Bush Administration

Darryl Dahlheimer, a project manager at Lutheran Social Service financial counseling in Minneapolis, points to the main reason we got into this mess: “We’ve been fetishizing free markets for the last 15 years to the detriment of the consumer and families and stable communities.”

Now consumers are experiencing anger and starting to fight back in the face of a $700 billion Wall Street bailout.

Minnesota home prices have declined by as much as 20 percent. More than 27,000 will have their homes foreclosed on in the next year. Twenty-five percent of ARMS in the state have yet to adjust. And thousands of more homeowners are struggling with negative equity in their homes as the housing market continues to be hit with serious aftershocks.

So how will homeowners caught up in the crisis fare under the Bush Administration’s Wall Street bailout? U of M law professor and former assistant attorney general Prentiss Cox says the bailout is “like a reverse criminal action where you give restitution to the criminals and put the victims in jail.” He talks to MnIndy about how we got here and why the bailout needs to change.

There’s something mordantly funny about watching the stenographers and voice talent of the Washington press corps fulminate about Scott McClellan’s admissions regarding the paper-thin pretexts on which the Iraq War was sold by the White House. You get the feeling they resent his flouting club rules more than anything else. Did they not wait their [...]