sell! sell! sell!

[tiznow]

With ethereum the possibilities are endless..

With Bitcoin it is what it is and that's all it will ever be... as time goes on there will be lots more crypto competition/ethereum based stuff...

buying ether is buying the "oil" that runs it and betting the platform itself will be a huge thing.. with lotsa crypto offshoots..

Russian kid who started ethereum dropped outta college and worked on Bitcoin initially with a Thiel fellowship .. he than saw the limitations of Bitcoin and created ethereum

ripple ramp right now comedy don't like that one either.. crypto definitely fun to watch.. no bets placed by me for now..

 

[tiznow]

Markets down a whole half a percent on trump might get impeached due to comey memo...

 

[tiznow]

Maybe this the bubble topping event.. "they" can now point finger at trump/GOP and blame him/them.. past 8 years of monetary lunacy during obama years not the problem at all!

 

[tiznow]

Stagflation hitting your homeland Eekster

--------

[h=1]Britons' Falling Real Wages Show Challenging Times Have Arrived[/h]More stories by Scott HamiltonMay 17, 2017, 4:30 AM EDT
It looks like those hard times the Bank of England warned about are here already.
Even as unemployment dropped to its lowest in more than four decades last quarter, U.K. workers saw their real earnings fall for the first time in 2 1/2 years, data from the Office for National Statistics showed on Wednesday. That’s particularly problematic for a nation that has relied on buoyant consumers to keep spending, not least as it enters negotiations to leave the world’s largest trading bloc.

The figures are almost certain to fuel the debate over living standards as Britain prepares for a general election on June 8. Real earnings are still below their level before the 2008 financial crisis, and their recovery over the past two years is now going into reverse as the weak pound pushes up prices. BOE Governor Mark Carney said last week that households will face “challenging times” in the second half.
“With increases in regular pay slowing again, earnings growth is now comfortably trailing behind inflation,” said Suren Thiru, head of economics at the British Chambers of Commerce. “If the disparity between pay and price growth continues to increase as we predict, household spending is likely to slow further, weakening overall economic activity.”
Regular pay adjusted for inflation fell 0.2 percent, the ONS said. Nominal earnings slowed to growth of 2.1 percent, an eight-month low. The unemployment rate fell to 4.6 percent, the lowest since 1975.
At the same time, inflation is heading toward 3 percent this year, squeezing consumer spending. In March alone, real earnings fell 0.5 percent, the biggest decline since July 2014. That’s already feeding through retail sales, which recorded their largest drop in seven years in the first quarter. Figures for April will be published on Thursday.
After Wednesday’s report, Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond said that government forecasts still show rising real wages for the next five years and that inflation will be “transient.”

Carney, whose forecasts assume that Brexit goes smoothly, last week highlighted the risk of rockier times ahead for British households. While officials see wages rebounding next year, the outlook for 2017 is subdued as uncertainty about future trading arrangements and higher costs brought about by the ailing pound lead employers to clamp down on costs.
The fall in unemployment also takes the jobless rate closer to the 4.5 percent that the central bank estimates is the level that can be sustained without generating inflation. For March alone, the rate was 4.3 percent. Yet for most BOE policy makers, the fact that earnings remain subdued despite a healthy labor market suggests, for now, there is still enough slack to keep interest rates at a record low.

 

[tiznow]

"They" floated the bait (cheap debt) and everybody took it as usual..

debt levels back to the 2007 levels..

--------

[h=1]Americans' debt back at record high after nearly a decade[/h]

