Gerard: "When did you get the first inkling that the collapse was impending and what did that feel like?

"Dean Baker: I learned from the stock bubble in the 1990s that the timing was hard to predict but I first became convinced that it was starting to burst in the fall of 2006, (house prices had begun to fall) and I wrote a forecast projecting a recession for 2007. It turned out that I was still somewhat premature. I was expecting the price decline to gain speed more quickly and to have a more immediate impact on the economy. However, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research, the official arbiter of recessions, the current recession did begin in 2007, so I was not too far off.

"First, it offers $200 billion to provide refinancing for some homeowners who owe more than their homes are now worth — shorthanded as being "underwater" on their mortgages. To qualify, these homeowners — 5 million of them by administration estimates — must have their mortgages in the hands of Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, the mortgage finance giants that the government seized last September.

"Many of these homeowners would like to take advantage of today's historically low interest rates and refinance but can't, since the law prohibits refinancing if the current mortgages reflects less than 80 percent of the homes' values. These homeowners now can seek to refinance if their mortgages are up to 5 percent higher than the present-day values of their homes. That helps some, but it won't reach lots of homeowners in California, Florida and elsewhere whose homes are now worth substantially less than their mortgages.

"Because most mortgages are bundled into securities and sold into a secondary market, it's often difficult for homeowners to find out whether Fannie or Freddie owns their loans or whether they've been pooled with other loans and sold by an investment bank to other investors.

"The other pillar of Obama's plan attacks the problem of affordability. The administration provides another $75 billion in incentives to help prevent foreclosures in cases in which the homeowners, up to 4 million of them, are about to lose their homes. The money comes from the $700 billion bailout fund approved last October."

Robert Parry at Consortium News talks about the double standard of the media that support the Interantional Criminal Court's arrest order for the Sudanese president but ignore former President Bush's war crimes.

"In his Thursday column, Kristof describes the plight of an eight-year-old boy named Bakit who blew off his hands picking up a grenade that Kristof suspects was left behind by Bashir’s forces operating on the Chad side of the border with Sudan.

“ 'Bakit became, inadvertently, one more casualty of the havoc and brutality that President Bashir has unleashed in Sudan and surrounding countries,' Kristof wrote. 'So let’s applaud the I.C.C.’s arrest warrant, on behalf of children like Bakit who can’t.'

"By all accounts, Kristof is a well-meaning journalist who travels to dangerous parts of the world, like Darfur, to report on human rights crimes. However, he also could be a case study of what’s wrong with American journalism.

"While Kristof writes movingly about atrocities that can be blamed on Third World despots like Bashir, he won’t hold U.S. officials to the same standards.

"Most notably, Kristof doesn’t call for prosecuting former President George W. Bush for war crimes, despite hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who have died as a result of Bush’s illegal invasion of their country. Many Iraqi children also don’t have hands – or legs or homes or parents.

"But no one in a position of power in American journalism is demanding that former President Bush join President Bashir in the dock at The Hague.

"Journalist Murray Waas often used the saying, 'all power is proximate.' I never quite understood what he meant, but my best guess was that Waas was saying that careerists – whether journalists or from other professions – might have the guts to take on someone far away or who lacked power, while ignoring or excusing similar actions by someone close by with the power to hurt them.

"That seems to be especially true about Washington and its current cast of “respected” journalists. They can be very tough on President Bashir but only make excuses for President Bush."

Liliana Segura writes at Alternet that Obama may be bringing to much religion into the White House.

"Now that Bush is history, one thing we can be sure of is a return to the traditional barrier dividing church and state. Right?

"Not quite.

"Since taking office, President Barack Obama has raised eyebrows by mixing faith and politics in a way that has dismayed some of his secular supporters.

"First there was that Jesus-laden invocation by conservative Pastor Rick Warren at the inauguration. Then, an executive order that, rather than doing anything to dismantle Bush’s faith-based initiatives, bolstered them with a new "advisory council on faith." And then, last month, U.S. News and World Report published an article with the following announcement as its title: "A New Tradition for Obama's Presidential Events: Opening With a Prayer."

"In a departure from previous presidents," reported Dan Gilgoff, writing on the U.S. News blog God and Country, "(Obama's) public rallies are opening with invocations that have been commissioned and vetted by the White House."

"Apparently, not even the born-again W. indulged in such practices; as U.S. administrations go, putting a presidential stamp of approval on a prayer is a new phenomenon.

" 'Though invocations have long been commonplace at presidential inaugurations and certain events like graduations or religious services at which presidents are guests, the practice of commissioning and vetting prayers for presidential rallies is unprecedented in modern history, according to religion-and-politics experts.'

" 'It is not the first time Lynn's organization has expressed dismay over Obama's religious initiatives. The AU Web home page currently exhorts: "Mr. President, Please Fix Your 'Faith-Based' Program!" -- a cry over Obama's creation of an "advisory council on faith" last month.

"The Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships was founded via executive order on Feb. 5 to be a new office of the executive branch. According to the order, the council 'shall be composed of not more than 25 members appointed by the president from among individuals who are not officers or employees of the federal government." They will serve one-year terms "and serve at the pleasure of the president.'

"Indeed, Obama's executive order focuses largely on the work done by churches and religious institutions in under-resourced communities. "The goal of this office will not be to favor one religious group over another -- or even religious groups over secular groups," he told the audience. "It will simply be to work on behalf of those organizations that want to work on behalf of our communities and to do so without blurring the line that our founders wisely drew between church and state."

"However well-intentioned it sounded, the American Civil Liberties Union was quick to voice its alarm over the president's order, pointing out that the mission of the religious advisory council will also be 'to advise the president and the White House faith-based office on how to distribute federal dollars, and also advise on a range of other issues, such as AIDS and women's reproductive health car' -- areas where religious views present nothing if not a conflict of interest.

" 'We are moving blindly ahead with faith-based federal spending as if it were not a radical break with our past,' Jacoby warned. 'If faith-based initiatives, first institutionalized by the executive fiat of a conservative Republican president, become even more entrenched under a liberal Democratic administration, there will be no going back.'