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The Fierce Fear of the Next Financial Crisis
The alarm bells are beginning to ring for another recession, should we be listening?
Democratic Presidential Candidate Elizabeth Warren has been calling out financial malfeasance for a large part of her career. As a Harvard Law Professor, she first gained national attention in 2004. During an appearance on The Bill Moyers Show she called out then Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan for acting at the behest of banks when he was encouraging Americans to borrow against the equity in their home.
Her concern was the fact that the data indicated Americans were overextending themselves and the banks were encouraging the behavior. In short, she equated the growing mortgage debt akin to gambling in Las Vegas . . . and in Vegas, the house always wins. Over the next few years, Warren became more vocal about her concerns on what she saw as increasing predatory lending by banks and a full on financial Thelma and Louise style ending for many.
Warren’s worries were often marginalized, when they were paid attention to at all. And then on September 15, 2008 investment bank Lehman Brothers imploded setting off a chain of events that, as Rolling Stone writer Matt Tiabbi noted, “almost punctured a hole in the universe.”