A cashier counts money in a file photo. REUTERS/ERIC THAYER





By Jonathan Spicer | NEW YORK
(Reuters) - Americans' debt level reached a record high this year, surpassing the peak touched just as the worst of the recession was taking hold in 2008, and marking a milestone for households that now lean less on mortgages and more on auto and student loans.
Total U.S. household debt was $12.73 trillion at the end of the first quarter of 2017, up $473 billion from a year ago, according to a Federal Reserve Bank of New York survey released on Wednesday.
Total indebtedness is now 14 percent above the 2013 trough of household deleveraging brought on by the 2007-2009 financial crisis and Great Recession. The previous peak, in the third quarter of 2008, was $12.68 trillion, and the New York Fed stressed that the pull-back since then marked an "aberration" from what had been a 63-year upward trend in household debt.
The quarterly survey on household debt and credit showed that overall delinquency rates were roughly flat at 4.8 percent. While balances have steadily shifted to more credit-worthy borrowers, New York Fed economists raised some concern over the 11 percent of student loan debt that was "seriously delinquent" at the end of March.
"This record debt level is neither a reason to celebrate nor a cause for alarm," Donghoon Lee, a research officer at the New York Fed, said in the report. "Auto loan and credit card delinquency flows are now trending upwards, and those for student loans remain stubbornly high."
The survey showed lenders tightened borrowing standards for home and auto loans, a sign of their increased caution.
Mortgage debt of $8.63 trillion, while up $258 billion from a year ago, represents a much smaller share of overall indebtedness than during the crisis.
Taking up the slack has been student loans, which rose $83 billion in a year to $1.34 trillion at the end of the first quarter, as well as auto loans, which rose by $96 billion to $1.17 trillion, the survey said.

ADVERTISEMENT


​

The shifts in borrowers come after a slow and uneven recovery from recession in which the economy has grown at a roughly 2 percent pace, less than previous decades. In a nod to falling unemployment and stable inflation, the Fed has raised interest rates twice since December and plans further hikes this year.
Yet while the survey painted a rosy picture of delinquency rates generally heading lower, especially on mortgages and credit cards, the trend among student loans deteriorated from 2004 to 2014 "and has remained stubbornly high since then," New York Fed economists wrote in a blog.
Last month, New York Fed President William Dudley, among the most influential rate-setters at the U.S. central bank, warned that rising student loan debt could ultimately hurt overall home ownership and consumer spending. [nL2N1HB0L7]

 

[tiznow]

Amazes me how out of touch with reality these guys are..

bubbles are are very very easy to see.. tech bubble.. 2007 (housing/leverage/banking) .. and now the current everything bubble (auto, student loan, corporate debt, housing etc)

the hard part is when it blows.. but bubble seeing very very easy..

everything bubble cause u kept rates low too long/QE too much.. the damage already done.. keeping low longer will only grow the bubbles bigger.. there is no free lunch.. we have spent our futures .. they are gone

----------

Fed's Kashkari says don't use rate hikes to fight bubbles

15 Mins AgoReuters

Mark Kauzlarich | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Neel Kashkari, president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.

Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank President Neel Kashkari on Wednesday warned against using
interest-rate hikes to address unwanted asset bubbles, saying that bubbles are hard to identify and such hikes would likely do more harm than good.
Kashkari is a voting member this year on the U.S. central bank's policy committee, and in March was the lone dissenter on a Fed vote to raise rates for the third time since the Great Recession. He has previously said he opposed the rate hike because he felt keeping rates low would result in more jobs for Americans who want to work.
Some Fed officials have worried that keeping rates too low for too long could create asset bubbles that could set the U.S. economy up for another recession. But the main reason Fed chair Janet Yellenand others have given for raising rates is not to tamp down bubbles, but to keep a now nearly fully employed economy from going into overdrive.


Kashkari's latest essay argues that keeping a sharp eye out for potential bubbles and using supervisory powers to protect banks from failures are better options than raising rates.
"Given the challenges of identifying bubbles with any confidence and the costs of making a policy mistake, I believe the odds of circumstances ever making sense to use monetary policy to try to slow asset prices down are very low," he wrote.

"I won't say never but a whole lot of evidence would have to line up just right for it to be the prudent course of action."

 

[tiznow]

Auto bubble a great example of a very obvious bubble.. no difficulty seeing just was matter of when the pop..

------------

[h=1]Carmageddon: All 3 Major Auto Markets Contract YoY For The First Time Since January 2009[/h]For the first time since January 2009, sales of cars declined year-over-year in all three of the world's largest auto markets of Western Europe (-6.8%), China (-1.8%) and the United States (-3.7%). Combined, these three markets account for roughly 70% of the world's auto sales (chart per Bloomberg).

