A couple of weeks ago, Barney Frank (in explaining the financial crisis) said that we shouldn’t push “low income people into owning homes that they can’t afford.” Last week, an economist wrote in the Wall Street Journal that “the poor are better off renting.”
All of this pious blaming of the meltdown on poor people misses the point: the mortgage crisis wasn’t caused by poor people buying houses they couldn’t afford. It was caused by middle-class people buying homes made unaffordable by urban planners. As previously noted here, most foreclosures in the last couple of years happened to people with prime, not subprime, credit ratings, suggesting that most were middle class, not poor.
The problem was that, in making housing unaffordable, planners were also making housing prices more volatile. Meanwhile, relying on historic low volatility rates (and under pressure to increase homeownership rates in the face of less affordable housing), banks and lenders (including Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) reduced downpayment requirements. This combination guaranteed that more people would end up under water (owing more on their mortgage than their house was worth).
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Risk managers also failed to note the increased volatility in housing prices, which led them to underestimate the risk in both prime and subprime loans. As the Economist put it this week, risk models “failed abjectly to take account of low-probability but high-impact events such as the gut-wrenching fall in house prices.” Except, just as important, the fall in housing prices wasn’t a low-probability event — thanks to urban planners.
Because of this, the Antiplanner argued 18 months before the meltdown, “we can give urban planners almost complete credit for” the recession. In spite of planners who continue to argue, like Bart Simpson, that “I didn’t do it,” they made housing unaffordable and prices volatile. But just because they were stupid (or, more likely, deliberately making housing unaffordable to achieve their goal of forcing more Americans to live in higher densities) doesn’t mean the more people ought to rent instead of own their own homes.
Regardless of income, families with children who can afford to buy a home are better off doing so than those who rent, not because homes are a good investment but because they offer a more stable environment for raising children. There are clearly income thresholds below which it makes more sense to rent than to buy. But those thresholds need to be determined by borrowers, based on how much of their incomes they are willing to devote to housing, and lenders, based on historic risk rates, not by government planners who decide that, for our own good, more people should live in rental housing.
All of this pious blaming of the meltdown on poor
IMHO calling this assertion ‘pathetic’, ‘desperate’ or ‘mendacious’ is an exercise left to the reader.
It was caused by middle-class people buying homes made unaffordable by urban planners.
THIS is mendacious. Bordering on a lie.
Meanwhile, relying on historic low volatility rates (and under pressure to increase homeownership rates in the face of less affordable housing), banks and lenders (including Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) reduced downpayment requirements. This combination guaranteed that more people would end up under water
Yes, if you area a strict macro person and believe landscapes should be a sea of residential roofs to lower prices, then lending for SFD is a loser because everyone’s house prices will fall in that scheme, and all will be under water. Brilliant policy, surely.
Not by government planners who decide that, for their own good, more people should live in rental housing.
No examples – zero – have been given to back this fallacious assertion.
This assertion is false.
Another post, another collection of falsehods.
Plus ca change, plus ce la meme chose.
DS
Dan, I thought you swore off ad hominem attacks? Can’t you do more than swear at the Antiplanner and trying to move the burden of proof?
Go get your own website to spout your stupid postings. I checked on GoDaddy.com and “Dan’sAdHominemAttacks” and “DanGetsAThesaurus” are available.
Dan:
Randall offered links to academic papers, including those by scholars not himself (like Ed Glaeser and Joseph Gyourko) providing evidence for his theory. He also provided quotes by politicians and op-ed writers saying that “for their own good, more people should live in rental housing.” (Though, in fairness, some of the same politicians were saying the exact opposite when the bubble was expanding.)
It seems to me that, once again, Dan is the one engaging in baseless assertions.
The more things change, the more things stay the same indeed.
Geez, Andy, I dunno, when DS goes ballistic I know the AP has made a major point that DS cannot refute.
Plus I’m a developer and know from a thousand personal experiences that the AP is right on this one, for sure.
