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Description: Homebuilding Drops as End of Tax Credit Loomed
URL: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aEMonBPQCaQE
Info/Broken?: http://www.bostonbubble.com/link_info.php?id=2684

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[Renting in Mass]

I can't stand the "unexpected" lede that Bloomberg uses in nearly every article. They ask a bunch of economists to guess where a number will fall, and then when the number is higher or lower than the average guess, they say it's unexpected. Totally pointless.

That said, this number was interesting in how far it was off the consensus estimates (guesses). The estimates ranged from 570,000 to 630,000 and the number came in at 527,000. It's rare to see a number come in completely outside of the range, let alone that far outside. In this case, it actually was unexpected in an interesting way, but since they use that term every single day, it has lost all meaning.

[john p]

I know, how do I get a job being an economist?

Do you remember when Fred Flintstone was a twin with this big executive in Bedrock and when the executive went on a bender, they asked Fred to fill in as a double? No? Oh, well anyway all they told Fred to say was "Who's baby is that.... What's their angle..... I'll buy that."

Most of these Wall Street guys have an angle. I knew an artist who described art critics as writers that wanted to show off their own writing craft in their review and many are not really focus on communicating the intent of the Artist or piece being reviewed. Economists are kind of the same way. Hell, Mark Zandi was considered some fringe nut-case until many realized he was right an awful lot. I also see many economists with a political agenda. I mean you're not going to be selected by either the Press or the Government today unless you subscribe to Government Interaction. If this starts to go bad, they'll roll in the Milton Friedman types and Dick Morris will be front and center. I love how that guy is always pumping his book "Catastrophe". I think much of the turbulence is due to the fact that the pendelum shifts so abruptly because people don't think of things like a mechanic that tunes things in a refined manner, they're either in one camp or another. Also, Economists fear being wrong so they don't make predictions, which is really the only value they have for society.

The interesting thing about capitalism and politics is that those that care about the bottom line don't care about anything but the bottom line. In a way that's kind of pure and predicatible. Wall Street shifts their support from Republican to Democrat because they want to pick the winner because they'll get the most spoils in doing so. So does their ideology differ; no because they were just doing what made them the most money and when a Republican is in office you make money one way and when it is a Democrat, you make it another.

I went to a Conference back when Clinton was in office. Clinton used this buzz word "Sustainable", and basically was going to throw money at anything that was "Sustainable". Well every guy from Yale and Harvard came forward saying "I've been talking about Sustainability for years....". I was a young guy but I knew what the deal was...

Today, I went to two presentations on "Green Design". The first was building solar voltaics. Basically the stuff is warrantied for like 10 years, and the financial payback period is guess what.... 10 years..." The second presentation was about the new building energy codes. Well it took three government workers two hours to just list the changes in the next few years. These guys held up phone book sized codes that referenced other phone book sized codes (all of which would be updated on different cycles). They never opened the cover of these codes to describe what was inside as the red tape was so dense that there wasn't enough time in the two hours. It was mind numbing and to think that they are going to dump tax payer money into this hole. I mean the only people that will embrace this are those that plan to exploit it. I remember hearing stories about contractors that would like about insulating homes and pocketting the incentive money....