Betting the House

Since spring 2008, an unprecedented housing crisis has left the front yards of U.S. single-family homes littered with “For Sale” signs, foreclosure notices, and dead flowers. The crisis has emptied out entire neighborhoods in Florida, California, Arizona, and Nevada, destroying years of sustained community building. What is happening in the United States of America? How is it that mostly ethnic minorities and women are stripped of their minimal savings, and why is such a vast rip-off possible? If so many Americans are now dispossessed, relocated to shantytowns, or worse, dumped onto the street, why aren't they marching on Wall Street? And, finally, are Marxist theorists able to make sense of this tragedy?