Recession in 2007 imminent?

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Pre-war vintage Baseball cards are up. That's a sign of a bad economy, when people start putting money into soft investments like collectibles.

The problem is people stretched themselves and bought what wasn't within their means on these 100% financed deals while the interest rates were low. The markets not bursting, it's just settling back into a healthier market. Unfortunately, the sky is falling attitude will actually put us back into a recession as they're predicting. The only way to fight it is to spend money, keep the economy going.

Here's what's going on in SF - you can't buy anything liveable for under $500,000, and that's still going to be more along the lines of a condo, or serious fixer upper. There's a ton of inventory on the market, because sellers were motivated to sell while housing prices were sky high, but where it used to be standard to take 6 months or even a year to sell a house, this market is accustomed to being snatched off the market in a few weeks. So now and you see a lot of reductions. The reductions are like 25 grand. Even the worst market in the US has only dropped 11%. As a result, you're seeing less overbids (people would come in above asking price in bidding wars) because buyers are less desperate to buy something, but you do still see them. You're not going to suddenly be able to buy your dream home with 100% financing, but the average home buyer over the past 4 years probably shouldn't have been buying anything to begin with anyway.