It's not just the American dollar that's losing value. A government agency has decided that an American life isn't worth what it used to be. The "value of a statistical life" is $6.9 million in today's dollars, the Environmental Protection Agency reckoned in May — a drop of nearly $1 million from just five years ago. The Associated Press discovered the change after a review of cost-benefit analyses over more than a dozen years. [Read More.]

“Owning a home lies at the heart of the American dream.” So declared President Bush in 2002, introducing his “Homeownership Challenge” — a set of policy initiatives that were supposed to sharply increase homeownership, especially for minority groups. Oops. While homeownership rose as the housing bubble inflated, temporarily giving Mr. Bush something to boast about, it plunged — especially for African-Americans — when the bubble popped. [Read More]

The foreclosure hammer is hitting ever harder. People lost their homes at the highest rate on record in the first three months of the year, and late payments soared to a new high, too - an alarming sign that the housing crisis and its damage to the national economy may only get worse. Dumping more empty homes on an already glutted market also is likely to put a further drag on home prices - extending a vicious cycle. [Read More]

Jesse Jackson was in Houston Wednesday speaking to local businesspeople and others about the need to involve minorities more in publicly traded corporations, and to urge parents to get more involved in their children's education. He spoke at the downtown Crowne Plaza during a symposium, "Building Capacity to Power America: Our Pipeline to Equanomics," organized by his Rainbow Push Coalition. According to the Houston Chronicle, Jackson told about 100 people at the luncheon that African-Americans battled through Jim Crow laws, earned the right to vote and gained other liberties, but now they must fight for economic equality. [Read More]