Archive for December 30th, 2009
Hope. But Not Change.
Posted by Joshua Sharf in Housing on December 30th, 2009
Hope, October 2005:
The keen interest of the media, and by extension, the public, in the future of house price growth in the United States centers on the question of whether there is a house price bubble nationally or regionally. Even among those who concede that a bubble per se may not be present, many worry that they may experience a decline in home prices in their metro area due to the very high and unsustainable rise in values over recent years in many parts of the United States. We examine this potential by forecasting the likely change in prices under three models – one that asserts a mean reversion correction on regional markets to return the national average gain in prices to the 50-year annual growth rate of 5 percent over the period 1998-2010; the second and third base future regional and national home price growth on economic fundamentals.
We also discuss recent findings by Chang, Cutts and Green (2005) and perform a simple extension of their work applied to 22 major cities. In all cases, we find the predicted worst-case outcomes to be much less dire than the “doomsday” predictions reported in the mainstream press and elsewhere.
Written by the then-Chief Economist, Frank Nothaft, and Deputy Chief Economist, Amy Crews Cutts, at Freddie Mac.
Last week, the current heads of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae received news of 7-figure bonuses at the same time the government threw their corporations an unlimited lifeline. In fact, the government won’t even estimate how much money it’ll take to stabilize these companies. Talk about too big to fail.
If the company was making decisions based on those employees who were responsible for “primary and secondary mortgage market analysis and research, macroeconomic analysis and forecasting,” and who had, “published studies in academic journals and books on such topics as the economics of subprime lending,” then it’s easy to see where they went wrong.
It would be a good thing, then, if those economists had found other employment. Unfortunately, they haven’t (see end of page 2). That’s right. Four years after their tsunami detector found nothing to worry about, nothing to see here, please move along, and one year into the administration that was going to hold everyone accountable, the same economists are still there, turning out reports and advice.
I’ve commented before on the metaphysical impossibility of making the sorts of predictions that these economists were trying to make. But in this case, their catastrophic mistakes contributed mightily towards shaking the world financial system to its core. They stopped issuing commentary along with their tables of projections from August 2007 until April of 2009. Apparently they figured that if they couldn’t find something nice to say about the housing market, they’d better not say anything at all. Now it’s all back to recovery and bottoms and shrinking inventory.
It seems that working for Freddie Mac – either in management or research – really does mean never having to say you’re sorry.
For Your Consideration
Posted by Joshua Sharf in Iran, War on Islamism on December 30th, 2009
If things in Iran work out, there may be a movie with much greater world significance than Al Gore’s efforts of a few years ago. Red County has learned, from sources close to the movie’s production, that The Stoning of Soraya M has become quite the hit on the Iranian street, with copies being smuggled in to meet the demand for group screenings in private homes. This is roughly the equivalent of The Magnificent Seven being shown on the other side of the Iron Curtain during the Cold War.
Such films serve an educational purpose in the West. But in Iran, they stiffen resolve. They remind the population what all that fighting in the streets is about. It assures them that their overseas countrymen haven’t forgotten them, even as Iran tries to stifle debate in the West by threatening families left at home. And it provides some hope that the US and the West might yet be roused to help these people. Who knows? Maybe the Ayatollah Khameini saw the film and glimpsed his future, which would explain his sudden 100-hour check on his personal jet.
Of course, since the Iranian government is in bed with the Chinese, maybe it could prevail on them to cut a few hundred thousand pirate copies to satisfy demand. I doubt the movie’s producers would object.