There’s always something to howl about.

First time home-buyers tax credit, the morning after: “The government’s ‘gift’ to new home-buyers? A house immediately worth $8,000 less than they paid for it.”

From the National Review Online:

Things are looking worse on the housing front, with a severe drop-off in existing home sales following the expiration of the home-buyer tax credit. It’s hard to overstate how stupid this policy was. The government marketed it as a measure to boost residential real-estate prices by providing new home-buyers with a tax credit in the neighborhood of $8,000. Did you see the ubiquitous ads featuring the couple that gets an envelope full of cash from Uncle Sam? The idea was to convince potential home-buyers that they were the ones who would benefit from the subsidy, when in fact the opposite was true. The tax credit was a subsidy for sellers, not buyers, allowing them to increase their asking price (or avoid decreasing it) by $8,000.

The government’s “gift” to new home-buyers? A house immediately worth $8,000 less than they paid for it, and falling fast thanks to the sharp drop-off in demand that accompanied the expiration of the tax credit. Gee, thanks, Uncle Sam! I’m not sure the “predatory lenders” Obama likes to talk about ever did anything that sketchy.

This is good, but it’s still wide of the mark. As everyone here knows, the purpose of the tax credit was to churn transactions, so that realtors and their brokers could get paid. You’ll see more evidence of this later this week, as the NAR pushes you to lean on your congresscreep to support Harry Reid’s extension of the expiration deadline for the credit. There are still 180,000 unclosed transactions out there, and that means 180,000 commission checks held hostage by the demons of time. We can’t have that…