I’m seeing a series of ideas suggested involving major government intervention in the housing market, and these things are usually presented or sold as a way of helping homeowners stay in their homes. Then, when you look at them more carefully, what they really amount to is a bailout for financial institutions or Wall Street.

-Hank Paulson, former Treasury Secretary in the George W. Bush administration, February 28, 2008, quoted by The Cunning Realist.