Too much faith in the free market?!?!?!

What an interesting article!

"A humbled Mr. Greenspan admitted that he had put too much faith in the self-correcting power of free markets and had failed to anticipate the self-destructive power of wanton mortgage lending...On a day that brought more bad news about rising home foreclosures and slumping employment, Mr. Greenspan refused to accept blame for the crisis but acknowledged that his belief in deregulation had been shaken."

After reading this article, I felt a little more secure in my belief that "free markets" are really not that free at all. Government regulation continues to influence capitalistic actions and the results, as history has repeatedly shown, are not pretty. Mr. Greenspan is basically blaming the "free market" and saying that the FED should have stepped in sooner to prevent the housing bust.

WHATEVER! By insuring sub-prime mortgages and establishing multi-trillion dollar credit default swaps, federal policy is to blame here... not the free market.

Now, I'm certainly no proponent of free market theory, but I do say let's place blame where blame is due. In a sense, we can applaud federal policy for trying new ways to get low-income/at-risk families into homes, but the methods they chose blew up in their face. Have we seen this before??

Until federal policy wonks figure out how to become involved, without creating unintended consequences, my opinion is that no action is the best action.

Obama and the "Crabgrass Frontier"

I mentioned in class the other night that I was saving up all my posts for the end because I wanted to take in a full semester's worth of knowledge before I started blogging. While I can't say that was entirely true... I will say that by doing so I have a much better perspective when I read pieces such as this. I honestly have NO IDEA what the "de Volkskrant" is... but when the article title "Obama Conquers the Crabgrass Frontier came across my RSS feed, I have to say I was more than a little intrigued.

The author, perhaps unintentionally, made reference to Kenneth T. Jackson's timely book while examining voting percentages in the Presidential election. Consider the following:

"What President-elect Obama accomplished Nov. 4 in the 'crabgrass frontier' was truly remarkable, not just statistically but for the multiracial coalition he formed among multicultural cities and their more segregated suburbs."

He goes on to say that Obama's success among city and suburban voters suggests the possibility of regional coalitions to solve mutual “metro” problems, like housing and transportation. And when it comes to race, his popularity in the nation’s suburbs is a positive sign of how far we’ve come.

Seems like I've heard that before (over the course of this class)! If anything, despite it's relative obscurity, the "de Volkskrant" just made one heck of a contemporary leap for this MPA student. Here's hoping that the "de Volkskrant" isn't alone in it's assessment of voter turnout, and that President-elect Obama can make serious strides in seeing that these regional coalitions come to fruition.