And while auto OEMs spent the first part of 2017 ignoring the growing signs of trouble facing their industry, some are finally starting to admit that all is not well in autoland. As we noted a couple of days ago (see "How Is This Not A Recession? Ford To Slash 10% Of Global Workforce"), Ford just announced plans to cut about 10% of its global workforce. Meanwhile Nissan Motor is forecasting a surprise drop in profit this year and Toyota Motor expects an 18% decline as well.
As we've been saying for months, this is likely just the beginning of what may be a very painful several quarters for the auto industry. So what else could go wrong? Here is a just a short summary from Morgan Stanley's auto team, led by Adam Jonas, of the things that could cause used car prices to crash by up to 50% over the next 4-5 years...which, of course, is probably not great news for new car prices either (Executive Summary: flood of supply, poor lending standards and desperate OEMs who need to keep new car sales elevated at all costs):

• Off-lease supply: This has already more than doubled since 2012 and is set to rise another 25% over the next 2 years.

• Extended credit terms: Auto loans are at record lengths and lease assumptions (residuals, money factor) are at record levels of accommodation.

• Rising rates: Starting from record low levels in auto loans.

• Overdependency on auto ABS:The outstanding balance of auto securitizations has surpassed last cycle's peak.

• Record high deep subprime participation: 32% of subprime auto ABS deals were deep subprime (weighted average FICO < 550) in 2016 vs. 5% in 2010.

• Record high units of new car inventory: 2016YE unit inventory levels were near 10% higher than 2015YE, and are continuing to trend higher in 2017.

• OEM price competition: Car manufacturers have capacitized to a 19mm or 20mm SAAR. At this point in the cycle we start seeing more money 'on the hood' to move the metal. As new car prices fall, used prices look relatively more expensive, which necessitates a decline in used prices to equilibrate the supply/demand imbalance.

• Increased ADAS penetration:We expect auto firms to achieve nearly 100% active safety penetration by 2020, creating an unprecedented safety gap between new and used vehicles, accelerating obsolescence of the used stock. Rising insurance premiums on older cars could accelerate this shift.

• Trouble in the car rental market: Due to a number of secular shifts, including how consumers access transportation options (e.g. ride sharing), car rental firms are facing stagnant growth, weak pricing and over-fleeted conditions. As these cars hit the auction, the impact on prices could be significant.

And here are the stats...
Off-lease volumes have already doubled since 2012 and are only expected to get worse...meanwhile, lending standards have gradually gotten worse and worse...

...as further revealed by the growing share of 'deep subprime' loans in auto ABS deals.

But lenders are starting to get worried and are tightening lending standards for the first time since the great recession. (Note: Shows net percentage of respondents reporting tightening standards on consumer loans for new and used autos. Negative numbers indicate loosening standards.)

Meanwhile, none of the warnings about a flood of used car volumes about to hit the market has impacted new car volumes being pumped out by the OEMs and pushed on to dealer lots.

All of which results in this fairly brutal outlook for used car prices and, by extension, the auto market generally.

Dear OEMs, the first step is admitting you have a problem.

 

[tiznow]

Bitcoin being Anonomous/untraceable a farse eekster.. may be a way to hide it if u really know what u doing..

and this is exaxtly why blockchain will be huge caus wits a ledger system "they" can track.. ethereum opens up limitless possibilities.. Bitcoin will never chain is faith based and not completely anonymous as advertised..

------------------

"If it was me, I would want people to use bitcoin all day, because you can trace it," said Luke Wilson, vice president for law enforcement at Elliptic, a London-based security firm that tracks illicit bitcoin transactions and that counts the U.S. Federal Bureau for Investigations (FBI) among its clients.

https://www.google.com/amp/mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKCN18E2F1

 

[tiznow]

Bitcoin and ether new highs.. ether continues to gain on Bitcoin in total market cap..

