Too many Cassandras

You know it's going to happen...you know the housing situation cannot continue forever. Yet calling the actual bursting of a bubble is a mug's game. Billmon explains:

[That kind of thing] always makes me nervous about forecasting a top -- as a wiser analyst than me once said, bear markets always begin with full elevators, and right now there may be too many people (including me) standing around talking about a housing bubble for the bubble to pop.

That's what happened during the tech stock bubble, anyway: There were analysts and brokers and traders who spent years arguing prices had gone too far, too fast -- and who were dead wrong for years, until they (and/or their clients) couldn't stand the pain any more and piled into the Nasdaq. Then the bubble burst.