And DS, before you start screaming, I have no bias for or against density. I’m of European origin and I love the dense, pedestrian friendly cities there. I also love the North American suburbs, which despite certain ranters, have created huge, green, parks with houses and which are extremely pleasant places to live.
My only bias is that people should be able to do exactly what they want, so long as they do not injure their neighbors, and that government has no business whatever ordering them around by “planning” or in any other way.
I am extremely tired of the lefty jerks who run municipalities and planning departments using “so long as they do not injure their neighbors” to lie, cheat and steal.
Yes they are lefties and yes they do lie, cheat and steal.
My only bias is that people should be able to do exactly what they want, so long as they do not injure their neighbors, and that government has no business whatever ordering them around by “planning†or in any other way..
Ah. You’ll be moving to an area of no gummint then. Good luck with securing enough ammo and shipping it. Share your success story so others can GoGalt too.
Nonetheless, the world does not work in this way. Everyone plans. And we know that the free market fairy does not care about humanity or society – we have seen how well that failed model works. So, sorry that the small minority doesn’t like how the world works. Adjust.
Randall offered links to academic papers, including those by scholars not himself (like Ed Glaeser and Joseph Gyourko) providing evidence for his theory.
I’ve brought this up at least a dozen times here. Randal conveniently “forgets” it every time he brings it up, and I remind him every time he brings it up that he “forgot” the last time he brought it up, despite the fact the last time he brought it up I reminded him:
The reason for the restrictions is the locals demanding their electeds re-zone to large-lot zoning to keep out undesirables and keep home valuse high. This is the restriction. “Forgotten” every time Randal trots out Glaeser.
I – and others – have also shown numerous times there are numerous reasons for growth management or restrictions – many if not all made at the behest of the citizenry – and who are you to demand that the citizens of the place where you do not live do something they don’t want to do?
———-
Lastly, just because I ignore low-wattage time-wasting dimwits doesn’t give low-wattage time-wasting dimwits license to post false assertions and opportunisitic mendacity, including ‘ad hom‘ attacks. Dimwits should learn the definition before they use it if they don’t want to embarrass themselves and llok like cowards, if dimwits are able to self-assess embarrassment and cowardice. Intellectually honest, self-respecting people with courage and a pair don’t use such puerile, low-wattage dimwit tactics.
DS
Yawn.
Atlanta had one of the highest foreclosure rates during the “financial crisis”. They’re not a SG city by any means. (Neither is Las Vegas, despite ROT/Cox/Cato assertions).
If planners caused the financial crisis, why are those states that don’t have much influence from planners having just as high of rates of foreclosure as those with sg regulations?
I might add, ROT should not care if people rent “tenements” (nice hyperbole) or own a home. He should not be advocating the Gov’t meddle in the business of living spaces, and that includes mortgage interest deductions for homeowners.
The Libertarianism in this post by ROT is completely absent imo.
Clearly Dan is also unclear about the definition of ‘ad hominem’. His statement “Another post, another collection of lies” is an ad hom, even if he can prove that it is true. Which I doubt.
I promise not to let you troll me again, Dan, but seriously, start your own blog.
And let falsehoods go unchecked at the source, bja? Why on earth would someone do that?
Non-starters or hopes notwithstanding, the definition of ad hom is simple (bja: hominem is from the Latin for ‘man’, you describe a different word):
Ad hom: your argument is wrong because you are an idiot.
NOT ad hom: Your argument is wrong because of x, y, and z, and oh BTW, you are an idiot.
See? Ad hom is misused all the time as a weapon and rhetorical tactic. Simply knee-jering “ad hom” doesn’t make it true.
Now, back OT: Randal is misusing Glaeser gain and falsely claims th’ plannin was responsible for th’ bubba. When will this blatant false argument set be scrapped in favor of a more truthful argument?
DS
Here in San Jose, Silicon Valley, Randal is right on. With Smart Growth and the Urban Growth Boundary planners got our averaged home prices up to almost $900,000. Now down to under $600,000 with many under water.
Lets have a report from Houston. I heard they had dropped very little in average home prices???
Does NO ZONING WORK???
Dan, you have scolded Randall for not providing examples. In your own words:
“No examples – zero – have been given to back this fallacious assertion.”
You then do exactly the same thing. Again, in your words:
“And we know that the free market fairy does not care about humanity or society – we have seen how well that failed model works.”
So, are baseless assertions allowed, or not?
Please provide us with at least one example of an actual free market, and an example of how it has failed. If you and I use the same definition of free market, I think you will have some trouble with this one.
“So, sorry that the small minority doesn’t like how the world works. Adjust.”
Dan, you might be surprised at the number of people who don’t like the way the world works at present. It may not be a “small minority”.
“Good luck with securing enough ammo and shipping it.”
Yes, sadly it is becoming ever more difficult to buy and ship ammo. It seems that some people, who believe they know what’s best for all of us, think that making my life more difficult will somehow reduce crime, or violence, or something like that.
Ron
Highwayman and other Antiplanner opponents sometimes post outrageous and irrelevant comments, but they also make some good points and back them up. That is very interesting and adds a lot to the website. Most of like reading the opposing views, though we wish they would just focus on their points and their back up research.
But Dan is just a troll with a Thesaurus and no other life. I would happily pay for a website where Dan could spout his trite comments to anyone who would want to go there.
Dan is consistent in using many types of fallacies & just insulting. It’s very common for people with no evidence to use name-calling. Just like in the playground, which is consistent with his puerile tactics. He doesn’t have substance and does not back up whatever point he’s trying to make.
Dan, just giving a definition of ad hominem, does not mean that you don’t use it & that you have provide backing for your point.
For some reason, Dan thinks people want no government, when the point is too much gov. It’s not a binary choice; it’s a false choice. Gov is now over 40% of the economy. Nobody is advocating that go to zero. Nobody is advocating no police & no fire, as he thinks.
Nobody thinks that there are supernatural forces, as he refers to the market fairy. Maybe he’s getting mixed up with his sexual preference. Invisible hand? No pun, that’s from the economic perspective. If gov gets out of the way, the private sector can do much more.
Hell, I disagree with his side, but could better support those positions, than him. Those positions would still be wrong though.
Dan could never be any kind of attorney. The judge would dismiss half of what he says, the jury would laugh at him & the opposing attorney would tear him up.
It’s clear that Dan is state-supported, either by employment, institution or a program. Because a private company needs people who can process info & be coherent & logical.
So Dan, why should housing prices be artificially high?
Oh, the gov denies responsibility in making that happen?
Beyond municipalities, blame includes the Fed & GSEs, & Congress. Don’t get mixed up that there are, occasionally, other reasons for increases, such as limited geography. Property is still higher in CBDs.
I see your copy-and-paste is working the same as usual, Dan. Perhaps one day you’ll have an original thought.
This entire argument–that restrictions on housing construction caused the housing bubble–hinges on the idea that housing construction was choked off in regions where housing prices increased the most during the bubble. Yet if you look at the actual housing permit data, many of the areas with the strongest increases in housing construction during the 2000’s were also the areas with the greatest price bubbles: Las Vegas, Phoenix, the Inland Empire, Sacramento, all of Florida, etc. That’s the fatal flaw in this argument. You can’t seriously argue that growth restrictions caused the housing bubble when in reality there was a huge construction boom and unprecedented increase in housing supply.
So True, zoning and planning are molding the economic decisions of families in many ways, forcing mothers into the workplace to pay for the huge homes…which are nearly the only option available for purchase. Affordable housing should be smaller homes on smaller lots, not more risky financial instruments…
Ron H:
As I’ve said, I’ve brought these up numerous times here. The refutations of the same tired argument have been part of this discourse since the beginning. Do you want me to link to my assertions? Let me know.