 

[tiznow]

Ether up to 114

-------

[h=1]Ethereum-Based Aragon Raises $25 Million Under 15 Minutes in Record ICO - CryptoCoinsNews[/h]11 hours ago
[h=1]Ethereum-Based Aragon Raises $25 Million Under 15 Minutes in Record ICO[/h]

Samburaj Das
11 hours ago

TwitterLinkedin FacebookReddit Weibo


Ethereum-based enterprise management platform Aragon has announced details of its Wednesday ICO token sale, raising a mammoth $25 million.
Get exclusive analysis of bitcoin and learn from our trading tutorials. Join Hacked.com for just $39 now.

The token sale saw participation from 2,403 buyers around the world and lasted under 15 minutes to raise the figure for a token sale that was originally set to run until June 14, 2017.
As a decentralized management platform, Aragon offers basic company management features such as governance, payroll, accounting, cap table management, fundraising and more.
Aragon placed cryptographically sealed hardcoded hidden cap that was only revealed during the sale, for “not wanting to put the Ethereum Network at any risk” revealed Aragon co-founder and project lead Luis Cuende.
Notably, the full token sale amount invested into Aragon was in Ether, despite Aragon’s partnership with ShapeShift which allowed users to purchase the ANT (Aragon Network Tokens) with 25 digital currencies.
Advertisement:

The $25 million token sale doubles the previous ICO record holder Gnosis, an Ethereum-based prediction market that raised $12.5 million in just under 10 minutes during the end of April.
Aragon’s token sale is now the 4[SUP]th[/SUP] highest funded crowdsale ever and only the second behind last year’s DAO as the largest FinTech crowdsale ever.
In concluding the record ICO, Cuende stated:

We now have the resources to hire the best talent and execute one of the most ambitious projects, one which has the potential to create a more equal and fair society.
​

The revenue from the token sale will be deployed to Aragon Institution MTÜ, an Estonian-based non-profit established by Aragon earlier this month. The company will use the funds to ‘develop Aragon Core and the Aragon Network (AN), implementing security audits and hiring additional developers and operational staff,’ the company revealed.
“This project is cool. Very cool. Businesses of the future who are looking to integrate the blockchain into their business models will certainly be considering the Aragon platform, for its ease of use and powerful features,” wrote CCN’s own P.H. Madore in an extensive analysis of Aragon last week. ” The chances of it competing swimmingly in the arena of blockchain-for-business is very high. It’s easy to see more modules being developed for the platform. A moonshot thought is that someone like UPS or FedEx might integrate their own data into the network in order to help businesses track packages as well as to help themselves keep track of them in an immutable way. One assumes these companies already have proprietary solutions in place, but Aragon could be very attractive to them nevertheless, or a big help to competitors for them in less-developed regions.”
Over the course of this year, Aragon expects to staff 10 people in its team, ahead of its release in late 2018.

 

[eek.]

Bitcoin hits $2000

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-39997585

 

[tiznow]

Took me too long for lightbulb to go in eekster... didn't until I researched ethereum.. with its potential to create a decentralized web.. vs current version which is a surveillance state... may be a libertarian wet dream but good to see the programming kiddos going for it and getting lots of support as crypto market valuation up to 77 bil.. may be just the beginning of next big thing although there certainly will be more bumps in the road.....and im sure google, Apple, amazon, global governments etc will do what they can to get in the way..

 

[tiznow]

S&p back to trying 2400 once again on sunshine and unicorn trump budget

----------

[h=1]Larry Summers: Trump’s budget is simply ludicrous[/h]By Lawrence H. Summers
May 23, 2017 at 5:00 AM

Wonkblog | Perspective
[h=1]Larry Summers: Trump’s budget is simply ludicrous[/h]By Lawrence H. Summers
May 23, 2017 at 5:00 AM
Details of President Trump’s first budget have now been released. Much can and will be said about the dire social consequences of what is in it and the ludicrously optimistic economic assumptions it embodies. My observation is that there appears to be a logical error of the kind that would justify failing a student in an introductory economics course.
Apparently, the budget forecasts that U.S. economic growth will rise to 3.0 percent because of the administration’s policies — largely its tax cuts and perhaps also its regulatory policies. Fair enough if you believe in tooth fairies and ludicrous supply-side economics.
Then the administration asserts that it will propose revenue neutral tax cuts with the revenue neutrality coming in part because the tax cuts stimulate growth! This is an elementary double count. You can’t use the growth benefits of tax cuts once to justify an optimistic baseline and then again to claim that the tax cuts do not cost revenue. At least you cannot do so in a world of logic.





