Shield Men From Folly: Fill The World With Fools

Many politicians and pundits claim that the credit crunch and high mortgage foreclosure rate is an example of market failure and want government to step in to bail out creditors and borrowers at the expense of taxpayers who prudently managed their affairs. These financial problems are not market failures but government failure.

The Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 is a federal law that intimidated lenders into offering credit throughout their entire market and discouraged them from restricting their credit services to low-risk markets, a practice sometimes called redlining. The Federal Reserve Bank, keeping interest rates artificially low, gave buyers and builders incentive to buy and build, thereby producing the housing bubble. Lenders were willing to make creative interest-only loans, often high-risk “no doc” and “liar loans,” in order to allow people to buy more housing than they could afford. Of course, with the expectation that housing prices will continue to rise, it was no problem for lenders and borrowers but housing prices began to fall, leaving some people with negative home equity and banks in trouble.

The credit crunch and foreclosure problems are failures of government policy. In fact, what we see now is a market correction to foolhardy government policy. Congress’ move to bailout lenders and borrowers who made poor decisions will simply create incentives for people to make unwise decisions in the future. English philosopher Herbert Spencer said, “The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools.”

~Walter Williams

MP: Or if you make the world safe for idiots (and reckless borrowers, investors and executives), you’ll create a world full of idiots (reckless borrowers, investors and executives).

Posted in Categories: Contributor, Economy, External Research, UK, USA.

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Comment by puravida19

2008-09-21 04:47:49

I forgot who said, “Against Stupidity, the gods themselves travail in vain.”

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