Dec 03 2013
How Wall Street Firms Still Dominate the Housing Industry, at the Expense of Ordinary Americans
Wall Street firms are at it again – the same financial industry that sparked the 2008 foreclosure crisis is capitalizing on the mess it originally created by buying up huge numbers of foreclosed properties, renting them back to families and creating another risky investment scheme.
One of the firms leading the mass home buying is The Blackstone Group. Blackstone, which is the world’s largest private equity company, has now become the nation’s largest holder of single family rental homes. The company has spent about $7.5 billion buying up 40,000 mostly foreclosed properties and bundled up the rental payments to create a securitized bond using the home mortgages as collateral.
Blackstone and other Wall Street firms have purchased over 200,000 homes over the past three years for a whopping $20 billion. But critics are extremely nervous about a scheme that seems strikingly similar to the mortgage backed securities crisis which led to the financial collapse in 2008. Not only do these Wall Street firms have no experience as landlords, a failed rental backed bond could potentially jeopardize thousands of families who could face eviction regardless of whether or not they miss their rental payment.
GUEST: Laura Gottesdiener, journalist and activist, and author of A Dream Foreclosed: Black America and the Fight for a Place to Call Home. She has a new article in TomDispatch* about this story, called How Wall Street Has Turned Housing Into a Dangerous Get-Rich-Quick Scheme – Again
ERRATUM: Laura’s article was erroneously announced as having been published in Mother Jones
Click here to read Laura Gottesdiener’s article.
One Response to “How Wall Street Firms Still Dominate the Housing Industry, at the Expense of Ordinary Americans”
kindest greetings team sonali: enjoyed the show this morning, and this banking piece only helped confirm my desire to see kpfk start creating more buzz about the idea of public banking. at truthdig.com ellen brown has already written several articles about public banking, and so would be another great guest to hear more about her ideas and how more people can get involved in this most important subject. no doubt, the political power is already in sacramento to make california the second state in the union to create such a banking system, and helping liberate some 30 million people from capitalists who will keep using their power to make life less than satisfying for millions.
thanks, and have some fun out there too, aye??
eddie