Adam Villani 2, Ben Stein 0

Some of you may know that eight years ago I beat Ben Stein on his TV show Win Ben Stein's Money.

Here is a link to a ten-minute montage (I won't take up the space embedding it here) of TV appearances by investor (and Ron Paul advisor) Peter Schiff back in 2006 and 2007 expressing prescient warnings about economic collapse, and being subsequently mocked for his pessimism by various mainstream-conservative talking heads, including Ben Stein. Taste the juicy schadenfreude as they make predictions of ever-rising housing prices and an ever-rising stock market.

Now, I wasn't on TV or anything saying that I thought the housing bubble was going to burst (although a comment I made a year ago supports my assertion that I knew high housing prices were not a good thing), but let me assure you, if you had asked me about housing prices a couple years ago I would have told you that that the rate at which the growth of housing prices had outstripped the growth on incomes was unsustainable. If nothing else, I didn't do what Ben Stein did and give advice to the world that turned out to be blatantly wrong. So I will count this as yet another victory for me over Ben Stein.

Also, in case you're wondering, those Merril Lynch stocks that Stein was saying were a bargain at about 75 bucks a share closed yesterday at 11.35. Another guy there said that Goldman Sachs was low somewhere around 150; it closed at 67.54. And as for the guy who recommended Washington Mutual, the less said the better.

And remember, here was the conservative reaction to Paul Krugman warning of the housing bubble in 2005.

So anyway, just remember all that the next time somebody tries to insinuate that Republicans are the ones who are smart about the economy.