reaction

image from here

Great deals out there

Vince sent me an e-mail asking for my reaction to the article linked above. Thanks for the e-mail Vince, I appreciate all e-mails.

I thought it to be a well written article. It had well placed platitudes -

I have heard both doomsday predictions and rosy outlooks. From this, I conclude that right now people are looking for direction. They are looking for some semblance of where the market is going, when the opportunities will emerge and how to best act on those events. (sic)

biased factoids -

While I cannot predict the short term fluctuations of the market I can offer insight based on MPC Intelligence's experience observing and documenting Metro Vancouver's development market.

I can provide some simple facts about the current market that will better allow consumers to sort through the fact and the fiction in the months ahead. (sic)

fallacious mythology -

The Chinese proverb says, "May you live in interesting times." (I have dealt with that before) (sic)

acronymic company titles -

MPC Intelligence... (and they are, who?),

and generally unbiased positivity. Vapid writing for the vapid and vacillating venture capitalists who still have way too much money to lose.

From a Google search for MPC Intelligence - MPC Intelligence reminds our customers that we are here to help in every way shape and form. We are working near round the clock to deliver ..., and - MPC Intelligence assumes no responsibility for inaccuracies provided by the ... MPC Intelligence is not responsible for the privacy practices or content of ... I am always so encouraged when a marketing group has disclaimers in their headlines. "Near round the clock", no less... Hang on, I'm going to give them a call... OK, so Jennifer Podmore (the author of the Vancouver Sun "article"), is a Managing Partner of MPC Intelligence! Qu'elle surprise! Another great surprise - MPC Intelligence is not really available around the clock... I called at 12:45 AM, and was advised that their business hours are "from 9-5, Monday through Friday". MPC Intelligence - contact

So, Vince, I think that the "article" is another piece of shill from the Vancouver Sun. A pumper for the developers is trying to get you to buy. Why even read it? My own take is that, if prices have retreated by 15%, they have another 35% to go - minimum. And that is if there is not a depression. If that happens, see the previous post featuring Detroit "mansions" for three hundred dollars.

I will not eviscerate the "article" further, that would be unseemly.

See, I'm a "journalist" too! All it takes is Google!

alliteration under the volcano

Vesuvius 1822

Wow, the shite is hitting the fan. Lots of talk about 1929, global depression, doom, gloom, and despair - and that is just the MSM! The commentary runs from the apoplectic, to the apocalyptic, to the apathetic, to the apologetic - and that is just the A's! I thought that I ought to add to the mix with some brimstone, bitter nettle, bone heads, and just a little braying.

Speaking of boneheads;



The picture is from this article - a nice synopsis, and I redact;

Let's take a look at America 's...entire financial system...in the process of blowing up...over $500 billion in bank losses, with over $1 trillion more to come. Over one dozen banks have failed, with hundreds on deck. A handful of large hedge funds have blown up, with hundreds more on the way...over $1 trillion has been transferred from the Fed to the banking cartel...estimate another $1.5 trillion will be needed to maintain liquidity as banks de-leverage over the next few years. Unemployment is now over 6% and inflation is over 5%, even with Washington 's manipulation of the data. Virtually every metric in the housing market is at multi-decade lows, except for foreclosures which are hitting new highs.

Taxpayers are on the hook for billions of dollars of potentially worthless debt held by Fannie and Freddie. It's now official. America 's free market economy is really a socialist system for corporations. One could argue this to be a form of Fascism. My best estimate for losses due to the Fannie and Freddie taxpayer bailout are between $200 to $500 billion. The worst case scenario would be $800 billion. When Superman fails to show up, Washington might consider giving David Copperfield a call. Get the popcorn ready.

Those clowns up there are the architects of all of this, but they won't be affected by it, they have made out like foxes in a hen house. My rough estimate of the debt that 330-odd million people just accrued (whether they wanted to, or not) is tens of thousands of dollars each, and that does not count the wars, and such. All to bail out banks, mortgage companies, and insurance companies whose directors and CEO's collected tens of millions of dollars in bonuses. AIG alone cost $2575 per man, woman and child. Sounds fair to me! Everybody loves an insurance company.

