Elizabeth Warren’s ‘A Fighting Chance’: An Exclusive Excerpt On The Foreclosure Crisis
The Massachusetts senator recalls an unsettling conversation with Timothy Geithner.
By Senator Elizabeth Warren | April 27, 2014
BY LATE 2009, the mortgage crisis had prompted plenty of finger-pointing — and a lot of it was directed at the families losing their homes. Earlier in the year, when talk of writing down mortgages surfaced, a televised rant about “losers” went viral and was generally credited with sparking the Tea Party. Now everybody seemed to have a favorite story about a bus driver who bought an $800,000 home or somebody’s brother-in-law who flipped houses, made a fortune, and then lost it all when the music stopped.
It all seemed backward. It was as if people were saying: “Oh, gosh, we can’t blame poor Mr. CEO Banker. He gets paid millions and millions of dollars because he’s really good at his job, so how was he supposed to know that his bank was about to collapse?” And then they turned around and said: “Hey, stupid homeowner! Why did you sign those confusing mortgage papers? Didn’t you know that your balloon payment would come due just the moment your job disappeared?”
In fall 2009, Secretary Timothy Geithner invited people working on TARP oversight to a meeting. It was held in the Treasury Building in an incredibly fancy room that was loaded with historic furniture, rich draperies, and heavily framed paintings. It looked like a room for kings to negotiate over who was going to get what colony. The secretary and his aides sat on one side of a huge table. The rest of us lined up on the other side.
Secretary Geithner spoke quickly, often dropping his voice into a barely audible monotone, rushing ahead so fast that there was no room for interruptions. He was clearly smart and in command of the facts, but he didn’t offer many opportunities for questions. Maybe he was a little anxious. It probably wasn’t much fun to face more than half a dozen people whose job was to look over your shoulder and second-guess your decisions.
more...
http://www.bostonglobe.com/magazine/2014/04/26/elizabeth-warren-new-memoir-exclusive-excerpt-foreclosure-crisis/c02alOTRWXiYCMLxbakSiO/story.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
