Getting Off Track: How Government Actions and Interventions Caused, Prolonged, and Worsened the Financial Crisis and The Housing Boom and Bust

These two books are must-reads for anyone wanting to have a working understanding of the economic and financial crisis.  They complement each other and together form a civics lesson for an informed electorate.

Economists are prone to write turgid prose and employ a jargon-filled style. Not these two gems. Each author is a deservedly well-regarded economist, eminent in his field, but their books are written for the layman. Both draw on detailed academic research, but neither requires the reader to wade through thickets of citations.

Taylor poses these questions: “What caused the financial crisis? What prolonged it? What worsened it dramatically more than a year after it began?” His answer in each case is first and foremost “specific government actions and interventions.” The heart of his argument is a criticism of Fed monetary policy under Alan Greenspan in the aftermath of the collapse of the dot-com bubble. The Fed cut interest rates and continued cutting aggressively, taking the short-term interest rate under its control (the federal funds rate) down to 1 percent. The rate stayed at 1 percent for a year. Other market interest rates fell as well. The artificially low cost of borrowing fueled the housing boom.

Taylor uses a figure to compare housing starts as they actually occurred in the boom with a counterfactual simulation—as they would have occurred had the Fed adhered to policies that began in the early 1980s and continued into the 1990s. The result: “No Boom, No Bust” in housing. Not everyone agrees that monetary policy was so benign throughout the period dubbed the “Great Moderation.” But the Fed’s cheap money policy after 2000–01 brought back volatility in housing and the economy last seen in the 1970s.

Taylor explains how the Fed exported its easy money to other countries (especially the European Union), drawing them into the crisis. He also examines the many other complications, including such issues as the actions of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the role of securitization. His analysis of the many policy missteps in response to the crisis is masterful. These policy errors prolonged the crisis.

While Taylor covers a broad array of issues, focusing particularly on monetary policy, Sowell focuses
on the housing market itself, chronicling the “skyrocketing rise” in home prices. From 2000 to 2005 the median sales price of a single-family home rose 53 percent, from $143,600 to $219,600. In the priciest markets, like New York City, Los Angeles, and San Diego, prices escalated at an even more rapid rate (79, 110, and 127 percent, respectively). How could home prices have increased so much in such a short period, then fallen so fast?

Sowell also asks the commonsense questions. “When it comes to the home mortgage boom and bust, who was to blame? The borrowers? The lenders? The government? The financial markets?” He answers yes to all the above and notes that “economics cannot explain such things.” Politics drove the housing boom, and he turns to the politics.

First, there is the wonderfully misnamed policy of “affordable housing.” Never precisely defined, it is
a complex combination of misguided policies. They include policies to lower borrowing costs, down payments, lending standards, and, generally, costs of homeownership. Instead they have together combined to increase housing costs. As Sowell observes, it is precisely where government intervention in housing is the greatest that housing costs are highest.

Government housing policies have been at war with themselves. Sowell cites the case of housing in coastal California, now one of the highest-priced markets in the country. As late as 1969, however, home prices there were affordable by a number of measures and in line with home prices in the rest of the nation. In the 1970s California began introducing land-use restrictions that drove up costs for lots and their development. He examines alternative explanations for the rapid escalation in prices and concludes it was the land-use policies that were responsible for astronomical housing costs in coastal California.

California’s land and housing policies were extreme, but not unique. So we have longstanding policies restricting the supply of land and homes meeting policies to stimulate demand. When demand is stimulated and supply restricted, prices will necessarily increase. Land-use restrictions, affordable housing, and easy credit caused the housing boom and bust.

For the full story, I recommend these two estimable books to Freeman readers.