The myth of the recovery.

• Author: Berryhill, Ferome
• Position: Letter to the editor

I was struck by two related observations in Anthony Randazzo's article "The Myth of the Recovery" (April).

First this: "The root problem of mortgage delinquencies has yet to be worked out."

The "root problem" of mortgage delinquencies is that A loaned $X to B so that B could buy a house. It has become clear that the house is not worth $X, and neither A nor B wants to take the loss. That is a problem for A and for B, but for the rest of us cheap housing should be good news. If a machine were developed tomorrow which could produce houses for free, would that be a national disaster?

Then there is this observation: "But the program [of homebuyer tax credits] has only helped individual buyers and sellers, not the housing market as a whole."

The program allows up to $8,000 in tax credits for people who buy houses. Since this program is restricted to first-time homebuyers, and many potential homebuyers have bought one already or cannot take advantage of an $8,000 tax credit, it has not succeeded in jacking house prices back up to their former insane levels. There are still lots of houses for sale at historically low prices.

And that's bad news? What would good news look like? One hundred percent increases in the cost of everything?

What is passing strange here is that a precipitous decline in the price of a very widely used product is regarded as a problem. Is anyone concerned about the failure of the...