Justin Sullivan/Getty ImagesNEW YORK Four years before Lehman Brothers collapsed and set off the worst U.S. financial disaster since the Great Depression, Ruhi Maker warned top officials at the Federal Reserve that the nation s housing bubble could wreak "enormous" economic damage.
Maker, a housing attorney in Rochester, New York, told Fed officials that a flood of faulty home loans could imperil the soundness of major investment banks, even naming Lehman Brothers, according to a transcript of the meeting.
The testimony drew on experience at the frontlines of a foreclosure crisis fueled by subprime loans thrust upon borrowers who couldn t afford them, Maker told ABC News.
"I remember one woman, a widow, sitting across from me and crying. She said she was so happy her husband had died, so he couldn t see what a mess she had made of the house," Maker said.
This fall marks the 15th anniversary of the onset of the 2008 financial crisis, which quickly spiraled into
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