And yet more clowns, chimps, chumps, cheats, whatever (I promise not to go through the whole alphabet).

The mental midget. The picture says it all - RESPONSIBLE. Responsible for 0%/40 year mortgages, responsible for blowing the surplus, and very likely for putting the gov't into a deficit situation. Responsible for leaving a $5-6 billion deficit in Ontario after just one term as provincial finance minister. He is no economist, or financier, he is a lawyer. Let us not see the likes of him return to the finance portfolio.



Heil Harpler. (complete with lip-stick on the pig)



What an unfortunate (if defining) photograph of this clown. I find it hard to believe that he has pulled the wool over so many people's eyes (as evidenced by poll numbers). Have Canadians not been paying attention to the chimps in the first picture these last 8 years? I find that to be very disconcerting, though I ought not to be surprised; after all, so many Canadians drank the RE kool-aid, I really ought to have lower expectations.


The picture above leads right into the photoshop below, though instead of looking like an evil dictator, Harpler ends up looking more like the incompetent Sgt. Shultz from Hogan's Heroes. I really hope that people wake up in the next 3.5 weeks, and get rid of this prick for good.



Things are not looking so good. I predicted back in January that we would see the TSX back at 8,700 before this is all over- I am now revising that to below 7,000. I also predicted that we were heading to a depression (in 2005), and now the MSM is predicting the same thing (that is my braying).

Good luck everyone, I hope that you don't have debt, and do have lots of savings, you are going to need it.

More reads -

The Ultimate Wall Street Nightmare

more gloom

unintended consequences

Vancouver leads fall in house prices

So much to write about, and so little time...

such negativity...

I have alluded to fractional reserve banking in the past, and David sent me an e-mail a while ago wondering about it. I don't have a lot of time these days to delve into it (or much of anything beyond me super cool kid), but I have understood that it was at most 5% (in Canada), and maybe as low as...gulp...0%. Makes you feel good about paying interest, eh?

But I stumbled upon this article that had in its first paragraph -

"The banks have no reserves other than debt."

Negative reserves? We are really fecked. What if I want to pull my million bucks (I wish) out of the bank in Loons? Is the bank going to tell me that they have no money - let alone my money?

It's a short article to read, with references to the New World Order and the Amero in the comments. Here is a snippet -

The reserves have collapsed - the banking system itself is bankrupt. Credit crunch is a very nice way of saying this, credit crisis is starting to sound a little more accurate.

Ah, but the Federal Reserve has saved us from a bank run! Well, they've put up $140 billion (plus whatever they're adding this week) so the economy could have $20 billion in loans - this is an amazingly ineffective & convoluted means of generating financial activity.

The reserves backing your checking or savings account are all owed to the Federal Reserve and the banks don't have the capital necessary to generate enough profit to ever reasonably pay this debt back.

It's a very twisted illusion that we live in.

the puppeteer - manipulating you and me

I came across this story over at coco's blog. It explains that "Developers are the Games’ real winners" (speaking of the 2010 Olympics). Yeah, no shite Shirley. I never had any doubt about that, and it has always pissed me off. Sure, a lot of speculators have been winners too, but they are more of a participating audience than players.

A former developer himself, Premier Gordon Campbell holds the purse strings to an Olympic-size sweepstakes payout.


The 2010 Olympics were still a gleam in Jack Poole's eye when he addressed a roomful of real-estate developers in the spring of 2002. Vancouver had been shortlisted for the Games, but it would be more than a year until the winning city was chosen.

The outcome of the race to win the Games didn't seem to matter to Poole, who headed the 2010 Vancouver Bid Corporation. Western Investor editor Frank O'Brien sat in on the talk and later editorialized that, according to Poole, "the real purpose of the 2010 Olympic bid is to seduce the provincial and federal governments and long-suffering taxpayers into footing a billion-dollar bill to pave the path for future real estate sales."

