A 15-year-old video of Sen. Elizabeth Warren predicting the collapse of housing markets is going viral among the presidential candidate’s supporters.
“[Then-Federal Reserve Chairman] Alan Greenspan, our national economic leader, has stood up for the last four years and told Americans ‘borrow against your house,’ ” Warren, then a professor at Harvard Law School, says in the 2004 clip. “What frightens me is millions of American families have taken that advice.”
{mosads}Warren’s interviewer responded, “The houses around me are rising in price. It makes sense that I should be able to harness some of that rising real estate value,” prompting Warren to respond “Think about what happens when you load up more debt on your house: just you are rolling the dice … that your income’s going to continue to go up, that nothing serious is going to go wrong in your family.”
Warren also warned about potential long-term fallout in response to Greenspan’s assurances the market will devise “innovative approaches” if anything goes wrong.
“Look at what his innovative approaches are about, they’re about owing money … they’re about people losing what is the No. 1 retirement plan in America,” completing their house payments and living in their home “for the rest of their days,” she said.
“Alan Greenspan has talked Americans out of their No. 1 retirement plan and we’re starting to see the effect of that,” citing an increase in Americans 65 or older who have not yet paid off their houses. “We’ve literally, as a country, mortgaged our future.” She added that while wage growth could offset the trend, “the long-term trends don’t look good.”
The first clip in the series, posted by Twitter user @TheLoveBel0w, has been retweeted more than 4,500 times and has nearly 270,000 views, with the users sharing it including former Canadian Prime Minister Kim Campbell. “[Warren] is so clear on how the so-called gurus like Allan Greenspan led Americans down the garden path,” Campbell wrote Tuesday. “She is not just smart and knowledgeable, she is passionate about American lives!”