HiredGoon

More comics at (censored world-wide housing crash forum)/index.php?showtopic=16502&st=0

So we found a humongous source of energy. But oil is finite, unlike hay. So now we are trying to run cars from farmed crops. But there isn't enough fields, nor farmers to grow enough ethanol to feed the cars and humans on earth today.... Looks like we just put off the problem, not solved it, huh?

If you think things are mad in the USA or the UK, Australia is worse. Our median price to median wage is over 6 nation wide or 8.6 in Sydney. There is over 100 acres of land per person in Australia. 2/3 of landlords by number and landlords overall declared a loss of interest vs rental income in 2007. The rental yield on the house I rent is 2.5% and interest rates are 8.5% Here is what 8x median wage, or $390AUD or 173k pounds buys you, only 1200km from the nearest ocean! How could you not buy it - it guarantees current as well as excellent future returns. http://www.realestate.com.au/cgi-bin/rsear...;t=res&q=Go There is a very popular Australian forum on the other house price crash forum (the global one)...

Um, there's been a housing bubble in the USA, UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. Maybe your government didn't stop it, but whatever the reasons are, they're not specific to your country. If you want to blame something, maybe try and isolate a "free lunch" gene in Anglo/Celtic/British DNA.

Yeah, I originally wrote "Commercial paper" but thought that nobody would know what it meant! I had only heard of the term a few weeks ago and had to look it up.

Yes, some people can just hold out for the price they want and not sell. Unemployment/moving for work can force liquidity into the housing market. Everyone can't sit in their houses forever.

Think of actions of creatures on earth - much occurs along only two axis. The earth seems to be flat from up close to an animal runs horizontally on the ground, left and right are opposite but equivalent and so there is no advantage in giving one too much bias. An animal that passes through air or water has an advantage being symmetrical and streamlined (almost without exception - dolphin, hawk, jet-fighter) Genes are instructions for building an organism. It is easy to conceive of a simple gene that operated on other genes and said "build this but mirrored". Simple, and advantageous (symmetry is a good design) and you'd expect it to be successful in the genepool. It is so much (look around you) I believe that to see a non-symmetrical animal (eg crab with 1 big claw) seems very strange. There are other patterns in genes, like apply this operation and build self-similar instructions, it is all very beautiful watching life arise from instructions of matter.

Does a monkey need to stand up and declare he's a mammal? Does Chuck Norris need to stand up and tell everyone he's tough?

http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2007/s2006034.htm

The Aussie dollar (high yielding currency for yen carry trade at 6.5% base rate) has dropped from .87 US => .78 US in a few DAYS - that's a 10% drop. The share market here is 70% foreign owned and it is 10% off the highs and dropped 5% today before bouncing to only drop 1.5%

In Australia 2/3 of landlords by number and THE INDUSTRY OVERALL declared a loss last financial year. And the median house is over 6 times average wage! We're completely doomed!

ASX fell by 3% today, we are down 10% from the highs. We are still calling it the "fallout from the US sub prime affecting our markets" - as if our low-doc 100% loans are any different because they're not called "sub prime"

(I don't know where this is from)

This is the best troll ever - deforesting an area the size of the isle of man is environmentally friendly and sustainable! And after removing millions of tonnes of forest, grow a few tons of soy beans! Soy beans are carbon sinks better than a rainforest!!!

Everyone should go and watch "They Live" - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096256/

Almost every single English speaking country has a ludicrously expensive cost of housing compared to local wages. Sure, if you have heaps of equity, moving to NZ or Australia from an expensive part of the UK you could do well. But if you are trying to live off a wage, you are screwed everywhere. Here's a question for you: If one country gave way, ie house prices descended massively while your country didn't, would you move so that you could have a significantly better lifestyle?

Nobody knows. It is impossible to predict things more than a few years out. Keep an eye on the figures and adjust your strategy depending on the facts. If you believe that there will be a few years slide, then buy on the first year YoY positive after a few negative.

But they can make stuff for free that (most) people will swap for gold. I was quite shocked when gold fell with stocks the other week, because I bought my precious metals not because I like dense shiny things, but because I expected it to behave in the opposite way to the rest of the world's financial bubbles. There were many explainations for the drop, including selling to cover other losses, but I would guess that the people who really lost the other day, the highly leveraged, the speculative stock buyer, borrowers of yen etc, would probably not have much gold. I would have thought holders of gold would be on the opposite side of trades than those people, but who knows. There probably is manipulation, but without auditing of stockpiles and a fully open market who knows what is happening. In the long run we're all dead... Still, it doesn't concern me too much, it's not like I'm selling soon - my stash is buried in the ground 25kms away to be dug up for my 2010 house deposit - talk about an illiquid asset!

