June 01, 2011
If the Washington Post sent reporters through northern Japan they would note the wrecked roads and buildings, the large number of deaths, the crisis at the nuclear power plants, but they would never notice the earthquake/tsunami that caused it all. That is what one can assume from its continued failure to notice the housing bubble.
Anyone who followed trends in house prices should not have been at all surprised by the drop in prices reported for March (the “double-dip”). Nationwide house prices are still close to 10 percent above their long-term trend.
No one — as in not a single economist anywhere — has presented a remotely plausible reason as to why we should expect house prices to diverge from their 100-year long trend. Given the continued near-record vacancy rates, and huge inventory of homes in the foreclosure process, there is no reason to think that house prices will stop falling any time soon.
The Post should try to find at least one person who recognized the housing bubble (the largest asset bubble in the history of the world) for its articles on the housing market, instead of relying exclusively on people who were caught by surprise by its collapse.
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