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The Home-Buyer's "Tax Credit"
Submitted by matthew on Mon, 08/25/2008 - 08:00.The other night, I had a dream. In this dream, I was watching a TV show with a line of enormous dominoes made of dense foam, like the type you see in action game-shows where the contestant has to run across the top or else fall into some kind of disturbing substance that has the effect of breaking the fall of the contestant while simultaneously humiliating them.
These dominoes, though, were titanic. Hundreds of people perched on top of them, jumping from one to the next. Some few were several dominoes ahead of the pack, leaping and leaving an unstable but still standing domino behind them. The bulk of people hopped just one step ahead of the toppling dominoes, unstably wobbling atop their current perch, and many fell into the slime with each falling obelisk.
The dominoes each had labels. The fallen included "Deficit Spending", "Investment Banking", "Savings & Loans", "Dot-Com stocks", "Real-Estate investment", and "Energy futures". Yet to fall were many more, but I couldn't distinguish the label of any given domino until it began to lean under the crushing weight of all the people piling onto it.
In that vein, I just found out some disturbing news regarding the so-called $7500 new-home-buyer "tax credit" as part of the recently-passed Housing Rescue Bill.


