It’s called “comfirmation bias”. That is, people simply look for and believe in evidence that supports their belief. When data points to the contrary, a weak argument like “this time will be different” comes up. But while history rhymes, it doesn’t exactly repeat. So we should just discard any arguments that has nothing but “this time it will / won’t be different”
However, some actually points out what’s different. For example, the exotic lending practices were pointed out as a difference this time around. So the question for a reader is to decide whether that factor is important enough to cause a “difference”. To me, the argument then has some credibility and can’t be immediately ignored. To translate into housing, if in the past (high housing price + recession/high unemployment) –> price correction; then today (high price + low wage growth + higher interest rate/stricter lending) will cause the same impact, because the root cause is always that the borrower can’t shoulder the burden of mortage payments. But without recession and massive job losses, the process probably will be dragged out longer. Before they give up, they always hope…
