More "insightful" economic commentary here...

[daveon]

I'm glad I've got Rand Simberg to explain stuff for me:  

Rand is referencing an article saying that Used Cars are more expensive at the moment than any time compared to 2004.  The reason for this, he proclaims is that the Evil(tm) Cash for clunkers program took a lot of cars off the market.

There's a slight problem with his thesis.  If you bother to look at the data provided by Edmonds, who did the car price analysis, they are making a comparison between New and 1 Year Old Used car sales - pointing out that you can, in most cases get better deals at the moment on new cars than a 1 year old similar car.

I'm going to go out on a very short and sturdy limb here and suggest that anybody in the market for, say, a Lexus ES 350 4dr Sedan (3.5L 6cyl 6A) probably isn't all that worried about the fact that there aren't all that many 15 year old Chevy Geos on the market at the moment.  

I have to wonder if there might be a simpler explanation for a shortage in second hand 1-2 year old car sales.  I wonder if something catastrophic happened in... well, 2007-2008 which would have significantly impacted the sales of new cars that would be having an enormous impact on the available of nearly new used cars?

This data says absolutely nothing about the prices of clunkers for sale.  But I'm glad that we have bloggers like Rand out there going the job that the "real" media is afraid to do.

Damn them for being scared of actual facts and data like that.

 

Comments

[sbisson.livejournal.com]

And anyway, the whole point of the programme was to *increase* the price of cars, giving more money to the producers and dealers. It's not destruction of value, it's transferring the incremental value of the clunkers (and removing their not-inconsiderable environmental and safety costs) to newer vehicles.

[gaspode.livejournal.com]

Not to mention the fact that during 'the crash' (not my favorite term) GM and many other car dealers halted or drastically scaled down production - so not just not as many sold but also not as many built...