May 05, 2008

Donald Luskin at SmartMoney calls housing bottom, his only argument being "They (home prices) simply cannot go down forever"



Here's Luskin calling bottom in housing, with no mention of price-to-rent, price-to-income, fraud, the global credit freeze, the change in consumer psychology, massive oversupply, job losses, or really anything of substance to back up his call, it's just that HP'ers are "arrogant".


Luskin has a blog "The Conspiracy to Keep You Poor and Stupid" and I'd say the ones who are on the way to being poor and stupid are the ones who listen to such an idiot.

Here's Mish slapping him down, and he also provides the nice chart above.

Why do "experts" like Luskin, Larry Kudlow and Mike Norman keep embarrassing themselves by trying to call bottom on housing? If you're going to call bottom, at least try to make a compelling argument. Luskin, on the other hand, makes this his central argument as to why home prices will not fall any further:

"They simply cannot go down forever"

Feel free to comment over at smartmoney too - he apparently hates it.

Yes, I do agree, one day, one distant, fine day, real home prices will stop falling. One day, when the fundamentals make sense again. But that day is not today. It hath been foretold.

17 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's interesting that the curve pretty closely approximates the Moscow bubble as well. I can recognize a slowdown around 2004 and a violent breakout in 2005-2006 - when the "investment" (= speculation) attitude finally set in. "It'll be different" every time but the psychology stays the same.

Anonymous said...

Luskin is on Kudlow a lot and also called the bottom in banking stocks awhile back. He was wrong then and he is wrong now...smart money will be going through a name change soon to dumb money...what a joke.

Anonymous said...

I see that someone has recently seen the Return of the King. It is a great line and certainly true here.

The pundits at CNBC et al have called 10 of the last 0 housing and stock bottoms.

It may be that we will see some reality set in when it's time for BOA to put it's money where its mouth is for Countrywide.

Rob R. said...

I've read a few of his articles in the past few months, and I have to ask: has he recently suffered brain damage?

Anonymous said...

I mocked him. Damn it feels good!

Anonymous said...

Lurskin is most likely too scared, or too blind to see or admit the truth.

All of these "talking-heads" spend much of their time trying to convince people the accept something which may not be in their best interest.

The more the housing crisis unfolds, the harder it get's for all these men and women to keep spinning the lie.

Anonymous said...

I was going to call him an idiot but you beat me to it

Anonymous said...

didn't japan fall for like 14 years?

Anonymous said...

What does Luskin know? He is only a successful Wall St banker. Compared to a bunch of bitter renting bloggers, how could he possibly match wits?

Anonymous said...

in July 2007 he said the bottom was in with subprime because paul kurgman was talking about it.

NOW WE KNOW FOR SURE THE SUBPRIME MORTGAGE CRISIS HAS PASSED Yep. Paul Krugman is writing about it...

http://www.poorandstupid.com/2007_07_01_chronArchive.asp#4941247523281020244

Luskin is the guy who was tangling with peter schiff in July of 2007.

Anonymous said...

I commented, but I disagree that he hates. I think he loves it. Just like Swanny. Wouldn't egg everyone on if he hated it.

Anonymous said...

I see. Prices simply cannot go down forever, therefore, prices must start moving up again right now. Makes sense.

Anonymous said...

HA ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha....


Ok... I need to breath now....

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.....

You've got to say this about the analyst out there, they may not have a clue in the world, but they sure are funny...

Anonymous said...

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article4591.html
The rebuttal.

Anonymous said...

Luskin had a go @ Joe Battipaglia last week. Too bad they weren't in the same room...there would have been 2 hits...Joe hitting Luskin and Luskin hitting the ground. Joe was the biggest cheerleader of the dot.com madness but learned his lesson well with his measured and thoughtful analysis on stock prices.

Miss Goldbug said...

Oh yes... just like from 1992-1996 realtors were saying houses were a good buy all the way down to half price.

Anonymous said...

successful wall street banker like bear stearns?