{"id":165,"date":"2006-08-29T21:59:34","date_gmt":"2006-08-30T01:59:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/freedom24.org\/rationalpost\/2006\/08\/29\/chicken-little\/"},"modified":"2009-09-23T01:10:06","modified_gmt":"2009-09-23T05:10:06","slug":"chicken-little","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/freedom24.org\/rationalpost\/chicken-little\/","title":{"rendered":"chicken little"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><a href=\"http:\/\/disney-clipart.com\/Chicken-Little\/Disney-Chicken-Little.jpg\" data-rel=\"lightbox-image-0\" data-rl_title=\"\" data-rl_caption=\"\" title=\"\"><\/a>&#8220;I can calculate the movement of the stars, but NOT the madness of men.&#8221;<br \/>\n&#8211; Sir Isaac Newton, after losing a fortune (\u00c2\u00a320,000) in the South Sea bubble.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>I&#8217;ve been meaning to write about the impending <a title=\"the months ahead\" href=\"https:\/\/freedom24.org\/rationalpost\/the-months-ahead\/\" target=\"_blank\">real estate crash<\/a> for quite some time, but until I get around to it, <a title=\"Roubini's blog\" href=\"http:\/\/www.rgemonitor.com\/blog\/roubini\/142759\/\" target=\"_blank\">this<\/a> piece is worth a read. Roubini is a Professor of Economics at the Stern School of Business at New York  University, and the work below is taken from his blog. Though the prose is somewhat awkward, anyone who produces &#8220;seminal work in international  macroeconomics, global macro policies, financial crises in emerging markets and  their resolution, and the reform of the international financial architecture&#8221; deserves at least a few minutes of your time&#8230;<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>&#8220;The Biggest Slump in US Housing<br \/>\nin the Last 40 Years&#8221;&#8230;or 53 Years?<br \/>\n<\/strong>By Nouriel Roubini<br \/>\nAug 23, 2006<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"body\" title=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2006\/08\/09\/news\/companies\/toll_brothers\/index.htm?cnn=yes\" href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2006\/08\/09\/news\/companies\/toll_brothers\/index.htm?cnn=yes\" target=\"_blank\">The Biggest Slump in US Housing in the Last 40 Years<\/a>: These  are not my views but those of the Toll Brothers, the famous luxury McMansions  homebuilders, as <a class=\"body\" title=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2006\/08\/09\/news\/companies\/toll_brothers\/index.htm?cnn=yes\" href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2006\/08\/09\/news\/companies\/toll_brothers\/index.htm?cnn=yes\" target=\"_blank\">CNN reported last week<\/a>. Also, as <a class=\"body\" title=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB115630090176442994.html\" href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB115630090176442994.html\" target=\"_blank\">reported by the WSJ today<\/a>: In his 40 years as a home  builder, Mr. Toll says, he has never seen a slump unfold like the current one.  &#8220;I&#8217;ve never seen a downturn in housing without a downturn in employment or&#8230;  some macroeconomic nasty condition that took housing down along with other  elements of the economy,&#8221; he says. &#8220;This time, you&#8217;ve got low unemployment,  you&#8217;ve got job creation, you&#8217;ve got a stable stock market and relatively low  interest rates.&#8221;.  This followed last week&#8217;s CNN headline: <a class=\"body\" title=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2006\/08\/09\/news\/companies\/toll_brothers\/index.htm?cnn=yes\" href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2006\/08\/09\/news\/companies\/toll_brothers\/index.htm?cnn=yes\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;Builder: Oversupply slump worst in 40 years. Toll Brothers  slashes outlook on new homes as orders plunge and revenue misses forecasts&#8221;<\/a> Indeed, <a class=\"body\" title=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601087&amp;sid=aGdFmRKPo82c&amp;refer=home\" href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601087&amp;sid=aGdFmRKPo82c&amp;refer=home\" target=\"_blank\">yesterday&#8217;s sharply falling profit results from the Toll  Brothers<\/a> confirmed their view that this is the worst housing slump in  decades. Similarly, Angelo Mozilo, the CEO of Countrywide &#8212; the country&#8217;s  largest independent home mortgage lender &#8211; <a class=\"body\" title=\"http:\/\/www.contracostatimes.com\/mld\/cctimes\/news\/nation\/15231922.htm\" href=\"http:\/\/www.contracostatimes.com\/mld\/cctimes\/news\/nation\/15231922.htm\" target=\"_blank\">recently stated<\/a>: &#8220;I&#8217;ve never seen a soft-landing in 53 years,  so we have a ways to go before this levels out. I have to prepare the company  for the worst that can happen.&#8221; So, effectively the only debate now is whether  housing conditions are the worst in the last 40 years or in the last 53 years.  So much for the bullish soft-landing wishful thinking coming out of Wall Street  these days&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Of course, the message from the Toll Brothers and Countrywide is like the  proverbial canary in the mine that is reflective of an ongoing rout &#8212; calling  it slowdown or slump is a misnomer by now &#8212; in the US housing market. Every  possible indicator of the housing sector that has been coming out in the last  few weeks &#8212; and I will discuss their details below &#8211; suggests that the housing  market is in free fall.  And today&#8217;s figures on existing home sales and unsold  homes say it all; as Bloomberg concisely headlined this morning: <a class=\"body\" title=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601087&amp;sid=aKTJ3LBIrKjU&amp;refer=home\" href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601087&amp;sid=aKTJ3LBIrKjU&amp;refer=home\" target=\"_blank\">U.S. Existing-Home Sales Tumble; Unsold Inventory Is Highest in a  Decade<\/a><\/p>\n<p><!--more-->At this point there no doubt on whether the housing sector is contracting &#8212;  real residential investment fell at the annualized rate of 6.4% in Q2. The first  derivative of the housing market is clear and negative today and looking ahead  for the next few quarters. There is not even a debate about the second  derivative of the housing market as any estimate out there suggests that the  housing sector will contract at a faster rate in Q3 and Q4 than in Q2. Some  official estimates that I have seen suggest that real residential housing will  contract at 10% &#8211; rather than the Q2 6.4% in the next two quarters. My own  estimate &#8212; based on a reading of the coming data &#8212; is that, actually, the  contraction is more likely to be of the order of 12-15% annualized rate in the  next several quarters. So, the only remaining scary question is about the third  derivative of the housing sector and at which point &#8212; in terms of quantities  and prices &#8212; the housing market will bottom out.<\/p>\n<p>I have also argued before that the effects of housing on US economic growth  and the role of housing in tipping the US economy into a recession in early 2007  are more significant than the role that the tech sector bust in 2000 played in  tipping the economy into a recession in 2001. There are three reasons:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>The direct effect of the fall in residential investment in aggregate demand  will be as high as the effects of the fall in real investment in the  2000-2001episode. Then, real investment fell by about 2% of GDP. This time  around the fall in residential investment alone &#8212; let alone the role other  components of real investment, such as software and equipment, that are already  falling in Q2 &#8212; will be as large as residential investment could fall from the  peak of about 6.2% of GDP (the highest level since the 1950s) to as low as 4% of  GDP at the bottom in 2007.<\/li>\n<li>The wealth effect of the tech bust was limited to the elite of folks who had  stocks in the NASDAQ. The wealth effect of now falling housing prices &#8212; yes  median prices are starting to fall at the national level &#8211; affects every  home-owning household: the value of residential real estate has also increased  to 48.5% of household wealth in 2006 from from 38.7% in 1996. Also, <a class=\"body\" title=\"http:\/\/www.rgemonitor.com\/blog\/editorial\/137483\" href=\"http:\/\/www.rgemonitor.com\/blog\/editorial\/137483\" target=\"_blank\">the link  between housing wealth rising, increased home equity withdrawal (HEW) and  consumption of durable and non durables is very significant (see RGE&#8217;s Christian  Menegatti brief on this)<\/a>, much more than the effect of the tech bubbles of  the 1990s. Last year, out of the $800 billion of <a class=\"body\" title=\"http:\/\/www.rgemonitor.com\/blog\/editorial\/137483\" href=\"http:\/\/www.rgemonitor.com\/blog\/editorial\/137483\" target=\"_blank\">HEW<\/a> at  least $150 or possibly $200 billion was spent on consumption and another good  $100 billion plus went into residential investment (i.e. house capital  improvements\/expansions). It is enough for house price to flatten &#8212; as they  already did recently &#8212; let alone start falling &#8211; as they are doing now since  they are beginning to fall in major markets &#8212; for the wealth effect to  disappear, the HEW dribble to low levels and for consumption to sharply fall.  Note that this year there will be large increases in the borrowing costs for $1  trillion of ARM&#8217;s while this figure for 2007 will be $1.8 trillion. Thus, debt  servicing costs for millions of homeowners will sharply increase this year and  next.<\/li>\n<li>The employment effects of housing are serious; up to 30% of the employment  growth in the last three years was due directly and indirectly to housing. The  direct effects are job lost in construction, building materials, real estate  brokers and sales agents, and employees of the mortgage finance industry. The  indirect effects imply that the role of housing is even larger than 30%. The  housing boom led to a boom in consumer durables spending on home appliances and  furniture. Indeed, in Q2 real consumption of such goods was already negative: as  you have less new home built and purchased and less old homes refurbished and  expanded, you get less purchases of home appliances and furniture. There are  also other indirect effects of the housing bust on employment, even on the  purchases of motor vehicles. Indeed, the current auto sector slump is not  unrelated to the housing slump. As the Financial Times put recently, the sharp  fall in the sales of Ford&#8217;s pick-up trucks is related to the housing slump as  such truck are widely purchased by real estate contractors. And indeed in Q2  real consumer durables (that include both cars, home appliances and furniture  all related to housing) already fell, consistent with the view that we have now  have a glut in the stock of consumer durables (durables consumption has a  investment-like nature to it as such goods last for a long time). Thus, as  housing sector slumps, the job and income and wage losses in housing will  percolate throughout the economy.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>How bad are the signals coming from the housing sector? <a class=\"body\" title=\"http:\/\/www.easybourse.com\/Website\/dynamic\/News.php?NewsID=44126&amp;lang=fra&amp;NewsRubrique=2\" href=\"http:\/\/www.easybourse.com\/Website\/dynamic\/News.php?NewsID=44126&amp;lang=fra&amp;NewsRubrique=2\" target=\"_blank\">As a recent news headline clearly put it<\/a>: it is simply UGLY.  Indeed, all the indicators from the housing sectors &#8211; including the latest <a class=\"body\" title=\"http:\/\/news.google.com\/news\/url?sa=t&amp;ct=us\/1-0&amp;fp=44e89c9bbcdc4715&amp;ei=4vboRIb0L6_qaPHygOQI&amp;url=http:\/\/www.marketwatch.com\/News\/Story\/Story.aspx?guid=%257BB29F8B8D-C526-44CC-9D27-B4D4B1CFBD22%257D&amp;siteid=mktw%25C3%25A3%25C2%25A2%25C3%25A2%25C2%25\" href=\"http:\/\/news.google.com\/news\/url?sa=t&amp;ct=us\/1-0&amp;fp=44e89c9bbcdc4715&amp;ei=4vboRIb0L6_qaPHygOQI&amp;url=http:\/\/www.marketwatch.com\/News\/Story\/Story.aspx?guid=%257BB29F8B8D-C526-44CC-9D27-B4D4B1CFBD22%257D&amp;siteid=mktw%25C3%25A3%25C2%25A2%25C3%25A2%25C2%25\" target=\"_blank\">housing starts<\/a> and the homebuilders (NAHB) forward looking  business conditions &#8211; indicate a housing sector that is literally in free fall.  New home sales started to fall since the beginning of 2006 and in some regions  they are down over 30% relative to a year ago. As Bloomberg summarized <a class=\"body\" title=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601087&amp;sid=aKTJ3LBIrKjU&amp;refer=home\" href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601087&amp;sid=aKTJ3LBIrKjU&amp;refer=home\" target=\"_blank\">today the new housing data<\/a>: &#8220;Sales of previously owned  homes in the U.S. fell more than expected in July, resulting in the biggest  supply of unsold homes in more than a decade, as higher mortgage rates  discouraged would-be home buyers.. Purchases declined 4.1 percent last month to  an annual rate of 6.33 million, the lowest since January 2004, from 6.6 million  in June, the National Association of Realtors said today in Washington. Sales  fell 11.2 percent compared with a year earlier.&#8221;  Indeed, the number of  unsold homes and the ratio of unsold homes to new home sales has therefore risen  sharply to over 5.5 months of supply. Similarly the ratio of unsold homes to  existing home sales has also sharply increased. These are clear indicator of a  glut of unsold homes in the market.  Housing starts are also sharply down  elative to a year ago and expected to fall further over the next few quarters.  