Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

‘Housing in ‘07 wasn’t a bubble” is a true statement that almost no one believes

fullstackeconomics.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 130 posts

Re: ‘Housing in ‘07 wasn’t a bubble” is a true statement that almost no one believes

#101

Post by Beltiras »

parkingrift wrote: post #88
modeless wrote: post #28

> And yet not very many people think we’re in the middle of a second housing bubble. Really? It seems pretty obvious to me that we're in the middle of a huge bubble. The problem is the bubble may not pop for decades because propping up the bubble is government policy at every level from federal to state to local. And if they ever stop, tons of people will be totally screwed. Never mind that even more people are getti…

If it takes several decades for the bubble to pop then it isn’t a bubble.

If it's being artificially inflated by policy it's a bubble, even if it takes a very long time for the inflation to pop it.

Re: ‘Housing in ‘07 wasn’t a bubble” is a true statement that almost no one believes

#102

Post by ThunderSizzle »

imtringued wrote: post #92
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a broad diatribe against monetary base expansion. The counterfactual for which, post crisis, we have in Europe. (And Depression-era America.)

I find it amusing when people automatically think that an increase in the money supply must result in inflation. There is this inherent contradiction that people are angry that the money supply grows because they save, while themselves demanding high interest rates like 5% to let their money compound over time. If you limit the money supply and demand high interest, that interest must circulate from lender back to th…

> There is this inherent contradiction that people are angry that the money supply grows because they save, while themselves demanding high interest rates like 5% to let their money compound over time.

When's the last time a high yield savings account made 5%? Or even matched inflation?

People are angry that they are punished by thr fed for trying to save money for a rainy day.

Re: ‘Housing in ‘07 wasn’t a bubble” is a true statement that almost no one believes

#103

Post by logifail »

sofixa wrote: post #75
logifail wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> better ventilation legislation Why worry about ventilation and masking - particularly in schools - when one could spend that time looking at data showing who is actually at risk, and how to protect them. Spoiler: for this pandemic at least, the risk group simply isn't healthy children. Or indeed healthy young adults. Or maybe even anyone healthy under say 45[0] Our 8 year old had a PCR-confirmed Covid infection thr…

What about the teachers and all other staff at the school? Or everyone those children will run into, like parents, siblings, grandparents, friends, etc.? Even if the majority of them are healthy and under 45, some won't be and would require hospital treatment. And that's a severely limiting factor on how much Covid a health system can bare - in many countries that was stretched to and beyond it's limits. Now thankful…

> What about the teachers and all other staff at the school? Even if the majority of them are healthy and under 45, some won't be and would require hospital treatment.

Isn't this why we developed vaccines? To reduce the risk of serious illness?

"Every year around 600,000 people die in the UK. The Imperial College team estimates that if the virus went completely unchallenged, around 80% of people would be infected and there would be around 510,000 deaths.

So, roughly speaking, we might say that getting COVID-19 is like packing a year’s worth of risk into a week or two. Which is why it’s important to spread out the infections to avoid the NHS being overwhelmed."[0]

Once we've vaccinated a large proportion of the at-risk groups, then the risk of overwhelming the hospitals drops. Then life can, and should, get back to normal.

[0] https://wintoncentre.maths.cam.ac.uk/news/how-much-normal-ri...

Re: ‘Housing in ‘07 wasn’t a bubble” is a true statement that almost no one believes

#104

Post by Cipater »

olivermarks wrote: post #100
Cipater wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you link the wrong article? Nowhere does it say that Russia has the largest gold reserves on the planet. Meanwhile: https://www.statista.com/statistics/267998/countries-with-th... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_reserve https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/gold-reserves

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/03/11/business/russia-economy-s... My understanding is that Russia's gold reserves are pretty tangible where the west has some pretty mysterious gold reserves. I'm a US/UK citizen, I'm not arguing a pro Russia position here just talking realpolitik and geo politics. Here's a Russian position which arguably gives away that gold and currency control is central to their positions http://thes…

Your replies are getting further and further away from your original definitive statement that Russia has the most gold reserves on the planet. It's all a bit strange.

Now that we're down to claims about the US lying about its gold reserves I'm afraid I have to check out.

Re: ‘Housing in ‘07 wasn’t a bubble” is a true statement that almost no one believes

#105

Post by sumedh »

imtringued wrote: post #92
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a broad diatribe against monetary base expansion. The counterfactual for which, post crisis, we have in Europe. (And Depression-era America.)

I find it amusing when people automatically think that an increase in the money supply must result in inflation. There is this inherent contradiction that people are angry that the money supply grows because they save, while themselves demanding high interest rates like 5% to let their money compound over time. If you limit the money supply and demand high interest, that interest must circulate from lender back to th…

> I find it amusing when people automatically think that an increase in the money supply must result in inflation.

