A Speculation on the Origin of the Housing Bubble

I recently realized that the jobs most at risk in the current recession are those that were thought to be least at risk a decade ago. For example, the two most common worries were that your job would be outsourced to the Third World or that the financial people would take over and lay off everybody. In order to avoid those fates, some people decided to get jobs fixing up houses on the grounds that house repair could not possibly be sent offshore. Some of them graduated to buying houses, fixing them up, and flipping them. Others decided to join the financial industry on the grounds that they'd be doing the laying off instead of being laid off.

The bright side of this is that the recession only has to undo a little over a decade of rumor-based bad career decisions, so the recession shouldn't be that severe.

Another lesson: If stuff that looked immune yesterday is most at risk, maybe a government job isn't the best choice.