Posted by Nicholas at March 21, 2009 12:02 AMThe current depression was born when the administration of Jimmy Carter, and a Democratic Congress, irrationally demanded that lenders approve mortgages for individuals who really couldn't afford them and would almost certainly never be able to pay them back. The political strategy of giving goodies away like this, in exchange for votes and other kinds of popular support, was probably old hat by the time the Romans got around to plying urban tenement dwellers with bread and circuses.
At the same time, housing for the poor appears to be some kind of bizarre obsessive-compulsive fetish for President Peanut. He's spent decades since his deeply flawed and humiliatingly failed presidency, hammering nails into future residences under the Habitat for Humanity program. How ironic it is that, just as the economy begins collapsing, so are the former president's shoddily-constructed houses across the country.
L. Neil Smith, "Cambodian Road Trip", Libertarian Enterprise, 2009-03-15
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