Article • Dean Baker’s Beat the Press
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I was glad to see Paul Krugman’s piece this morning in which he reminded readers of the basics of supply and demand. If we slow the foreclosure process, we reduce the supply of housing, thereby raising the price of housing. This is important because there are a lot of people running around this town, with pretensions of being serious, who have been saying that slowing the foreclosure process would lower house prices and hurt the market.
Maybe I’m idealizing the past, but I would like to think that in the old days, not knowing the basics of supply and demand would have been a fatal blow to a business reporter or a Treasury Secretary. These days, ignorance on this level seems to be a job requirement.