While being proactive is generally a good thing, there is the principle of primum non nocere, “First, do no harm,” to consider.

What is the expected effect of subsidies, say for example farm subsidies? Isn’t it that they prop up prices? When the problem is that first time buyers can’t afford homes because they are too expensive, taking measures that prop the prices up don’t make a lot of sense.

As for an alternative, first time buyers can do what I’m doing- wait. Let the market correct. Logic says that first time buyers can’t be priced out forever.

Sorry about the delay looking at your post (you caught us between shifts). We’re being as constructive as we can, and are following all the efforts to get us out of this mess, especially those coming out of Congress and the REIC itself.

“While it is true that assessments of the extent to which the New Deal rescued America from the ravages of the Great Depression vary widely, in any case, on this occasion perhaps we can for once commit ourselves to learning something from history. And this at a time when there is an unmistakable undercurrent of hopelessness abroad in the land. It is salutary to recall that the most pessimistic reflections on the New Deal conclude that it was all for nothing and that the real ‘saviour’ lay in the dreadful carnage of the World War.”

There is no shortage of comment an analysis of this crisis. But sometimes I get the feeling that there’s a kind of ‘Universal Jonestown’ euphoria in anticipation of the potential Armageddon of a Global Depression. “I told you so,” is not going to afford much solace in a World War.

It may be sound schoolmarmish to say let’s have some constructive solutions; but what’s the alternative?

DDGrant
Home Foreclosures

Great link- that pretty much sums up the NZ mania. Another bad case of “But our market is special, we can’t go down here!”

http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/dailynews/4042292a19716.html

I think New Zealand is still behind the curve. The UK and Northern Ireland have been getting nuttier and nuttier with their “affordability” schemes; anything rather than let prices fall. My favorite is still this one from late last year, when a young lady was happy to mortgage … “a 50 per cent share of a one-bed house in Totterdown, Bristol”