“There’s a little froth in this market [but] we don’t perceive that there’s a national bubble.” - Alan Greenspan, October 2004

“Will we have another crash? Yes. Will we have another credit crisis? Yes. Can we do anything about it? No.” - Alan Greenspan, September 2007

WILL YOU JOIN US IN THIS NEW CITIZEN JOURNALISM INITIATIVE?

Danny Schechter, director of IN DEBT WE TRUST here. I will be joining our colleague Sharon Kayser in revitalizing the stop the Squeeze newsletter and turn it into a blog that can track the economic crisis that my film warned about, and has hit with gale force. The economy is now in a recession with the pressures of the collapse of the housing market because of all the subprime scamming widely acknowledged. The debt system has struck back with force, and many of the top experts don’t know what to do if anything.

That is why we the people have to wake up out of the stupor of denial fed by upbeat media reporting and endless advertising and marketing by the credit-industrial complex. This crisis is real and its impact is just beginning to be felt even after TRILLIONS of dollars have vanished on Wall Steet and in the financial system worldwide. We are going to continue to cover this issue by monitoring global media coverage, and hopefully with the articles you send and the experiences you share.

We cannot do this alone and hope soon to join forces with other websites and activists fighting predatory lending and unfair foreclosures. We want to support students crushed by the burdens of high priced educational loans and everyone dealing with credit card interest and rate hikes. WE ARE ALL BEING SQUEEZED and have to fight back.

This blog–and extension of the blog I already write as the NEWS DISSECTOR on Mediachannel.org will focus on credit and debt issues but also report on the growing fight back that I have been monitoring and part of. Even though I am a journalist, I can’t be detached because as a consumer and citizen, I am facing the same pressures that we all are. If the eonomy collapses, I will collapse too. We all have a shared interest–young and old, white, black or latino, young and old–to engage this issue.

I have been studying, first in the investigation that led to the film IN DEBT WE TRUST. (Please get a copy and show it wherever you can from indebtwetrust,org) and now have a book called SQUEEZED: America As The Bubble Bursts free for you to download from Http://www.coldtype.net/debt.html. Another version is now making the rounds of publishers.

I have also been wriiting the weekly Stop The Squeeze newsletter. As a blog, we will be able to update more regularly. Please subscribe to it at stopthesqueeze.org and share it with friends and organizations. For many reaons, the change community has ignored economic justice issues and that has to change.

You can write to me at: Dissector@mediachannel.org if you have ideas or suggestions. We also need to raise money to keeo this work going. Tax-deuctible donations to The Financial Awareness Project at the Global Center will help us sustain this increasingly timely work. Remember that voters now see the economy as a top issue—but they need more sources of information than CNBC or FOX BUSINESS NEWS. All too often the business pages are totally pro-corporate and uncritical of exploitative practices and fraud in the marketplace. We have to spotlight the criminal aspects of this credit crunch and press the press and our leaders to do something about it.

Will you join us in this work.

Here is some latenews for a starter:

The Telegraph reports: Bush Convenes Plunge Protection Team

Bears beware. The New Deal of 2008 is in the works. The US Treasury is about to shower households with rebate checes to head off a full-blown slump, and save the Bush presidency. On Friday, Mr Bush convened the so-called Plunge Protection Team for its first known meeting in the Oval Office.

ON THE ECONOMY: CNBC MORE RATE CUTS COMING AT THE FED

Federal Reserve officials from opposite ends of the ideological spectrum had a similar message Tuesday — that further interest rate cuts could lie ahead given risks to economic growth in the United States.

“The economy is going to be weak; the real question is how much weaker it’s going to get,” Charles Plosser, President of the Philadelphia Fed, said in a speech in Pennsylvania.Meanwhile, Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren said the U.S. housing market was on track for its worst performance in half a century.

BLOOMBERG: PAULSON SAYS HOUSING COLLAPSE CONTINUING

Jan. 8 (Bloomberg) — Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said the housing decline will continue, and a program aimed at heading off a wave of foreclosures may need to be expanded beyond subprime borrowers.

“There is no evidence it is bottoming,’’ Paulson today said of the housing decline on CNBC television during a trip to New York. “The evidence would be that it has further to run.

AS BANKRUPTCIES SURGE, CONGRESS CONSIDERS NEW LAW

ANOTHER HEAD CHOPPED ON WALL STREETS—CAYNE OF BEAR STERNS

Investment News: Cayne mutiny: Bear boss is out
James Cayne will retain the role of chairman and will be replaced

BALTIMORE SUES WELLS FARGO

In a potentially groundbreaking lawsuit intended to stem foreclosures in Baltimore, Mayor Sheila Dixon’s administration is suing a leading mortgage provider for what the city says has been a pattern of predatory lending in black neighborhoods.

The lawsuit, which the Dixon administration plans to file today in U.S. District Court, alleges that California-based Wells Fargo Bank sold higher-interest subprime mortgages to blacks more frequently than to whites and that the practice, known as reverse redlining, violates federal housing law.

Lenders are increasingly coming under legal attack from borrowers and investors stung by the subprime mortgage crisis, but Baltimore’s lawsuit could be the first in the nation in which a city is attempting to recapture costs associated with foreclosed homes that wind up vacant.

In a potentially groundbreaking lawsuit intended to stem foreclosures in Baltimore, Mayor Sheila Dixon’s administration is suing a leading mortgage provider for what the city says has been a pattern of predatory lending in black neighborhoods.

The lawsuit, which the Dixon administration plans to file today in U.S. District Court, alleges that California-based Wells Fargo Bank sold higher-interest subprime mortgages to blacks more frequently than to whites and that the practice, known as reverse redlining, violates federal housing law.

Lenders are increasingly coming under legal attack from borrowers and investors stung by the subprime mortgage crisis, but Baltimore’s lawsuit could be the first in the nation in which a city is attempting to recapture costs associated with foreclosed homes that wind up vacant.

We will have more news for you in the days and weeks ahead.

Join Us.