More doom and gloom...

Here's some of the recent dreary, depressing views on the state of the economy and real estate:

1) L.A. is already the worst and will get worse still. According to Fortune magazine, L.A. is the worst housing market for 2009. Well, 2008 wasn't too grand, my friends.

2) In the WSJ on Monday, a Russian professor predicts the end of the old U.S. of A. Hmm, hasn't that long been the dream of many Russians.

3) "The Black Swan" author Nassim Nicholas Taleb (start watching at 15:30) said about the same on Charlie Rose earlier in the month. (To me, he often seems to be making it up as he goes along).

When I start to hear so many people jumping on the doomsday bandwagon, I wonder if some are stretching their ideas beyond the boundaries of reality. There are terrible things and terrible trends going on in this economy. But instead of "irrational exuberance" have we hit the point of "irrational discouragement" with statements like this?

I don't know the answer, but I certainly agree with this quote from a RE developer today in the San Francisco Chronicle: "...in the long-term, we're going to find that real estate in the infill areas of San Francisco and Los Angeles will be harder to penetrate and more valuable."