The clarity of hindsight…

An article by Clara Hill in today’s Realty Times release uses statistics released by the National Association of Home Builders to quite confidently discuss events that took place in February. According to her article, sales of newly-built homes declined by a staggering 16.9 percent in February; as reported by the U.S. Commerce Department. That was a national average with the Northeast hitting a record low, falling 57.1 percent last month. The Midwest was down by 27.5 percent.

This “news” followed reports earlier in the month which stated how confident the NAHB was that things are getting better. Now, of course they discuss in great detail all of the factors that have stalled out new home sales. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

The pronouncements based upon hindsight are also the only truths that sometimes get reported. There are many guesses or hopes that also make the news, usually positioned as forecasts by various learned men or groups. They actually provide some of the best fodder for the hindsight writers to feast upon later – sort of the “what were they thinking” tag line.

I’m reminded of the recent statements that have been published by Daniel Kahneman, Nobel laureate in economics, which quite correctly pointed out what a buffoon Alan Greenspan is and always was when he repeatedly sat in from of various Congressional panels spouting total nonsense, which of course they took in with wonder and adoration.

Greenspan was, after all, “the smartest guy in the room”; even thought not one of the Congressmen or Senators had any idea what he had just said. Alan, as Kahneman pointed out, has mastered the art of talking in economic gobbledygook to such a level that not only did no one know what he was saying, they didn’t know how to question or refute it. It is only though the clarity of hindsight that anyone has come forward and stated – this guy led us down the garden path to recession.

It’s just too bad that in the midst of the hindsight driven witch hunt that is now gong on for scapegoats in the banking world that there isn’t some way to drag Greenspan into court for his role in perpetrating this mess upon the country. One can only imagine the appropriateness of Alan Greenspan sharing a cell with Jeffrey Skilling or Bernie Madoff – two other smartest guys in the room – although they are pikers compared to the damage that Greenspan did to the U.S. economy. Now that would be a sight worth seeing.