Political Quotes

“Mr. President, during the financial crisis, $13 trillion in household wealth was erased. Nine million jobs were lost, and 5 million Americans, 5 million families and individuals lost their homes. The financial services industry has bounced back, and far too many American families have not. While many in Washington may have forgotten the financial crisis, millions of Americans haven't forgotten how predatory lending practices contributed to the housing bubble and helped spark this crisis. For them, this was the crisis. Unscrupulous lenders offered loans that required no documentation, loans with teaser interest rates that later spiked and undermined a borrower's ability to repay, and loans where borrowers never paid down their principal. Borrowers with these higher cost loans were foreclosed upon at almost triple the rate of borrowers with conforming 30-year fixed-rate mortgages. The crisis revealed a host of other harmful practices, such as steering borrowers to affiliated companies, kickbacks for business referrals, inflated appraisals, and loan officer compensation based on the loan product that they peddled. These practices offered little benefit to the borrower. They were not about helping those families purchase a home they could afford. It is no coincidence that as borrowers' costs increased, so did loan officers' compensation. These abuses didn't start in 2007 and in 2008. In many communities, predatory lenders began moving in a decade or more before the crisis.…”