If you were head of Central Planning (howdy, Ben!) and were tasked with crippling the real estate market, here's what you would recommend. Choke the market and banking sector with zombie banks... Have the central bank (the Federal Reserve) buy up $1 trillion in toxic, impaired mortgages... Lower the rate that banks can borrow from the Fed to zero, and then pay the banks interest on all funds deposited at the Fed... Try to prop up the housing market by giving poor credit risk buyers loans with only 3% down... Load young people up with the equivalent of a mortgage in student loans... OK,let's see how our Organs of Central Planning are doing: check, check, check, check, check: a perfect score! they're doing everything possible to cripple the real estate market. Do they care? Of course not; the only goal is to keep the zombie banks alive, regardless of the cost to the nation. Great work, Ben, Barack, Timmy and the rest of the gang at Central Planning: thanks to your policies, the real estate market will never clear and therefore it can never be restored to health.
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