The two main competing views of government are clearly on display in the foreclosure crisis. Those who believe that it is government’s responsibility to redistribute money to rich people favor modifications that use government money to keep underwater homeowners paying banks.

This article I wrote tries to explain how some of the assumptions concerning housing may not be valid. I wrote this in 2009 and the topic still remains absent from any housing financial forecasts.

The vast majority of economists completely missed the housing bubble. Even now they can’t seem to admit that this was a serious mistake.

The great housing bubble had a very specific and noisy but could be seen coming for years. Those who should have prevented it are still in place.

On the news that Whirlpool plans to move an Indiana factory to Mexico, joining so many other manufacturers abandoning America, the president of the largest manufacturing union in North America spoke to an expert on manufacturing about the crisis this exodus is causing the U.S. economy.

By Zach Carter, Media Consortium Blogger

In a landmark decision last week, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations could spend unlimited funds to influence American elections, overturning a century of legal precedent. The Court’s ruling in Citizens United v. FEC undermines the integrity of the U.S. government, as President Barack Obama emphasized at his State of the Union address. But the decision also deals a damaging blow to the U.S. economy by encouraging lawmakers to write economic rules that benefit specific companies at the expense of everyone else.

The economic free-fall is finally slowing down, although nobody expects the recovery to be very pleasant. Job losses and foreclosures are expected to increase well into next year. But even if our economic system gets back to normal, it’s important to remember that gross inequalities are embedded in the global order. At home, minorities face significant barriers to economic security, while abroad, children in poor countries are denied access to basic nutrition. This is especially disheartening in the wake of the G-20 meeting in Pittsburgh, which demonstrated that the world’s economic leaders are more focused on bailing out banks than eradicating global poverty.

The second anniversary of the bursting of the housing bubble passed unnoticed.

Nouriel Roubini, Dr. Doom, endorses one of the prime architects of our current financial disaster Ben Bernanke

Economists missed an $8 trillion housing bubble. But now they can do the right thing by supporting a third stimulus.