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.
