Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke recently expressed dismay over the lack of success of the government's efforts to spur the national recovery of the housing market. He cited what he called "sincere government efforts to address the problem, but they run into lots of bureaucratic and other difficulties," in testimony before the Senate Banking Committee in January. He is certainly right about the difficulties being faced, and he's correct that the government's efforts have been sincere--particularly in an election year. But sometimes it seems that, for all its sincerity, the government is missing the root cause of the difficulty as well as overestimating its ability to control things. It is not only about the lack of response to federal programs that is at issue, nor is it only about the almost 10 percent unemployment rate. At the end of the day, it's about the inventory out there, and getting it under control is going to require the positive impact of multiple factors. Some are governmental, but others are well within the grasp of the private sector.
