One of George W. Bush's professors at Harvard Business School said, "He showed pathological lying habits and was in denial when challenged on his prejudices and biases. He would even deny saying something he just said 30 seconds ago."

Exploiting a weakness in the U.S. Constitution, Bush became president in 2000 despite losing the popular vote. He ignored an August 2001 Presidential Daily Brief titled: Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the U.S. Then he used that attack -- along with some trumped up evidence of WMDs -- to justify an invasion into Iraq that killed thousands of people and cost trillions.

Now as Bush goes on his self-pity tour before he (hopefully) leaves office in less than a week, bin Laden is apparently still alive and enjoying a last laugh at Bush. Bin Laden's latest video blames Bush for weakening America which permitted Israel to invade Gaza. Bin Laden is partially right -- Bush has weakened America.

Thanks to the ownership society, families have never lost more in three months than they did between July and September of this year. And I have no doubt that when the numbers for the fourth quarter are totaled up, 2008 will go down as the worst year for destruction of family wealth in history.

How bad has the third quarter damage been? Household net worth fell $2.81 trillion, the most since records began in 1952, to $56.5 trillion. Real-estate-related assets declined by $646.9 billion, following a $217.1 billion loss. Owners' equity of real-estate holdings dropped to a record-low 44.7% in the third quarter, from 46% in the second quarter. With 1.9 million jobs lost in the last year and unemployment claims at a 26 year high, people are hurting.

You will remember back in 2004 when President George W. Bush boasted about the wonders of the ownership society. In case you forgot, he bragged about his June 2002 America's Homeownership Challenge to the real estate and mortgage finance industries to increase by at least 5.5 million families the number of minority homeowners before 2010. As Bush boasted, "under his leadership, the overall U.S. homeownership rate in the second quarter of 2004 was at an all time high of 69.2%."

Be afraid, be very, very afraid. According to a piece from Marketwatch, subprime is -- to borrow a line from Monty Python -- not dead ... it's just sleeping. And when the subprime players come back, they will just look different. Maybe they'll be more responsible, less predatory, and easier to understand -- but maybe not.

According to some experts, the reason that subprime mortgages will return is that our country is dedicated to the idea of increasing home ownership. And the only real way to increase home ownership is to give mortgages to people who wouldn't traditionally qualify for them.

Perhaps it's a policy that needs some rethinking. As we watch record numbers of Americans struggling with increasing mortgage payments, we have to wonder whether they can keep their homes. There's something to keep in mind: A lot of these people would have been a lot better had they continued renting for now, and our national fixation on the idea of home ownership is a big part of what got them into this problem.

Don't get me wrong: I think home ownership is a wonderful thing, and absolutely something that should be encouraged. But in our religious zeal for creating the ownership society, we've forgotten something: If you can't afford a home, you're better off renting. The fact is that a lot of people bought homes who had no business doing that, and that's a big part of why we're in the crisis we find ourselves in now.