Bloomberg Businessweek: Why Are All These Colored People Wrecking Everything Again?

Have you heard the news? The housing crisis is over! Instead, minorities are rolling around in houses full of cash . It is craziness! This must be the case, because it's all over the cover of Businessweek , and they have never had an inappropriate cover before.

What are these crazy Individuals Of Color doing with all that money? They are only going to mess everything up again! Look at the barefoot black man with the fistful of dollars and the crazed look in his eye — you think he's going to be spending that wisely? How about the weird black lady drooling into a cereal bowl upstairs? "What could possibly go wrong?" it says, and we believe it!

Everybody knows minorities caused the last housing bubble, with their whole "believing banks who were intentionally screwing them" and all. Now they have cash by the houseful, and they are going to do it again! Say it ain't so. 

Actually... it... ain't so? What's going on?

 Apparently , the story that goes along with this cover is called "A Phoenix Housing Boom Forms, in Hint of U.S. Recovery," though you can't blame them for changing that for the front, since it is a perfect example of a really, really boring headline. Also really, really boring? The story !

We were very excited for this one, because the Businessweek people were going to explain how all these ridiculous people on the cover were going to ruin the economy, AGAIN, just like Cavuto said they would .

But we got worried that this wasn't going to be the case, because the folks at the Columbia Journalism Review got all huffy about it :

In fact, though, the record is clear: minorities were   disproportionately targeted by predatory lending, which has always gone hand in hand with subprime. Even when they qualified for prime loans that similar-circumstance whites got, they were pushed into higher-interest subprimes .

Well, that sounds awful, though really, what is so bad about lying to people, giving them a bum loan, and then taking their house? Businessweek explains this, right? They must. This is their big story about the next economic catastrophe, caused by houses full of cash and non-white folk.

This is where it gets really disappointing, because it isn't about minorities at all, and never, though the cover promises to, considers "what could possibly go wrong?" It is about how, since mortgage rates are low and there aren't as many homes for sale, home values are going up and people are building again. In Arizona. That's the whole thing.

Come onnnn guys! Your cover promised some good old-fashioned minority-bashing, and instead you told us about how well house-flippers are doing. Try to bring your A-game next time, and remember: Blame everyone but the bankers.

 [  CJR ]