Gasp! How could this be?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080318/lf_nm/usa_housing_consumers_dc
Reuters: BACK TO BASICS
“One of the hallmarks of the recent property boom was that buyers could get into a home with little or no money down. Those days are apparently over.
“What we’re seeing a lot of is people with good income who haven’t put any money aside and now have to save for a deposit on a home,” said Van Johnson, president of the Georgia Association of Realtors. “When people like that don’t spend, restaurants and retailers suffer and it tends to slow the economy down.”
“There will be pain in that correction,” he added.”
The Public Pinata
The ever-eloquent George Will weighs in on CityNorth and the general outrage of city sales tax giveaways:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/14/AR2008031403320.html
Arizona’s Booster Socialism
Courts have misconstrued the gift clause into a nullity, so legislators now use any asserted public benefit, however remote, to justify using subsidies to compete with rival jurisdictions for businesses and their tax revenue — or to rationalize conferring benefits on powerful interests.
