The Case Of The “Disappeared” Minority Subprime Borrower

Foreclosed: State of the Dream 2008 – examines the racial bias of the subprime mortgage lending crisis, and the resulting huge wealth loss to people of color that has resulted.

The mega-hustlers who steered venerable financial institutions into this mega-iceberg, are not hurting. The press described the CEOs of two of the greatest malpractitioners of banking, Merrill Lynch and Citigroup, as having "fallen on their swords"—but not for these types such a noble end. Stan O'Neal, the ousted CEO of subprime-bombed Merrill Lynch, received a $160 million "retirement" package. The golden chute for Chuck Prince, the CEO who led Citigroup to the biggest loss in its 196-year history, was $42 million. John Mack, the CEO of Morgan Stanley, had to forego his 2007 bonus, but it’s some consolation that at the height of the subprime scam, in 2006, he copped $41 million.

Dick Fuld, the CEO of bankrupt Lehman, took home $45 million in 2007, so he won’t have to mourn the vaporization of his 401k. "Jimmy" Cayne, the former CEO of the former Bear Stearns, similarly burned on his vested stocks, presumably retired to his $28 million apartment in the Plaza Hotel, to lick his wounds.

The banks themselves have not had to drink the hemlock they had brewed either. Instead of falling under the weight of their own malpractice, except for Lehman they have basked in the largesse of the Federal Government. Technically, it's not a bailout using taxpayer money—just a wide-open "discount window", a spigot from which poured over a quarter trillion dollars in just four days in mid-September ’08. But it's a bailout nonetheless, as pointed out by Barry Grey on the World Socialist Website: