Shiller: a rare, honest economist, admits what most financial types never will

I disagree with his praise for Bernanke as a savior, as it ignores the reality that Bernanke was a member of the Greenspan-led Fed that helped inflate the very stock and housing market bubbles that he then had to “rescue” us from. But Bob Shiller offers some rare value in his humble measurements and honest admissions in this clip:

“Well, we have always had recessions, they come every 5 years or so and the last one ended in 2009, these things happen and economists are not very good at predicting them, they only start predicting them when they are actually happening…but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we had another recession in the next year or two…that’s just par for the course.”

As a footnote as to why these facts are so critical to understand and prepare for, not only do recessions bring job losses, business losses and unexpected spending deficits, but stock and commodity markets typically lose 25-50% of their value heading into recessions. By the time the mainstream gets round to acknowledging the presence of a recession, the capital devastation is already largely done.

Thanks for the honesty Bob… Robert Shiller, a professor at Yale University and co-creator of the S&P/Case-Shiller home-price index, talks about the U.S. housing market. Here is a direct video link.

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