The sad story about the travails of Taylor Wimpey, a major British homebuilder (“Throwing in the Keys,” July 5, 2008), is so much sadder because it is being retold with every major slump, when homebuilding shrinks into irrelevance. After some twenty years, most homebuilders in top jobs have forgotten the lessons of the previous slump, let alone the one preceding it. Actually, many of them are too young to have learned the lessons in the first place. Both monetary and fiscal policies have lengthened the economic cycles so much that the sad stories are repeated over and over again, ad nauseum. But there is a lesson here for those behind monetary and fiscal policies, as well. Perhaps the cycles have gotten too long for the puny homebuilders’ brains? Perhaps policies should be adjusted to their capacity to digest lessons from the past? After all, homebuilding is a major industry, and it deserves a bit more attention from the intrepid policy-makers.