The Slaughter of Cities: Urban Renewal as Ethnic Cleansing by E. Michael Jones is a remarkable history of the application of private foundation and federal housing policies and dollars in Boston, Chicago, Detroit and Philadelphia as a weapon of economic and political warfare from the end of WW II through the 1960’s.
For the most part, Jones sticks to the legal economy. We don’t read much about the narcotics trafficking and mortgage fraud that was an essential part of this phenomenon. Nevertheless, his work is a formidable intellectual accomplishment and well worth reading to understand American history, the roots of housing bubbles and the history of our “”financial coup d’etat.”
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