Mortgage crisis

Leading up to the mortgage crisis of 2008 the big New York banks were making so much money they developed an insatiable appetite for more and more mortgages. This led to lower standards for qualifying for loans and finally reached the unbelievable ninja loan. No income, no job and no assets and you could still get a loan and buy a house. You could have any house that you wanted because you just fudged in the income needed for the loan. You could do this even though you didn't even have a job. Why would anyone do this? Because houses were increasing in value so rapidly that you only had to hold on to your house for a year and you could sell it at a profit. When the bubble is growing everyone wins but when it burst the low and middle income groups pay the penalty. 10 million lost their homes and they were mostly low income and many of those were people of color. On the other hand those who caused the problem like Lehman CEO Richard Fuld left with $500 million dollars. In testifying before congress he said it was $250 million which was not true but if you have enough you can lie to congress and get away with it.