Fun with Tom, Rex, and the Housing Market: Delayed Response Notice
Yesterday, MarketWatch reporter Rex Nutting responded at this post chronicling our communication exchange with this comment:
Clearly, I won this “debate.” Unlike Tom, I do not have my mind made up before I see the facts. Unlike Tom, I looked at the evidence and followed where it led me. Unlike Tom, I am not fixated on dictionary definitions, but on what’s happening in the real world. Unlike Tom, I can call a spade a spade. Unlike Tom, I don’t see this as some sort of media or political conspiracy, where the only thing that matters is whether you’ve scored a debating point against the hated MSM or DNC.It’s not a liberal or a conservative view to see that the housing market is in a free fall. Just look at a few facts: Starts down 13% y-o-y; new home sales down 21.6%; existing home sales down 11.2%; home builders stocks down 40% y-o-y.
If Tom had had his way, I suppose we’d have seen lots of headlines in 2001 saying: The Nasdaq hasn’t been in a bubble; it’s just returning to normal!!!!
Or this one in 1638: “Don’t worry about losing your life savings!!! Tulip prices are just returning to normal!”
“Normal” can be a long ways down, my friend. A lot of money can be lost on the way to “normal.”
One more thing: If home prices are now returning to “normal,†what were they before? Maybe…. abnormal??
Mr. Nutting also e-mailed these graphs separately, graphs that he must think somehow prove the points he so carefully articulated above reduced for space reasons (click on each individual graph to see larger version):
Wow. that’s a lot to absorb. It looks like I’ve been bowled over by the sheer weight of Mr. Nutting’s data, eh?
Well, no. In fact, quite the opposite.
I don’t have time today to create the necessary comprehensive rebuttal, which involves much more that merely refuting the data presented; that may very well be the easy part. That rebuttal will have to wait until tomorrow, and a post will go up tomorrow afternoon. Given that it’s likely no one will care about anything other than the 5th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks on Monday, I will carry forward that rebuttal to Tuesday.
Stay tuned.
