Categories:
Finance: stocks, options, etc.
Two stories look at early warnings of the housing bubble. Bruce Bartlett points to A Forbes piece from September 2001–way too early, in my opinion. Prices in most markets at that time were too low, not too high. He points to Ed Leamer’s piece from June of 2002, but in that article Leamer concluded that the near-term outlook for house prices was very positive.
The Wall Street Journal profiles three long-term bears. All three of them are particularly worried now about U.S. Treasury securities being overpriced. Their views make sense to me. I am very sympathetic with Peter Schiff, who has had doubts about the dollar’s ability to remain strong.
READER COMMENTS
Grant Gould
Jan 2 2009 at 3:18pm
To what extent are these just stopped clocks having their right-twice-a-day moment? I’d be more interested in people who were bullish and then changed their minds than people who’ve been bearish since the Clinton administration.
Daniel Klein
Jan 2 2009 at 4:37pm
“the next major bust, if there is no major interruption such as a global war, will be around 2008.”
Fred E. Foldvary. 1997. The Business Cycle: A Georgist-Austrian Synthesis. American Journal of Economics and Sociology 56(4): 521-41, quote at p. 538.
It appears that an html version is available online at:
http://www.foldvary.net/works/geoaus.html
The quotation given above appears in the conclusion.
The paper must have been written about 1995-96, so Fred called it a good 12 years in advance.
Patrick
Jan 2 2009 at 7:22pm
How exactly was real estate under-priced in 2001? I’d love to see some type of analysis to back up such a strong statement.
Huxley
Jan 4 2009 at 9:54am
Schiff, Jim Rogers, and Marc Faber all say the dollar is going down, down, down. Given the Federal deficits and the ballooning balance sheet of the Fed, it is hard to see how we avoid high inflation/currency depreciation, but on the other hand people are willing to lend dollars long term at fairly nominal rates, so I must be missing something. I certainly don’t buy long term bonds.
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