Predatory lending emerged with a vengeance in the mid 1990s. Subprime mortgages were nothing new but the way Wall Street pushed them on homeowners was. Those homeowners, disproportionately African-American, have lost their single largest asset and billions of dollars in equity have been gambled away on Wall Street. Perhaps more disturbingly there were state laws in place that would have prevented such practices. They were repealed.

Tonight on GRITtv we look at the great subprime swindle with Sarah Ludwig, Co-Director of the Neighborhood Economic Development & Advocacy Project (NEDAP), Kai Wright author of a recent article in the Nation magazine, Lionel Ouellete the Executive Director of C.H.A.N.G.E.R., and John Flateau Chair of the Economic and Empowerment Committee of the NAACP in Brooklyn.

As millions of Americans are forced to foreclose on their homes, find out how the Government fell asleep at the switch and why regulators failed to do their job. As Ludwig says, there were many who knew the house of cards was about to topple, including advocacy groups calling for basic oversight, and yet nothing was done.

 FOR MORE ON THE HOUSING CRISIS: come out Saturday, to the Lyric Theater in Miami, where Laura Flanders will co-host, with Miami’s own Cheryl Mizell, a special Live From Main Street town hall meeting on sustainable development. For more on Live From Main Street — a production of the Media Consortium with GRITtv, go to Livefrommainstreet.org

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