More good news on the housing market. This morning, the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price index posted its biggest annual increase since 2006—just before the housing market crash.

Home prices in all 20 metro areas included in the index rose for the second month running. Phoenix led, with a 23% annual increase followed by San Francisco (18.9%), Las Vegas (17.6%) and Atlanta (16.5%).

Still, Robert Shiller, co-creator of the index, is cautious. “There’s a lot of excitement in the housing market now but it might be just short term,” he tells The Daily Ticker.

Related: The Recovery in Housing is Behind Us: David Rosenberg

Shiller says the housing market is operating in an “abnormal economy” where the Federal Reserve is buying $40 billion worth of mortgage securities and $45 billion worth of Treasury notes each month. This has driven mortgage rates to record lows.

According to Freddie Mac’s weekly survey out last Thursday, the average rate for a 30-year fixed rate mortgage is a record low 3;4%;

Niall Ferguson has two words for Paul Krugman: you’re wrong.

The Harvard University history professor and author of “Civilization: The West and the Rest” says Krugman’s pro-government spending thesis not only fails to address the core problems facing the U.S. and Europe today but also has dire consequences for individuals living in these economies.

“You can’t borrow trillions of dollars a year for the rest of time,” Ferguson says in an interview with The Daily Ticker at the Milken Institute Global Conference 2013. “Once a government gets to a very very high level of debt, the risk is very small increases in borrowing costs which create a vast ocean of red ink. So that risk is not negligible. Very large debts do not simply disappear by magic.”

Related: The Economic Argument Is Over — And Paul Krugman Won

Ferguson argues that Carmen Reinhart’s and Ken Rogoff’s conclusions about the relationship between high debt and low growth are still true. The two Harvard economists had to defend