Housing mania will end in tears

This week, I thought I might bloviate about the bubble in real estate — the catalyst being a spectacular article in the March 2 edition of the New York Times titled “Speculators See Gold in a Boom in Home Prices.”

About two years ago, I began writing on my Web site about the lunacy in the financing of housing, something I called the “housing hot potato.” The evolution of this has allowed folks to use their homes as ATMs to live beyond their means. Now, as always happens near the end of bubbles, madness (in real estate) is on display nearly everywhere.