I thought it worthwhile to re-post my 2008 slides on the credit crisis. I wrote these slides just as the crisis was getting started (right after the big defaults), but I still think my analysis was correct and better than post-hoc discussions that are going on to this day.
I believe I called the housing bubble back in 2004 -- see, e.g., here for a specific discussion of bubbles and timescales. The figure above also first appeared on my blog in 2004 or 2005.
(2004) ... The current housing bubble is an even more egregious example. Because real estate is not a very liquid investment - the typical family has to move and perhaps change jobs to adjust to mispricing - the timescale for popping a bubble is probably 5-10 years or more. Further, I am not aware of any instruments that let you short a real estate bubble in an efficient way.I discussed the risks from credit derivatives as early as 2005; see also here and here.
Finally, there was a lot of post-crisis discussion on this blog and elsewhere about mark to market accounting: were CDO, CDS oversold in the wake of the crisis (see also The time to buy is when there is blood in the streets; if you want to know what "leading experts" were saying in 2008, see the Yale SOM discussion here -- oops, too embarrassing, maybe they took it down ;-), or was Mr. Market still to be trusted in the worst stages of a collapse? The answer is now clear; even Fannie and Freddie have returned $180 billion to the Feds!
