While JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon has been credited for a confident and feisty performance today in front of Congress, he was careful to not criticize their efforts thus far to regulate the financial services industry. Given that JP Morgan has been on the receiving end...
Swedish economist Assar Lindbeck once wrote, “In many cases rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city—except for bombing.” In the late 1970s, a poll of American economists found that ninety-eight percent agreed that “a...
The Federal Reserve ran another “stress test” on major financial institutions and has determined that 15 of the 19 tested are safe, even in the most extreme circumstances: an unemployment rate of 13%, a 50% decline in stock prices, and a further 21%...
Recently, the Obama Administration seemed to flash a rare sign of laissez-faire thinking when it issued a report calling for the “winding down” of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two taxpayer-guaranteed institutions now responsible for backing at...
Economist Peter Schiff writes: “How has the [housing] market found the strength to stop its descent? No one is making the case that fundamentals have improved. Instead, there is widespread agreement that government intervention stopped the free fall. The home...
Hot off the press is my colleague Dr. Thomas Sowell’s 43rd book, “The Housing Boom and Bust.” The book is an eye-opener for anyone interested in the truth about the collapse of the housing market that played a major role in our financial market...
In the spirit of bipartisanship, my newest book– “The Housing Boom and Bust”– shows how both Democrats and Republicans ruined both the housing markets and the financial markets. Like so many disasters, the current economic crisis grew out of...
Someone once said that Senator Hubert Humphrey, liberal icon of an earlier generation, had more solutions than there were problems. Senator Humphrey was not unique in that respect. In fact, our present economic crisis has developed out of politicians providing...
In his “ Remarks by the President on the mortgage crisis ” on February 18, Obama stated: Our housing crisis was born of eroding home values, but it was also an erosion of our common values, and in some case, common sense. It was brought about by big banks...
Behind the housing boom and bust was one of those alluring but undefined phrases that are so popular in politics– “affordable housing.” It is hard for me to know specifically what politicians are talking about when they use this phrase. But then...
Did lack of regulation create the subprime mortgage crisis? I am asked this all the time. The short answer: Of course not. Nowhere close. Not a chance. Here is the long answer. What regulations have we had? The mortgage originator (your local bank or mortgage broker)...
The turmoil in the credit markets now emanating from the collapse of the housing bubble can be understood in the light of the theory of the business cycle developed by Ludwig von Mises and F.A. Hayek.
Amid all the hand-wringing and finger-pointing as housing markets collapse, mortgage foreclosures skyrocket, and financial markets panic, there is very little attention being paid to the fundamental economic and political decisions that led to this mess. The growth in...
One of the things that happens when you get old is that what seems like news to others can look like a re-run of something you have already seen before. It is like watching an old movie for the fifth or sixth time. A headline in the September 14th issue of the New...
They say time is money but a lot depends on whose time and whose money. For example, in California the San Mateo County Planning Commission has spent five years deciding what can and cannot be done with the site of an old racetrack that is no longer economically...
The United States was built on the very premise of the protection of private property rights. How can a government possibly be allowed to take anyone’s home for private gain?
The blazing-hot topic at suburban cocktail parties this spring is whether there’s a bubble in the residential housing market. No wonder. In 2004, existing home prices rose faster than in any year since the 1970s. Some markets are going bonkers. Alexandria, Va.,...
Once, after giving a talk, I was confronted by a lady in the audience who asked what some people regard as the ultimate question: “What is YOUR solution?” “There are no solutions,” I said. “There are only trade-offs.” “The...
A new study shows that you need an income of about $104,000 to buy an average home on the San Francisco peninsula with a 20 percent down payment. Since the average price of a home in this area is more than half a million dollars, the 20 percent down payment itself...
One of the staples of liberal hand-wringing is a need for “affordable housing.” Last year, the standard liberal solution — more government spending — was proposed in a televised speech at the National Press Club in Washington , in a report...
I have warned many times of the dangers of homeowner’s associations (HOA’s). As I speak around the nation on the subject of “Sustainable Development,” an environmental term intended to disguise the elimination of property rights, inevitably...
Rent controls don’t work, and its advocates know it.
Zoning proponents have presented zoning as the solution to many of the “problems” confronting Houston. At a time when the nation, and indeed much of the world, is rejecting government programs as the solution, zoning advocates endorse a massive government...
In the months since the November 1993 zoning referendum, zoning advocates have launched a number of accusations against their opponents. Zoning opponents, pro-zoners said, were dishonest and unprincipled. They resorted to lies, misrepresentations and scare tactics to...
The purpose of zoning, and its sole reason for existing, is to give government control over the use of all land within the community. While the rightful owner remains responsible for that property, the government will determine how that property is used. Under zoning,...
The National Heritage Areas program is an expensive, insidious attempt by non-governmental organizations and federal agencies to impose land use controls and zoning mandates on unsuspecting local communities.
Last Tuesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled in the case of George Washington University v. District of Columbia, upholding the District’s zoning restrictions on GW’s land use. The case was by no means a landmark...
Should a random passersby be able to dictate the color of your house?
A black man waiting at a bus stop called to me as I was bicycling down the street: “You’re the first black man I have seen over here in a long time.” “It will be a long time before you see the next one,” I said, and we both laughed. In a...
While Senator Barbara Boxer is trying to get the federal government to declare more than two million acres in California off-limits to development, California’s other Senator, Diane Feinstein, has already brokered a deal that takes 16,500 acres off-limits....
Politics, according to an old adage, is “the art of the possible.” But, during election years especially, politics has increasingly become the art of the impossible. What politicians promise to all the various groups adds up to more than anyone can...
Despite the fanfare of a televised speech at the National Press Club in Washington, a very old and hackneyed set of proposals was unveiled as a “new vision” for the creation of “affordable housing.” The speech was by Richard Ravitch,...
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