For confirmation of the old adage that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, take a look at the US housing market. Lavish Wall Street bonuses mean that apartments and houses for the well-off in New York are still rising smartly in price. Meanwhile, in the poor US city districts where many blacks and Latinos live, something very nasty is going down.

Global stock markets shuddered last week at the prospect that an implosion in the subprime mortgage market would pull the US into recession and crimp world growth. Subprime mortgage lenders such as New Century Financial are in trouble because so many borrowers have defaulted on their mortgages as interest rates have risen and homes have fallen in value.