Barry has some interesting discussion of the housing bubble. It's probably pretty difficult to argue convincingly against the idea that it has been in large part driven by increasingly bad lending practices (which were, it must be said, encouraged by Uncle Alan Greenspan). The "price" of a house isn't really the sales prices, it's the monthly mortgage cost, and continuing to hand out low-initial rate ARMs and no-interest loans kept depressing the mortage cost while simultaneously allowing actual home prices to rise.
New home sales were down sharply, and there's a new record for unsold inventory. Construction jobs are going to start disappearing rather fast I imagine, which could tip us into recession. Then other people lose their jobs. Then the foreclosures...
Fortunately my Egyptian cotton futures investments are netting me 47 quatloos per second.
