Many thanks to John who put the They cried wolf, they were right article on the sidebar yesterday. I was particularly struck by this quote:
Some in the real estate industry say the early cries of bubble should be called to account on the grounds of intellectual fairness. If the boosters have to acknowledge they were wrong when they provided justifications for prices that were, well, unjustifiable, then the doubters should also own up to the fact that they were too negative, too early.
“Even the people that were talking about booms busting, my goodness they were talking about it in 2001 and 2002,” said David Lereah, the former chief economist with the National Association of Realtors. “And they were wrong for four years and they only became right at the end of 2004.” He and his former employer had been criticized for the optimistic forecasts they made during the boom.
I couldn’t help but think of the Minneapolis bridge collapse across the Mississippi, and the fact that there were early warning signs that the bridge was defective:
Minnesota officials were warned as early as 1990 that the bridge that collapsed into the Mississippi River was "structurally deficient," yet they relied on patchwork repairs and stepped-up inspections that unraveled amid a thunderous plunge of concrete and automobiles.