Note also that, while overall mortgage applications are still up in the latest  figures published today, due to sustained refinancing applications, applications  for purchase applications have fallen 1.0% during the last week, this being   fifth  fall in  the  last six  weeks. Moreover, there is a large amount of  evidence that suggests increasing cancellation of initial mortgage applications,  as the slump in the housing market and in the economy is now scaring households  considering buying a home. Thus, the official data on purchase mortgage  applications are very likely to exceed actual home sales.<\/p>\n<p>More generally, note that when demand for housing initially falls relative to  a glut of supply, the initial market response is not on price, as it is the case  of financial market where prices adjust rapidly, but rather on the quantity of  unsold homes and on how long unsold homes stay on the market. Housing prices,  unlike financial assets, are sluggish. This market inventory adjustment  eventually leads to lower prices once sellers realize that demand is low and  that waiting is not going to help.<\/p>\n<p>The housing market has thus followed so far the predicted various stages of  adjustment to cycle driven by the initial housing bubble: initially a glut of  supply of new homes as high prices (driven in part by speculative demand) led to  high and excessive production of new homes; then a fall in demand as speculative  high prices and rising rates made the purchases of housing less affordable to  many; then, the ensuing inventory adjustment &#8212; an increase in unsold homes.  Then, the reduction in the production of new homes &#8212; lower housing starts &#8212; as  homebuilders with falling revenues and profits and lower expected demand finally  reacted to the growing glut of unsold inventories. Indeed, the value of home  builders&#8217; shares on the NYSE has fallen by almost 50% relative to a year ago.   Finally, we have now a price adjustment in two directions: a) an increase in  rents as housing affordability fell since more and more households could not  afford to pay the speculative prices of existing and new homes; this increase in  rents is now correctly jacking up owner equivalent rent and increasing headline  CPI inflation; b) the beginning of a fall in actual housing prices as the glut  of unsold homes is now putting downward pressure on actual prices.  (for more on  recent indicators of the housing bust see <a class=\"body\" title=\"http:\/\/www.rgemonitor.com\/80\/global_macroeconomics\/housing_bubble\/?more=cluster&amp;cluster_id=4245#12)\" href=\"http:\/\/www.rgemonitor.com\/80\/global_macroeconomics\/housing_bubble\/?more=cluster&amp;cluster_id=4245#12)\" target=\"_blank\">the RGE Monitor cluster of readings on housing indicators<\/a>)<\/p>\n<p>The evidence on falling home prices is now becoming clearer. Since the end of  World War II, there has never been a year on year fall in housing prices. There  have been instead several quarters in which housing prices declined. Of course  in some regions where there were housing busts prices declined for a while: in  Texas during the housing bust of the mid 1980s that led to the S&amp;L crisis;  in California in the early 1990s following the recession in that state; in  Boston in 1990. Those episodes were all associated with the housing bust that  was related to the 1990-1991 recession So, you do not need a persistent  year-on-year fall in median housing prices to have a housing bust; such bust can  occur even if prices are flattening or falling in some regions, but not  nationally. Moreover, such regional bust can be associated with national  recession, as in the 1990-91 episode. So, the fact that the latest housing  bubble was concentrated on the two coasts (North East all the way to Florida;  and West Coast, especially California) does not mean that the coming housing  bust in these regions will not have national macro effects. For one thing, the  value of the housing stock in those two regions is close to 50% of the total  housing stock given the bubble of recent years. Thus, a housing bust in the two  coasts can and will have macro effects.<\/p>\n<p>Indeed, today the National Association of Realtors reported today that the  median price of an existing home rose only 0.9 percent in July from a year ago.  So, housing prices are practically flat at the national level. Worse, relative  to a year ago housing prices have already fallen in the North East (-2.1%),  Mid-West (-0.6%) and the West (-0.3%). So, not only housing prices are falling  in the bubbly two coast; they are also starting to fall in the Mid-West, the  region where the conventional wisdom was that there was no housing bubble. The  fact that home prices are falling in the Mid-West where prices did not skyrocket  in the bubble years is a scary signal of how much the housing bust and glut in  supply will lead to a sharp fall in housing prices in the quarters ahead with  painful effects on the wealth, and thus consumption, of households.  You can  expect falling median housing prices, on a year-on-year basis, at the national  level starting this month of August: indeed, today&#8217;s figures on the glut of  unsold homes &#8211; much larger than in the housing bust of the early 1990s &#8211; are  only consistent with a highly likely actual fall in home prices in the months  ahead and throughout most of 2007. Note  also that, on an inflation adjusted  basis, real home prices (relative to the CPI index) are already falling at a 4%  plus rate.<\/p>\n<p>Also, as <a class=\"body\" title=\"http:\/\/www.prospect.org\/deanbaker\/2006\/08\/the_wall_street_journal_discov.html\" href=\"http:\/\/www.prospect.org\/deanbaker\/2006\/08\/the_wall_street_journal_discov.html\" target=\"_blank\">noted by Dean Baker<\/a>: &#8220;current house price indices are failing  to pick up the full decline in prices because they miss the various concessions  (seller paid closing costs, buyer-side realtor bonuses, and seller subsidized  mortgages) that sellers often use to move their houses.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Even more ominously, futures markets now expect that house prices will fall  during 2007. Following the lead and prodding of Robert Shiller &#8212; the maverick  Yale professor who predicted the 2000 stock bust and is now predicting a housing  bust &#8211; the Chicago Mercantile Exchange opened this spring a new futures market  for house prices in ten U.S. cities. While this market is very new and still  relatively illiquid, it is now predicting that U.S. house prices will fall in  2007 at the national average level, for the first time in over fifty years. The  index of this futures&#8217; market for the entire US is projecting a 5% price fall in  2007. And the futures contracts for individual cities show expected declines in  housing prices even larger than 5% for Miami, New York, Boston, San Francisco,  Boston, San Diego and Las Vegas.<\/p>\n<p>The likely fall in median home prices in 2007 may actually turn out to be  larger than the 5% priced in the futures markets. In fact, one of the peculiar  features of the latest housing cycle has been the presence of a large housing  bubble: prices were going up well above economic fundamentals because of the  speculative demand coming from expectations of increased housing prices that  were feeding further speculative demand: &#8220;condo flipping&#8221; is the popular term  for this speculative demand. Now that the bubble is bursting the fall in prices  will be sharper than the one implied by medium term fundamantals as the initial  price increase was due to a bubble that is bursting and leading to a fall in  speculative demand: with prices now falling homeowners and speculators have no  incentive to buy new homes as they expect prices to be lower in the future. So,  an expected price fall leads to fall in speculative and fundamental demand and  triggers actual larger than otherwise fall in actual prices. The speculative  excess of a price bubble will now bring the bust of this price bubble. While the  effect will be slower than in asset markets where prices adjust instantaneously  (due to the sluggish nature of housing prices and their slow adjustment to  increased inventories) eventually this price adjustment will occur &#8211; as it is  now &#8211; and it will be very persistent over time. So, you can expect falling  housing prices throughout most of 2007.<\/p>\n<p>So, the simple conclusion from the analysis above is that this is indeed the  biggest housing slump in the last four or five decades: every housing indictor  is in free fall, including now housing prices. By itself this slump is enough to  trigger a US recession: its effects on real residential investment, wealth and  consumption, and employment will be more severe than the tech bust that  triggered the 2001 recession. And on top of the housing bust, US consumers are  facing oil above $70, the delayed effects of rising Fed Fund and long term  rates, falling real wages, negative savings, high debt ratios and higher and  higher debt servicing ratios. This is the tipping point for the US consumer and  the effects will be ugly. Expect the great recession of 2007 to be much nastier,  deeper and more protracted than the 2001 recession.