CNNMoney, March 16, 2018: 10 years after the financial crisis, have we learned anything?
As president of the nonprofit National Community Reinvestment Coalition, John Taylor warned Congress about the predatory and fraudulent lending that was fueling a housing bubble as early as 2000. Lawmakers told the Federal Reserve to write rules that would have put a stop to the worst practices. But the crash came first.
“Thinking about it now, I can feel myself being angry about it,” says Taylor, in a soft accent left over from his upbringing in the housing projects of Boston. “Because we fought when we saw these things happening. We brought it to the attention of both Democrats and Republicans. In the end, it took the nation’s economy having to collapse before they felt the need to do something.”
“We’re sitting here, 10 years later, with a short-term memory that doesn’t seem to recall how we got into that mess,” Taylor says. “We got into that mess because of the lack of regulation, and now we’re talking about making banks less accountable. It makes no sense whatsoever.”
