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Cathy Lesser Mansfield was busy staging her opera, “The Sparks Fly Upward,” a year ago when the economic crash was sending sparks all over the place. She had taken a leave of absence from the “Americans for Fairness in Lending” committee to bring years of work to the stage, and she didn’t have much time to contemplate the collapse of the global financial system.

However, she had already done her part to keep it all together. Clear back in 2000, the Drake University law professor co-authored a paper about the inevitable subprime mortgage disaster and presented the findings to a Cabinet-level task force and the House Banking Committee.

She admits that more data might have produced a stronger presentation, but they made their point. They predicted the 25 percent foreclosure rates that some parts of the nation are now seeing.

Mansfield wasn’t the only one who saw where we headed, of course. A few years later, at the annual convention at the National Consumer Law Center, “they said we were on the Titanic,” she said. “They said, ‘when all of these adjustable-rate mortgages reset, we’re going to see a huge number of foreclosures.'”

Harvard Law School professor Elizabeth Warren “asked what our exit strategy was,” Mansfield said. “Nobody had a satisfactory answer.”

But Wall Street was quite happy with the money being made all through the decade, and it’s rare when anybody says, “This is too lucrative. I’d better stop.” Nobody seemed to think we even needed to slow down or change course. Hitting an iceberg, though, gets your attention.

So now the federal government might be more receptive to change, and last week Mansfield took another shot. She was one of more than 70 law scholars across the United States who signed a statement supporting the proposed Consumer Financial Protection Act (H-3126). It’s an idea that Elizabeth Warren first advocated in 2007.

If Congress decides to establish a Consumer Financial Protection Agency, Mansfield hopes “it will streamline and focus our attention in a way we haven’t done before. … For two decades, the federal government has said, ‘Our rules prevail; OK, banks, do what you want.”

At the least, she figures consumers need to have a better chance at understanding the rules. What we have here, she says, is “informational asymmetry.” That’s when the lender looks through the cards and selects its hand, while the borrower sits across the table hoping for the best.

“We have this foolish respect for our current view of economies,” Mansfield said, that leads us to believe that the market will sort everything out just fine with minimal regulation.

As last week’s letter carefully phrased it: “Our review of the regulatory approaches at the existing agencies … leads us to conclude that on balance they place a higher value on protecting the interest of financial product vendors who promote complex debt instruments using aggressive sales practices than they do on protecting the interests of consumers in transparent, safe and fair financial products.”

Or, as the captain of the Titanic used to say, “Let’s see how fast this baby can go.”

Mansfield has heard plenty of stories about outrageous loan documents with little connection to the facts. If a broker decides to lie, can one more federal agency prevent it?

“Can you completely stop lying? I suppose not,” she said. “But the agency could have strict guidelines on when you could do no-doc loans (without proof of income, etc.).

“When a broker makes money on closing the deal and also shares in the spread, you set up a system that encourages that kind of behavior.”

An individual’s effect on the process may be limited, but Mansfield has done at least one more thing to pitch in. As an occasionally practicing lawyer, “I took a couple of cases for people in foreclosure because of predatory loans,” she said.

“I told my daughters, ‘I want to do more than just stand here and say I told you so.'”