Angela Blount’s Reviews > The Housing Boom and Bust > Status Update

"What the government buys with the enormous sums of money it dispenses is the power to give orders to the recipients that the Constitution never authorized them to give. Politicians are, in effect, buying up our freedom with our own tax money."

"The current economic crisis itself grew out of politicians intervening in businesses and markets, making decisions for which they have neither experience nor expertise--much less a stake. To extend the same principle to other sectors of the economy is to invite a wider disaster, rather than an end to the current crisis."

And there it is--the gist of the whole book.

"The purpose of government is not to exercise every conceivable right it has, but to exercise whatever wisdom it has for the benefit of the country."

... "In this latter case, it doesn't matter how slowly spending gets underway. What matters is the law gets passed while the public is panicked, and before any opposition can get organized."

"If the purpose was to get the current economic crisis behind us, then the slow-moving policies passed in haste make no sense. But, if the purpose is to use the current crisis to create enduring changes in the institutions of the American economy and society, then the haste makes perfect sense." ...

"The larger question that remains as relevant as ever today is, was it the free market that led to the massive unemployment that persisted throughout the decade of the 1930's, or was the Great Depression prolonged by the government interventions that were intended to shorten it?"

"When you open the floodgates, you cannot tell the water where to go. Housing speculators--flippers--found the new and looser home mortgage rules a bonanza. So did others. It is by no means clear that the poor, or minorities, came out ahead at all after the housing boom turned to bust and many were left with mortgage payments they couldn't meet on homes they couldn't afford."

"Few things blind human beings to the actual consequences of what they are doing like the heady feeling of self-righteousness durring a crusade to smite the wicked and rescue the downtrodden."

"More generally, what is called a solution in politics is often simply a patch put over problems caused by previous political solutions, which in turn were patches put over other political solutions before that. What never seems to get through to many politicians, or to supporters of political interventions in markets, is that policies have repercussions far beyond the particular goals of those policies."

"Survival in the market often requires recognizing mistakes and changing course, while survival in politics often requires denying mistakes, continuing the current policies, and blaming the bad consequences on others."