The Enron Felons Believed in Enron: Corrective to Samuelson on the Housing Bubble

Robert Samuelson used his column today to tout a new study that analyzes home purchases by the income level of the buyer in contrast to previous work that analyzed data by average income in a zip code. The conclusion of the study is that increased aggregate debt to income levels was the result of more people buying homes, not higher ratios of debt to income among purchasers. This means that the problem was not a deterioration in lending standards. It also finds that the growth of debt was pro...