The counter example to the OP's point about housing is agriculture? When we just had a story about how Bill Gates is now the US's largest land owner? When Farm AID was started to assist local farmers from corporate encroachment 40 years ago?! This whole thread points out how people who claim that the US has free markets are really deluding themselves. The FEDERAL government is heavily involved in EVERY non-trivial aspect of our PERSONAL lives, and they pick the winners and losers. It truly, truly sucks, but this trend of investment banks getting involved in buying up real estate, and driving up prices of home ownership is NOT going to go away. Owning a home will become so expensive that only corporations will be able to do so, and rent/lease it back to you. We truly are becoming a capitalistic country, and either you'll have "capital," or you won't. It's modern feudalism.
