Plenty of Blame to Go Around

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As I mentioned a few posts back, I intend to post some quotes from, and comments, on Thomas Sowell's latest book, The Housing Boom and Bust.

One of the things I have appreciated about reading Sowell over the years is that he is not partisan in his assessment of the economic tomfoolery that our politicians are prone to. He subjects the policies of both Republicans and Democrats alike to scrutiny. Truth be told, however, the Democrats' big government approach to everything has hurried our economic collapse along faster than the Republicans' smaller big government.

Smaller big government?

Yes. The Republican party as a whole (although there are a few exceptions) has the same basic approach to government as the Democratic party - government involvement in education, healthcare, the economy, etc. is necessary, just not on quite as large a scale, and not quite in the same ways, as what the Democrats propose.

Back to Sowell. He points out that our current problems did not arise overnight.
There was no single dramatic event that set this off, the way the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand set off the chain of events that led to the First World War or the way the arrest of political operatives committing burglary at the Watergate Hotel led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon. A whole series of very questionable decisions by many people, in many places over a period of years, built up the pressures that led to a sudden collapse of the housing market and of financial institutions that began to fall like dominoes as a result of investing in securities based on housing prices.
More to come...

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