Prosper Australia

photo credit: h.koppdelaney By Philip Soos This article first appeared at www.theconversation.edu.au and is republished under Creative Commons. One aspect of housing and stock market bubbles continually repeats: the vast majority of economists either miss or deny their existence. In recent years, enormous asset bubbles have burst in many countries. The most notable have been [...]

photo credit: dcmaster Barry O’Farrell was elected Premier of NSW in March this year. His first budget announced Tuesday raised a storm of protest – not over a realignment of government priorities to his conservative Coalition’s agenda, but on Stamp Duty. The previous Keneally ALP government had exempted first home buyers (on houses up to [...]

photo credit: coba The taxing of alcohol allows slimy politicians to pound their chests about the damage the drug causes and claim high moral authority for sweeping the money into Consolidated Revenue. Slimy? Yes! Governments say alcohol taxes are a policy tool – to discourage consumption and offset its harm. In 2009, Allen Consulting Group [...]

photo credit: Torley The Externalities Factor in Land Economics Leo Foley Leo is our guest speaker at our 120th Annual Henry George Commemorative Dinner, on this Thursday. This article was taken from Progress Magazine. Subscribe now for a free Trial Subscription. Why is it so difficult to recruit people to the idea of Land Value [...]

There are currently 377,300 houses for sale across Australia, according to SQM Research data released today – up 21.9 per cent on last year. Why is this significant? Well, we have some 8.9 million houses. A quick back of the envelope calculation tells me 3.79 per cent of all our houses are for sale right [...]

photo credit: Jeff Kubina A young academic has produced a fresh review of the economic fundamentals behind The Great Australian Land Bubble, and concluded “a collapse in property prices appears unavoidable”. ‘Bubbling Over’ examines the history of house prices in Australia from 1880 to 2011, including a critical analysis of the arguments offered by the [...]

photo credit: atomicshark “The devil is in the details.” German Proverb A fascinating paper on Manhattan real estate in the 1920-39 era shows why property went down, stayed down and didn’t recover in real terms until 1960. ‘Real Estate Prices During the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression’ by Nicholas and Scherbina makes a chilling [...]

photo credit: M J M Michael Hudson Free money creation to bail out America’s elite financial speculators, but not for Social Security or Medicare Only the “Crazies” Get the Bank Giveaway Right Kindly borrowed from Michael-Hudson.com Financial crashes were well understood for a hundred years after they became a normal financial phenomenon in the mid-19th [...]

photo credit: George Laoutaris Will Greece Let EU Central Bankers Run Riot Over Sovereignty? Michael Hudson When Greece exchanged its drachma for the euro in 2000, most voters were all for joining the Eurozone. Their hope was that it would ensure stability, and that this would promote rising wages and living standards. Few saw that [...]

photo credit: Super Doily As published in yesterday’s Online Opinion As if out of thin air, a magical 46 per cent more property was offered for sale in February than a year earlier. Like the heavens opening after a long drought, desperate first home owners must have been thanking their lucky stars. Let’s repeat that. [...]