Comments for The NYT Gives Track Records on the Oil Spill, Why Not on the Housing Bubble? at http://www.cepr.net , comment 1 to 5 out of 5 comments http://www.cepr.net Thu, 20 Jun 2013 06:11:31 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/the-nyt-gives-track-records-on-the-oil-spill-why-not-on-the-housing-bubble#comment-1929 The Western states where folks hate the government the most are the ones sucking on its teat. - Denise Thu, 05 Aug 2010 20:34:37 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/the-nyt-gives-track-records-on-the-oil-spill-why-not-on-the-housing-bubble#comment-1912 i utterly agree with this post- yesterday on macneil/lehrer, which i consider quality news, they completely missed this logic by instead questioning the estimate of how much has been cleaned up- to me, the empirical analysis of how much was cleaned up is more accurate than the judgement that that quantified amount is then @ 70% of all the oil that spilled- if the overall spill estimate is flawed, then the % that has been cleaned already may drop considerably (thereby damaging the PR effect, which is probably the bias behind the overall spill estimate) - frankenduf Thu, 05 Aug 2010 03:29:39 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/the-nyt-gives-track-records-on-the-oil-spill-why-not-on-the-housing-bubble#comment-1909 So is this a bubble or not ? http://www.roubini.com/emergingmarkets-monitor/259374/andy_xie_on_china_s_empty_apartments - AndrewDover Thu, 05 Aug 2010 02:52:36 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/the-nyt-gives-track-records-on-the-oil-spill-why-not-on-the-housing-bubble#comment-1908 Izzatzo's argument does not make sense. Every bubble serious bubble is, contrary to what others may suggest. Read Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds and you, too, will start seeing them. In the economy, anything that deviates from the long term trend line is either explained as a bubble or requires extraordinary explanation to dismiss it as the new trend. This did not happen with housing bubble. Dean was hardly a lone wolf talking about the housing bubble. Even popular magazines like Atlantic Monthly talked of it. The problem is not identifying bubbles, rather it is what to do about them when they occur. Certainly, it is unpopular to recommend deflating bubbles when they occur. Witness the ridicule Greenspan received when he spoke of the irrational exuberance in the stock market. Dean is correct that economists that failed to warn of the bubble should be held up for condemnation, that their current pronouncements should be considered suspect. - Bill Turner Thu, 05 Aug 2010 02:41:12 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/the-nyt-gives-track-records-on-the-oil-spill-why-not-on-the-housing-bubble#comment-1906 Calling the bubble is not like calling the size of the oil spill. Anyone could see the oil spewing and everyone knew it had to be stopped. Owning and selling house assets with rising prices was quite another matter for which a bubble was not obvious and indeed required experts to step in with a warning that the party could turn into a nightmare. For the oil spill, there's one universal understanding of how it mechanically happened, but for the housing bubble there's at least ten competing explanations believed by the public that will linger forever. That's why many who benefitted from the bubble are still benefitting in the wake of its bust and why Baker is still like a lone wolf economist among a few others who predicted the bubble, now trying to remind the public how we got here. Credibility matters least when large numbers of unaccountable "experts" who wildly miss predictions from incompetence or willful ignorance, nevertheless retain sufficient power to maintain their occupational position. At worst they just move sideways into an obscure position or retire with full benefits. - izzatzo Thu, 05 Aug 2010 01:28:01 +0100