Call me a simpleton if you must, but what was the housing market boom and bust, but an echo of the dot-com boom and bust? Those wild speculators, once drawn to anything with .com, then spooked, were probably the same ones engaging in things like flipping houses in the same day during the housing boom. And, once again, the bust. Scary, indeed. Guess who's gonna need to step in? Yep, you guessed, it, the government. Now is not the time for less government. Now is the time for smarter government. I suppose neither of the two will be a reality. Like I said, we don't live in a vacuum. But...an active government (for better or for worse) it will be.