patrick.net

hey, economists predicted 9 of the last 3 recessions! that's not a bad strike rate...

on the creation of jobs question, etc, how about this? (i always felt the Treasurer was gloating about 'soaring economic growth' based solely on the aggregated GDP which was really due to empty internal housing inflation in the economy -- when the boom turned, the GDP figures nosedived, so he had nothing more to brag about and went a bit quiet. altho he knew all along what was causing it, just pretended it meant productivity increases or something for the gullible press)

After the House Price Boom: Is this the end of the Australian dream?

The house price bubble has finally burst. Average house prices more than doubled between 1996 and 2004, but according to one source, Sydney prices fell back by 15% during 2004, with Melbourne 11% down.[2]

While it lasted, the boom added substantially to the wealth of existing home owners, but it has made home ownership more expensive for aspiring new buyers. In its aftermath, three questions arise. First, who financed the capital gains that home owners have enjoyed? Second, has home ownership become unaffordable for the younger generation? And third, what, if anything, should the government be doing to help young families get onto the home ownership ladder?

[...]

SQT, one other trick for embedding URLs are the
a href = "URL address" text /a
tags, where you can substitute the original title of the story, and/or source name, or some abbreviation of it, in normal English, and embed the URL between the double quotes. I've left out the > Housing Market Slides on Coast - and Greater Bay Area - The Half Moon Bay Review

hope that worked...

try again... told you those marks wreak havoc...

Housing Market Slides on Coast - and Greater Bay Area - The Half Moon Bay Review

you need to reference the full HTML syntax, i cheat sometimes by pressing the blogger button on a page and copying the result. the last post got mangled because i used the greater than and less than signs a bit earlier for pedagogical reasons, which interacts with other embedded HTML :(

@Different Sean,

Welcome to the blog-authoring world! I look forward to seeing some really creative inflammatory anti-American rhetoric from you in the near future! :-)

Btw, thanks to you I've learned a new term: spruiker. In American that's "con man, swindler, hustler, scammer, shyster, sharpie", etc.

Btw, thanks to you I’ve learned a new term: spruiker. In American that’s “con man, swindler, hustler, scammer, shyster, sharpie”, etc.

c'mon, they're gurus

I look forward to seeing some really creative inflammatory anti-American rhetoric from you in the near future!

hmm, i might touch lightly on one or two relatively minor things in passing...

speaking of spruikers:

"AMERICAN SPRUIKER IN AUSTRALIA"

"ROBERT G ALLEN - A LI/\R AND A TH|EF"

'nother trans-pacific connection... albeit a hustler... i'm scared to quote jenman's title allegations except in Leet...

ahhh peter,
The "party of tolerance" speaks.

@tannenbaum,

Good points on CA net outmigration vs. housing supply. Another thing to consider is how much of the state's 300,000 net annual population growth (almost entirely due immigrantion, mostly illegal, as well as children born to immigrants) is really "in the market" for housing in the conventional sense. Despite the fact that many of the banks are now pitching NAAVLPs to illegals, it's not as if a high % of these people are lining up to buy right now. A big problem in lot of marginal neighborhoods right now is overcrowding, where you have 5-10 people per bedroom. This is how your typical day laborer "affords" a house or rental unit in SoCal --I see this all the time, first-hand.

But that’s SoCal. I’m not convince that SF Bay Area has the same illegal/undocumented problem that SoCal does - or at least to the same scope.

In prime areas in & around the Peninsula, perhaps not. Though, I bet there's plenty of this going on in the outer burbs/East Bay --and especially in the Central Valley.