Liberal Talk Radio

[Alternate post title: "Ding, Dong, the Witch is Dead"]

Looks like the long-anticipated housing market slowdown is finally upon us.

I can’t help but be excited by this.* On a personal level, this means that it may — MAY — be possible for me to actually buy a home and not feel like I just had the special colonoscopy with the “extra wide” camera attachment.

On an economic level, I think this is a good sign that the economy is finally coming to terms with six years of (no) tax and spend big-government conservativism. The biggest beneficiaries of this are going to be those (including me) who weren’t able to jump on the home-ownership bandwagon, and those in parts of the country where prices rose at more modest rates (Michigan, Iowa, etc. — I’m looking at you). Ironically, while this news will undoubtedly get mad negative-spin air time in Peoria, it’s middle America that’s going to benefit most. Including all those workers in declining manufacturing industries who will now see the fruits of their labors become more competively priced as the dollar inevitably falls alongside interest rate expectations.

Politically, let’s call this another attack by the picadores of Changing Political Fortune. Not the killing blow to Bushism, but certainly another timely dart.

The big open question is whether this represents a soft-landing, or something more sinister. Two things will go a long way to determining that — first, do oil prices continue to rise, leading us into a period of ’70s-style “stagflation” and second, do consumers begin to default on their credit now that the asset prices they were counting on are deflating?

Hang on!

* Apologies for my gloating to any of you who bought a house in the last year or so.