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Don’t Look Now IX

Don’t Look Now IX

Lead articles today in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, respectively:

“3-Year Descent in Home Prices Appears at End”

“Home Prices Rise Across U.S.”

Written by

Alan Weiss is a consultant, speaker, and author of over 60 books. His consulting firm, Summit Consulting Group, Inc., has attracted clients from over 500 leading organizations around the world.

Comments: 9

  • Mike Sivertsen

    August 1, 2009

    Market Ticker
    http://market-ticker.org/

    and Dr. Housing Bubble
    http://www.doctorhousingbubble.com/

    have, shall we say, vastly different outlooks.

  • Alan Weiss

    August 1, 2009

    Understood, but my point is that this recession is largely perceptual because the media and those who can profit from downtimes are emphasizing bad news. Simplistically: Unemployment may be 10%, but half of it is chronic, institutionalized unemployment, and that means that 95% of people are working.

  • Mike Sivertsen

    August 1, 2009

    Here is a good discussion on layoffs and unemployment by Dr. Gary North
    http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north738.html

    This discussion of the FED and the insolvency of the major banks that is being hid from Joe Public is also informative (by same author)
    http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north739.html

    It appears to me that the only way a collapsing, partially-free economy built on debt and spending can recover is to have a massive contraction. Painful but necessary. Of course, we could always try Communism again – that worked so well in the 20th century.

    Those who have been frugal and have ‘acted their wage’ (as Dave Ramsey, financial author, says on billboards here in Dallas-Fort Worth) may find opportunities.

    However, any business transaction that involves the government will be fraught with politics, ideology and complexity.

    Witness the Cash for Clunkers fiasco.
    http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YTk1YTkxOGYyMDk0ZWJlYmE4YTYzMWRkZWYzYWZmZWI=

  • Alan Weiss

    August 1, 2009

    That’s a lot of opinion with a lot of links. I can’t tell whether you’re being serious or ironic (Communism in the 20th Century?), so I have no idea how to respond. The contraction has happened, people who overspent were punished, most of the corrupt were caught, and now we’ll head back to another cycle. I don’t believe in conspiracies and things hidden from the public, but maybe I’m just naive.

  • Graham Franklin

    August 2, 2009

    Sorry you don’t believe in conspiracies and things hidden from the public. Come and live in the UK for 6 months you will soon change your mind.

  • Alan Weiss

    August 2, 2009

    Perhaps, but it one goes through life worried about Hanger 59 or the Loch Ness Monster or circles in crop fields I really think one’s got an advanced case of paranoia.

  • Graham Franklin

    August 2, 2009

    Good point…..

  • Mike Sivertsen

    August 2, 2009

    re “most of the corrupt were caught” is sadly wrong.

    Karl Denninger on Market Ticker writes about this regularly. Here’s one example among many and a reason an audit of the Fed is gaining ground in Congress.

    More Fed Lawlessness: AIG
    http://market-ticker.org/archives/1166-More-Fed-Lawlessness-AIG.html

    Goldman Sachs is named in this article as another arm of the global bankers behind these corrupt schemes.

    Hollow States and Global Financial Predators
    http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2009/06/link-hollow-states-and-global-financial-predators.html

    EXCERPT
    “A couple of global guerrilla themes here: incessant and morally bereft financial predation at the global level (financial tribalism?) and the emergence of hollow nation-states that serve merely as vehicles the enrichment of these predators.

    “NOTE: It’s also an interesting reprise of the current carbon trading scheme — essentially, instead of responding to environmental stress with real solutions (a push to create local resiliency) we get another big rip-off that will line the pockets of global banksters.”

  • Alan Weiss

    August 2, 2009

    I’m not sure what your point is, and I hate all these links as if they justify an opinion, when they’re just someone else’s opinion. There are still “evildoers” out there, but the worst of the scams were cratered by the sinking economy which could no longer generate returns to sustain Ponzi schemes. That’s my point. (Let along those gullible and stupid enough to invest in them in the first place.)

    Your excerpts sound like the UN is taking over the world rhetoric. There are still bad guys. There always will be. But people and regulators are now more on guard.

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