Our guest blogger is Robert Gordon, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

When you’re not checking the stock market today, check out Emmanuel Saez’s recently updated tables on income inequality. Here’s an interesting table:

Look at incomes for the top 1% of earners — the solid black triangles. You’ll see that in 2006, their share of the nation’s income (22.9%) reached its modern peak. The only year higher? 1928.

Another table shows that the top 10% in 2006 took a bigger share (49.7%) than at any point since 1917. The year 1928 was the runner-up.

Let’s hope that 2006 and 1928 don’t end up looking similar in other ways. If they do, it will be a good reminder that growth needs to be shared not just because it’s right, but also because it’ll last longer.

– Robert Gordon

Just yesterday, a new report revealed that home foreclosure rates in February had skyrocketed 60 percent from the same month last year. The amount of equity Americans own in their homes plunged to lows not reached since 1945; and home sales remain at near record low levels.

Yet throughout this crisis, Bush has refused to lend homeowners a helping hand. In fact, he has repeatedly insisted that homeowners are at fault for intentionally buying homes they could not afford:

“It’s not the government’s job to bail out speculators or those who made the decision to buy a home they knew they could never afford.” [8/31/07]

“Some borrowers took out loans they knew they could not afford. … We should not bail out lenders, real estate speculators or those who made the reckless decision to buy a home they knew they could never afford.” [12/6/07]

However, in a Friday speech to the Economic Club of New York about the state of the economy, Bush admitted that some of the borrowers now facing foreclosure may have been confused about the terms of their loans:

These mortgage agreements can be pretty frightening to people; I mean, there’s a lot of tiny print. And I don’t know how many people understood they were buying resets, or not. … And to the extent that these contracts are too complex, and people made decisions that they just weren’t sure they were making, we need to do something about it.

Watch it:

Unfortunately for homeowners, however, Bush’s shift is no more than rhetorical. Even as the Federal Reserve was in unprecedented negotiations to bail out giant Wall Street firm Bear Sterns, Bush refused to grant similar help to struggling homeowners. “In a free market, there’s going to be good times and bad times,” he said flatly. “That’s how markets work.”

Today, ThinkProgress is launching a sister blog — The Wonk Room. To address the need for substantive dialogue and information, The Wonk Room is intended to be a rapid-response policy blog as well as a resource for in-depth policy analysis on four core issue areas: health care, economic mobility, national security, and climate change.

While the media often focuses an inordinate amount of coverage on the daily political horserace, less attention is paid to the deep philosophical and ideological differences between conservative and progressive policies. The Politico reports:

The site – which the center calls “the first-ever public policy rapid response blog of its kind” — is designed to bridge the shrillness of the presidential campaigns and the details of policy choices that will confront the winner.

The daily mission of this blog is to provide a substantive, focused, and relentless effort in each of these areas:

– Promoting progressive policy solutions on the four core issue areas

– Defending those progressive ideas from false attacks

– Defining the Bush record

– Critiquing the conservative approach

The ultimate goal of our effort is to create a mandate for progressive action in each of the four core policy areas.

The Wonk Room will combine the talents of individuals from unique backgrounds, joining former policy directors of presidential campaigns with policy analysts, established progressive bloggers, and skilled political researchers. (If you’re interested in working for the Wonk Room, we’re still hiring. Please email Faiz your resume at faiz@thinkprogress.org).

Please bookmark us and check back frequently!