The Washington Post has a front page article on Alphonso Jackson's reign as secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The article begins "in late 2006, as economists warned of an imminent housing market collapse..." Yes, I and a few other economists were warning of the collapse of the housing bubble, but we were the exceptions, and our views rarely appeared in media outlets like the Washington Post. The vast majority of economists, including people with names like Bernanke and Greenspan, were still saying that everything was just fine in the housing market, even as late as the fall of 2006. Secretary Jackson's tenure as HUD secretary was a disaster and he deserves to be held accountable for his performance, but it is ridiculous to single him out for ignoring the housing bubble and the fallout from its inevitable collapse. This blame is better directed at the Fed, the economics profession as a whole, and the economic reporters who lacked the ability to independently assess arguments about the existence of a housing bubble.
--Dean Baker
