There simply is not a lot of evidence that real estate has hit a rough patch.

This is according to the National Review’s John Tamny. Mr. Tamny does an awful job of manipulating the government’s statistics and interpreting the foundations of bearish arguments. As with war, the neocons are insane when it comes to the stock market, bubbles, and bullishness. According to them, house appreciation = real wealth and artificially created bubbles and a sinking dollar are things for which we should be thankful and delighted. Insane is truly the only thing that comes to mind. So go out and keep flippin’ them houses (here) and building those construction projects (here). Just one out of many, many cases: a 60-home, upscale development in my area that was to be finished in fall 2006, but the cleared land still sits there with nothing more than the stonework identifying the entrance to the new sub that will never be built. Oops. Oh, but of course government money was used as the city of Taylor had a $14M bond issue, and gave the proceeds to a developer as an incentive to buy the land and develop it. Under free market conditions, of course, there would have been no monetary incentive, no government bond issue, and no developer would put his entire business at risk to build an upscale development in Taylor, MI – otherwise known as “Taylor-tucky.” Lemme put it this way: Taylor is a dump. It will remain a dump.There are currently *18* unfinished residential housing developments that remain unfinished in Taylor-tucky as the government has sought to turn a dive into a palace through statist means. Without the expected tax revenue stream from the planned-but-not-happening developments, the city cannot continue to make its bond payments. The chances of the developer staying solvent enough to make those payments (as was contractually agreed upon) is slight to none. The taxpayers will suck it up.

How does it end? So again, government to the rescue. Now the city dictators are proposing a moratorium on new housing developments because of a massive reduction in home values and the blight that the unfinished developments have imposed on an already trashy and blighted city.

The simple fact is that markets work. If there was a demand for upscale housing in Taylor-tucky, entrepreneurs would be building it without having to be baited by government money – because they seek profits. Government will always f____ things up so it can then steal from you to “fix” it up. And thus the cycle of central planning, despotism, politicization, tax rape, wealth reduction, and ruination continues onward.