JOHNSON GARDNER SERVER DOWN

My company's server crashed yesterday, Tuesday. Why is that notable? Well, all of our personal photos that are posted on this website are hosted on the company server. As you can see, the photos are temporarily gone. Things will hopefully be back to normal soon.

ME-MA UPDATE 2/16

Me-Ma was moved out of the intensive care wing of the Spring Valley Hospital yesterday and is now in the normal care wing of the hospital. She's still recovering slowly, but making progress and the doctors are satisfied with her condition that she doesn't need constant monitoring. Any progress, even slow, is greeted happily. The doctors continue to discuss her ability to go back to Pahrump after she's stabilized a bit more and her heart treatment details are worked out.

Everyone will be happy about that, but certainly no one more than her.

JOHN KORYNASZ'S EYE SURGERY TODAY

John, or Koke to many of you, will be having eye surgery today to continue to improve his eyesight. His vision hasn't quite been the same after his cancer treatment, but good doctors in Medford, and seemingly here in the Portland area, seem to have helped his vision with various surgeries over the past few years.

Prayers for success and a quick recovery are with him.

BIG SEATTLE PRESENTATION: ECONOMICS & HOUSING BUBBLES

I'm headed to Seattle to co-host a major presentation tomorrow morning at 7:30am. I'm starting off, to be followed by my employer Jerry Johnson and then Seattle partner Matthew Gardner will finish up. I'm to talk about the national and Seattle regional economies, current and outlook.

One of the points I will be making tomorrow has to do with whether or not we have a housing bubble. By housing bubble, I mean whether or not housing prices nationwide have escalated due to normal market forces or by a bubble - "irrational exhuberance" by homebuyers and speculators - sort of like the internet firm stock market bubble that "burst" in 2000.

The issue has been of much interest in the press off and on, really for no better reason than a irrational prices driven by irrational buyers, seems to be one of the few concepts journalists seem to think they understand.. they don't. The following link is to a .pdf copy of an economic research paper out of Harvard University's Institute of Economic Research, which basically finds that when you control for land values, one of the major recent drivers of higher home prices is actually regulation, zoning and other government hurdles to development and construction - only making housing affordability for first-timers and lower income people all the worse.

In other words, planning, smart growth and growth management polices have become a larger and larger tax on actual construction costs, thus making home prices escalate nationwide, substantially in some areas known for aggressive land use policies.

Oddly enough, Seattle is one of the worst according to some of the statistics they employ, and I plan to make the point tomorrow!