There is a banking adage that if it's growing like a weed, it's a good chance that it's a weed.

They called me the sexiest economist in America, and that was years ago, when I had hair and body mass and my teeth were shiny.

At the center of every recession is a serious imbalance in the economy and mirrored in the financial system. Think subprime mortgage and the Great Recession, or the technology bubble and the early 2000s recession. There are no such imbalances today.

Indeed, the FHA was born out of the Great Depression, which was also caused in significant part by a foreclosure crisis. Mortgages in the early 1930s were mostly three- to five-year 'bullet' loans, which did not amortize and were due in full at maturity.

The FHA's success provides strong evidence that government can and should play a role in the nation's mortgage finance system. It also demonstrates that although government intervention in the economy during the Great Recession was messy, things would have been a lot messier without it.

The most important point is, in a time of crisis, there is no way out but for the government to be bold and aggressive.

Predicting recessions is indeed a dark art, but I think we are several years away from the next one.