Anyone who points their finger at one thing, GSE’s, congress, private lenders, greedy borrowers, Global pool of money sloshing…If you put your finger on one and say, that’s who did it. You are incredibly wrong. The GSE’s clearly played a big role. To insinuate otherwise is shockingly blind. Imagine for a second, that they did not exist, there was no fha, Fannie and Freddie, HUD, etc. would we have had the bubble? Hard to know, but they were clearly a key contributor.
Lets talk about a similar arena in which GSE’s are also prevalent.
Student loans…Arguably a bigger bubble in terms of YOY growth than the housing bubble…only it has yet to pop.
Do you think the infusion of easy debt and loan shark like collections rules has made a college education cheaper/more affordable? Has the infusion of easy debt made the quality of our education better?
Now is Sallie Mae solely responsible for the raping of “students?” Of course not. But are they a key contributor and are they “evil?” Probably!
I would contend that the same market dislocations and distortions done by the GSE’s of the education bubble are the same with the housing bubble.
It all comes back to the law of untended consequences. My first link.
And if we step back even further, we’ll confront the fact that politicians from both parties are completely unwilling to be honest with Americans about fiscal responsibility (personal and governmental) and that we’ve been “papering over” stagnant or declining real wages (since the early 1970s), a hollowing out of the middle class and a general falling standard of living with cheap money and easy credit, which sustains the illusion of wealth, while at the same time destroying it.
America enjoyed something of a golden age from about 1945 (end of WWII), where we were the undisputed economic power globally, till about 1972, shortly after Nixon closed the gold window and competition began catching up to us. Since that time, politicians have been unwilling to admit that we probably won’t see an era like that again, and that hard sacrifices are necessary to put our house in order.
With the exception of Paul Ryan, I don’t see anyone credible, from either side of the aisle, that’s willing to do that.