Indeed this was Poole's opinion. "If the Olympic bid wasn't happening," he told the developers, "we would have to invent something." Long-time developer Poole had it right. The Olympics are about real estate.

(emboldening mine)



It verges on criminality,in my mind, but "we" asked for it - if not begged for it. Now, the average citizen of Vancouver cannot afford to buy the lowliest crack-shack, while these rich bastidges get richer - at our expense.

B.C. premier Gordon Campbell knows well how taxpayers subsidize developers. Campbell was all smiles when he announced that Marathon would be glad to sell the land to the province at a good price. It was still worth three times as much as its value before the city rezoning.

Campbell...boasted that he got the property at a rock-bottom price before others became aware of what the stadium would do to land values. He built a hotel that was completed at about the same time as the stadium.

Twenty years later, Campbell holds the Olympic purse strings, and as Poole pointed out, it's payday for developers.

The whole article is worth reading. It demonstrates what g-damned fools the populace of this fair city are - sucked in to voting for the Olympics without a clue as to who would really pay for them, and who would benefit.


As you may have gathered, sometimes my postings are more about doing the photoshops, than any serious commentary, though this one is about both.

Do a Google image search for "Bob Rennie", and two of my photoshops come in in the top 9. One of them is the first. That makes me laugh. Let's see if this one shows up on a Google search for "Jack Poole, Bob Rennie, Gordon Campbell".

of chickens and eggs

I managed to bust my head out of the box ever-so briefly this afternoon, and wondered what really drives the RE market.

There are lots of boffins - be they economists, policy wonks, finance ministries, schools of business, etc., and we hear from them all the time. But what justifies their positions? I did not hear many of them predicting price reversals in London or San Diego, or Paris, Texas for that matter. I don't really remember anyone saying that prices would ratchet up so much before it began, either.

I really doubt that people who bought in 2001-2003 really thought that they would see the values sky-rocket as they did. Few who bought in 2004-2008 were likely see the impending correction in values either.

Seems that the market may have a mind of it's own.

Corporations are considered as "persons", and are afforded rights and privileges commensurate to actually being a living human being. Of course, corporations are made up of a bunch of people, all performing more or less correctly, who are made up of a bunch of mindless cells that perform their functions more or less correctly. Those cells are in turn made up of atoms made up of protons and electrons, which are made up of sub-atomic particles.

So, back to the macro - All of those corporations seek growth, and the RE related companies do likewise. Pretty soon it is rolling on it's own, and all of we perform our functions more or less correctly to keep it going. The problem is, the market is feeding on us, rather than feeding us. Pretty soon, the cells are not able to function correctly because of the stress on them, and they turn bad. The body becomes tired and ill, and ceases to function correctly. Then the vultures and bugs come to pick over the carcass.

So, does the market drive "us"? or do "we" drive the market?

nightmares

Back to my normal, if odd, look at things.

I had a dream last night that I bought the green monster house with the hellacious eyebrows.

I went to an open house - just for laughs - and the house sucked me and my family in, and started feeding on us. Every month it demanded more and more from us. It was horrible! It reminded me of the mother in The Wall.

Suddenly, I was in the developer's dream. I was so glad to escape my own, but his was even worse. He was a green monster fanatic, and had torn down many simple family homes to build many dun-coloured dominatrix dens. He had angered the spirits of the simple people that had raised families in those homes with his greed, and they had chained him until he lost everything.

If you happen to go to an open house, and get a weird feeling, don't even think of buying it!

Of course, all of that is nonsense, and is untrue, but I just had to do some photoshopping, and write a silly story, to make myself laugh.

Maybe this could be a mascot for the anti-olympic committee.

You didn't expect stats, did you?

let them eat hamburger

I was mumbling about CPI, M3, inflation etc., a while back, and came across a site that discusses how CPI was rejigged. According to the author(s), it is understated by about 7%. There are all kinds of fallacious arguments about quality and safety being better, but I have never bought them.

The article is discussing the US position, but it is surely applicable to Canada.

A couple of choice quotes from the article;

Inflation, as reported by the Consumer Price Index (CPI) is understated by roughly 7% per year.

