Is the state of the economy a rebuke of laissez faire policies?
David Frum: I think it’s just impossible to accurately describe the policies of any American administration since Calvin Coolidge as laissez faire. This is a highly regulated economy, and finance in particular remains quite heavily regulated. And the driving force of the immediate problems is, in fact, one of the most regulated sectors of the economy, and that is housing. Because remember the mortgage market in the United States is a government run market. The repackagers [sic] and often holders of mortgages are two gigantic federal corporations, and the idea that we should drive the home ownership rate up, from its historical norm of about 60 percent, to a rate of over 65 percent, as happened in the lasted [Bill] Clinton and Bush years, that was an important goal of public policy. I think when people look back on what happened with the mortgage market in our time, the fundamental cause is going to be this public decision that if 60 percent home ownership was good, 65 percent was bette
