Steve Keen - hopelessly wrong.
Keen made two bets, one that house prices would be lower in 12 months (they weren't so he did the Mt K walk), another that prices would fall 40% over 10-15 years. He lost the first part only, yet Propertunity continues to refer to the 40% call being wrong when it was not (yet), I have corrected him on multiple occasions on this site. It's sad that an individual has to try and drag someone elses name through mud without good reason...
Not correct.
When Keen sold his home in 2008, just before the boom, he said this...
"There’s no point in paying a mortgage on an asset that is going to fall by 40 per cent or so in the next few years."
http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/...ts-instant-fame/2008/10/20/1224351149788.html
Are you claiming that when he said a 'few years' he meant 15 years?
A 'few years' might mean 15 years if we were talking about, say, the history of settlement in Australia, or the rule of the Roman empire.
However, most people pay off a mortgage in less than 25 years. Therefore 15 years is not 'a few' years in the context of a mortgage, or even in the context of a persons lifetime.
Is is quite dishonest to suggest that Keen meant 15 years in this context. A 'few years' of a mortgage would be 3-4 years for most people. If Keen meant 15 years then he should have said 15 years. Any sensible person would not have taken his statement of a 'few years' to mean 15 years.
Immediately following Keen's 40% crash prediction (and the sale of his home), house prices rose by 20-30%. Even if we assume Keen really did mean 15 years when he said a 'few years', he now needs a crash of more than 50% to be right.
Keen was hopelessly wrong about house prices, it's as simple as that. He was also wrong about interest rates dropping to zero, wrong about double digit unemployment, and wrong about the severe recession that he predicted.
Keen was interviewed in the media regularly during 2008 telling us about the imminent severe recession, mass unemployment, ZIRP and 40% house price crash. He thought these events were going to happen shortly, a result of the economic downturn that was just beginning at that time.
Why would he bother showing up in the media every night scaremongering about severe recessions and huge house price crashes unless he thought they were going to happen during that cycle. It's ridiculous to suggest he thought these events were 15 years away. He didn't - he thought they were imminent.