Meltdown : The Financial Crisis, Consumer Protection, and the Road Forward

Meltdown reveals how the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was able to curb unsafe and unfair practices that led to the 2008 financial crisis. In interviews with key government, industry, and advocacy groups along with deep archival research, Kirsch and Squires show where the CFPB was able to overcome many abusive practices, where it was less able to do so, and why. Open for business in 2011, the CFPB was Congress's response to the financial catastrophe that shattered millions of middle-class and lower-income households and threatened the stability of the global economy. But only a few years later, with U.S. economic conditions on a path to recovery, there are already disturbing signs of the (re)emergence of the high-risk, high-reward credit practices that the CFPB was designed to curb. This book profiles how the Bureau has attempted to stop abusive and discriminatory lending practices in the mortgage and automobile lending sectors and documents the multilayered challenges faced by an untested new regulatory agency in its efforts to transform the broken—but lucrative—business practices of the financial services industry. Authors Kirsch and Squires raise the question of whether the consumer protection approach to financial services reform will succeed over the long term in light of political and business efforts to scuttle it. Case studies of mortgage and automobile lending reforms highlight the key contextual and structural conditions that explain the CFPB's ability to transform financial service industry business models and practices. Meltdown: The Financial Crisis, Consumer Protection, and the Road Forward is essential reading for a wide audience, including anyone involved in the provision of financial services, staff of financial services and consumer protection regulatory agencies, and fair lending and consumer protection advocates. Its accessible presentation of financial information will also serve students and general readers.

GREGORY D. SQUIRES is Professor of Sociology and Chair of the Department of Sociology at The George Washington University. Currently on the Board of Directors of the Woodstock Institute and the Advisory Board of the John Marshall Law School Fair Housing Legal Support Center in Chicago, he has served as a consultant and expert witness for fair housing groups and civil rights organizations around the country and as a member of the Consumer Advisory Council of the Federal Reserve Board. He has written for several academic journals and general interest publications, including Social Science Quarterly, Urban Affairs Review, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. His recent books include Insurance Redlining, Color and Money, Urban Spraw, and Organizing Access to Capital.

Elizabeth Warren, the widely admired former presidential candidate, is the senior senator from Massachusetts. She is the author of a dozen books, including A Fighting Chance and This Fight Is Our Fight, both of which were national bestsellers. The mother of two and grandmother of three, she lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her husband, Bruce Mann, and their beloved dog, Bailey.