There is a concerted effort among so-called experts to imply that recognizing this crisis was really difficult and would have required extraordinary insight. This is garbage.
It required third grade arithmetic and nothing more. House prices had sharply diverged from a 100-year long trend, with no plausible explanation on either the supply side or the demand side of the housing market. Ben Stein apparently couldn't see an $8 trillion housing bubble. His "longtime friend," Jim Cramer, either also lacked the capacity to see it, or did see it and deliberately misled his audience.
But, let's be clear. It was very easy to see, very easy for those who know arithmetic. Competent analysts saw the housing bubble and warned about it. Ben Stein didn't see it.
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