Some great posts on the other RE bear blogs discussing Mark Carney's recent pronouncements on RE. He seems to be getting into panic mode about the state of our indebtedness, and belatedly, has realised that he is about to become our version of Bernanke...leading the folks into a chasm of debt and bankruptcy.
Once again his words are pointless. No-one listened the last time and no-one will listen this time, even when he uses words like 'housing is taking on the characteristics of a financial asset rather than being driven by fundamentals' . No kidding!
Why doesn't he go to China and look at all the houses bought to store value and left empty because no one trusts the value of their money, the government and carrying rates are still too low.
Well we have all those three except the last one is even lower- why shouldn't housing become a financial asset when you are trashing money so much. and why not just come out and say 'housing is in a bubble'! Why use this hard-to-understand BS that Greenspan used.
BTW- words without actions are pointless.
On the Chinese angle, I am hearing ego-driven bidding wars from mainland Chinese for properties in West Vancouver and the Westside. Literally hundreds of thousands being bid over asking so as not to 'lose face'. Why would they do that? How easily can you make money to pay tax on it, and then throw it away like confetti.
Maybe it is this type of money
If Carney has any balls , one of his actions would be to look more closely to make sure we are not the recipients of 'hot' laundered money.
Then tell Flaherty to kill the CMHC- bloated self-serving creature that it is, and finally move rates up to match inflation.
That would much more than hours of useless chatter which no one listens to. His speech didn't
even make it to the front page of our local papers with all the hockey stuff.
"words without actions are pointless."
ReplyDeleteRead Bill C-3. Seriously. There are a few "actions" in there that will be making the rounds when it's enacted.
I find incredible that we are making exactly the same mistakes as our neighbours down south, and like them, we will have destroy the savings of the prudent (even more) to save the speculators. Sickening. The HAM are just the icing on the cake.
ReplyDeletehere come jesse again puting his faith on the government to do smth stupid to pop the RE bubble here.
ReplyDeleteThere is no chance in hell the government will do smth that will effect negatively 70% of the population. ZERO chance! If anything, the government will help to keep the bubble going or stabilize at those levels.
The bubble will pop here only through buyer exhaustion, and eventually the Chinese economy crashing and commodities taking a hit.
"There is no chance in hell the government will do smth that will effect negatively 70% of the population."
ReplyDeleteHow about 4% of the population? Because that's what Vancouver's owner population is, and under Bill C-3, the government can cave Vancouver in like a cold souffle.
Go ahead and think that the government can't cause Vancouver to crash without affecting the rest of the country. That could never happen: prices will stay high, but if they do drop a bit don't worry because the government will step in and keep them from crashing, but if they do crash don't worry because the government never could have controlled it anyways.
Jesse,
ReplyDeleteDont be naive please.
The goverment doesn't give a dam about 4% of the population , and if people in vancouver want to pay 6 million for a house here so be it, the goverment keeps collecting taxes. Let them sell houses to each other.