Economics reporters seem to prefer relying on expert sources who are surprised by the economy. The NYT has an article today that examines the impact of Bear Stearns' collapse on New York City's economy.
At one point the article presents the comments of Alan H. Fishman, the chairman of Meridian Capital: "Nobody’s ever seen something like this, ... If you’d asked everybody how serious this was two weeks ago, they would have said, it’s serious but it will pass. Now they would say it’s very serious.”
Mr. Fishman is wrong in his assessment of what everybody would have said two weeks ago, or more precisely two months ago:
"Watch the New York housing market. Real house prices in the New York City area more than doubled in the decade from 1996 to 2006, driven in large part by the extraordinary boom on Wall Street. With the boom turning into a colossal bust, the NYC real estate market looks quite vulnerable."
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