joining us from new york to discuss today's struggle for fair housing is laura gottesdiender, author "a dream foreclosed: black america and the fight for a place to call home." laura, welcome inside "the war room." >> thanks so much for having me. >> michael: this foreclosure crisis was not an accident. banks targeted people of color for subprime loans and then foreclosured in wide stretches. tell us how that happened. >> i would be happy to. you know, i'm glad that you opened with the fact that the fair housing act was passed in 1968, and that was followed by the fair lending act of '77. but the fact of the matter is that housing discrimination is very much alive and well in the united states. it has been incredibly well documented how racial discrimination was rampant throughout the mortgage industry. really, essentially, a systemic practice of the mortgage industry. the way that one former loan officer in baltimore put it was that wells fargo put bounties on the heads of minority borrowers by providing cash incentives to any of the loan officers who were able to convince these cus