Sanders earns the coveted Geppetto Checkmark (wealth was lost by the AA community)

[Babel_17]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/02/18/sanderss-claim-that-the-african-american-community-lost-half-of-their-wealth-in-the-wall-street-collapse/

“As I understand it, the African-American community lost half of their wealth as a result of the Wall Street collapse.”

–Bernie Sanders, Democratic debate on PBS, Feb. 11, 2016

The intensifying competition for minority votes was evident during the most recent Democratic debate, where Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton consistently pivoted to statistics about minority communities. This particular claim by Sanders was jarring and called for a deeper look at the statistic. Was Sanders correct?

The Pinocchio Test

Census data from 2005-2011 and Federal Reserve data from 2007-2013 support Sanders’s assertion about such staggering loss in wealth (43 to 53 percent loss, depending on the time frame and data used) among African Americans. Most of the loss in wealth was due to people losing owned homes — the major source of wealth in the black and Hispanic communities.

These data are more outdated than we generally require at The Fact Checker, especially since many communities have started seeing wealth recover since the crash. But there were no comparable, post-2013 national data to update the figure. Moreover, housing finance experts we consulted said they don’t anticipate black wealth to have increased significantly since 2013. We will look for the updated Federal Reserve data, anticipated by the end of this year, to see if politicians should update their talking points on this matter. Until then, Sanders earns the coveted Geppetto Checkmark.

[tk2kewl]

1. that is a horrifying statistic

[Babel_17]

2. Yes it is

We bailed out much of Wall Street, now they can pay a little more to fuel a real recovery. And that recovery needs to look to who's been hurt the most, and who's most in need.