Untold Stories at the Periphery: Reflections on the Financial Crisis of 2008

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Throughout the media, I have been reading retrospectives on the "Financial Crisis of 2008," occasioned by the 10-year anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers. It strikes me as odd that the touchstone event is so removed from those most adversely affected by the calamity.

While I did not know it at the time, the seeds were sown many years prior. The first harvest of destruction was felt by America's vulnerable communities long before the earthquake on Wall Street. Beginning in 2001, I was an associate pastor at St. Stephen Parish in South Bend, IN. Fr. David Porterfield, C.S.C. and I had great hopes for how we could serve South Bend's west side. Gregorio Chavez approached me about opportunities to acquire abandoned properties adjacent to the parish through the county tax sale. Properties that had fallen behind on taxes were available through auction. Year by year, the lists became longer, growing as a many-paged supplement to the South Bend Tribune. Some properties were in the more affluent parts of the county, but many were in our neighborhood. We had hopes that they may become more beneficial than the abandoned homes that were blighting our community as dens of all sorts of iniquity. The house immediately to the west of the St. Stephen's office was one such property. In 2002, the county listing indicated that it was owned by Lehman Brothers. After numerous inquiries, I received a call from a manager at Lehman who understood that I had interest in the property. I explained to her that we would be willing to receive it as a donation. She insisted that a donation was not possible as the house had resale value. I explained to her that it had passed several winters without occupation, apart from occasional refuge for those using drugs, and an investment to repair it would not be feasible. The best option, I explained, was demolition. She disagreed, saying, "I have a picture of the home here in front of me." I countered, "I am standing on the second floor of our office looking down through the whole in the roof into the home's kitchen." I made an appeal that the tax deduction for the donation would be more valuable than the sale fo the property. She would not consent. The home at 1104 W. Thomas St. proved to be one of many toxic properties in the Lehman portfolio. While I did not know it at the time, I can see now that Lehman's death was inevitable with a multiplication of decisions like this. Lehman Brothers cared more about making profits than the health of the communities where those profits were made.

In time, I came to see that those long listings of tax sale properties that dotted my neighborhood were the dashed hopes and dreams of my parishioners: young immigrants extended unmanageable loans to purchase a home, older adults who refinanced with a predatory loan to pay for health expenses. We collaborated with Notre Dame Federal Credit Union to launch a branch that spoke Spanish. We collaborated with First Source Bank on financial literacy. We hoped that we could save our neighborhood, but greater forces were at work than we could imagine.

The plentiful accounts of the "Financial Crisis of 2008" often neglect to tell the stories of millions of Americans, particularly those who were least able to bear it. Worse yet, no one has gone to jail for the criminal acts that brought on the crisis.

While much discussion continues about oversight and preparation for the next crisis, again, it will be the same ones, the most vulnerable, who lose the most next time around. The poor, the vulnerable, are almost always invisible to us.

Pope Francis said it well:

How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points? This is a case of exclusion. Can we continue to stand by when food is thrown away while people are starving? This is a case of inequality. (Evangelii Gaudium, #53)

Steps regarding the "prevention" of the next crisis are no more than rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic until we attend to the deeper issues of inequity in our society. The focus on Lehman Brothers keeps us from seeing the stories of those families on the periphery, whose lives were damaged by putting profit over people.