David Lereah, former chief economist of the National Association of Realtors, was the economist we all loved to hate.  During the boom, he was all over the news talking about how real estate "would not bust".  During the bust, we all looked forward to seeing how great a disconnect there was between reality and his forecasts.  Now he says that it wasn’t his fault:  [Thanks L!]

Mr. Lereah, who says he left NAR voluntarily, says he was pressured by executives to issue optimistic forecasts — then was left to shoulder the blame when things went sour. "I was there for seven years doing everything they wanted me to," he said, looking out his window to his tree-filled yard in this Washington suburb. Mr. Lereah now works at home, trying to rebuild his career and saddled with a sagging portfolio of real-estate investments.

A spokesman for NAR says Mr. Lereah used the same kind of forecasts in his book, which wasn’t an NAR publication.

He did give the same sunny forecasts in his book while he became addicted to his own Kool-aid:

Mr. Lereah says he was recruited to NAR in 2000 with an offer in the "healthy six figures." During the boom years, Mr. Lereah was eager to profit himself. He snapped up condos, including two in Washington in 2003 and 2004 and one each in Tampa, Richmond, Va., Alexandria, Va., and Naples, Fla. By 2006, he says, he owned six condos worth between $150,000 and $400,000 apiece.

He claims that in spite of the pressure, he did try to slip in little hints about market problems:

Mr. Lereah says he was starting to worry about the housing market and tried to tone down his optimistic comments with phrases like "we also may be seeing some fallout from a decline in subprime lending." He says his critics nevertheless "became vicious."

Mr. Lereah admits to one mistake: believing there would be no national housing crash. "I have to take the blame for that," he says. "I never thought it would be as bad as this."

So why not take a stand and refuse to issue sunny forecasts he didn’t believe in?  It sounds like he needed the money.  According to his wife, We have an expensive lifestyle: a big house, a housekeeper once a week, college tuitions, the country club.

That isn’t all-

Mr. Lereah’s real-estate portfolio has taken a hit. He says his 3,068-square-foot five-bedroom, 5½-bathroom brick house has lost about 20% of its value in the past two years. (It is worth $780,000 now, according to Zillow.com.) His condos are down, too. He now says housing prices won’t recover for some time.

I’ve spent a lot of time going over the numbers he’s provided over the years, and it was clear to me that his conclusions didn’t match his data. It didn’t take a PhD in economics to see that the bubble was unsustainable and was bound to collapse.

Go ahead- blame the messenger.  He deserves it.  His excuses sound way too much like Flip Wilson’s character Geraldine- "The devil made me do it!