It’s Friday, and it’s been a long while since we’ve posted on the shill we most love to hate- David Lereah, former "chief economist" [Their title, not mine.] of the National Association of Realtors. Lereah was most famously known for his book, "Why Real Estate Will Not Bust"
Given that Lereah’s predictions were disasterously wrong, you’d think he’d have found a job doing something else, but no:
First this guy talks millions of people into buying far more home than they can afford. Then, when that scam falls apart, he leaves the National Association of Realtors and skedaddles for some Web outfit. Now he’s advising Wall Street on how to clean up investing in the wreckage of the disaster he created.
He finally comes clean (barely) and pronounces housing’s bottom as not yet in. No Shinola, Sherlock. You, of all people, ought to know just how out-of-whack home prices are with historical norms.
It turns out he has recently set up a new firm called Reecon Advisors, which is advising Wall Street firms and institutional investors about the real estate market. "Wall Street has an intense interest in [this], because they’re looking for when is the recovery going to come, and at what point does the cycle turn," Lereah told me.
I wonder if Lereah is even a tiny bit aware of the irony in his starting a company almost called "re- con."
Anything else ironic, sad, outrageous or mildly entertaining happening today? This is an open thread, so feel free to take the floor on anything housing related.
Northern Virginia Housing Bubble Fallout
Ohio Fraudclosure
Bubble Meter
UK House Bubble
Mish's Global Economic Analysis
Breaking News Relevant Articles© Copyright 2012 Housing Doom | Copyright© 2011, AuthentiCraft, Inc.
It’s too bad David Lereah and the likes have not done a much better job on many fronts. About the only thing that they’ve done a good job on is giving the National Association of Realtors a bad name.
How about this study:
Swaggering Down 87%
Chuck Ponzi
When somebody with a record as bad as his says the bottom is not yet in, I begin to wonder if maybe it is.
Twist – Do you like to watch amateur magicians? Here is a lame attempt at amateur magic tricks that I couldn’t help but laugh at, from Canada. The Vancouver Sun is back in real-estate cheerleading form, and looking pathetic as ever, this time along with large Canadian bank “TD Canada Trust”. Did even any major U.S. newspapers try using logic that is this lame?
To paraphrase today’s Vancouver Sun article-
“See that 6.2% drop in real in Canadian real estate prices that has been OFFICIALLY reported by the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA)? It only LOOKS like ’6.2′. Look closer, that number is actually a ’1.3′.
…
Now just watch our clumsy sleight-of-hand and cheap parlour tricks (please ignore our large rubber thumbs and marked card deck!), and you too can see how we turn ’6.2′ into ’1.3′.
…
Voila!..See? Don’t panic, and keep buying homes!!! Please!!! After all, who are you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?”
And the real article…
“The drop in Canadian home prices in September may not be as severe as it seemed, TD Securities said on Wednesday, bolstering the case that the country is not headed for a U.S.-style housing meltdown.
TD, a unit of Toronto-Dominion Bank, argued in a report that home prices fell 1.3 percent in major Canadian markets in September, not the dramatic 6.2 percent drop that was reported by the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) last week.”
….
“TD crunched its own numbers and applied a weighting to each major city to fix “compositional shifts”, which it said were behind the distorted CREA view.”
That’s right, “compositional shifts” is the new way of saying “abracadabra”.
But, PLEASE, hold your applause until the end.
For their next trick, the Vancouver Sun & TD Canada Trust will be levitating builder’s stocks on nothing but *hot air*. THEN, as a grand finale, you can watch as they stick a dozen knives into the Canadian real-estate market and cut the economy in half. The trick to this last last one is that they’ll be denying it is happening all along!
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=9a0be1bd-ee2f-4777-a2ce-870ad119e813
(BTW, I wonder why the MSM weren’t in a big rush to apply their “compositional shifts” to market numbers when prices were headed UP?)
MikeC-
I saw a cartoon once that I loved. It showed a CEO in a boardroom doing a presentation. He had a graph with the trendline headed down at about a 45 degree angle, but he’d put the graph on its corner, making the line pretty much flat. He said, “As you can see, our profit picture isn’t that bad.”
Perhaps the guy would do well at the Vancouver Sun. [Or the Arizona Republic, or ....]
twist -
This article in the NYT has convinced me that we are entering a new phase in the crisis: “This is a panic in the way of the fine 19th-century panics, where we all run around like headless chickens.”
… to continue …
Long-time Doomers will remember the post Voice of the Mountains (Aug 26, 2007) from a bit over a week after the Montreal Accord marked the opening battle in the credit crunch. David Kanis of Asheville NC documented the sudden collapse of the non-conforming Jumbo mortgage market. It wasn’t long after that when the whole sector, including best-in-class company Thornburg went rapidly down the tubes.
I’m getting an uncomfortably déjà vu feeling about the present moment. I look at forex trends like the disorderly retreat of our beloved loonie and wonder if the hedgies are collectively in a deleveraging death spiral. Again, we’ve got a clear best-of-class in Ken Griffin’s Citadel, so we need to watch it (and him) closely for signs of strain. Roubini, among others, are starting to call for an enforced world-wide trading markets holiday, as the side-effects (like funds selling furiously into any equities rally to raise cash for redemptions) are becoming alarming.
“Citadel says it remains on solid ground”, by Joshua Boak and Michael Oneal, Chicago Tribune, October 25, 2008.
————————————
“Buyout, Hedge Funds Are Next Dominos”, by Matthew Lynn, Bloomberg, October 21, 2008.
“No money,” says Igor, and that’s about it.
Twist – You would think that those that are part of the dying medium (newspapers) would know that it is much harder to regain the trust (and money) of readers that know they have been lied to… than to be balanced and keep the readers they already have.
John – I’m as perplexed as you are by the currency markets. Not so much by the fall in the Canadian dollar (which seems a natural reflex to the fall of oil and other commodities which Canada heavily exports) but by the rise in the U.S. dollar in comparison to practically the entire world. That isn’t going to help U.S. exports in the short term – a double whammy for the recession?