Tag Archives

Archive of posts published in the tag: housing

Economic Segregation

Kevin Williamson is one of the best economics writers around, especially for a non economist. His style follows in the tradition of Henry Hazlitt and his classic Economics In One Lesson, bringing economic theory into common experiences. This is from latest

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Supply, Demand, and Finance

Kevin Williamson follows in the footsteps of Henry Hazlitt in his clarity of economic and political issues. Like Hazlitt he is not a professionally trained economist, but brings a writer’s clarity to the subject.  I have probably excerpted him more

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Targeted Inflation

Henry Hazlitt wrote Economics in One Lesson in 1946 and it is still a classic. Hazlitt was a reporter, not a credentialed economist and he brought the dry concepts of economics to the lay reader.  Kevin Williamson, a journalist as

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Home Ownership and Unemployment

“The federal government has no fewer than 160 housing programs in all; each of them contributed in some measure to blowing up the bubble.” “Official government propaganda touted home ownership as the American dream. No one paid attention to studies

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Creation of Destructive Demand

In 1993, under Andrew Cuomo (currently governor of New York), the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced that it would “encourage” Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to have half their loan portfolios in affordable-housing (subprime) loans. Freddie and

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The United States Fiscal Policy as an Example to Avoid

Tips to Mark Perry at Carpe Diem for pointing to this speech given by Canadian Parliament member Pierre Poilievre.  We Americans think we get the capitalist thing right but we clearly have something to learn from our neighbor to the

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Housing Sanity is Just Due North

Economist Mark Perry writes in The American in 2/26/2010 Due North: Canada’s Marvelous Mortgage and Banking System. Excerpts: And this recent financial crisis isn’t the first time that Canada’s banking system showed greater signs of stability and less exposure to

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The Canadian Lesson on Sound Banking

The default belief  of our economic history of the last 100 years has been an acceptance of the dynamic growth of capitalism punctuated by excesses of market greed that have to be corrected by the singular wisdom of government regulation.

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Why the drop in home sales is a good thing.

It is not Obama’s fault that home sales are dropping, though it is his fault that they did not drop sooner.  Why is it bad that the sales of home and home prices are dropping? Yes, it eats up bank

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Does Our Housing Policy Foster Unemployment?

By pushing more people into housing through incentives the Federal government may be aggravating the unemployment problem. In good markets housing is illiquid. In a real estate depression a house is like a heavy anchor.  The inability to be mobile

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Political “Solutions”

More generally, what is called a  “solution” in politics is often simply a patch put over problems caused by previous “solutions,” which in turn were patches put over other political “solutions” before that. What never seems to get through to

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Wrecking Ball Benevolence

This August 2004 Barron’s article by James Bovard castigates Bush for his housing policy. Read the entire article here. Excerpts : ONE OF THE PROUDEST ELEMENTS of President Bush’s “compassionate conservative” agenda has been government financial support to home buyers

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More Home Owners; Less Home ownership

“Social engineering may aim to create stronger citizens, but it usually ends up producing weaker people.” Tim Cavanaugh in the October 2009 edition of Reason in an article entitled “The Ownership Society”. Tim explains how federal programs aiming to increase

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