In recent decades, however, the reporting system increasingly succumbed to pressures from miscreant politicians, who were and are intent upon stealing income from social security recipients, without ever taking the issue of reduced entitlement payments before the public or Congress for approval.

The Boskin/Greenspan argument was that when steak got too expensive, the consumer would substitute hamburger for the steak, and that the inflation measure should reflect the costs tied to buying hamburger versus steak, instead of steak versus steak. Of course, replacing hamburger for steak in the calculations would reduce the inflation rate, but it represented the rate of inflation in terms of maintaining a declining standard of living. Cost of living was being replaced by the cost of survival. The old system told you how much you had to increase your income in order to keep buying steak. The new system promised you hamburger, and then dog food, perhaps, after that.

It's worth reading, and exploring the whole site.

shadowstats

more shadowstats

Edit: Thanks to casual observer for the link. I couldn't remember how I got there, and casual had posted the link on the previous thread to this one.

D-ohpe (baby-brain).

frothing at the fingertips

What's he so happy about? Did he get a free kite? Or is he the nephew of the Chairman?

Thanks to the pope for the cool picture! Read his rant.

Thanks to black'n'brownedout for this link.

Inflated by the Olympic spirit

THE transformation of China's capital over the past few years has been astonishing. This year the effect will be giddying...Amid an Olympics-fuelled frenzy, Beijing's economy is booming and its house prices soaring. Many fear their return to earth will be bumpy.

Ah. What me worry? You can't lose. And I'm so giddy, I can't think straight anyhow.

Olympic cities usually experience an economic surge before the games. And with under 18 months to go before the games open in Beijing, China's economy as a whole is growing nearly as fast as Beijing's: 10.7% last year compared with the capital's 12% (its eighth consecutive year in double digits). Central-government leaders worry that the pace could be reckless, but are loth (sic) to apply the brakes hard.

I'm too indolent to look up the stats for how much our economy has grown, but it seems to me that I heard that it was in the neighbourhood of 3%. That's crazy growth in Beijing!

Communist Party ... leaders will be trying to stress how much in sympathy they are with the suffering of ordinary citizens.

Oh, so solly full you! Throw the dogs a bone.

For the past two years, the central government has introduced a series of measures aimed at cooling property markets in Beijing and elsewhere. These have included new taxes on property deals and higher mortgage downpayments. Last month new restrictions were imposed on property purchases by foreigners. In Shanghai, these moves have achieved some success (diverting speculative money to the bubbling stockmarket), but not in Beijing. Last year property development still accounted for more than half of all investment in the capital.

So where will the money go now? Off-shore. Vancouver sounds good. Golden Mountain. We buy it all. It's a global frenzy of liquidity. The only bright light that I can see is that the sub-prime market is melting down, and will take a lot more down with it. It's sad that the idea of a depression can seem like a bright light isn't it?

Speculators are betting that property prices will benefit from the tightness of land supply

Oh fulak! The land shortage thing. It had to be there with the friggin' Olympics thing, didn't It? Can I even type Olympics without being sued for copy-right infringement?

Moreover, in order to keep the city clear of unsightly cranes and dust-billowing building sites during the games, Beijing has been discouraging new construction projects. This has reduced the expected supply of properties and helped to drive up prices. Last year the total floor space of new housing projects was nearly 6% less than in 2005. For poorer residents the outlook was particularly grim. The floor area of newly launched low-cost housing projects was down by nearly 57%.

I think that loathesome regime is doing better than our own loathesome regime regarding housing the poor. Slavery never really went away, but now people are proud to be mortgage slaves.

According to press reports this week, the central government recently called a special meeting to discuss ways to tame Beijing's property market. Among its suggestions was an increase in the housing supply.

Is it just me?, or does that not make sense? Just above, they were moaning about the shortage of land, but now they want to build even more. Look what happened here. Thousands of new condo's, houses and townhouses, and the market just keeps on exceeding itself.

