Ask most people who live in a home and have a mortgage on it whether they own their own home and the answer is almost guaranteed to be a resounding 'yes'. Yet it's the wrong answer. Technically speaking, until they have paid the mortgage off, they don't own it. Herein lies the difference between reality and illusion, between ownership and control. This confusion lies not only at the individual level, but also at the heart of government thinking.

How the West Was Lost: Fifty Years of Economic Folly--and the Stark Choices Ahead (ed. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011) - ISBN: 9781429988483