Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission Report - 1/3

Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) Report
Angelides: "People Want To Know How This Happened and Why It Happened."
February 11, 2011 • 12:44 PM
In his second interview with WNYC's Brian Lehrer, cut short because of breaking developments in Egypt, FCIC head Phil Angelides continued to promote circulation of the FCIC's Final Report (which continues to get scant coverage in the media), and called for more aggressive federal action to deal with the continuing foreclosure crisis.

Asked about the coming second wave of foreclosures, Angelides said that what's driving this is the high level of prolonged unemployment, and also the inability of homeowners to modify their mortgages. The complex securitization process makes it very hard to unwind these mortgages and establish ownership, Angelides said, adding, "we've created a very tangled web."

Saying that more aggressive federal action is needed, Angelides pointed out that in the 1930s, Franklin Roosevelt created a home-ownership assistance program, under which thousands of federal agents were sent out to help people negotiate with their banks.

Angelides again urged people to go to the website, download the report, or purchase it from Public Affairs press or the GPO.

"This is an important story: of what happened to this country, how we came to the verge of financial collapse, and hopefully there will be lessons learned here, so we do not repeat this... I think it shows there's a tremendous hunger in this country still -- anger, confusion, about what it is that brought us to the point where 4 million families have lost their homes, and 13 million families may; $11 trillion in life savings were wiped away, and 26 million of our fellow Americans are out of work. People want to know how this happened and why it happened."

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