process exclusively and it comes out with traders making bets on which direction interest rates will go and whether money is going to be loose or tight, is this huge regulatory role of the fed chair. yes. i mean, you are essential lay essentially the regulator oaf last resort for the entire industry, right? yeah. let s think, even before dodd/frank, which alexis and i worked really hard on, actually gave a lot more power to the fed and didn t deal with its conflicts of interest, which we would have liked to have seen. before dodd/frank, for 14 years, the federal reserve could have stopped subprime lending in the crisis. it sat on its hands it could have done it. it had the power to do it. it had the power to do it. i won t do this for your viewers, but it had the power, and in fact, was the only real regulator that had the power to regulate subprime mortgages for 14 years, basically could have prevented the foreclosure crisis. and just really quickly, post dodd/frank, the
we understand there s a segmented labor market even as we saw unemployment decline nationally, it ticked up one point for african-americans. it s not a question of is everything good for america automatically good for black america. it s the question is it as good for black america. since the problems we ve seen among african-americans are a result of specific policies targeted at them, it s only reason reasonable that in order to redress those, we have to have a policy that specifically addressed that community. toing necessarily has to be a big racial pow-wow. one of the big blown opportunities the administration had was during the stimulus where they did not opt to the direct funding to the zip codes that had been hardest hit by the recession. and by the foreclosure crisis. i think that in and of itself would have addressed black and brown communities because we were hardest hit. the reverend al sharpton is host agevent tonight on msnbc
like this one all across the city of detroit. that led to an increase in crime, a decrease in property values, and a precious drain on those city funds. so officials are saying, by tearing it all down, it will clear the path to bring detroit back up. stay away and scrappers will be shot. signs like these are a common sight in neighborhoods all across the motor city where there are more than 78,000 abandoned homes, most of them fallout from the housing crisis. more than 30 of those homes are on robert couch s small street and have become magnets for squatters, scrappers and criminals. bring our neighborhood down, our community down. it ain t no community. we try to do what we can as neighbors but neighbors can t do it all by their self. reporter: now help is on the way in the form of wrecking balls and dump trucks. in a first-of-its-kind program, michigan is taking on detroit s foreclosure crisis and
let s talk about this. garrett tenney is live for us in the motor city. the big question is, is this going to help? reporter: well, heather of the goal of this program is to stablize neighborhoods and redice foreclosures like taking homes like these and making them look like this. stay away and scrappers will be shot. signs like these are common site in neighborhoods all across the motor city where there are more than 78,000 abandoned homes. most of them fallout from the housing crisis. more than 30 of those homes are on robert couch s small street and have become magnets for squatters, scrappers and criminals. bring our neighborhood down, our community down. it ain t no community. we tried to do what we can as neighbors. neighbors can t do it all by their self. reporter: now help is on the way in the form of wrecking balls and dumping trucks. in the first-of-its-kind program michigan is taking on detroit s foreclosure crisis and
thank you very much. meanwhile, a brand new twist in the foreclosure crisis sending shockwaves through the financial system. in richmond, california, they want to seize houses worth less than their current mortgage using eminent domain where necessary and then refinance the homes for less than their current value. is that legal? stewart, is that the correct use of eminent domain? in my opinion, no. this is a vast extension of government power. let me repeat how it works. the city of richmond seizes privately held mortgages. about 620 of them. it cuts those mortgages, cuts the amount that s owed, and then resells those mortgages to other investors. the homeowners get lower short ganlg payments. arguably the neighborhoods win because there are fewer abandoned homes. but the losers here are those people who own those mortgages.