it s one thing to say the public sector pension system needs to be cut back, effects will be felt unevenly, 19% employed by the government, 14% of white and 10% of latino. cutting pensions would hit black retirees especially hard. insult added to injury, significant portion of african-american seniors live in poverty. 19% currently living in poverty compared to 9% of seniors as a whole. many might call something a fix but what could actually be a system of increasing racial equalities plaguing our system. we re talking during the break we can t separate from from 99/1% narrative. we talk about fairness, lets talk about policy and self-interest. if you re well off self-supported merchant of high-end furniture in the detroit suburbs today, you don t want people losing their pensions, because that goes down the chain.
credit. they persuaded them to sign off on loans, people who needed credit because the wages weren t keeping up with the rising cost. lets pull back. we talked about predatory lending and subprime. even people who are responsible family members. post bubble, san diego or phoenix where houses went up crazy volumes in the boom, if you bought in 2006 at the top of the bubble, you needed to send your kid to a decent school district, you had to sign off on a funny money loan to afford prices driven up by the supposed by now responsible people who bought in 2001, 2002. because the money was so cheap and wall street was creating exotic loans, you had an asset price bubble. you can t get off that ride, unless you re moving to another country. or detroit where you can still pick up a house for $10,000. but then you re not in as you
right? shouldn t we blame practices in place at bank of america and wells fargo. joining me to answer that, executive business editor of the huffington post and author of past due. also shawna smith, the president of the national fair housing alliance. lynette cox who is co-founder of ask the money coach.com and author of zero debt for college grads. i ll be talking to her later. and peter, let me start with you, what is the problem of housing prices for responsible homeowners. you hit part of it already. you had this predatory system, wall street hungering for higher risk assets because the world seemed so safe in the housing bubble. investors were pouring into anything with more risk. you had a retail operation in memphis, baltimore, where wells fargo targeted people with lower