One’s guess could be that if the PPP was available to the public, it would show that NAR economists were already aware & forecasted the RE bubble. Doesn’t this make sense?
“NAR economists were already aware & forecasted the RE bubble”
Sure they forecasted it. A year too late! Good thing we have Piggingtonians saving all of Lereah’s statements in 2005 and early 2006 when he was still “expecting” prices to go up.
It was intentionally released IMO, in the same fashion that the government and military selectively choose to release items of interest while downplaying others, thus creating a media story. The NAR are engaged in a classic game of information operations and their goal is to influence the mass psychology of the American populace into maintaining their confidence in the housing market. They now have no choice but to admit that the data is bad, so the new strategy is to present that data and in the process build trust. They then ignore most of that data and find a way to craft a prediction that involves a mere soft landing, or slight downward trend with an eventual return to appreciation. Not the rapid appreciation that we have come to expect, but we can all sleep well at night knowing it will only fall 2.8% and then rise again in a few years. Consider what would result if the NAR approached this from an unbiased perspective. The mere prediction of a large decline would drive the market down further, cause people to lose faith in housing and pose a huge risk to the economist if he were wrong. This is why they always stick with the soft landing scenario! HP considered putting spies in newsrooms…what has the NAR been up to?
Perry, you are frequently unable to resist. You take every opportunity to beat your anti-Bush, anti-Iraq drum and don’t seem to care that you are forcing your politics on everybody.
He didn’t bash Bush; he makes a correct point that Bush is having to come to terms with an unpopular decision. From his statement, I couldn’t tell whether he likes Bush or not.
I only mentioned here because JES drew the parallel betwen the NAR’s tactics and those of the government and the military — “a classic game of information operations and their goal is to influence the mass psychology of the American populace.”
I read JES’s other analogies in other threads. He sounds like a smart reasonable man to me.
BTW, I’m far from a bleeding heart liberal. I’m more of a Lincoln Chafee kind of conservative.
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