Peter Hun
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Posts posted by Peter Hun
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In your own ways, you are as optimistic as the 'house prices only ever go up, get in quick' nutjobs that drove the market to where it is today.
Life's crappo at home - never mind - Nirvana is just a couple of thousand miles away. Cheap property, cheap wine, cheap women (one can but hope) and, presumably, an endless sterling income that converts to shedloads of local currency cash! Wow! What a dream!
Funny how Mr. Market always has a way of ruining the most beautiful dreams. Spain is full of people who retired there with the dream intact - only to find they can't afford to live there and can't sell their house to come home. Ahhh, but you're going to take advantage of their mistakes and buy their property cheap eh?
Still, if you haven't got a dream, how you gonna make a dream come true? Boom .... boom .... boom
The basis of this site is basically jealousy. Jealous that they missed out on HPI, jealous that council tenants get to pay less rent, jealous that the unemployed get to laze around being paid by the state. Its not described as jealousy of course, but unfairness.
I have found my Nirvana though, because in Poland you can buy property cheap and get building work done for 1/4 the amount in the UK. But as you point out, imbalances compensate themselves.
Similar thing will happen if the northern and southern countries split. there will be a period when southern countries property looks cheap, but the high DM will kill the German export economy and bring it back down in line. The only question is how long that will take, I suspect German would have a immediate a VERY serious crash as its being subsidised by a cheap Euro..
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Good link Doccy. Such criticism in mainstream media. Interesting.
Re Adams - I am interested to see that the protestors we see on the television seem to be agents provocateurs from Sinn Fein. Their star could be in the ascendancy if they match the moral indignation of the public - even if you don't quite know what their policies are. Certainly he was towards the communist side of things in his youth - but that is probably acceptable for a man of his age.
Sinn Fein are communist.
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Sadly true. But spare a moment for us Irish of a HPC frame of mind who didn't vote for the above morons or get suckered by the property pushers. Some media organs printing articles suggesting mortgage debt forgiveness necessary (Sunday Independent of Ali O'Riordan fame). If any bailout money goes to fund such a scheme then people in my position must wonder what we do next........Big trade union demo in Dublin this Saturday lunchtime...possibilty of serious unrest........
I don't think debt forgiveness is possible with bailout money...
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I'm sure I'm not the only one thinking of investing over there.
Wait until the house prices stop falling , they have a long way to go yet.
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But most currencies in the oil states of the Gulf are fixed to the dollar so they are effectively dollars anyway.
No they are not effectively dollars. You wouldn't call the Yuan a US Dollar would you?
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as I say, hyperinflation works really well....NOT.
I dont know all the facts on the Argies, but I read an article in Moneyweek a few months ago where they said 1 cent ( whatever the currency is now) is worth, following TWO hyperinflations, MORE than the entire issue of currency before the first hyperinflation.
default clears the deck...bondholders...should be more careful
The Argies decided that their currency had parity with the dollar (haha, sure) and their debt was in dollars. Devalued by 75% and the debt stayed the same
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Iceland is recoverying....already.
I beleive Argentina went the hyperinflation route...course they failed twice trying the same thing..twice...
Argentina has/is still fighting/paying bank the bond holders and is still getting 25% inflation. The Government fabricates the inflation figures, of course.
Iceland has a legal battles with its bond holders coming up, and its still negotiating Icesave. Its 'recovery' includes a currency that is not accepted outside of Iceland, all exchange has to go through the Icelandic bank and an artificial exchange rate is applied.
First article summarises Argentina's 'boom'
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If you're being sarcastic you're wrong - at least about Argentina. Immediately after their default in 2000 things were indeed really very bad, but the country recovered quickly. By 2004 the economy was growing at 8% and it's done pretty well since then. Similar story with Russia after 1997. I guess a big difference is that those two have their own currencies, unlike Ireland.
'Done pretty well'. Ha Ha Ha.
Do you live in Argentina? This guy does, and he describes its as a total cluster**** even now. He's trying to emigrate. Argentina is still a disaster.
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Didn't Russia default in the 90s?
Russia has massive natural resources and oil, it paid back its debts with a wall of money the high oil price gifted them.
Argetina and Iceland are countries who's only natural resources are an abundance of very stupid people.
