Contexts: The More Challenging and Troubling Missing Pieces of the Financial Reform Debate

"Perhaps the most critical factor that has been missing in plain sight is the role of residential racial segregation. As Jacob Rugh and Douglas Massey recently reported in the American Sociological Review, racial segregation is a stronger predictor of the number and rate of foreclosures across US metropolitan areas than creditworthiness, level of subprime lending, home price inflation, coverage by the Community Reinvestment Act and other factors. Because low-income and minority communities were targeted by subprime lenders, it is no surprise that the targets of such high-pressure marketing could be more easily identified in segregated communities, with the foreclosure patterns one inevitable outcome"