Also let me know if common knowledge on this site needs to be referenced every time it is brought up, like ‘the sky is blue’. Do you want an optics text for that?
Dan is consistent in using many types of fallacies
I call bullsh–. Simply saying something doesn’t make it true.
DS
There is not much claim that the housing bubble was caused by “choking off construction”.–Close, but not quite. Many local policies restrict available land &/or increase construction costs.
For one thing, the markets that have extra municipal restrictions have had higher than average housing prices for years, some going back to the 70s, with prices gradually rising at a faster rate than the average.
There is also a dif between a bubble & artificially high prices. Again, close, with some similarities.
Many areas with high prices did not see a real rapid increase because the prices were already high.
Municipal policies are not the only reason that housing prices rise extra high.
The fact that there are sometimes others does not invalidate the main reason.
For Las Vegas & Phoenix, those have been the fastest growing large UAs for over a decade. Housing demand is not immediately met, taking maybe a year there to build, but maybe 3 years in markets with restrictions. So if demand has an even bigger jump, supply can fall short. Housing demand had a bigger impetus with the low interest rate, Federal policies to force banks to loan more & speculation.
Las Vegas also had quasi-UGB restrictions. The BLM wouldn’t sell any more land. The Las Vegas UA is actually about the 5th most dense, in a ~400sq.mi. square. Look at a map.
For all of CA, besides local restrictions (UGB, TIF, NIMBY, water supply), there are state policies that push prices, such as Prop 13 & CEQA.
Florida has limited geography (natural low buildable land supply), with building only desirable close to the coast. There are also policies against building inland.
Further evidence can be seen in Texas. With one exception, all Texas UAs have below avg prices. Austin pursues smart growth & has the higher than avg housing prices.
Even Paul Krugman is aware of this simple concept that extra zoning restrictions, reduces supply, thereby raising prices.
There is plenty of evidence out there. I have dozens of links to offer more data. But I have a feeling that those who think that prices rise randomly or whatever, are not interested in learning.
Dan,
You realize your errors, but only call others, albeit falsely. “Simply saying something doesn’t make it true.” That’s what you repeatedly do. You don’t back your points up.
I offered at least 3 fallacies, with examples, that you employ. Almost each of your pseudo-points can torn apart into fallacious reasoning. Most readers here are aware of that, but it’s time consuming & frustrating to explain so much to you.
You never offered any reason why anybody is an idiot.
You did not provide any reason why Glaeser is wrong. Have you read his reports?
You just employed another flaw. I’ll call it the simplification fallacy. There is not a debate on the sky being blue or on cars needing roads. You try to break down complicated processes/concepts & compare to well-known things.
Also, the previous-mention fallacy. Just because you say that you have “proven it wrong before” does not make it so. You have never proven anything beyond some common knowledge & some uncommon words.
In general, what fallacies can also be called, are faulty comparisons. That’s your continual methodology, in addition to not providing data.
People get tired of calling you out on all your errors & typing enough to educate you. It;s like trying explain algebra to somebody who has just learned the alphabet, even with fancy vocabulary. I’m sad to say, your glory days of winning the spelling in junior high are long over. You might be able to survive in a stet coercion job, but methods from Rules for Radicals can only go so far, certainly not for real productivity.
Scott, as stated, Randal’s false assertion is so well known they need no backing.
If you want to see my past writings here on them, state such. Don’t huff false umbrage about made-up stuff.
Otherwise, your other BS about all my errors is Gish galloping mendacious bullsh–.
DS
Hey Dan. We know you have made your comments over and over and over and over again. That is why we find you to be an annoying troll. The first few times you said it was interesting, but posting the same argument four or six or ten times a day does not make you more intelligent or convincing.