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More explanation here
http://www.sacw.net/free/rohini_marinella30012005.html
Basically, one of the advantages is that countries have to keep a (few?) trillion dollars available to buffer purchasing of goods. China for instance his hundreds of billions of dollars that they cannot easily dispose of as it would drive down the value of the remaining holdings. And whereas the rest of the world needs to work to earn dollars, the US can simply print as much as they want, forcing inflation onto the rest of the world while reducing its own debts.
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And it went so well for Iceland and Argentina
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Just how does that work then. You mean I can't use Euros, Sterling etc to buy oil?
No, you have to use US Dollars
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has this got anything to do with Gordon Brown not being directly involved in the detail?
No, nothing whatsoever.
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I don't think it really matters what currency oil is priced in, what matters is who controls the supply.
Er, no. The pricing of commodities in USD gives it a massive advantage, one that they black mailed Britain to obtain after WW2.
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Bernanke hints dollar standard is flawed
Posted by Izabella Kaminska on Nov 22 08:23.
Blink and you may have missed it.
But last Friday, Ben Bernanke probably made his most important speech since his ‘helicopter money‘ talk almost eight years ago.
According to author and economist Richard Duncan this is the first time the Federal Reserve chairman has publicly pointed out that the international monetary system may have a structural flaw. In the dollar standard.
As Duncan told FT Alphaville this weekend:
In it he conceded the Dollar Standard is flawed. He said, “As currently constituted, the international monetary system has a structural flaw: It lacks a mechanism, market based or otherwise, to induce needed adjustments by surplus countries, which can result in persistent imbalances.”With that statement, the Fed revealed it has been won over by the logic expressed in my book, The Dollar Crisis (John Wiley & Sons, updated 2005). The first two lines of that book state: “The principal flaw in the post-Bretton Woods international monetary system is its inability to prevent large-scale trade imbalances. The theme of The Dollar Crisis is that those imbalances have destabilized the global economy by creating a worldwide credit bubble.”
Never before has a senior US policymaker admitted that the Dollar Standard is flawed. Former Fed Chairman Greenspan wrote in his autobiography that the trade deficit was far down the list of things the United States needed to worry about. With this speech, the Fed abandoned that position.
According to Duncan — who largely predicted the subprime crisis in his 2005 published The Dollar Crisis — Bernanke may be alerting the world to the most important shift in US trade policy in more than a generation.
What’s more, since the flaw has now been declared, Duncan believes the world should expect the Fed or the US to do something about it relatively soon.
As Duncan expresses:
The world has been put on notice that the United States will take steps to correct this defect and the destabilizing trade imbalances it permits. If the flaw cannot be corrected through international coordination, then unilateral actions by the United States should be anticipated. These actions would likely include trade tariffs. Tariffs would have a devastating impact on the countries pursuing an export-led growth strategy, particularly China.
The United States last resorted to trade tariffs in 1971 when the Bretton Woods system collapsed. At that time President Nixon imposed a 10% “surcharge” on all imports.
Which essentially means: trade wars cometh.
To read the full text of Bernanke speech see here.
http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/bernanke20101119a.htm
http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2010/11/22/411951/bernanke-hints-dollar-standard-is-flawed/
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Thou shalt not bluff
Posted by Izabella Kaminska on Nov 17 17:46.
As all eyes focus on what should be done about the Irish banking crisis, perhaps it’s time for the European Union, IMF and other related parties to take a closer look at some of the factors that may have exacerbated the problem.
After all, it’s now becoming abundantly clear that the dishing out of an elaborate 100 per cent deposit guarantee back in September 2008 was largely nothing more than a massive bluff designed to steal attract deposit flows from neighbouring states to for the purpose of propping up Irish banks.
Furthermore, as we’ve mentioned already, the EFSF is already turning out to resemble something like Paulson’s bazooka in its own right too.
Which means — with everything becoming a high-stakes game of ‘Call my bluff‘ — it could be time to restrict the ability of sovereigns generally to randomly guarantee things they clearly can’t afford to guarantee in the first place. (If confidence in the Eurozone is to be restored properly that is.)
After all, let’s just look at the dynamics of the Irish deposit guarantee itself.
CONT>
http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2010/11/17/408021/thou-shalt-not-bluff/
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It is very worrying when the Fascists are the only party that seems to be on the side of the People.
The Fascists are only on the side who voted for them, which is precisely F.A.
The people didn't vote for BNP.
If they let enough Migrants in though BNP won't be able to get enough votes to win any election....See above.
