My wife and I have been looking to buy a home in recent months. You would think we would have been grateful, at least personally, for the $8K tax rebate for new home buyers — even if we thought (as I did) that it was not a good thing for the nation as a whole. And initially, I thought it probably would work to our advantage. (Mind you, if I could have personally removed it, I would have.)

But that faded quickly when I started looking at the numbers: Zillow trend graphs were showing a huge spike in many housing prices in our area — tens of thousands of dollars (many, many times the amount of the rebate) — leading up to the April deadline. And then, after the deadline, a sudden decline. Worse, the housing market was whipped into a frenzy to get everything sold before the deadline, and since then we've seen only a bare trickle.

Stephen Spruiell has other observations, noting that he also thinks the credit ended up in sellers (not buyers') pockets, notes that taxpayers now owe another $12.6 billion as of February (not even counting this spring yet), and notes that 85% of those who were "induced" to buy a house would have bought one anyway. There are also some notes about various scams which arose to rake in taxpayer cash. (The ones which have been discovered are the tip of an iceberg, I would guess.)