"For most of the country’s history, state and lo- cal usury laws imposed modest consumer protec- tions by setting caps on interest rates and fees. But in 1978, a federal statute was used to bypass these laws. Creditors quickly rewrote the rules, issuing un- intelligible contracts that increased fees, penal- ties, and interest rates. The fragmented financial regulatory bodies that remain have operated as if their main goal were lender profitability."
[...]
"The ever-widening information imbalance between consumers and creditors has only made borrowers easier marks. In a Federal Trade Commission study conducted last year, for instance, nine in ten mort- gage customers examining relatively straightforward fixed-rate loan agreements could not figure out the up-front costs on the loan; half could not iden- tify the loan amount. Of all the borrowers who were sold subprime mortgages in the past five years, nearly 60 percent would have qualified for prime mortgages if brokers had offered them; the sub- prime mortgages carried so many rate escalators, prepayment penalties, and other traps that even would-be prime borrowers defaulted."
Elizabeth Warren back in this era was also famous for talking about the twin-income trap, here's a 2004 talk about 'The Coming Collapse of the Middle Class': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akVL7QY0S8A&feature=youtu.be