The first home Buyers Strike announced by tax reform group Prosper Australia last week is being supported by debt-skeptic Steve Keen. “This is an excellent idea which I endorse,” Keen said on his website (1) yesterday. “It would be a foolish personal decision to take...
BLOG: boom-bust
Buyers Strike “Irresponsible”
“Two secure jobs and a good deposit are no longer enough to buy a home. First home buyers must make a life-long vow of poverty as well. It is irresponsible to expect such a sacrifice,” Collyer said. “Do not underestimate their anger and frustration at being denied land ownership and its civic benefits.”
Liberate labor and enterprise
The reform challenge for our beloved country is to discard the taxes that weigh on effort and creativity, and to put them instead on economic rents, like land and mining.
We wont listen to our own experts, how about a foreign one?
photo credit: Express Monorail Australians have a disturbing mind-set: we prefer foreign experts over our own. People like Steve Keen and Gavin Putland make waves overseas with their valuable commentary on The Great Australian Housing Bubble, but are ignored at home....
The pain in falling land prices
photo credit: Travis S. The US housing market is a living hell. Homeowners are being boiled alive. The price of land was bid up to staggering multiples of incomes, until it no longer made sense to buy a house. And then the trend turned, hard and fast. One in five US...
Be bold, Mr Baillieu: abolish Stamp Duty and Payroll Tax
photo credit: djking To win the election, the new Victorian Premier Ted Baillieu pledged to phase in reductions in Stamp Duty by fifty per cent on real estate transactions under $600,000 for first home buyers. This is a very modest proposal. Mr Baillieu’s incoming...
Will ninjas burst the Great Australian Housing Bubble?
photo credit: The Library of Congress Only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked. Warren Buffett In the US housing bubble, banks and financiers gave a mortgage to anyone with a discernable pulse. NINJAs (No Income, No Job, no Assets) were...
Australia’s AAA credit rating affirmed. How’s yours?
i photo credit: Susanica The credit rating agency Standard & Poor's overnight reaffirmed Australia's AAA rating. Donald Horne’s 1964 label ‘The Lucky Country’ was ironic, yet fits our unique position as the western world endures its worst financial crisis since...
Did you remember to sell the house today?
Prof. Ross Garnaut gave the Hamer Oration at Melbourne University on Thursday. He pointed out that Australia has not experienced a recession for 17 years, a record for The Lucky Country. Such a period of unbroken growth is not just an Australian record, it is a world...
Investor opinion: an uneasy equilibrium
photo credit: Dru! A survey of property investors in The Age today by Colemar Brunton shows sentiment delicately poised between those who see the market flat or falling and those anticipating further rises. This is not the bursting of The Great Australian Property...