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Strategies & Market Trends : The Residential Real Estate Post-Crash Index-Moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Broken_Clock who wrote (23624)	5/28/2011 12:56:51 PM
From: Giordano Bruno	1 Recommendation Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 119361

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Captain Obvious. Gifted with the power of hindsight, Captain Obvious has become ever-more visible in the mainstream media since the subprime debacle raised its now familiar head. “The Greenspan Fed keeping rates at 1% for over a year was reckless” Thank you, Captain Obvious “Lending hundreds of millions of dollars to sub-standard credit risks was a bad idea” Thank you, Captain Obvious. “Allowing Lehman Brothers to employ 33x leverage was a ridiculous thing to do” Thank you, Captain Obvious “Enabling BBB tranches of mortgages to be re-packaged as AAA was downright crazy” Thank you, Captain Obvious “Assuming there would never be a nationwide decline in house prices simply because there had never been a nationwide decline in house prices was a naïve assumption” THINGS THAT MAKE YOU GO Hmmm... 4. 27 May 2011 4 Thank you, Chairman Bernanke Captain Obvious Or a more current example; “Greece was never going to be able to meet the EU requirements and was always going to need a further bailout” Thank you, Captain Obvious. You get my point. So, the trick is to try and figure out just what our friend Captain Obvious is going to use the power of hindsight to establish for us once things have played out - and doing so could actually be easier than you might think. Firstly, you have to take a look for something that is so obviously a problem as to be essentially incontrovertible. Secondly, you have to make sure it is a situation about which powerful men (and women) are making assurances that it ISN’T a problem Thirdly, you need to cast your mind forward and imagine that the problem actually comes to pass and then insert it into one of the following sentences: “I can’t believe we thought_______ wasn’t going to be a problem” “Why did we EVER think_______ would_______ for so long?” “Why on EARTH did we listen to_______?” “It’s hard to believe that_______ continued to_______ for so long” Finally, you simply need to add the sentence “Thank you, Captain Obvious”. If it makes sense then - Bingo! zerohedge.com