Finance Economy Economist	Independent Economist
Housing Bubble	Two years ago: "There is no housing bubble." One year ago: "Ok, there was a housing bubble but it was no big deal." Now: "Ok, it was a big deal, but not enough of a big deal that its collapse will lead to a recession." One year from now, "Ok, it was enough of a big deal to cause a recession, an asset price deflation and decline of the finance economy, but when this is all over it's back to business as usual."	Two years ago: "By holding interest rates down too far too long in the early 2000s the Fed created a housing bubble to prop up the economy after the collapse of the technology stock bubble, which was created when the Fed kept interest rates down too long in the 1990s." One year ago: "The housing bubble is now collapsing." Now: "The collapse will badly damage the economy, certainly leading to recession and quite possibly worse." One year from now: "Told you so."
Financial Assets Crash	There is no crash, only temporary volatility that will quickly pass once loans to banks from the Fed calm investors. The DOW will soon resume its inexorable climb to 20,000.	The asset markets are in a crash process that will not end until trillions of dollars in factitious value reflected in inflated asset prices is written off or inflated away.
Free Markets	A "free market" is when you get laid off from your job making parts for GM cars because GM made bad bets on products and failed to compete effectively with foreign auto manufacturers. A "free market" is also when the Fed loans money to banks that made a fortune selling mortgage-backed securities to foreign pension funds when the bets turn out wrong and those securities turn out to be worthless.	A "free market" is when you get laid off from your job making parts for GM cars because GM made bad bets on products and failed to compete effectively with foreign auto manufacturers. A "free market" is also when the Fed does not loan money to banks that made a fortune selling mortgage-backed securities to foreign pension funds when the bets turned out to be bad and securities worthless but instead allows the market to determine their fate. Or, if the Fed is going to loan money to failing banks because they made bad bets, then it should also loan money to the auto parts business so it can stay in business, too.