by HARM follow (0)
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Well, when all is said and done, you can't fool the middle class.
And you can't fool the "market."
Patrick and Ben evince the genius of common sense wedded to superior intellect, minus a hidden agenda.
Nice work, gentlemen.
Hey, and if the whole Hari Seldon angle doesn't put you on edge, imagine what could happen if a "Housing Mule" shows up! Imagine someone with the power to mentally manipulate real estate prices all over the galaxy at will.
Think about it... 8O
The Mule's power is a lot more limited. He can only create the power of undying loyalty by personally modifying a person. -- Much like Suzanne's *research* for future FBs.
HARM,
For David Lereah and other realtors--it's obvious that their job creates a huge conflict of interest (per your Upton Sinclair quote).
But beyond them I take part of your question quite literally. For so many economists like Greenspan and and other university academics whose career and lifestyle are secure bubble or no, the conflict of interest is not so clear.
I am not as cynical as some who believe Greenspan knew there was a bubble and didn't care. Rather, I believe he and many others truly believed prices were sustainable.
Finding the reasons these economists kept their head in the sand (ulterior motives or not) interests me greatly.
Boston Transplant,
I agree that the "ivory tower"/academic bubble syndrome can be very real, as others have already discussed. Even so, I seriously doubt that one of the Chief Bubble Architects: Greenspan himself, was somehow unaware of the effects his actions were having on the RE market. Remember how he was publicly pimping option-ARMs after he slashed Fed Funds rate to 1%? Coincidence? Hardly...
I would also argue that AG was not a truly disinterested academic with no conflict of interest. Rather, he was an old supply-side political hack who had a vested interest in pleasing his political masters in order to keep his job (whomever they happened to be at the time --Dems or Republicans). Not to mention all those lucrative private sector engagements he wanted for post-retirement.
OTH, I'm sure there were plenty of self-deluded academics who managed to convince themselves of a New Paradigm, just as many had during the first tech bubble.
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As the rolling bubble crash gathers steam, and even formerly hostile MSM sources now reluctantly admit the bubble --and its bursting-- is undeniably real, one question remains: how did people like Patrick Killelea and Ben Jones correctly predict all this so accurately beforehand?
Nearly two years ago, Ben and Patrick founded their now-famous blogs, dedicated to the national housing bubble. They boldly predicted its demise as "inevitable" long, long before most industry experts would even admit the bubble even existed. Now events are unfolding almost like clockwork, almost exactly as predicted:
My questions: how could such seemingly average Joes ever predict such events when the brightest, most highly paid industry experts could not? I mean, David Lereah went from "no bubble" to "correction's over" in like 30 seconds flat! If the danger signs were so obvious, then why didn't we hear about them beforehand from the NAR... the Fed... Wall Street? It's not as if these frequently quoted (and rarely challenged) "industry experts" could possibly have known about this mess beforehand, but just kept it to themselves for some reason. Like, that's just conspiratorial, tinfoil-hat wing-nuttery, right?
So, if the only way to perceive an asset/credit bubble is after-the-fact (as Sir Alan Greenspan has asserted), then how could Ben and Patrick possibly have known about it that far back? Are they psychic? Are these guys prescient modern-day Nostradamus-es? Or, are they financial super-wizards --real-life Hari Seldons-- who can accurately predict the future with mathematical precision, but posing as regular guys? If the housing bubble was so impossible to predict, even with access to the very best market data and cutting-edge computing power (as the experts insist it was), then how could two ordinary working-class stiffs manage to pull off such a feat by themselves?
Should we be concerned that Patrick and Ben are some form of genetically mutated super-geniuses hiding in plain sight?? How else could they possibly have foreseen the unforeseeable?
Spooky, isn't it? :roll:
Discuss, enjoy...
HARM
#housing