Thinking about some of the things others said, I did some googling and came across Henry George I really like his ideas. I'm 1/2 way through one of his books Progress and Poverty - Never heard of his stuff before but the ideas are floating around though not in a complete philosophy. Very interesting, maybe his ideas of natural wealth could combine with environmentalism to solve pollutions tradgedy of the commons problem. I think these late 19th century ideas are due for a resurgence!

In most countries capital gain on the primary residence is completely tax free. Since the late 90s tax on everything else (including investment properties was halved). Basically the system became lopsided rewarding capital, people did all they could to make losses they could claim against income and then gain through low-taxed capital. A speculative frenzy. My theory is that as a population bulge goes through the part of their lives where they are asset rich non-workers, they will vote for low capital tax, high wage. Voting yourself funds from the treasury is part of the fun of democracy I guess, and this is the first time it has been the old taking from the young.

In my country income derived from performing work has an income tax that for most people is ~30% Income derived from buying and selling things - capital gain - is taxed at half the marginal rate, so to me, ~15%. Here are some different ways to earn income: a. Work on an oil rig or in a mine b. Buy and sell oil/mining shares a. Create art, play an instrument b. Buy and sell modern art a. Work as a doctor or a nurse b. Buy and sell medical stock a. Work as a bricklayer, build houses b. Flip a property without anyone actually living in it. Does A or B do the most productive work? Which one CREATES wealth? Now guess which one is taxed at twice the rate of the other. Capital is needed for investment, true. But don't you need both labor and capital? Why not tax them the same? An argument that it is a compensation for working out inflation. Ok, but 50% over 2 years when the government says inflation is so low? Risk deserves reward - But doesn't hard work and creativity? And it encourages investment? It seems that there is too much money chasing too little nowdays... I see this as a fairness thing, but it also has a dire effect on society. The path of society and of individuals is often made on financial decisions, and that includes taxation. There is talk in the media and by government about a skills shortage. If we have a lack of qualified labor, surely decreasing taxation relative to capital would have a beneficial effect? --- Imagine the future: Three bright young students get top marks and are trying to decide what university course to study. They don't know what to do, so they look to the market to see who gets the most money and which are the hottest fields. They each then dedicate themselves to an area of study - mining, medicine and green energy - and agree to meet again once their schooling has finished. The day they graduate they each go into a cafe, and start to look around for a geological engineer, a doctor and inventor. Instead they reckognise each other and realise they are all wearing expensive suits. "I trade biotech startups". "I trade miners" "I trade energy companies" They each complain that it is so hard to find good companies to invest in, as the industry is having trouble recruiting staff! --- Do we want a society of expensive shit art? Of homelessness because houses are for speculation not shelter? Of the best and brightest providing liquidity rather than inventing the future? This is not how it has to be, it is a choice we have made or have let be made for us with taxation laws. Maybe this would bring some house flippers back to doing some actual work? Someone has to work, and the financial system, which is really a parasitic but unfortunately necessary evil - should be as small as possible, not such a huge source of wealth - I think an old native american saying went something like "it is only once the last person has gone long on sandwiches will the world realise you can't eat derivatives"

Greenspan knew EXACTLY what he was doing: http://www.321gold.com/fed/greenspan/1966.html Periodically, as a result of overly rapid credit expansion, banks became loaned up to the limit of their gold reserves, interest rates rose sharply, new credit was cut off, and the economy went into a sharp, but short-lived recession ….. But the process of cure was misdiagnosed as the disease: if shortage of bank reserves was causing a business decline-argued economic interventionists-why not find a way of supplying increased reserves to the banks so they never need be short! If banks can continue to loan money indefinitely-it was claimed-there need never be any slumps in business. And so the Federal Reserve System was organized in 1913. …. When business in the United States underwent a mild contraction in 1927, the Federal Reserve created more paper reserves in the hope of forestalling any possible bank reserve shortage. … The excess credit which the Fed pumped into the economy spilled over into the stock market-triggering a fantastic speculative boom. Belatedly, Federal Reserve officials attempted to sop up the excess reserves and finally succeeded in braking the boom. But it was too late: by 1929 the speculative imbalances had become so overwhelming that the attempt precipitated a sharp retrenching and a consequent demoralizing of business confidence. As a result, the American economy collapsed.

>> Our landlord went by the name of Barrat, Bennet or Barnet, depending on which student house you lived in. Or Borat.