Henry Hazlitt on The Housing Crisis

Slam-Dunk!!!

From Dr. Mike Munger of Duke, quoting Henry Hazlitt:
Kids Prefer Cheese: Mr. Hazlitt....He right: "Government-guaranteed home mortgages, especially when a negligible down payment or no down payment whatever is required, inevitably mean more bad lAoans than otherwise. They force the general taxpayer to subsidize the bad risks and to defray the losses. They encourage people to “buy” houses that they cannot really afford. They tend eventually to bring about an oversupply of houses as compared with other things. They temporarily overstimulate building, raise the cost of building for everybody (including the buyers of the homes with the guaranteed mortgages), and may mislead the building industry into an eventually costly overexpansion. In brief, in they long run they do not increase overall national production but encourage malinvestment. (my emphasis)"

Related links:
Walter Block on Hazlitt's Economics In One Lesson
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