Greenspan’s Housing Bottom Call

Barry Ritholtz of The Big Picture blog poses a logical question regarding Greenspan’s comments made yesterday at The National Association of Realtors [NAR].

“We are finally beginning to see the seeds of a bottoming [in the housing industry. The U.S. is] at the edge of a major liquidation [in the stock of unsold properties, which may help to stabilize prices].
—Alan Greenspan, May 12 2009

“I don’t know, but I think the worst of this may well be over.”
—Alan Greenspan, October 2006

Why does the public — and the Press — constantly seek out reassurances from the same people who misled them time and again in the past?

emphasis added

[via The Big Picture]

Greenspan’s policies have been and continue to be thoroughly discredited at this point. Much of what is wrong in the financial markets and world economy today can be traced to his door. Yet the media keeps lauding him. He repeatedly missed in his eighteen-year tenure as Federal Reserve chairman the caustic impacts his policies and the housing bubble had in fostering the imbalances and excesses of an  increasingly asset-dependent US economy that had to borrow surplus saving from China in order to keep growing. Many may call that growth. I’d say is growth based on fumes.

From BR: Few people have been worse than Greenspan in analyzing the Housing market. In fact, the only person / group I can think of with a consistently worse track record than Greenspan’s of analyzing the housing market was the group he spun his foolishness to yesterday: The National Association of Realtors.

• Become A Funded Futures Trader