The economy is just fine. Really. Really?

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Random Friday links from readers, all worthy of a quick look:

From Pseudo 100: Permabull, and nice guy, Brian Wesbury argues in the Wall Street Journal that the economy is just fine. Really: ‘It is hard to imagine any time in history when such rampant pessimism about the economy has existed with so little evidence of serious trouble,’ Wesbury writes. Housing, he says, ‘... has fallen so much already that it is highly unlikely to drive the economy into recession all by itself.’

Also from Pseudo 100: Timothy Egan of The New York Times takes the ‘Abandoned Swimming Pools of the Inland Empire Foreclosure Tour: ‘Peek behind the palm trees and there you see the most shocking sight: abandoned swimming pools, fetid and green, left to the elements and choked with algae. Thousands of people have walked away without even draining the water.’

From SLD, a glitch in the Bush plan to help sub-prime borrowers refinance: ‘President George W. Bush’s proposal to help 1 million sub-prime borrowers avoid foreclosure with tax-exempt bonds has an obstacle: States don’t want the risk any more than private lenders do.

Kathleen Fairweather and Judy Graff point out this L.A.Times story about pets abandoned in foreclosures. ‘I know it’s not Darfur, but it’s tragic all the same,’ Kathleen writes, ‘As Ghandi said, ‘You can tell the greatness of a nation by how it treats its animals.’ ‘’ The story quotes our favorite surfing Realtor, Leo Nordine, who sees a lot of foreclosed houses and ‘said he finds abandoned dogs at least once a month these days. Sometimes they’re chained in a yard, sometimes locked in the house.’

Better Village points this blog, which crunches the Case-Shiller data and concludes L.A. prices are 27% above where they ought to be.

Thanks all. Comments? Insights? E-mail story tips to peter.viles@latimes.com.