I am off for a week...couple of things

I was cycling past 3 Harbour Green, a new ultra chic development, starting at $5 Million.

The ads on the building mention a 'communal Ferrari' (not sure if you can see read it in the picture). It is actually on the front and back of the building.

Just wondering, what happens if two suites owners want to use it on the same night?

How much is a Ferrari in any case? Enquiring minds need to know.

BTW- As we head into the last part of August. Anyone want to guess what happens to the SFH Average price for August. I won't put up a poll, just put your guesstimate below in the comments.

Last time we had a major correction in our real estate, it took a worldwide credit crunch. It looks like we are heading into another one now, will it have the same effect?

Personal Loan, Business Loan

More and more people are asking about personal or business loans recently. Many do not know where else to get one except from loan sharks (Ah Long). Hence they were left with 'no choice' but to take the risk to venture into whatever their dreams are. Actually there are quite a bunch of legitimate sources ...

Below show a list of sources who can give you a loan without any collateral ( tak payah cagaran )

just click on the image to view the big detail image

Some of them may not offer the loan as stated in above list anymore but they usually have other similar alternative products replacing above. So you can just call and let them know what your needs are. They should be able to offer something as they have been 'requested' by the government to 'assist' local entrepreneur.

The interest rate will NOT be LOW as it does not have collateral. But at least they wouldn't come paint your house red I suppose. It is their job to assess your ability to repay. Should things really go south and you have problem repay this loan later, you can try get help from AKPK.

The loan amount is not big in term of business sense. So you may really want to ask yourself why do you need a loan for whatever you want to do. Why haven't you had a saving that is enough for you to start a few thousand ringgits business ? If you are honest in answering that question to yourself, you may find a better way to finance your business.

Else whatever happened in the past may most probably happen again and you may face a lower success factor. Perhaps that is why you will need to pay a higher interest rate to learn the lesson the harder way, again !?

Don't forget credit card is a kind of loan too at 15-18% interest rate. Do get offer from as many sources as possible before considering which one to go for. NEVER NEVER NEVER go for the first one you encounter with.

Coupon Deals at Publix

I headed out to Publix this morning after dropping my sweets off at school to score some deals.

I have been couponing for about 6 months now, and it has cut my grocery bill in half. It is so much work, but it has really helped out

These are my items I purchased:

2 packs of Chinet Napkins

2 Boxes of Uncle Ben's Rice

2 packs of Knorr Pasta Sides

4 packs of Seattle's Best coffee....this is the hubs favorite!!

1 Box of cake mix...for E's b-day party coming up in 4 weeks!

1 tub of icing

3 containers of Resolve Spray and Wash

 And this was my total:

I was pretty stoked:o) I am not an extreme couponer, or the total would have been 63 cents:o) Those people have a sickness!!

Anyway, I attend church with a girl who has her own coupon website. It's called 

She is always posting great deals, whether it be grocery stores or online sites. You should definitely swing by her way and check out what deals are going on. You can also sign up for emails which is a great way to stay up to date on sales. If you are a facebooker, show her some love & LIKE The Coupon Centsation Fan Page.

Have a great Wednesday...I am headed to the bonus room to de-clutter and take a bunch of toys to the local thrift store.

Guest Post- Back Pack Buddies

Today we have guest poster, Deanna, from Just Deanna.

She is a mother of 4, and is always up to something crafty. Deanna is sharing with us how to make some cute backpack buddies.

Take it away Deanna!

Hello!  I am Deanna of Just Deanna.

A little blog with sewing and crafting tutorials and lots of other miscellany. 

Glad to be here visiting Crystal's great blog.  :)

This summer I hosted a little craft club for my kids and their friends. 

At our last one, for a fun back to school project, we made these fun backpack buddies with shrinky dink paper.

They are super simple to make and the kids seem to really love them. 

You can use them as a key chain as well.

Supplies we used:
frosted shrinky dink paper,
colored pencils,
scissors,
and a hole punch.

For this project I printed up a bunch of fun characters and other shapes for them to use. 

They traced around the picture and colored in with colored pencils.

You should color on the rough side of the paper.

You'll want the picture to be about the size of half a sheet of shrinky dink paper.

  If little ones struggle with the paper shifting over their picture, just tape it down on the sides.

White pencil will show up once they are baked.

Next, cut around the picture leaving room around the picture.

 If you cut around skinny parts, they break off easily. 

Finally before baking punch a hole in the top.

Bake according to the directions in the package.

.

Once cooled, we used large jump rings to attach to the hole and then to a key ring. 

Then we attached them to a zipper on their backpack.

Thanks for letting me guest on your blog, Crystal!  :)

Thanks Deanna, for sharing such a fun back to school craft!

Make sure to show Deanna some love, and check out her great ideas!!

Vacay Pics....

We have been M.I.A. for a week because we were vacationing in sunny Florida. We decided on a whim that we would drive down at night. That was the QUIETEST trip we have ever taken:o) We arrived around 10 a.m. and hit the beach. The hubs and I were completely zonked, but knew the kids wouldn't be able to wait to see the beach. This was the view from our balcony:

 Not too bad, ehh?

Here are my sweets getting their piggies wet.

 After 3 days on the beach, we headed to Orlando. We did a character dinner with Cinderella and Prince Charming.

Here is S.R. with one of her favorite princesses.

 E was actually very excited about meeting Prince Charming.

 S.R.....not so much:o)

 Step sister #1

 Step Sister #2

 There were kids all around us who had these great looking cupcakes. We found out that they were for birthdays....they felt sorry for our little ones and let them have one to share....E's birthday is in a few weeks, so that's how they justified it:o)

 We spent a day at Universal Studios. Here are the kids sporting their shirts that I made them. We had several ask if they were twins.

This is after lunch all tuckered out. It was soooooo hot that day. The hubs and I haven't sweat that much since we were college athletes:o) Did you spot the fans that I wrapped around the stroller bars? Dollar Tree....they were great for the kids, and the blades were made of foam.

 Now this is funny.....E begged for a magic wand from Harry Potter land. Here he is showing off his new Dumbledore wand.

 Here he is asking if it's okay to wave his new magic wand.

 Here is the look of utter disappointment when he realizes that magic wands aren't real.

 Here is the discussion of how magic is make-believe. 

Thankfully he was completely okay after realizing magic is pretend. He loves his wand and has been "zapping" everything in sight. S.R. got a fluffy unicorn and takes it everywhere she goes.

We had a fantastic trip, but I am glad to be home....the kids start preschool tomorrow. 

What am I going to do with myself?!?!?

Possibly lay in the fetal position in a corner and cry??? I am sure that I will get over it;o)

Any-whoodles, be on the look out for another guest post.

Have a great Monday!!!

The business cycle in a nutshell

Capitalism has many flaws, however one of it's biggest virtues is the business cycle. Firstly, as most will agree, the graph for any socio-economic parameter has been trending up for the history of humanity. Whether that be GDP, protein consumption per capita, or survival, we are moving upwards. The reason is our increasing numbers coupled with our ingenuity.



Even catastrophes like HIV or WW2 only put a temporary dent in this progress.



However it is not a smooth line up, but a jagged saw tooth.The cycle (and there are multiple different cycles running at the same time- eg commodities/industrial production etc) in it's most simplified situation is thus:



Along comes a need or an innovation- eg railroads in the US to bring wood and gold back to the burgeoning eastern seaboard or the Internet. This draws in money which causes a boom in the sector or even the whole economy. Eventually it becomes too speculative as investors are mesmerized by the huge gains made by the early money. More and more money flows into the sector, so much so , that bubbles often form in these assets or companies and they leave their most optimistic fundamental valuations. Eventually the boom turns to bust as not all the 'blue-sky' projections can be met.



Companies go bust. Most railway companies in the US went belly-up as did the Dot-com companies. Debt is defaulted on. A recession in that industry or even the whole economy ensues and we wait for the next driver.



