When 2008 rolls around and the U.S. economy is sinking with frightening momentum into a bottomless quagmire, you’ll be glad you read this entry. Why? Because you anticipated every step of the implosion and warned your friends who were still floating complacently down that river in Egypt (de-nial).

In keeping with our theme of context, let’s begin by noting that the proper context for the housing bubble is the all-encompassing global credit bubble which has inflated every asset class. With this fundamental firmly in mind, let’s follow Deep Throat’s advice from the classic film All the President’s Men and "Follow the money."

Let’s first dispense with "the real estate market". Yes, supply and demand and housing starts and zillow.com and neighborhood sales and all the other market stuff play a part in the coming implosion, but all that noise is more a sideshow than the Main Event. Why? Follow the money. The main event is the credit market, because if you can’t borrow money, or can only borrow it at a premium and under tight conditions, then how many houses are for sale in your neighborhood or the median price paid, etc. shrink to near-meaningless. Real estate sales and valuations depend solely on credit. Everything else is secondary.

Next, let’s dispense with the notion that the implosion of housing-based lending can be "quarantined" and won’t affect the economy. The reason is that mortgage-backed securities, and the CDOs and other derivatives which have been piled in untold trillions onto them, are one leg of an increasingly wobbly three-leg stool. The second leg is so-called "junk bonds" and other commercial paper (which has ballooned to astounding levels–see chart), and the third is government bonds in all their flavors. Once the MBS leg snaps, the entire debt stool collapses.

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By Gary Shilling

I am convinced that the housing bubble is gigantic and will burst before long with massive implications here and abroad. In fact, it’s the key to the global economic outlook.

Setting the Scene

House prices in recent years have leaped well beyond their normal relationships to the CPI.




Even when the increasing size of houses–the McMansion effect–is excluded, inflation-adjusted house prices have jumped as never before in over a century.



Furthermore, for the first time since the 1920s, the bubble is nationwide, and it’s been driven by four national forces. First, the decline in mortgage rates.




Second, the loose lending practices designed to accommodate those who have been priced out of the market under conventional mortgage terms.




We’re referring here to interest-only Adjustable Rate Mortgages as well as option ARMs that allow borrowers to make even lower monthly payments that result in a rising mortgage principle, or "negative amortization." Then there are unrealistically high property appraisals to justify oversized loans and the lack of full documentation that allows borrowers to overstate their ability to make mortgage payments. Lenders also accommodate financially-weak borrowers with high loan-to-value ratio and piggyback loans, which in effect finance more than 100% of the houses’ prices.

The Grand Disconnect

These loose lending practices are a manifestation of the massive speculation that infected stocks in the late 1990s and was never eliminated, despite their 2000-2002 collapse. Substantial ease by the Fed and other central banks, aided and abetted by big tax rebates and cuts and U.S. government spending on homeland security and military needs, kept the 2001 recession short and speculation intact. It simply shifted from dot com stocks to private equity, commodities, emerging market stocks and bonds, hedge funds and, especially, real estate as investors remained convinced that they deserved 20% returns each and every year. If U.S. stocks didn’t do the job, surely other investments would.

So, gigantic levels of speculation remain. But they won’t be eliminated and the yawning Grand Disconnect between the real world of goods and services and the financial world of asset speculation won’t disappear unless forced by significant events. Speculations never end voluntarily or in orderly fashions. Meanwhile, the game continues for five reasons.

Reason A, the world has been awash in liquidity, which amply feeds speculation. It comes from the leap in house values, which have been liquefied by refinancings and home equity loans.

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