"...what Alan Greenspan focuses on when he talks about the health of the American family is whether or not they'll be able to continue to make the payments on those outstanding credit cards, and outstanding loans. Because if they can keep making the payments, if they can keep a shoulder to the wheel, then it means the banks are safe. Ultimately, Alan Greenspan's constituency is just the banks. Just keep those banks safe, and that means everything is happy.

[...]

"...Let's talk about what's happened to families, not in the long past, just since the year 2000. Since the year 2000, credit card defaults, that is people who are not making even the minimum monthly payment, up 55 percent.

"Home mortgage foreclosures ­ people who desperately want to keep up the payments on that one asset, because if you don't, it means you're out on the street ­ up 45 percent. And bankruptcies, the ultimate declaration of financial death that I can't make it anymore, up 33 percent.

[...]

"Alan Greenspan, our national economic leader, has stood up for the last four years and told Americans, "Borrow against your house. If you can't close the gap at the end of the month, just borrow against your house."

[...]

"...think about what happens when you load up more debt on your house.

"Just you are rolling the dice at the table in Las Vegas. And here's how you're rolling it. You're rolling it that your income's going to continue to go up. That nothing serious is going to go wrong in your family that's going to make it hard to make those payments.

"Someone's going to get sick, you're going to lose a job, you're going to be without health insurance. Someone's going to get divorced. None of those things are going to happen to you. And here comes the third one, the one you hit on.

[...]

"And then here comes the real hooker. And when mortgage foreclosures start in earnest, it doesn't just affect the person who's been foreclosed against, it affects everybody up and down the block.

"When banks take homes away in foreclosure, housing prices for the entire neighborhood drop.

Warren has argued in previous work that hired gun hack academics are producing pro-credit-industry research that helps companies fight off consumer protection and rational policy.