It Rhymes with Crime: Sub "Prime" Crisis and the Crime Angle

It had to come up. If crime is the ideal against which all social problems are measured, and forms of governance imagined (more or less my thesis in Governing through Crime), it was only a matter of time before the rippling sub-prime loan crisis would be recast as a story of crime.

In one sense there is much about the sub-prime scandal which invokes crime, especially the highly premeditated strategies employed by many in the loan supply chain to manipulate the rules in order to enrich their personal bottom line (while exposing unsophisticated consumers to high risks of financial ruin). But the preferred crime story in America emphasizes poor people and minorities involved in street crimes, not educated professionals involved in "suite crimes."

Thus MSNBC's coverage:

Eighty-five bungalows dot the cul-de-sac that joins West Ontario Avenue and East Ontario Avenue in Atlanta. Twenty-two are vacant, victims of mortgage fraud and foreclosure. Now house fires, prostitution, vandals and burglaries terrorize the residents left in this historic neighborhood called Westview Village.

Squalor, crime follow wave of foreclosures, MSNBC.COM

(thanks to Keith Hiatt for calling this to my attention)