“Mortgage companies have ramped up their purchases of government-backed mortgages in forbearance, and they are selling these loans back to investors at a profit.”
Ultimately, we are responsible for ensuring our own security and our incentives are aligned with those of third parties with whom we can contract to assist us. In this regard, security is no different than many other desirable things.
Political candidates are offering endless government spending and "free stuff" for everyone. But at the same time, governments appear incapable of performing even basic duties like ending street riots.
Human beings do not have constant value scales, but change their goals constantly as the world around them changes. This habit of changing goals does not make a consumer "irrational."
The chronic US trade deficit is a direct result of the dollar’s status as the world’s main reserve currency and unabated monetary increases in government spending. More tariffs won't change that.
Whether today's Great Monetary Inflation (which began in 2011) will end with sustained CPI inflation remains a wide-open question at this point. Prices could be reined in as in the 1990s, or a 1970s-style inflation could still be in store.
