Mortgage crisis fueled by financiers' lack of liability

While reckless mortgage lending threatened the American economy, the Bush administration, Congress, free marketers and industry lobbyists protected the responsible parties from both civil liability and government investigations. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s Eric Nalder reveals in a series “Green Light for Greed” a little-known battle where Wall Street financiers and lenders were protected from civil liability while they expanded eightfold their financing of subprime and non-traditional loans in just five years. They financed predatory lending and the mortgage crisis. Meanwhile, federal bank regulators stopped their state counterparts from doing investigations of the abusive and reckless lending practices.