CNN Money: 10 years after the financial crisis, have we learned anything?
10 years ago this week, Lehman Brothers filed for the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history.
For families in Ohio—and across the country—the economic crisis that followed had major consequences: Some struggled to send their kids to college, others lost their homes and cars, and many watched the savings they’d spent decades putting away disappear.
But Republicans have recently turned their attention to rolling back regulations put in place to prevent another crisis. Sherrod is fighting back—because as long as some Americans are still struggling as a result of the last financial meltdown, it’s up to us to do all we can to ensure this country doesn’t experience another one.
CNN Money: 10 years after the financial crisis, have we learned anything?
Lydia DePillis – September 13, 2018
Key points:
- Lehman Brothers’ 2008 collapse set off a chain reaction of bank failures that required unprecedented federal action to unwind.
- Of course, America has come a long way since the Federal Reserve and the Treasury had to step in to save the banking system from going under. But by many metrics, and for millions of Americans, the recovery has yet to arrive.
- Take the homeownership rate, for example: Only in 2017 did it stop its long downward slide, after private equity investors bought hundreds of thousands of foreclosed homes and rented them back to their former owners, many of whom saw their credit so badly damaged that they can never buy again.
- The recovery has deepened the divide in other ways: By income, most gains have gone to households in the top 10% of the wage scale.
- There’s also a shortage of affordable housing, a legacy of the drought in both mortgage and construction lending that lasted long after the worst days of the recession had passed.
- After the Obama administration implemented rules meant to prevent another crisis, Republicans passed the most significant rollback of Dodd-Frank regulations since the bill was enacted.
- Meanwhile, President Trump’s picks to head federal agencies overseeing the banks have either worked for the industry or have been harsh critics of the agency they’ve been put in charge of, like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s acting director Mick Mulvaney. They have slowed or halted enforcement actions and rule making and imposed hiring freezes, limiting their ability to pursue fraud.
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