NightBlogger

Interesting looking book flagged by the WSJ, called Confessions of a Subprime Lender. The story is told by Richard Bitner, who founded his own subprime mortgage company right as the industry was taking off. Over five years, the company boomed. Confessions of a Subprime Lender is his insider story — disillusionment, fraud, greed, ignorance. A year after he gets out and leaves the industry, sub-prime imploded. More

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Stephen Lendman
RINF
A more recent book is her [Frances Fox Piven is a Canadian-born Professor of Political Science and Sociology at The Graduate Center, City University of New York] 2006-published “Challenging Authority” and subject of this review. It’s about how social movements can be pivotal forces for change because ordinary people in enough numbers have enormous political clout. Abolitionists, labor movements and civil rights activists proved it. Piven examines their collective actions plus one other in the four examples she chose - the American Revolution.

Piven’s book is succinct and masterful. Howard Zinn calls it a “brilliant analysis of the interplay between popular protest and electoral politics.” Canadian Professor Leo Panitch says the book is “theoretically profound, yet immensely readable,” and sociologist and social movements expert Susan Eckstein describes the book as “quintessentially Piven-esque.” It “eloquently (shows) how ordinary people….have taken it upon themselves to correct injustices.”

Piven’s theme is powerfully relevant at a perilous time in our history. The nation is at war on two fronts, a third one looms, constitutional protections have eroded, social services erased, the country is militarized, dissent repressed, and the government is empowered to crush freedom and defend privilege at the expense of beneficial social change it won’t tolerate.
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