The graph above is the picture of human greed and fear. It is stupidity too, however, it is necessary to move us along the graph upwards. Without speculation, we would not have had dozens of railway companies fighting to cross the US. The process would have taken decades longer.



So are we always stuck with this business cycle, where a mis-allocation of resources ends in tears- which can often be so severe that it leads to social upheaval eg WW2?



Some economist like Keynes suggested acting to smooth out the cycles. Intervene to reign in speculation as the cycle went up and add money (borrowed if need be) on the way down.



Then we had fools like Greenspan and Bernanke (and the Treasury secretaries like Robert Rubin, Lawrence Summers and Paulson who worked with them) who thought they could halt the business cycle- they unfortunately influenced all the other Central Bankers from Europe to Canada.



They allowed the cycles to go as high as possible and even advocated removing the few legal restrictions which kept the worst of human greed and speculation under check. This is from the free-market theories of Milton Freidman.



It led to HUGE up-cycles and misallocation of resources- eg the Dot-com boom. When these bubbles burst, they then became Keynesian - lowering interest rates and trying to bail out the stranded speculators.



They did this prior to the Dot-com with a number of mini-booms/busts like the LTCM (derivatives explosion) and the Russian and emerging market debt boom/crisis.



What this did was make the up swings huge but cut off the down swings. It seems like a good idea and in fact many wise economists in Central banks thought that Greenspan had found the Holy Grail. Lots of up, but very little down. There were no major recessions from 1987 when Greenspan took over.



Of course all that does is delay the inevitable. You don't get a good purge of speculation, the big money gets the message fast- we will be bailed out of our mistakes. So each bubble gets bigger as it has to swallow the losses of the previous one too.



Thus we had the huge housing bubble in the US. When that burst they tried again. Zero interest rates and even took the debt of speculators onto Government books. However it was too big and all the pent up excess had to come out of the system.

They could not stop the downward movement with their usual bag of tricks. The business cycle took it's full revenge.

There in fact several different cycles with different time frames that play out at the same time. There are short cycles and then longer more dramatic ones. Nicolai Kondratiev a Soviet economist and wrote about it. His theory was that this was how capitalism moved from animal exuberance to purging the excess speculation. A form of self-cleansing if you will. For suggesting this he earned Stalin's anger and was sent to a gulag and later executed there.

As I mentioned we have come though a period where we had the worst of both worlds. Regulators who did not regulate. Central bankers who were too close to the speculators and politicians who did not want the good times to be curtailed. The result was a delaying of the cleansing until we now have the mother-of-all down waves.

It is human nature to want to delay pain. We did it in Canada. When the crisis hit in 2008- we were in excellent shape. Low consumer debt, near balanced budget, and still buoyant commodity prices.

However our own Central bankers and politicians panicked. You know the script. Zero interest rates, CMHC doubling, Tax incentives, RRSP down-payments, Long mortgages etc.

All leading to our own speculative bubble which as Ben has shown is right where the US was when they burst. Had they done nothing we would have gone though pain. However it is very likely that as a result there will be even more pain.. I guess everyone just hopes it bursts on someone else's watch.

It is like a party where everyone is get rat-faced drunk and a few people nag that this is not going to end well. "This will end with fights, and vomiting, and maybe even more serious events". - They are told they are Spoil-sports! Drink. Enjoy the fun.

Of course the bears in the US were fully vindicated, not that it gives them much comfort, since they have to share the pain with everyone else!

The evidence is mounting

Ok maybe it is a bit too soon to put up my roller coaster picture. But I have been waiting for a LONG time to use it :)

However, lets say we are hanging precariously at the top.

August SFH was down. We have huge MOI's from outside Vancouver. Here is Larry's latest contribution.

And in case you missed my Whistler post

fish10 said...

Whistler 5 sales in a week with 777 on the books. MOI = a very long time.



Of these five sales some got real bargains and some, inexplicably, paid almost full price. Original list and final sale price;





L 314 S 220!!

L 479 S 469

L 759 S 600!

L 739 S 712

L 1050 S 995

Have a great week-end!