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On a slightly unrelated note, a couple of days ago, China took the supercomputing crown away from the US with a new computer capable of 2.5 petaflops. Not bad for a developing, second world country wouldn't you say?
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2010-10/28/chinese-supercomputer
Best,
L
So if I stuck 10,000 mail order bought American GPU's in a box I would become a world technological leader would I?
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You know a lot of these, China is rubbish type posts are starting to sound a lot like what British bikers were saying in the 1970s. Ged my instructor regales me with stories about the 1970s when they were all riding triumph and other assorted British motorbikes. They laughed at how rubbish Japanese bikes were.... curiously he and his fellow instructors won't touch a UK made bike with a barge pole these days. Then the Japanese made a killer (in figurative and metaphorical sense) they came out with bikes like the 6cyl CBX1100 which was a monster. Once they'd picked over the corpse of the British bike industry their bikes were better than our own.
You are talking about 2O years ago,
British Bikes are now regarded as some of the best in the world. Three quarters of Triumphs output is exported and they are on the way to be the biggest manufacture in Europe. The 675 for instance was voted bike of the year around the world and pulverised the Jap sports bikes in performance (reliability etc is as good as anything the big for produce).
Japanese sales are going down, the problem with Honda et al is that they are unable to adapt and accept that some of their design choices are wrong, suffering from the 'not invented' here syndrome. Jap bikes are also damn expensive.
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Mish is an idiot. He makes clueless off the comments without any though let alone serious study of the subject.
The Chinese government has made a purchase of a new, untested aircraft from a chinese company, its a communist country after all. Lets see the plane compete in a fair, open market, buying an aircraft if a very small part of owning it, the running costs are what matter. If two airlines compete side by side the slightly less economic aircraft will bankrupt the operator using it.
Making a cost competitive aircraft is a very very difficult thing to do, ask Airbus and Boeing.
Edit: what Topher Bear said...
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Yes I know, I did think twice about refering to one of their articles. This one is either true or not, how much do you want to bet with me that it is true?
You know its a rehash of the same storyline they printed about 3 months ago don't you?
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Newsnight is reporting that the UK will spend 7 billion to help bail out Eire - the deal might be just for the banks or for the State and banks.
The banks and the State are one in the same in Ireland. The problem being that the state guaranteed the debts of the banks and then found out the banks had lied about the true level of those debts. The Irish state doesn't really need a bail out if it wasn't for the banks.
As I said before, this is being driven by the Germans who want to protect the Euro and they have angered virtually all their allies and enemies in Europe by talking down the PIIGS. Germany benefits just as much from the PIIGS debts as they do, without it jobs and export sales will vanish from German and move to low cost countries (i.e. if German's exchange rate was at its true - level 50% above the PIIGS).
This is all the Euro countries doing, but there maybe a backlash, Austria is refusing to pay its contribution to the Greece bailout as Greece has failed to meet its obligations - other countries could do the same.
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no one has mentioned Germany yet !
£80k will buy a very nice house
Indeed, with depopulation in the east there are many abandoned houses.
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Well, one major factor was they became EU base for lots of big and high-value 'merkin companies.
Makes a lot of sense for the 'merkins. English-speaking, business-friendly, and EU-friendly. The downside - it became the story that drove HPI there - their equivalent of our "small island, big demand".
Lots of them are leaving now. Dell has already left for Poland for instance. Ireland is far to expensive.
Main reason for Ireland's growth was the massive EU payments over 30 years or so. Something like 35billion euro's (at then present prices, in today's money its probably 100 Billion++), about 4% of GDP per year.
Basically its enough to give a house to every man, woman and child in Ireland.
http://www.finfacts.ie/comment/irelandeunetreceiptsbenefits.htm
Of course the Irish are probably enraged that they are having to pay into the EU now...
Portugal Next - Then Spain
in House prices and the economy
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The president of Iceland is a moron (as well as being a crook who was bribed millions by the banks to act as company spokesman).
You obviously don't know what you are talking about so I'll just point out that Iceland is F***ed this year, next and for a very long time. Iceland doesn't have its own currency any more; its worthless. I'm sure they would love to have the Euro, but having a 'currency' that is unconvertible to any other rather precludes it.
Icelandic politicians in his Party hate the idea of the EU preventing their Mafia from operating (they have applied for EU membership) so they will say anything they can to keep raping Iceland.