While record-low interest rates and cheap financing from the Federal Reserve have helped push up stocks, they have done little to ease the blow of a housing collapse or encourage firms to go on a hiring spree.
The award-winning Police Homeowner Loan Program offers police officers low-interest (4%), short-term (20 year) financing with no down payment for the purchase of rehabilitated houses in low-income, inner-city neighborhoods in Columbia.
For some time now, demand for houses has been artificially boosted by federal and state tax policies, rising governmental involvement in residential-debt financing, and persistently low interest rates orchestrated by the Federal Reserve.
Of course, the system only nets out that way because of low-interest loans from a Japanese development bank, with the remaining favorable financing from the state and national governments.