Challenging one’s biases is an important part of my reading experiment, so here I am reading Anatole Kaletsky, whose piece today defends his earlier assumption that we are not in a housing bubble. He points out that the housing market doomsters have gone all quiet. I don’t think he is correct, because my perception when reading between the lines is more and more commentators are hedged with some prediction of price falls, while asserting that “a gradual slowdown” is the likely outcome. Kaletsky’s point is really that a weaker housing market won’t injure the economy. What will injure the economy will be necessary tax rises if Gordon Brown continues public spending at current levels. The private sector, which Kaletsky says is growing at the slowest rates since the early 90s, won’t be able to support it all. So one way or another bad times ahead, just dispute over the causes.

This is a little bit confusing as he is normally very bullish on the economy. I don’t read the Times at all regularly, so when I read his stuff I also always try to give him the benefit of the doubt, because he is one of the few journalists that Taleb has any kind words for in Fooled By Randomness. Contrast Kaletsky’s view with the more empirical Didier Sornette, whose praises I’ve heard Taleb sing.

Related Posts

1. Too much housing news
2. Pensions and the link with housing
3. Are we falling off a cliff, or is this a gentle slow down?
4. FT says house price falls ease rate pressure, but do they?
5. Sornette pronounces that US housing now in bubble