12 months ago, it was clear sailing to $1M homes, with no retrenchment whatsoever. Now, all that has been broomed.

What changed? I would say nothing. This, and similar blogs, have chronicled all the problems facing the housing market, and we have not changed our tune over the entire life of this blog. I’m the biggest broken record here (save ’shug).

Economists make predictions that change like weathervanes. They want to look good NOW, and making a radical prediction is a risk they won’t take.

This should suffice to show how the average J6P should not base major economic decisions on the musings of professional economists, or anyone that stands to be enriched by their actions (re agents, loan sharks, get-rich-quick book schleppers, etc.)

I’m thinking that by this time next year, these economists will be predicting a retrench back to ‘97 prices.

In fact, about a month ago there was one group that was already bandying that notion around. To be exact, they said “10 years” which puts us at ‘96.

Interesting to watch the relationship between the “how many years you need to stay in your house to make the purchase worthwhile” camp and the “how far back in years prices will retrench” camp.

Both are walking in lock-step. And both are increasing in # of years.

The next recession will be the catharsis for both the stock bubble and the housing bubble.

I’m thinking we will need to square the aftermath ugliness. This would be uncharted territory, so it’s anyone’s guess.

Prices could go back further than ‘97.

She claimed that her programs took the 2.5B shortfall into a 2.5B surplus today. That gov’t took on a limited role to help grow private industry, etc. I wasn’t here so I don’t know what happened.

No mention of Real Estate.

It sounded like she’s gearing up to spend a lot of those tax revenues. Her 3 main initiatives in order of importance are:

1. Free Healthcare for everyone
2. Make Education a priority
3. Better economic opportunity for everyone (kinda vague no?)

I don’t know donkey about what you guys went through after 2001, but I know it wasn’t pretty. Sometimes politicians just catch a lucky break – right place/right time.

Other highlights from the speech:

1 in 3 WA jobs depend on foreign trade, 180K jobs created since 2004; wants to get rid of passport requirement re:canada; wants system to check all incoming cargo to port; supports guest worker prog, supports offering tax incentives to lure foreign investment but with job accountability.

Several ppl in the audience wanted to know why it was so hard to get visas for the workforce they were trying to bring over. That’s a clear indication we need some serious edumacation.

She also mentioned that in her meetings with other countries the two biggest questions for the region were education (will they be able to find intelligent life forms here?) and transportation (will they be able to get them and their products to work).

So do you guys feel that her programs had nothing to do with the surplus? That was my impression, but, again, I’m new.