A recent report from the New York Times tells us that Washington may be loosening the leash on mortgage lenders, but a range of research from sociologists over the last five years suggests that there were actually multiple problems that led to the 2008 housing crash, and they weren’t all about financial regulation alone.

Modern mortgages arose when homeownership was politically popular.

• Neil Fligstein and Doug McAdam’s A Theory of Fields

Politicians often used economic policy to “punt” unpopular political conflict.

• Greta Krippner, Capitalizing on Crisis, 2011.
• Thomas Ferguson and Robert Johnson, Too Big to Bail: The “Paulson Put,” Presidential Politics, and the Global Financial Meltdown (Part 1 and Part 2) 2009.

Subprime lending didn’t just take advantage of the poor—it was also a racial problem.

• Jacob Faber, Racial Dynamics of Subprime Mortgage Lending at the Peak, 2013.