<\/p>\n<p>And the housing bust is not going to be only a US phenomenon. As I will  discuss in another blog, housing bubbles festered in many other economies  including many European ones. Thus, the combination of high oil prices, delayed  effects of rising interest rates and slump of housing that is now leading to a  US recession is a phenomenon that is common to many other economies, including  several European ones. So, expect the same deadly combinations of three ugly  bears (slumping housing, high oil prices and rising interest rates) to hammer  Goldilocks and sharply hurt Europe and other economies in the world.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Thursday morning update:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>This morning&#8217;s data on new homes sales, inventories of new homes and prices of new homes fully confirm and reinforce my analysis yesterday that this will be  the worst housing bust &#8211; calling it slump is too mild &#8211; in decades. And since  median home prices may actually fall on a year-on-year basis in 2007 &#8211; something  that has not happened since the Great Depression of the 1930s &#8211; this may  end up  being the biggest housing bust in the last 75 years, not just 40 years as the  Toll Brothers argue or 53 years as Countrywide argues. As reported by Bloomberg  this morning:<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>New Home Sales in U.S. Fell to a 1.072 Million Pace by Bob Willis<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Aug. 24 (Bloomberg) &#8212; New home sales in the U.S. fell last month and  inventories rose to a record, raising the risk for the economy that the housing  market slowdown will become more pronounced.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Purchases of new homes, which account for about 15 percent of the market,  dropped 4.3 percent to an annual pace of 1.072 million, the Commerce Department  said in Washington. Sales in the Midwest slumped to the lowest level in almost  nine years. The median U.S. home price rose 0.3 percent from July 2005, the  smallest rise since December 2003.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>The weakening housing market is leaving builders with record inventory and  little choice but to reduce prices at a time when profits are declining. Some  Federal Reserve policy makers have said a slump in housing is one of their  biggest concerns because refinancing, which provided homeowners with extra cash  to spend, may dry up as home values decline.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>&#8220;There is no question we have what could be called a housing recession,&#8221;  said James O&#8217;Sullivan, a senior economist at UBS Securities LLC in Stamford,  Connecticut, who forecast a drop to 1.075 million. &#8220;I don&#8217;t think we&#8217;ve seen the  full effect of this yet on the overall economy.&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>The decline in new home purchases follows yesterday&#8217;s report that showed a  drop in sales of previously owned houses to the lowest in more than two years.  The National Association of Realtors said existing home sales, which make up  about 85 percent of all purchases, declined 4.1 percent to an annual pace of  6.33 million in July.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;I can calculate the movement of the stars, but NOT the madness of men.&#8221; &#8211; Sir Isaac Newton, after losing a fortune (\u00c2\u00a320,000) in the South Sea bubble. I&#8217;ve been meaning to write about the impending real estate crash for quite some time, but until I get around to it, this piece is worth a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[21,1],"tags":[126,166,28,98,99,121,49],"class_list":["post-165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-financial-crisis","category-other","tag-bubble","tag-employment","tag-history","tag-leverage","tag-macroeconomics","tag-real-estate","tag-speculation"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>chicken little - The Rational Post<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/freedom24.org\/rationalpost\/chicken-little\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"chicken little - The Rational Post\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"&#8220;I can calculate the movement of the stars, but NOT the madness of men.&#8221; &#8211; Sir Isaac Newton, after losing a fortune (\u00c2\u00a320,000) in the South Sea bubble. 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