I’ve been looking at houses here in LA, and I get the listings every night from Zillow and MLS. As soon as one little bit of good news hits, there are a bunch of relistings, all placed with higher prices their old list price. Hello, hold-outs who think the good times are here again.

Richard Florida tweeted this excellent link to Business Insider writer John Mauldin’s commentary on why we’re nowhere clear of the US’s financial troubles.

My brilliant colleague Richard Green convinced me to feel better about ARRA funding; my brilliant dean Jack Knott helped me embrace the bailout policy in general, but I’m still incapable of thinking my way through how, exactly, the US can work through the looming deficit and the debt we seemed bound and determined to accrue.

Maybe somebody can help me work out how what we are doing is sustainable over the long-term?

And I love the book that he draws on here: This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly by Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff.