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"What happened to our wealth? They took it."
Homewreckers: How Wall Street, Banks & Trump’s Inner Circle Used the 2008 Housing Crash to Get Rich
We speak with investigative reporter Aaron Glantz about his new book “Homewreckers,” which looks at the devastating legacy of the foreclosure crisis and how much of the so-called recovery is a result of large private equity firms buying up hundreds of thousands of foreclosed homes. “Homewreckers: How a Gang of Wall Street Kingpins, Hedge Fund Magnates, Crooked Banks, and Vulture Capitalists Suckered Millions Out of Their Homes and Demolished the American Dream” reveals how the 2008 housing crash decimated millions of Americans’ family wealth but enriched President Donald Trump’s inner circle, including Trump Cabinet members Steven Mnuchin and Wilbur Ross, Trump’s longtime friend and confidant Tom Barrack, and billionaire Republican donor Stephen Schwarzman. Glantz writes, “Now, ensconced in power following Trump’s election, these capitalists are creating new financial products that threaten to make the wealth transfers of the [housing] bust permanent.” Aaron Glantzis a senior reporter at Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting. He was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize this year for his reporting on modern-day redlining.
[ ... ]
AARON GLANTZ: Well, first of all, I wanted to know. Eight million Americans lost their homes in the Great Recession. But they didn’t just disappear, right? So we live now in a society where the wealth gap between the richest one-tenth of 1% and the other 90% is bigger than it’s been in a hundred years. And so much of Americans’ wealth is in their homes, because we have very few other ways to save. So I wanted to know: What happened to these houses? Who profited off this mess? And that trail led me to a number of people who are in Donald Trump’s inner circle.
[ ... ]
What I wanted to know was what happened after. Right? We’ve been stuck in this country on this trauma of 2007, 2008, 2009. But now here we are in 2019. Ten years have passed. The unemployment rate is low. The president tells us everything is great. But people don’t feel like everything is great. So, you know, we have jobs, but what happened to our wealth? They took it. That’s what happened.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And also, the disproportionate impact that this loss of equity in all these homes had, especially on the African-American and Latino communities, which were even more dependent on home equity for what little wealth they had or net wealth they had.
AARON GLANTZ: What we see is that banks, like Steve Mnuchin’s bank, concentrated their foreclosures in communities of color. And then, when they started making loans again when the economy improved, they didn’t make loans to those communities. So they wiped out the wealth of these communities with foreclosure, but then, over a five-year period, Steve Mnuchin’s bank made three loans to help African Americans buy homes and 11 loans — this is national bank — helped three African Americans and 11 Latinos buy homes over five years.
And now Steve Mnuchin, as the treasury secretary, is in charge of regulating every American bank. And so, he and Donald Trump picked one of his deputies at OneWest Bank, Joseph Otting, for this position called comptroller of the currency, which basically is America’s top bank cop, who’s in charge of enforcing laws, like the Community Reinvestment Act, that are meant to stop redlining. So, this bank, which didn’t make any loans — hardly any — to communities of color is now in charge — you know, this leadership, under President Trump — of making sure that these anti-redlining laws are followed.
[ ... ]
(Video and transcript at link)
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one way, or the other. They can't do it with industry and transportation this time, so they'll do it with finance and healthcare. There's never enough for these greedy nabobs. They can't be satisfied with anything. They want it all.