The Antiplanner (who has the courage to have his own blog) writes something every day, often from original research. Why don’t you just post your comments on your own website (www.Dan’sRepetiveComments.com)? Then you wouldn’t have to spend your life trying to have the last word every day on this website.
The rest of us are looking for original ideas and discussion. Believe me, everyone has heard your tripe at this point, and even where we agree with you, we still find you an annoying troll.
Dan, you didn’t exactly respond to my request, so yes, please link to your assertion. I’m only interested in this one:
“And we know that the free market fairy does not care about humanity or society – we have seen how well that failed model works.â€
Again, please provide examples (links) of a free market. Also please explain (links) how it failed.
If this is common knowledge here, and you have repeatedly provided these references in the past, then I apologize for asking you to do it once more, but as an infrequent reader of this blog, I am not a member of this group: “we have seen how well that failed model works”.
Please show all these naysayers here that you aren’t just a troll. I have a feeling you can contribute a great deal to the discussions on this blog, but I, for one, need something more than you have provided in this thread. Go on, Dan, show them they’re wrong.
Scott,
Dan is absolutely right on this. It’s disappointing to see you huffing false umbrage. If you wish to huff umbrage, at least huff REAL umbrage. For God’s sake, man!
Dan,
None of my comments had anything to do with huffing false umbrage.
That is an unsupported accusation. Please elaborate how you think, particularly, what’s false & made-up? Just stating items, does not make it so, which is typical for about all of your comments. Even Ron noticed that.
You have even proven your lack at reasoning by using fallacies again.
Dan, you continue to do what you just claimed others do–making general assertions, without any backing.
My comments had substantiation & destroyed Dan’s assertions. His response was very weak & he could not defend any of his positions made on this page.
Dan, If you can really defend your position, I suggest that you go back to my post & address each point. You often lose by default. Just claiming a whole post is BS is laughable. I even gave an analogy of that (ie lawyer).
This is not a personal thing, we are trying to discuss items here, but Dan continually resorts to shallow, juvenile nonsense, without any evidence or logic.
And when there are so many errors made, I call them out.
I have read many of your past posts. They are all ridiculous. There were times that I wanted to point out all of your flaws, but it was over a week later that I read them.
Shall I just resort to quick comments, like Dan?
Objectification cause prices. You are erroneous & a jackass.
That basically sums up his typical comments.
Scott, one question: how can there be a difference between bubbles and artificially high prices when there is hardly a working economic definition of bubble. Have you not followed the last year’s debate on EMH?
Scott, if the cause of the housing bubble was restrictions on housing construction, then how do you explain the fact that the bubble occurred in some of the places where the most housing was built? Case in point: from 2000 to 2005, there were permits for about 250,000 homes in metro Phoenix, about the same as the number of housing permits in metro Dallas (250k) and in metro Houston (230k)… despite the fact that the Phoenix area had only about 2/3 the population of Dallas or Houston. The market is still absorbing those housing units today. Do you think that more housing should have been built in Phoenix during the bubble years? If the reason that housing prices increased so much in Phoenix was a shortage of housing, then why aren’t developers building more homes there today?
peter,
I will try to address part of your question, if I may. Permit numbers may not be a good indicator of housing growth. You may want to look at the number of houses actually completed and sold.
I believe that when money is flowing into housing, as it was from 2000-2005, builders are attracted to those areas that will give them the highest potential return on their investment. The cost of building a house may not be much different anywhere in the country, but the increase in land value may be very different. Areas with restrictive policies may provide that high potential return.
As property is acquired, permits will likely be drawn as fast as possible. I think the attitude is “get it while you can!”. When the money stops flowing, the building stops, and many houses remain unbuilt or unsold. Some win, & some lose. It’s a feature of the housing sector.
A case in point is a large development near me in the Inland Empire that was planned for 2400 single family homes. When the good times ended, only 100 of these houses had been completed, and so it remains today. Permit numbers by themselves wouldn’t tell the real story.
Ron H.
