Mortgage Buyouts Won't Have Instant Impact

Did you hear? The government's initiatives to save the real estate industry have failed.

What's that, you ask? Oh, it's only been in the past days or so that the government has even bought up mortgages on a large scale? You mean it was supposed to take more than that?

Well, not according to the Associated Press, which ran an article that stands as about as good an example as any of the comically short-term, anecdotal and small-sample-loving nature of the business media.

Considering the government's very recent actions, brace yourself for the headline: " Real estate market slow to respond to gov't plan."

The Business Press Maven is not inclined to think that government hacks of any political stripe can shoot fish in a barrel, let alone save an industry, but even I have to say: Give our incompetent bureaucrats and politicians a break here. There is only one way you can conclude that an impact of the government's action on the real estate market is too slow to emerge, and that's if you were so short-sighted that you assumed an impact would be evident overnight.

And even if you did assume that a recovery should have happened overnight, there would only be one way to assume it had or hadn't: through a ridiculous reliance on anecdotes and the comments of a few far-flung individuals -- a reliance that, unfortunately, characterizes the business media.

Read this lead and weep: "KANSAS CITY, Kansas - By late Saturday afternoon, only three prospective homebuyers had visited the open house Valerie Morrill was hosting. The Prudential real estate agent recalled a year ago, she'd see 10 to 15 people during an open house in this midtown Kansas City neighborhood."

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