By Doug Miller
Lending institutions in California have foreclosed on African-American and Latino homeowners nearly twice as much as white property owners, according to a new study by the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL), indicating that banks likely targeted those ethnic groups to receive more expensive and financially toxic subprime mortgages mortgages during the decade of the housing boom.

By The Editors
Has America forgotten there’s a Great recession going on? That more than 14 million workers who recently had jobs now don’t? And that more than 44 percent of them have been out of work for six months or longer – a circumstance which has laid the foundation for a permanent jobless class numbering in the millions?

The funding formula used to provide grants to New Orleans residents whose homes were damaged or destroyed by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita very likely disadvantaged black homeowners because it was based on depressed property values that result from both current racial isolation and the city’s segregated past, a U.S. District Court judge has indicated.
As the [...]

By The Editors
After weeks of deadlock in Congress, the Senate and House this week quickly passed legislation extending unemployment benefits to millions of Americans who’ve been out of work for six months or longer.

By Stacey Patton
Now, as the country braces for the possibility of a double-dip recession, additional spells of unemployment, and yet another wave of home foreclosures, a recent report by the New York Times found that the bulk of those dumping their mortgages are rich people.

They call it “strategic defaults.”

By Lee A. Daniels
The gateway to understanding the optimism blacks feel even in the face of an alarming deterioration of their economic position can be put in one word.

Faith.

By Lee A. Daniels
The nation’s unemployment rate in June declined slightly, as did the number of people counted as being out of work.

But no one’s happy about it.

By Doug Miller
A tornado of foreclosures spawned by the subprime mortgage collapse has disproportionately flattened black and Hispanic homeowners, according to new research by the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL), sucking hundreds of billions of dollars in wealth from communities of color.

By Lee A. Daniels
Black and Latino Americans are disproportionately bearing the burden of joblessness, with, relatively speaking, more of their working-age members out of work at every demographic level, from high school dropouts to college graduates.

By Lee A. Daniels
The mixed record of recovery of the U.S. jobs crisis continued last month as the number of new jobs created substantially outstripped expectations – but was shadowed by an increase in the unemployment rate and the number of those jobless for six months or longer.