About that housing market surprise
From
The Independent (again, a news source from England, not a news source from the USA):
US house price fall 'beats Great Depression slide'
The ailing US housing market passed a grim milestone in the first quarter of this year, posting a further deterioration that means the fall in house prices is now greater than that suffered during the Great Depression.
The brief recovery in prices in 2009, spurred by government aid to first-time buyers, has now been entirely snuffed out, and the average American home now costs 33 per cent less than it did at the peak of the housing bubble in 2007. The peak-to-trough fall in house prices in the 1930s Depression was 31 per cent � and prices took 19 years to recover after that downturn.
And of course, the current administration is saying that this is a big surprise.
From
Lew Rockwell:
Austrian Thymologists Who Predicted the Housing Bubble
I think it is very important that we keep track of, and thank, the Austrians who predicted the housing bubble. Let this signal contribution of the praxeological school never fall down that proverbial memory hole. Why do I say this? For one thing, to give credit where credit is due. All too often, mainstream economists take credit for all and sundry; it is time, it is long past time, that some credit be publicly accorded to Austrian economics and its practitioners, and predicting the housing bubble will do quite well as one small part of these accomplishments. For another, I focus on these predictions in order to promote this school of economics, the last best hope for humanity. Were the school of thought of Menger, B�hm-Bawerk, Mises and Rothbard more widely known, and public policy more heavily based upon it, we would not be suffering from the economic quandary that now envelopes us. Previously, I blogged on this subject, mentioning that I was trying to put together a list of citations of Austrians who had predicted the housing bubble. I offered there the beginnings of this list, and asked people to help me make it more complete. I now thank the following scholars for helping me add to this bibliography: Rick Burner, Matt Dioguardi, Mike Finger, Kevinz Kevz, Julio Linares, Mickey Propadovich, John Spiers, Scott Sutton, Scott Weisman. As you will see below from the TBA�s, this bibliography is not yet in its final stage. So, gentle reader, please correct any of my remaining errors of omission or commission. I am determined to put together as complete and accurate a bibliography of this signal contribution of Austrian economics as possible.
What follows is a list of over seventy articles, most with links to the original sources and dating back as early as 2000 with most in the 2002 to 2005 publishing range.
Thymology - the anthropological study of human action in time, present and past.
What makes Keynesianism so attractive to the power hungry?
I guess the answer is that the free-for-all of the Austrian method gives them the willies -- they cannot control it and, for a liberal, it is all about control -- not listening to your constituents, controlling them.
Posted by DaveH at June 5, 2011 11:20 AM