Crisis

The PBS star attracted crowds to what appeared on the surface as a way to help black borrowers build wealth, but a lawsuit alleges it was actually just the opposite.

The Minnesota Independent’s Andy Birkey has the details:
Days after Rep. Michele Bachmann [R-Minn.] launched a petition against the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, ACORN is shooting back with a petition of its own.
“When you pick on ACORN, you pick on ME!” the petition says. “Congresswoman Michele Bachmann would rather pick on ACORN than [...]

Among the many housing policy disappointments sustained during the bust, the Hope for Homeowners mortgage refinancing program has to rank as the disappointing-est. Originally estimated as having the potential to aid nearly half a million struggling borrowers, the program has resulted in just one successful loan refinancing to date. Quite the batting average. But the [...]

The New York Times takes stock of the economy’s dreadful year:
In a mere 12 months, the Dow Jones industrial average plunged 4,488.43 points, or 33.8 percent, its most punishing loss since 1931. Blue chips like Bank of America, Citigroup and Alcoa lost more than 65 percent of their value. The broader Standard & Poor’s 500-stock [...]

Over at our sister site, The Michigan Messenger, Todd Heywood reports that he just conducted a phone interview with Palestinian journalist Sameh Habeeb, who is on the ground in Gaza. Habeeb says an Israeli ground incursion into Gaza is currently underway. Israeli tanks are shelling Gaza.
Habeeb reported Israeli tanks had begun firing into Gaza and [...]

The fight that neighborhoods in Cleveland are launching against banks that dump vacant and vandalized foreclosed homes back onto the real estate market received a bit of a setback, as I noted in my story Monday. A private, non-profit housing advocacy group had filed suit in local housing court to force the banks to clean [...]

Another good point made by TWI’s Daphne Eviatar and Josh Marshall, who sums it up well. From TPM:
Senate Republicans are following this course for three key reasons — first is payback against a major industrial union; second is payback against states like Michigan and Ohio who have been moving away from the GOP; third is [...]

Right. In Texas giving a commencement speech at A&M. As some folks are pointing out this morning, it brings to mind another time when Bush was reading to kids in the midst of a crisis.
Remember “My Pet Goat?”

Forget credit default swaps, mortgage-backed securities and all those complicated financial instruments that are causing the economy so much trouble. Wall Street is reeling today instead from a straightforward, by-the-books, $50 billion Ponzi scheme apparently orchestrated by the once-respected investor Bernard Madoff, a former chairman of the Nasdaq Stock Exchange. There is no complex chain [...]