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Despite a combination of fiscal stimulus and low interest rates, the government has been unable to foster sustainable growth.

The history of the homebuyer tax credit shows that the housing stimulus package was ineffective, added billions of dollars to an already bloated deficit, and wasted tax dollars.

A credit for first-time homebuyers enacted in 2008 has led to a massive tax fraud.

In less than twenty-five years, government “affordable housing” and other housing policies have turned a healthy market into a financial ruin. Until Fannie and Freddie’s market dominance and the government’s role in the housing finance system are substantially reduced or eliminated, the United States will continue to have an inferior and unstable housing market.

Alan D. Viard discusses the complications posed by the needless complexity of tax incentives, income-based phase-outs, and the alternative minimum tax.

The U.S. economy has received massive doses of stimulus medicine, and as that medicine is being withdrawn, it appears that the patient has not yet recovered. We are now in the experimental drug phase of monetary policy.

The idea that home ownership confers special benefits on American society is deeply embedded in our culture--so much so that our national tax policy confers a special benefit of its own on it.