After the 2008 financial collapse, the government required big banks to undergo annual stress tests. Now, those banks are suing to overhaul the stress tests. What does that mean for the stability of the financial system? Shayna Olesiuk, director of Banking Policy at Better Markets, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization focused on the financial system. They are often referred to as a “Wall Street watchdog.” Greg Baer, President and CEO of the Bank Policy Institute, an advocacy group for the big banks. MEGHNA CHAKABARTI: This is On Point. I'm Meghna Chakrabarti. For those of us old enough to remember it, it's hard to fathom that 17 years have already passed since the 2008 financial crisis. It was the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Though, the Trump administration's recently launched trade war against our closest and largest and most peaceful trading pa…

In the years running up to that crisis, millions of home mortgages were handed out to people who eventually would not be able to pay them. The nation's biggest banks had created complex assets out of those mortgages, sold and resold them to each other, and were so tightly intertwined that when the bottom fell out of the mortgage repayments, it threatened to take the entire financial industry with it. Millions of people lost their jobs, lost their homes, lost their retirement savings. Markets were wiped out. But the big banks themselves, they got a federal bailout. For years, policymakers and regulators would hold hearing after hearing to figure out exactly what went wrong. PHIL ANGELIDES (Tape): Good morning. Welcome to the public hearing of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission. This is our second day examining the issue of financial institutions that have become t…