Wud I Say?

Every once in a while I need to step back, take a look at what he said and she said and I said some time in the past, and say "I told you so." Two years ago, six months before the "official" collapse of the real estate market and beginning of the economic meltdown, housing prices were already beginning to slide. But the corporate media, most of the public, and especially the wingers were unwilling to admit that we were in trouble. They persisted in trying to convince everyone, but mostly themselves, that real estate's eroding prices were merely a temporary speed bump.

I make no claim to superior wisdom, since everything I've ever learned I learned from someone else, and on this topic the most significant influence on my thinking has been Jim Kunstler. Whether a person acquires knowledge or not is largely a function of who one's teachers are, and it's no mystery how ideologues who depend on professional propagandists and ruling-class whores like Charles Krauthammer or Sean Hannity to Tell It Like It Is get to be as dumb as they are, and are consistently wrong about everything.

Remember "They'll greet us as liberators."?

Mostly I remember the threads on discussion boards in late 2006 and early 2007 in which posters endlessly chirped about how wonderful the American economy was, how "the markets" were a self-regulating, magic wealth machine and automatic prosperity pump, and that people who saw trouble in the tea leaves didn't know what they were talking about, because they were boo birds who took perverse pleasure in emphasizing the negative, etc.

You know who you are. So dig this, and listen up: I told you this was going to happen.

So, does this mean that people who were right back in early 2007 about what was on the horizon are going to get some respect and gain a little credibility for having been right? Guess again.