When the Big Boys Get in Trouble, Who Pays the Ultimate Bill?
By RALPH NADER I was at a large wedding reception in New York City that I saw Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, sitting down to dinner one spring evening in 2000. Having heard on the grapevine that the Federal Reserve was finally going to do something about predatory lending-an area of enforcement under their jurisdiction-I went over to his table and asked him this question: “Mr. Chairman, I hear that you are going to crack down on predatory lending practices.” He nodded and said quite firmly, “Yes, Enough is Enough.” Since it was, after all, a social occasion, those words were enough for me and I returned to my table with the good news. For years, my associates, Jon Brown and Jake Lewis, had been working to document the prevalence of predatory lending and communicate our concern to the federal banking agencies and members of Congress. Jon Brown developed detailed computerized maps of bank redlining in low-income areas, city by city, which were geographic guides to place
