[hga]

At least a few people thought they were a bad idea, but Bush and his style of Republicans wanted an "ownership society" and Barney Frank and company wanted to "roll the dice". A nice bipartisan mess they've made ... although it should be pointed out that there were many housing bubbles and then busts (e.g. Ireland, Eastern Europe, Germany had to do some nasty real estate company rescues but I can't remember how much they were residential; heck, not counting basket cases like Japan, wasn't Canada about the only country to avoid a bank mess???).

Which suggests to me that there was an underlying problem (e.g. too much cheap money) and real estate was just where that happened to bubble up. And it's a particularly destructive area, the dot.com (actually mostly telecom) bubble was much less worse for the nation at large, bad though it was for us.

Bottom lin: there would have been a bubble somewhere.