That's right, the headline of an NYT article tells us that, "White House Philosophy Stoked Mortgage Bonfire." Was it their philosophy? How about as an alternative hypothesis that many Republican contributors in the financial sector were making a fortune on garbage mortgages? The article is actually reasonably good in making this point, but the headline writer certainly deserves some grief. The point, for the 946,326th time is that people get elected to office by currying the favor of powerful interest groups. They don't get elected for their excellence as political philosophers. Reporters and headline writers should know this. The article also includes the remarkable revelation that people in the Bush administration first noted the soaring sale price to rent ratio in March of 2007 (okay, some did note it sooner). While this discovery is attributed to someone who is described as a 29 year-old "whiz kid," this is about the most basic statistic that one can use to examine house prices. Any analyst of house prices who was not familiar with this ratio should have been fired instantly for an ungodly level of incompetence.
--Dean Baker