Officials estimate that the Olympics have been contributing more than two percentage points to Beijing's annual growth since 2003. After the games, they insist, the city's new infrastructure and additional glamour (including the egg-shaped theatre, which hopes to attract international stars) will help keep the economy rolling. The flow of investment will be sustained, they say, by further infrastructure development, and by the pent-up demand for property, which will be supported by a continuing large influx of migrants from the countryside.

La la la. Guns and roses and sweet dreams in a shovel. Pent up demand, and glamourous peasants flocking to Beijing on their ways to Aurean Mountain to partake in our Aquarian Sporting Event, in the town between Pemberton and Squamish, in the year between 2009 and 2011. (That is as clear as I can be, because it seems that the season between fall and spring has been copy-righted - along with quite a few other words and place names - including that word for the distraction involving boards, cards and chance, hockey, basketball, head, etc.. The one that starts with a G, and has an A, an M, an E, and an S.)

But some observers are worried. ...two Beijing academics...said the end of the Olympics would coincide with a cyclical downturn in China's economy, exacerbating the risk of a post-Olympics slump in the capital. Beijing's Olympics-related spending of around $35 billion, they calculated, would make up more than 43% of the total for all the games since 1976. This could make the post-Olympics investment downturn all the more pronounced—especially if the speculators are busy bailing out.

No worries here though, that kinda shite does not happen here. And, there aren't that many speculators...

So, I think that we are competing with the City of Beijing for the place that everyone wants to be. And we don't have no stinking French-designed, egg-shaped theatre to attract international stars. We couldn't even give the Ford Theatre enough business to keep it going. Beijing is building a mag-lev train system for it's festival, and the network is planned country-wide. We get the RAV, lose BC Rail, and watch almost weekly derailments. Third World Class.

Excuse my cynical rant. I'm tired. I will have another rant for you in the coming days.

an explanation

CPimages ‘04/J.P. Moczulski


I came across an article about mad cow disease, and re-wrote it to explain why so many people have been sucked into this "bull market". It's the food (a lack of selenium?). Enjoy.

Agency confirms BSE (blatantly stupid extension of credit) in mature Alberta bull


EDMONTON - Canada has confirmed its ninth case of BSE since 2003, in an Alberta bull. The Agency said Wednesday a mature bull died on a farm last week. A senior market analyst for Western Canada said the animal's death caused it to be identified as an "animal of interest" as part of a national Real Estate surveillance program.

Provincial and federal tests then failed to confirm the BSE.

"Where the animal is found at the time of its death is not as important as where it lived in its first year of life - with consumption of contaminated feed in its first year of life suspected to be the cause of all the foolishness." How many toys it had when it died is unknown.

An investigation is underway to find other animals born within a year of the bull that may also speculate in the Vancouver market. It is suspected that the bulls were born into the cohort commonly known as "baby boomers".

Officials are certain this particular bull had been very foolhardy, and had been heard to sneer at the bears..

Preliminary findings suggest the bull was born and raised in Alberta.

Eight previous cases of BSE have been detected in Canadian bulls in the past, when the discovery of an Alberta bull with the disease caused the United States to slam the border shut entirely. It is believed that the US has it's own share of bankruptcies and foreclosures to deal with.

Five new cases were discovered in Canada in 2006, including one in a bull born five years after safeguards were adopted to prevent the spread of the disease.

"The small number of cases of over-extension are, I suppose, unwelcome but on the other hand, not entirely unexpected," the official said, adding other countries have seen a small number of "residual" cases after adopting strict credit regulations.

New rules proposed by CHMC that would allow 0% purchases amortized over 40 years to resume are up for public review until everyone is broke.

Almost one-third of the Canadian bull herd and one-quarter of the total herd is estimated to have been born before 1961.

The official said he doesn't expect the latest case to have a negative impact on the "Olympic" plans.

"What's most important is that there's safeguards, there's a stringent suite of measures in place to prevent and eradicate speculation," he said.

"We are open and transparent with home buyers . . . we do not expect that this will negatively impact any of the planned measures proposed." Those measures reportedly included a plan to bankrupt recent home buyers through raising interest rates 5 basis points.