Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog [4],
It's painfully obvious that real estate valuations are once again at asset-bubble extremes.
Correspondent Mark G. submitted a chart of the Wilshire REIT (real estate investment trusts) index that sums up the current real estate market in one image: it's painfully obvious that real estate valuations are once again at asset-bubble extremes, one that's even bigger than the last RE bubble that popped in 2008 with devastating consequences to the global economy.
Defenders of current real estate valuations can draw upon an array of justifications, but they boil down to the same one used to justify valuations in every asset bubble: this time it's different.
Is there anything in this chart that suggests this belief might be misplaced, for example, that credit/asset bubbles burst with a rough time/amplitude symmetry?