1. Research Question: What was the reason for the crisis and economic downfall which has caused the shrinking of America’s middle class?
2. Research key words: Middle class, American economy, Wall Street, housing mortgage fraud, economic crisis, class warfare, white collar crime, personal debt, banking, and financial institutions
3. Sub questions: What can be identified as the beginning of the economic downfall?
Did Savings and Loans executives have anything to do with the situation?
What other financial institutions were involved?
Occupy Wall Street protesters blame financial institutions on Wall Street. Is it a reasonable assumption that they have at least some responsibility?
The financial instruments called “derivatives” were never regulated? Why not?
The middle class have been hit hard. Why is the middle class shrinking?
Has anyone been arrested for White Collar Crime? Should they be?
Why aren’t audits enough to keep the financial institutions honest?
4. This is an important subject to me because it has so much to do with my future. It has impacted my family and their ability to help me out with college tuition. We know people that lost their retirement money and had to go back to work. I want to more about what happened so I can do a better job of planning for my own financial future.
A lot of people have lost their homes and their retirement savings. Even though they used to live comfortable middle class lives they are now struggling to have a decent quality of life. I read Plunder by Danny Schechter, an investigative journalist, who researched the subprime scandal so I have a basic idea of the overwhelming amounts of money that changed hands and the large number of people who lost their homes. He explained the overall scheme the ‘profiteers’ used to take a lot of money. I would like to learn more about the issue.
5. I will use Inside Job: The Looting of America’s Savings and Loans by Stephen P. Pizzo, Mary Fricker, and Paul Muolo as a resource to answer the research question.
There are some interesting websites I will read such as one that monitors the mortgage business, www.MI-Implode.com. Daily News Stories at www.carolynbaker.net has up-to-date information. In order to understand how mortgages work I will research The Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America (www.naca.cm).
For scholarly sources I will look for articles from peer reviewed journals. ProQuest has a database called EconLit that has scholarly sources of information.
For primary sources the New York University Libraries has research guide on US economic statistics here http://nyu.libguides.com/content.php?pid=132892&sid=1139458. The London School of Economics has a website for economic primary sources.
