Monday, August 3, 2009

Last Call

The Kroog is a funny guy as he points out that Malkinvania is no wackier in the economic theory department than the NY Times "other" economics blogger, Casey Mulligan.

Bonus Kroogenfreude for spotting Mulligan's call on the commercial real estate crisis.
For months now, experts have been predicting that commercial real estate will be “the other shoe to drop.” But in fact, non-residential building fell far behind housing construction during the housing boom. This shortage of commercial buildings relative to housing suggests that a commercial real estate crisis will not occur, or that at worst it will occur with much less severity than did the housing crash.
Yeah, it's not occurring alright.
I continue to watch the economy in 2009 but, barring a significant further decline in business activity, I do not expect to see a nationwide surplus of commercial real estate and therefore do not expect to see commercial real estate suffer the kind of crisis that followed from the housing surplus.
I choose to respond through Jim The Realtor.


Yeah, how's that CRE call coming there, Case?
Despite a pick up in sales, commercial real estate prices posted a record drop in the second quarter, according to an index developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Center for Real Estate.

With an 18.1 percent drop, the index, which tracks commercial property sold by major institutional investors, is now down 22 percent year-to-date, 32 percent from a year ago and down 39 percent from its mid-2007 peak, according to the report released on Monday.

Not a "crisis" equal to the 35-40% drop in the residential real estate market though (which is still falling.) Nope.

1 comment:

The Grand Panjandrum said...

It didn't require a very sensitive snark detection unit to catch Krugman's drift in his "defense" of Our Lady of Perpetual Outrage. I actually saved the video of Malkins gummint cheese comments on my hard drive. I'm chuckling right now thinking of Cynthia Tucker and ol' George looking at one another in horror (just out of the camera shot, of course) wondering how the hell they ended up on TV with her. We know George's excuse--it's his show. But Tucker was probably praying that somehow, some way, no one she knows was watching.

I sure Krugman savored typing University of Chicago. Ah yes, the home of Milton "Chicago School of Economics" Friedman will save our economy.

Isn't it ironic that the Right often criticizes Obama's "Chicago style" politics, as in "bare knuckles" toughness, yet fail to acknowledge the real Chicago style failure is the stench ridden mess of the "bare knuckles capitalism" from that School?

Related Posts with Thumbnails