Phoenix and Las Vegas has an abundance of completed homes on the market. Their markets, and the US market, is saturated with too much supply, actually. Supply issues did not cause any such bubbles in these areas. Real estate speculation did. Non-completed permits had to do with the collapse of the economy.
The sheer number of permits being issued simply shows that there really isn’t restrictive development going on in these areas in the first place, regardless if something is built on the permit’s property right now or not.
Dan, you didn’t exactly respond to my request, so yes, please link to your assertion. I’m only interested in this one:
“And we know that the free market fairy does not care about humanity or society – we have seen how well that failed model works.â€
Again, please provide examples (links) of a free market. Also please explain (links) how it failed.
Thank you Ron.
I cannot, of course, provide evidence of a free market existing anywhere on earth; This is, in fact, my point when folks here claim it works to procure public goods and quality of life and such.
The ‘free market fairy’ is a phrase used in a continuation of an earlier point, where we noted that loosening regulations led to the latest bubble. There is no free market, but some folks here get confused and want the freest markets possible to procure public goods and quality of life, money flow, and such.
Nonetheless, wrt the other topic, here is a typical thread. *
BTW there is something in the latest JAPA and APA rag about an analysis of foreclosures and SG policies by state. Doesn’t make the ideologue’s argument look good. Haven’t read thru yet but will soon.
DS
* http://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=517#comment-33123 Another
Dan:
There is no free market, but some folks here get confused and want the freest markets possible to procure public goods and quality of life, money flow, and such.
Yeah, no kidding. Sheesh. How dare they want such things. The Platonic philosopher-kings know so much better what’s good for us; we should just accept their edicts at face value.
Oh, and Dan, Ron meant for you to provide links to actual research; you know, credible material. Not links to your past posts that contain biased and/or subjective and/or non-credible material. Your posts are worthless and always have been. That’s kind of Ron’s point. And here I thought you hated the word “bootstrapping,” yet that’s how you build your arguments.
Ron H.:
Historically there is a very close relationship between housing starts and permits, particularly for single family home construction. Read this page from the Census Bureau website:
http://www.census.gov/const/www/nrcdatarelationships.html
Nationwide, housing starts and housing completions are only slightly less than housing permits. Can you show me some data that proves that Phoenix is different than everywhere else?
You could also look up the number of housing units in metropolitan Phoenix. According to the Census, there were 1,715,000 housing units in metro Phoenix in 2008 compared to 1,331,000 in 2000. That’s an increase of 48,000 units/year, which seems pretty consistent with the permit data.
So, again, can somebody explain to me how growth regulations caused the housing bubble in Phoenix?
peter:“So, again, can somebody explain to me how growth regulations caused the housing bubble in Phoenix?”
ws: Yep, no one can pinpoint it to one factor. And I don’t disagree by any means that regulations/fees/zoning/growth boundaries, etc. don’t naturally raise the cost of housing, because they do (and when a bubble does occur, more people are susceptible); but there’s little talked about in “Cato circles” that will admit that “cool” cities rich in natural environment, “localism”, and other amenities simply cost more because of those factors alone.
Are some of the sunbelt towns offering the same things that Portland and Seattle are in regards to those factors?
To say that a bubble didn’t impact Atlanta or Houston is completely erroneous. Atlanta has one of the higher foreclosure rates of large cities in the US.
Has anyone even addressed the fact that living in Portland, one can be in the mountains (real mountains, not foothills) in 1.5 hrs, the Pacific Ocean in 1.5 hrs, and the desert in 2 hrs? What affect does the natural environment have on housing costs? Unfortunately, the Sprawl-bertarians want to pave over that and justify it by saying it will reduce housing costs. No thanks, and there’s better, cheaper ways to grow, anyways.
peter
So, again, can somebody explain to me how growth regulations caused the housing bubble in Phoenix?