Because that is what happens with other countries. The only reason US gets a free pass is because the dollar is a global currency which is sought by everyone.

Re: ‘Housing in ‘07 wasn’t a bubble” is a true statement that almost no one believes

#106

Post by sumedh »

csee wrote: post #20
LinAGKar wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably because it's mostly desert

No. The non-desert land per capita in Australia is more than twice that in the US.

Its not just desert, it about water as well. If I not mistaken large parts of Australia had drought in the last couple of years.

Re: ‘Housing in ‘07 wasn’t a bubble” is a true statement that almost no one believes

#107

Post by danaris »

MrMan wrote: post #95
nabla9 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of those things people just say like a tourette. Only study that attempted to quantify pundit accuracy (I know about) found out that Krugman was the most accurate public pundit. source: Hefferman, S., Klondar, E., & Tummarello, K. 2011. Are talking heads blowing hot air? An analysis of the accuracy of forecasts in the political media.

he is clearly right more often and about more things than most people, I dont understand the hate

From what I've seen, the hate is mostly because the things he says contradict the trickle-down bullshit right-wing and libertarian types tend to be steeped in.

Re: ‘Housing in ‘07 wasn’t a bubble” is a true statement that almost no one believes

#108

Post by olivermarks »

Cipater wrote: post #104
olivermarks wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/03/11/business/russia-economy-s... My understanding is that Russia's gold reserves are pretty tangible where the west has some pretty mysterious gold reserves. I'm a US/UK citizen, I'm not arguing a pro Russia position here just talking realpolitik and geo politics. Here's a Russian position which arguably gives away that gold and currency control is central to their positions http://thes…

Your replies are getting further and further away from your original definitive statement that Russia has the most gold reserves on the planet. It's all a bit strange. Now that we're down to claims about the US lying about its gold reserves I'm afraid I have to check out.

Thanks for correcting me, I was wrong about the Statista chart I posted. My point was a broader one about the war for who would control future world reserve currencies, which appears to be between the US, China and Russia right now with Russia making a bit of a hail Mary pass https://www.suissegold.eu/en/posts/russias-massive-gold-accu...

Re: ‘Housing in ‘07 wasn’t a bubble” is a true statement that almost no one believes

#109

Post by danaris »

jmole wrote: post #8
aeternum wrote: post #6

It would probably be more accurate to call it a subprime mortgage bubble. Those were the assets that were significantly over-priced. Or one could argue that in '07 they were correctly priced given the questionable assumption that home values would only increase. Home values themselves were high but definitely not in bubble territory. It was the derivatives that amplified those high home values. Specifically mortgages…

no one would have called it a bubble if it didn't pop. the pop came from the supply side, tons of mortgage companies selling now-cheap houses trying to claw back their money from bad loans. they patched the hole though, and now mortgages are larger than ever. great news for the banks and existing homeowners, bad news for anyone else.

But it was guaranteed to pop, because of the fundamental unsoundness of it.

Like aeternum said, it was only viable as long as prices kept increasing. Any kind of shock to the system would cause a wave of defaults.

And because of the bundling and spreading out of the CDOs based on these unsound mortgages, it essentially infected the entire system, meaning that that wave of defaults wouldn't just affect the real estate lending sector.

So, sure, in an imaginary world where house prices could monotonically increase forever, we could choose not to call this a bubble. But it really is just that: imaginary.

Re: ‘Housing in ‘07 wasn’t a bubble” is a true statement that almost no one believes

#110

Post by long_time_gone »

throwawaycities wrote: post #38

There is no doubt that the entire housing market was exploited to float the US economy and covered up a recession dating from 2000-2001 until the housing market could no longer be sustained resulting in a complete collapse of the financial markets and banking. The housing market didn’t “snap back” rather two unprecedented tax payer stimulus packages totaling just shy of $2T were given to the banks to finance millions…

> One of my favorite things to highlight was that following the Fed receiving taxpayer funds to prop up the stock market Disney had their greatest single day stock gains in history all while every single theme park, hotel and cruise ship were indefinitely shutdown and every single movie production was indefinitely suspended.

Probably because of their massively successful streaming service that was perfectly placed to pick up the slack. They also have one of the deepest content libraries around so production stoppage hurts them less than competitors like Amazon, Netflix, AppleTV.

To drive it home, Disney had record revenue in 4Q2021, driven by streaming and parks revenue [1]. Maybe it’s you who had it wrong?

[1] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/disney-stock-soars-after-r...

Post reply on HN