2004 Fed study entitled,“Are Home Prices the Next Bubble?”

Starts here

“Home prices have been rising strongly since the mid-1990s, prompting concerns that a bubble exists in this asset class and that home prices are vulnerable to a collapse that could harm the US economy.”

Woot, crisis will be averted, the smart people have things in hand.

 

Ends here

“A close analysis of the U.S. housing market in recent years, however, finds little basis for such concerns. The marked upturn in home prices is largely attributable to strong market fundamentals: Home prices have essentially moved in line with increases in family income and declines in nominal mortgage interest rates.”

What happened?

 

Thank goodness for these expensive research papers, if not for them,my 401k might have something like a -6% rate of return!!. >_>

Seriously though, I despise the academic world's emphasis on publishing research papers, since so many of them seem to be worthless, often used by people seeking to justify some often bad direction in politics.