Need to add that your group of lying thieves is most responsible for the financial crisis that has decimated so many govt entities. If you actually do some research instead of spewing your uninformed rhetoric, you’ll find that the #1 reason that govt finances are in such trouble is because of the significantly reduced revenues, not pensions.
Governments are often forced to spend what they take in (if you need me to explain that to you, just let me know), so their expenditures went up with the bubbles. If not for the bubbles, they would have been forced to keep their spending down, and they wouldn’t be in the shape they’re in today. Realtors were 100% behind the bubble and were telling everyone to pay more than they should and that they should stretch to bid more than the next potential buyer. The NAR was very actively denying that there was a bubble, while pushing for even more “financial innovation” so that more idiots could pay more for housing than they could ever afford.
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“Lereah has been criticized for encouraging the rise of the United States housing bubble. According to a blog quoted by the Chicago Tribune, “In October 2005 Lereah was busy calling the bubble believers ‘Chicken Littles.’ Many of the predictions espoused by the ‘Chicken Littles’ are fast becoming closer to reality. … David Lereah has lost credibility because of his irresponsible cheerleading.”[8]
Commenting on the phenomenon of shifting NAR accounts of the national housing market, the Motley Fool reported, in June 2006,[9]
“There’s nothing funnier or more satisfying … than watching the National Association of Realtors (NAR) change its tune these days. The latest news release from this sunny-Jim industry group finally fesses up to its past fiction, but even when it admits the bubble’s going to pop, it can’t muster the courage to just come out and say it. … the NAR is full of it and will spin the numbers any way it can to keep up the pleasant fiction that all is well. … [T]he cracks began to show in subsequent remarks from NAR ‘Chief Economist’ David Lereah. The head outfit that ridiculed the idea of a housing bubble for years is now crying for Ben Bernanke to bring it back. … It should have been completely obvious to anyone with a loan calculator and a glance at wage increases that those months of industry bubble denials were just wishful thinking.”
Business Week also captured David’s most famous quote:
“The steady improvement in [home] sales will support price appreciation…[despite] all the wild projections by academics, Wall Street analysts, and others in the media.” David was Chief Economist at the National Association of Realtors when he said this. The day was Jan 10, 2007, just as housing prices steadily worsened falling even farther than many skeptics had predicted.”
