Five years ago, millions of bad loans that banks had peddled—in order to feed the profitable securities market—began to fail and foreclosures began climbing. Washington ignored it then and continues to ignore it in all but name today. Millions of people lost their homes and millions more will follow. But amid all the chatter about deficits and coming presidential elections, it’s easy to forget this crisis continues apace. One in eight mortgages are past due; one in five black and Latino borrowers are believed to be at the brink of foreclosure.

The consequences stretch past the families that get kicked out. The systemic fraud that drove up prices and flipped homeowners through large refinances has also left the market with a glut of ridiculously overvalued, foreclosed properties upon which banks are now squatting. The glut has spawned many new crises, including driving down the value of everyone else’s home and all the echo-effect problems that creates, too. It’s a series of dominoes that the banks’ failed mortgages sent tumbling and that continue to fall.

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