Argh!...and catching up.

There are tons of crazy and interesting things going in the world of Wall Street - hopefully I can blog about it in more detail soon - and yet here I am blogging instead about a pet peeve.   So, it is time to pick on The Oregonian. Once again, they have reported on median sales price data and in both the headline and the article that say something along the lines of "the average Portland house has lost $22,000 in value." (The new and improved OregonLive site does not seem to have a trace of the article and my copy of the paper was too efficiently recycled so I am going by memory)  No, no and an thousand times no.  These data tell you nothing of the sort.  You absolutely cannot say that house values have depreciated.  They may have, or not.  These data tell you only transaction prices, it could be simply that a greater proportion of smaller, less expensive houses sold.  So, for the last time, Oregonian, stop it!

Much of my free time is being spent in my new 100 year old house trying to do some work before we move in so my blogging has been  sporadic - terrible timing with all of the interesting things going on - but I will try to get more out soon, starting with an interesting piece by friend of the blog Fred Thompson.  In addition to the regular junk I post, I hope soon to start blogging regularly on the economic aspects of local, state and national elections.  

Bear with me!