[PEN-L:29486] PK on current events

["Devine, James" <jdevine@xxxxxxx>]

Title: PK on current events

The most interesting thing about Paul Krugman's NY Times column (http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/16/opinion/16KRUG.html?tntemail0) is that he cites Dean Baker's work approvingly:> More and more people are using the B-word about the housing market. A recent analysis by Dean Baker, of the Center for Economic Policy Research, makes a particularly compelling case for a housing bubble. House prices have run well ahead of rents, suggesting that people are now buying houses for speculation rather than merely for shelter. And the explanations one hears for those high prices sound more and more like the rationalizations one heard for Nasdaq 5,000.

>If we do have a housing bubble, and it bursts, we'll be looking a lot too Japanese for comfort.<

Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxx &  http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine