James Grant Says

"Markets look forward, except when they look backward. At this moment the real estate market is looking backward. What it sees is comforting but irrelevant. In the past five years real estate investment trusts have outperformed the Standard & Poor's 500: up 19.1% annually for the Bloomberg REIT index, negative 3.2% for the S&P.

Mistaking the past for the future, people are pouring money into houses, shopping centers, office buildings, hotels, anything with a front door and a roof. They are paying some of the fanciest prices on record."

James Grant writes a weekly newsletter called the Interest Rate Observer. He has been saying that the housing bubble is going to pop for at least two years, maybe longer. In any case