JRBH

Home Ownership: The Ideal That Refuses to Die

Mr. Salmon's article reflects the equity marketeers bias against real estate. Every dollar in a home is a dollar lost to Wall Street. It is this very dilemma that led us to the mortgage backed security instruments that have cause the current malestrom.
Mr. Salmon also fails to understand that the greatness that is America is private ownership of property. Private property is the the singular necessary component of wealth creation. In addition home ownership tends to create community. Unlike Europe where for centuries land was owned only by the nobility and worked by serfs America from its first settling has been a land of freeholders.
John McCain's bailout offer is best described as loony. That said the old world model of a nation of tenants is not conducive to either liberty or self reliance. As long as average Americans can own property, primarily their own home we will not follow Europe into the fever swamps of collectivism.