by Calculated Risk on 3/13/2007 08:51:00 PM

Last week, after two years of blogging, I decided to take some advertising to defray some of the costs of this hobby. Today I'd like to welcome the first direct advertiser to CR: Zacks Investment Research.

And a special thanks to the Director of Research for Zacks, Dirk Van Dijk, who is a frequent participant in the comments.

I hope the banner advertisers receive fair value for their advertising dollars. Please visit them if you are interested in their products or services. However, just to be clear, there is no connection between the advertisers and the content on this blog. I've quoted Dirk in the past, and I probably will in the future (Tanta mentioned him today), but that is completely separate from any advertising relationship.

Second, I'm grateful to the readers for allowing me to assault their eyes with those annoying little links. I tried putting some links below the posts, but that was just too distracting. After puzzling over the payment algorithm for a few days, it is basically weighted entirely towards clicks - with little or no weighting for impressions. Hopefully some interesting Ads will show up in the sidebar for readers to check out - it's mostly been advertisements for subprime mortgages, and that hasn't generated a lot of click interest - but it has been good for some enjoyable snark in the comments!

And finally the blushing ... two of the blogs I reference frequently made some nice comments about me today. I sincerely appreciate the comments, and also the mention at CNN's Pat Reigner's blog Generation Risk.

Professor Hamilton (who literally wrote the book on Time Series Analysis) wrote at Econbrowser that Calculated Risk is "your one-stop-shop for all housing news" - an obvious exaggeration, but much appreciated.

And from Professor Roubini: Mainstream Monday Morning Quarterbacking on Subprime Mortgages..While Still Being Blind to the Spillovers and the Coming Credit Crunch

A minority of scholars and analysts - including Robert Shiller, David Rosenberg, the blogger Calculated Risk and a few others - already warned last summer about a severe housing recession ...

Roubini is too generous with his praise.

In many ways, Nouriel Roubini has been out front and taking the heat for those of us cautioning about excessive speculation in the housing market - and who now find ourselves cautioning about the probable unfortunate consequences (that hopefully won't be too severe).

Last year we jokingly calling Roubini "Eeyore" (from Winnie The Pooh). This started with a speech from Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher last August:

"I expect second-quarter GDP growth to be revised upward to closer to 3 percent. And my best guess one month and two weeks into the third quarter is that the speed at which we are now proceeding is roughly of that magnitude. From my vantage point, despite what you hear from some of the Eeyores in the analytical community, a recession is not visible on the horizon."

Of course we had some fun with Fisher's Eeyore remark. It was actually Professor Duy at EconomistsView who, after Fisher's speech, first jokingly called Dr. Roubini the "archetypical Eeyore".

It's looking more and more like Eeyore was right.

Best to all.