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This chart of Case-Shiller home prices, from The Mess That Greenspan Made, shows some interesting things, and judging by the title of their site, not what its creators intended. If we were feeling superior, we could look at it and say, “Gosh, look at those poor folks in LA and San Francisco and Las Vegas and Phoenix who suffered through such a big bubble.” Or we could look at it and go, “Wait a minute.” The cities whose home prices spiralled into never-never land seem to be ending up, at least as of May, at a higher overall indexed price than Dallas is. All the cities, for purposes of comparison, start out in 2000 at an indexed value of 100. Nine years later, Dallas ends up back at 100 or near it. New York, in the meantime, ends up 1t 174. Miami — Miami! — ends up at around 150. So who was the sucker here? Quiet, careful Dallas? Or all those wildly speculating, high-risk mortgage-getting cities that went through the boom and bust of the Bubble Economy?
