Today's feature in the Strib focuses on the housing crisis and Wright County, where subdivisions now sit empty, housing auctions go unattended, and blame is thrown around like monkey dung. We have seen this before, if anyone remembers, and it was not long ago taxpayers footed another big bill for speculators and bankers: The S & L crisis was like this, a product of deregulation, speculation and that great American past time, public subsidy of private risk, or welfare for the rich evil cynics like myself would call it. Anyone ( with a rational brain)watching the goings on in the suburbs three years ago would have wondered how long you could ride that horse, but doomsayers or long-term rationalists are never welcome when the money hangs like meat on a chain. The dogs will tear you apart just for barking. There are some rules in life I still try to live by. If a salesman says don't worry, that means hold on to your wallet. If a financier or banker says we need to de-regulate to free up the economy, it means my buddies and I want a higher rate of return for doing nothing, and we want the public to bail out us investors when it goes bad; so sayeth Adam Smith. Unlike most, I will not blame ordinary people. Most are trained dogs believing whatever crap is told to them throughout their lives; god is in the heavens, corporations love you, and the good life of the suburbs awaits all if you stay away from those nasty dark people and keep your teeth white. That and they want a decent home, a job and health care, and they pray and hope if they play the game right, that will happen, for they have been told that. There is more to this than a few mortgage bankers and irresponsible owners trying to speculate. It is fundamental to what they have been doing for the last 35 years: Remove the brakes from the New Deal reforms that tried to correct speculative bubbles which are almost always driven more by investors than markets. There is another aspect to this, and anyone can see it if they look. Suburban development is not stable, does not build places that people actually want to live for the long term, is a waste of resources, and is probably the craziest thing we have ever done. As fuel becomes more expensive, and it will, the giant truck we are all riding to the supercenter will become more and more expensive, and there we will sit locked in communities without a heart, 20 miles from nowhere. For the area, as we now see potential development, I will remind everyone what happened before; just look at the numbers for 1978 then for 1988, remember what happened well, and then as people race to split the parcels as the boomers move to town, get ready to ride. There is only one long term project proposal of real size; the rest are mines lasting only 20 years, or smaller projects not really having a dent. 20 years, and we are left with a big nasty mess and overbuilt infrastructure...AGAIN. And, like the last time, most of the money will be blown on gas toys and beer, with 60 inch screens added in this time....and then they will whine when the house won't sell.....