what housing bubble: question mark

  1. 5,186 Posts.
    "American Dream Ends In Property Market Crash"

    That's an actual headline. Of course it isn't a headline that
    appeared in an American newspaper. It appeared in a British
    newspaper - The Independent - on April 6.

    The story presents the usual mix, part history of the US housing
    bubble and part "hard luck" stories about individual Americans who
    are now staring foreclosure in the face. The bulk of it, though,
    concentrates on the growing political reaction in the US, notably the fact that "civil rights organisations" are now demanding a six-month moratorium on foreclosures.

    The article also makes the point, in passing, that the same situation
    is latent in Britain. And of course it is latent in Australia too,
    although you'd never know it from recent evidence in the housing
    markets. Here in Australia, we live in a relatively small but very
    well known resort town which is home to about 60,000 people. The lead
    up to the (four day) Easter weekend is one of the prime real estate
    selling periods of the year. There are two local papers, one
    published on Thursday and the other on Friday. In the Thursday paper
    this week there were two thick sections on real estate totalling well
    over 100 pages. The Friday paper only had one real estate section,
    but it was about twice as thick as usual. Yes, there was overlap, but
    not that much.

    Now one might think that this is evidence of desperation on the part
    of home sellers, until one looked at the prices being asked.
    Australians, like their counterparts in Britain, have not awakened to
    what is happening in the US and WHY it is happening. They are
    tenaciously clinging to the notion that it can't happen to them.

    House prices have already hit the skids in many parts of Australia
    and Britain. But once the housing slump hits the BIG time, as it
    inevitably will, the same hue and cry that is already being raised in
    US political circles will be heard loud and clear. Everything will be
    blamed for the housing debacle except its two major causes. The first
    cause being the manipulation of the Central Bank and their connivance
    with the commercial banks which made the money available
    for "borrowing" in the first place. The second cause being the
    gullibility (or avariciosness) of the people who didn't bother to
    LOOK at what they were signing when they took out no down payment
    loans at teaser interest rates.

    The politicians, of course, blame the "risky exotic mortgages", never
    bothering to wonder about how the lenders managed to get the money to
    offer these mortgages in the first place. They also blame "predatory
    lending practices", never bothering to examine that same question.
    And of course, when times were "good" and real estate was booming,
    there wasn't a peep out of any of them about the lending or borrowing
    practices of the participants.

    As many commentators who DO know how and why the US (and UK and
    Australian) housing bubble was blown up have pointed out - ten years
    ago, the lending which provided the fuel would have been impossible.
    The money simply wasn't there and nobody was going to borrow it into
    existence. What the mainstream doesn't want to acknowledge and are
    pulling out all stops to keep under the rug is the fact that the
    money IS borrowed into existence.

    The reason why the real estate bubble - and the previous stock market
    bubble - was blown into existence was the simple fact that it became
    easier to borrow money into existence. The catalyst was, of course,
    the HUGE global lowering of interest rates in 2001-03. This was led
    by the US Fed and it didn't take very long at all for all the rest of
    the Central Banks to leap aboard the wagon. Lowered interest rates
    lowered perceived risk because servicing costs went down. With that
    came legions of people who could not have afforded loans before
    lining up at the counter to get their piece of the action. And with
    that came more lax lending standards.

    That is how all "booms" in financial "assets" and market "bubbles"
    are engineered into place. It is the only way they CAN be engineered
    into place. Nobody, neither the perpetrators nor the recipients of
    their "largesse", complains while the boom is on. But listen to the
    wailing once the air leaks out!

    The real reason why so many people are so enamoured with a financial
    system in which the money is issued through borrowing and there is
    nothing behind the money but the government's ability and willingness
    to tax future generations is that they buy the illusion that they are
    getting something for nothing. In Australia, for example, the
    government passed a law which "granted" the sum of $A 7000 - later
    doubled to $A 14000 - to anyone applying for a first home loan. That
    was the item which turned local real estate from a boom to a bubble
    market. Rates were low and the government would literally give you
    your down payment. Aussies flocked to buy houses. There is one born
    every minute, it's sad but true.

    What we are witnessing now in the US, and what will soon overtake all
    the rest of the something for nothing crowd which has been living
    beyond their means through borrowing for years all over the world, is
    the politicians' and bankers' worst nightmare. It is a tapped out
    financial system, unable to create credit fast enough to perpetuate
    itself. The willingness to borrow is drying up at exactly the same
    time as the necessity to borrow new money into existence has never
    been higher.

    Go back to the headline with which we began this piece. The "American
    Dream" is not ending with a property crash. The property crash is
    just the beginning. What we are seeing is the beginning of the end of
    the modern "American Dream", shared by people all over the world,
    that there is such a thing as something for nothing. The extent to
    which any indivdual has "bought into" that fable will be a good
    measure of the extent they will suffer as it all comes unstuck, as it
    is now starting to do.

    Gold still sits quietly in the background, rising slowly but surely
    in $US terms and holding its own in terms of the other currencies
    while the financial system from which it has been excluded slowly but surely comes apart at the seams. Gold's great advantage is that it
    represents the best way we have ever found of exchanging something
    for SOMETHING. That old way of doing things, on which the
    REAL "American Dream" was built, is patiently waiting for its rebirth.

 
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