History is awash with the spectacle of fear and panic: The Grand Army of the Potomac hightailing it out of Manassas in 1861. Stockbrokers in 1929 doing the Charleston off the New York Stock Exchange building. But that's no state of mind in which to plot a housing recovery.
Motivated by the desire to do something — anything — politicians are vying for membership in the economic-cure-of-the-month club. What housing rescue scheme hasn't been pitched to a wary public?
Some want to force banks to write off half your mortgage in exchange for the hundreds of billions taxpayers have poured into lenders' depleted vaults. Others want to stake homeowners — the responsible and bankrupt alike — to 4.5-percent interest rates.
This smacks of the surrender-your-citizenship-and-rely-on-the-great-minds-of-Washington school of governance. You know, trust the same mob that helped inaugurate the current crisis.
The Washington Post ran a sobering column last week about the limitations of White House wizardry. Very telling was the part about Franklin Roosevelt setting the price of gold with a flick of his cigarette holder, disregarding how his meddling harmed millions of Americans.
Nostalgia aside, Roosevelt's activism, though it salved popular discontent in the 1930s, bungled its chief goal. In 1938, six years after he took office, unemployment stood at 19 percent.
Here's a vote for doing essentially nothing: A report this week by Florida economist Hank Fishkind predicts housing prices in the Tampa Bay area should recover in the next three years.
Fishkind's computer model forecasts the following price rises by county through 2012: Hernando, 9 percent; Pinellas, 11 percent; Hillsborough, 14 percent; and Pasco, 17 percent. Fishkind assumes interest rates will stay low through 2009 and a drop in the inventory of unsold homes will aid appreciation.
The local recovery will include lots of foreclosure sales and displaced families. Better the messy local fix than the slick promises of the self-styled experts, particularly when they've got the temperaments of Chicken Little.
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