How does a corrupt mortgage scam by brokers in California become a massive national fraud that puts the whole economy into a deep crisis? Bill Black on theAnalysis.news with Paul Jay.

Transcript

Paul Jay

Hi, I'm Paul Jay. Welcome to theAnalysis.news. Please don't forget there's a podcast at the top of the webpage. If you're on YouTube, you can hit subscribe and please share this story with everybody you know. This is part three of my series of interviews with Bill Black on what he calls control fraud, please watch the earlier parts as we're picking up where we left off. The docu-series titled The Con breaks down what happened during the financial crisis of 07/08. Here's another clip from the trailer of the film.

Excerpt from "The Con"

Addie Polk was specifically targeted for who she was because she was living in a poor area, she didn't have any direct, you know, any direct descendants, she was widowed and she was a minority.

You can go in mostly poor minority neighborhoods and you would have people canvassing the neighborhood, knocking on doors, putting fliers in your mailbox. Say we can help you. We can get that roof fixed. We can get you new windows and sometimes they would have information on your house that you didn't give them. They would just look up your house. That was commonplace.

"The weak, the meek, and the ignorant are our best targets." Those are the words they put on paper to describe those folks. So, that has meant that the quintessential victim, if you wanted a single face, that face would be of an elderly black woman. That's the quintessential victim of predation in the financial sphere.

Keep in mind, when you had all of these little mortgage companies, these people had to find their victims because they had to keep things going into the pipeline. They had to keep up a certain number. It started in the inner city, but like anything else, when it was getting good and the money was, then it branched out and everybody became fair game. This is why we have to stop seeing each other by color, because if it starts over there, it's going to come over here sooner or later and so as a result, it's now a national problem because everybody knows somebody who lost their home.

The system said that the poor and minorities are disposable. The system says that that was simply the cost of doing business. The mortgage company said after Addie shot herself we'll forgive the loan. You should have never made the loan. You should never have made the loan. We'll forgive the loan, but she shot herself already. People can say all lives matter. I say black lives matter not because white lives don't matter, but because traditionally when something like this occur, no one comes to help. Black Lives Matter, Addie Polk matters, and anyone else who has lost their home, who have lost their life, they matter. I hope, I pray that we can come to some sort of common ground. That people need protection from those who are seeking to make profit. People need protection.

Paul Jay

Now joining us to discuss the history and present state of control fraud is Bill Black, who's in the film The Con and was an adviser to its producers. Bill is an American lawyer, an academic, an author, and a former bank regulator with expertise in white-collar crime and public finance, and other topics in law and economics. As I mentioned, he's the author of the book The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One, and he's an associate professor in economics and law at the University of M...