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...buyers would have bought anyway. In many markets, prices have fallen so far that houses are affordable in a way they haven't been in years - that's a reason to buy even without a gift from the government. We're giving up tax revenue on $11 billion that we don't need...
...even if it was originally supposed to be temporary. In academic literature this is called the endowment effect. Taking away such a program once it's ingrained can be a monumental political challenge. It's not just that expanding the home-buyer tax credit would cost $50 billion to $100 billion this year. It's that it could easily wind up costing that every year...
...figure out the answer, we might look to an existing one: the mortgage-interest tax deduction. Each year we give up some $80 billion in tax revenues so that homeowners don't have to pay tax on the income spent on mortgage interest. The thing is, about half of homeowners don't claim the deduction; they don't see the benefit, nor do the one-third of people in the U.S. who rent a place to live...
...with complex financial instruments, only to walk away scot-free when their bets went awry, plunging the world into crisis. Bonuses are just one aspect of the larger issue of moral hazard that has been raised over the past year, as governments and central banks have spent tens of billions of dollars of taxpayers' money to rescue financial institutions whose recklessness in the name of short-term profiteering is at the root of the trouble. For all the recent signs of improvement, the financial situation is still far from normal. Some huge financial institutions, from AIG to Royal Bank...
...tanks at least three-quarters full, and exercise caution when driving through "small rivers." It's the sort of travel advisory you'd expect for negotiating an untamed wilderness, not a city of more than 12 million souls. Damage from a deadly 2007 flood cost Jakarta half a billion dollars - ironically, roughly the same cost as an unfinished project designed to prevent it. Nearly 15 miles (24 km) long, the East Flood Canal will one day drain the overflow from Jakarta's rivers into the sea. But when? The project was initiated in the 1970s. City officials say the canal...