They didn’t. The Antiplanner is simply dead wrong on this issue. The housing bubble in Phoenix was overwhelmingly caused by an excess of marginal lending due to artificial market distortions. This article does a fairly comprehensive job of explaining and substantiating what happened.
If this verifies, this changes the extant projections even further away from SFD.
DS
tg said “how can there be a difference between bubbles and artificially high prices when there is hardly a working economic definition of bubble.â€
Basically the same; not the dif that I meant. By “artificialâ€, what I meant is how over decades, that supply restrictions have pushed prices higher than otherwise, in some markets.
The recent rise & fall is not quite the issue, as I slightly mentioned. In several markets, municipal policies have pushed housing prices up over time (some since the 70s). Even in 2002, there were big differences between markets.
When housing prices increased a lot, 2002-2006, there were wide variances in UAs.
__
Peter, I wasn’t really addressing, specifically, the bubble, but long-term policy that creates more expensive homes.
For Phoenix, or any market, it’s hard to relate to homes built, without comparing to population growth, and most importantly, vacancy rates. Also, speculation creates more temporary demand, which starts out by a supply shortfall, not meting demand.
The vacancy rate is a very good indicator of supply falling short. Nationally, it was about 9%, before the bubble burst. Now it’s about 11%. If you look at about any market, there will be a direct correlation with lower vacancy & higher home price increases. Few can really disagree with that, basic supply & demand, [if know rudimentary econ]. The debate is what causes the imbalance.
Of course, there were other factors than local policy. The low interest rates & the lower lending standards, pushed by Congress, occurred across the nation, but prices did not go up proportionally in each UA. In areas where supply could not keep up, then the price increases resulted in speculation, which fueled the increases.
__
This recession was not caused by laissez-faire, but by government interference. That does not mean that there should be anarchy. The banks used to require 20% down & sustained, verifiable income, able to handle future payments. Congress changed that, in the name of affordability & for those of lesser means, to be able to be a homeowner. It’s true that the banks shouls not have loaned so much & should not have relied on the high home prices. The people who defaulted on the loans, because they had negative equity, are big factors in this recession.
Also, the interest rate should not have gone so low. And the rating agencies should have been more prudent, and lowered the AA ratings far sooner, before too much debt was taken on.
Additional resources:
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=OTE0YmIwNjg1NjA1N2QxNGUzNGUyMmZiZThmN2UwNTg=
http://townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2009/02/18/upside_down_economics?page=full&comments=true
http://townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2009/04/29/the_housing_boom_and_bust
http://townhall.com/columnists/WalterEWilliams/2009/05/27/the_housing_boom_and_bust
http://www.cato.org/event.php?eventid=4902
http://www.newgeography.com/content/00583-housing-price-bubble-learning-california
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200711/housing?ca=PoSzloTzAzqq0Pg%2BPB504R6MjpVFf78zhjpE2yeHl78%3D
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ih4Itl0PmaE
Scott, here’s a how-to for hyperlinking your references (we’re more likely to click through to them in this format).
t g,
Thanx for the tutor page.
Did some of the links not work?
Or did you want just the title appearing?
That’s time consuming.
Scott,
The links all worked as is. Sorry, you are correct, I meant to recommend condensing the address, perhaps, as you suggest, by showing just a title or an abbreviated descriptor. I imagine more people will follow through to the references if the hyperlink format is concise and descriptive. I agree it is time consuming; but we can be a ruthless crowd on both sides of the aisle here, so any bit of decorum we might be able to agree on is best held to tightly.
(This may just be a personal preference. I read Poincare’s Science and Method recently and came across the line, “Tolstoi explains somewhere in his writings…” and thought he should have spent the hour and found the book to attribute to, so forgive me if I’m excessively MLA in the comment section.)
On “bubbles” from Scott Sumner:
“What would Hayek think if he came back today and found so many people who confidently knew when markets were overpriced? Why do we even need markets? If it so obvious what the correct price is, let’s bring back Soviet-style central planning.”
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