[tcostell]

This is actually a pretty good piece. My only fault with it is that since he exagerates the scope of the variables to illustrate the hazards, lots of people around here will read it and say "Well it was obvious all along, to anyone who was reasonable.", and then use their misplaced confidence that some wrongdoing was obvious, as a justification for the witch hunt that they've already begun to demand. In reality the actual choices are never that clear.

With that said though, I think it's actually a pretty good, if slightly hyperbolic, depiction of the issues in the credit market.

[palmer]

witch hunt

I agree that that is the worst thing we can do right now. Will post more late today.

[Notary Sojac]

lots of people around here will read it and say "Well it was obvious all along, to anyone who was reasonable."

When I saw my house in South Florida triple in "value" between 1999 and 2005, while incomes went up maybe 15-20% over the same time period, it was sure obvious to me that a day of reckoning was bound to come, and I've never been considered a financial genius.(other than for my prescience in selling that house at the peak. You could consider me Angelo Mozilo's Mini-Me)

A lot of people on FR and other sites were called doom'n'gloomers in the past for suggesting that borrowing money from foreign countries and using it to repeatedly buy and sell houses at ever-increasing prices was not exactly a sound business model. I now consider "doom'n'gloomer" a title of honor.