The Trump team prides itself on its business background. This error is akin to buying a company assuming that you can make investments that will raise profits, but then, in calculating the increased profits, counting the higher revenue while failing to account for the fact that the investments would actually cost some money to make. The revenue generated by the investments might exceed their cost (though the same is almost never true of tax cuts), but that doesn’t change the fact that the investment has a cost that must be included in the accounting.
This is a mistake no serious business person would make. It appears to be the most egregious accounting error in a presidential budget in the nearly 40 years I have been tracking them.
Who knew what when? I have no doubt that there are civil servants in Office of Management and Budget, the Treasury and the Council of Economics who do know better than this mistake. Were they cowed, ignored or shut out? How could the secretary of the treasury, the director of OMB and the director of the National Economic Council allow such an elementary error? I hope the press will ferret all this out.
The president’s personal failings are now not just center stage but whole stage. They should not blind us to the manifest failures of his economic team. Whether it is Secretary Mnuchin’s absurd claims about tax cuts not favoring the rich, Secretary Ross’s claim that the small squib of a deal negotiated last week with China was the greatest trade result with China in history, NEC Director Cohn's ludicrous estimate of the costs of Dodd-Frank, or today's budget, the Trump administration has not yet made a significant economic pronouncement that meets a minimal standard of competence and honesty.










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[tiznow]

Latest housing bubble may have now reached its peak.. at full employment and average joe can't afford the prices... that and mortgage rates up from what everybody used to with ZIRP policy..

---------

New home sales in the US fell much more than expected in April.
Sales slumped 11.4% at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 569,000, the Census Bureau said in its monthly report.
Economists had forecast that sales of new single-family homes fell 1.8% at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 610,000, according to Bloomberg.
Sales in March, which were revised higher, rose for a third-straight month and lifting the pace at the start of the busy spring selling season towards the highs set in 2016.
Most of the sales, however, were not made in the affordable end of the market where homes cost less than $200,000. Even though there's demand from buyers, a shortage of affordable homes, and prices rising faster than wage growth, is keeping many would-be shoppers out of the market.
In April, sales in the West fell by 26.3%, the most since October 2010. Sales did not rise in any other region.

 

[tiznow]

[h=2]Big auto lender only checked 8% of applicants' incomes[/h]By Heather Long May 27, 2017: 4:52 PM ET


Nearly 107 million Americans have an auto loan.
It's a record high, and there are growing concerns that many people who obtained their car loans really can't afford them.
Alarm bells are ringing because one of the largest subprime auto lenders in the nation -- Santander Consumer USA -- only checked the incomes of 8% of its applicants, according to a new report from Moody's Investors Service. Subprime refers to loans made to people with poor credit.

​

"A lack of income verification...creates more uncertainty around whether borrowers will be able to afford their monthly payments," Moody's wrote.
By comparison, Santander's main competitor in the subprime auto lender space -- AmeriCredit -- verified 64% of applicant incomes.
Santander's behavior is reminiscent of the practices that led to the home loan crisis where people were getting home mortgages who clearly should not have. The difference is that car loans are for smaller amounts and make up a far tinier portion of the overall economy.
Still, there are concerns since losses at subprime auto lenders are at the highest rate since the aftermath of the Great Recession. S&P Global Ratings found that losses on subprime auto loans in January hit 9.1%, the worst level since 2010.
"The warning bells are blaring too loud to ignore any longer," says Erin Mahoney of the Committee for Better Banks, a group advocating for reform.
Related: Auto sales are slowing, and upheaval is next
Santander is pushing back by saying that it looks at many metrics to determine if someone should get a loan. Proof of income isn't always the best indicator of whether someone can repay a loan, some say.
"We are entirely committed to treating our customers fairly and lending responsibly," a Santander Consumer USA spokeswoman told CNNMoney. "We consider a wide range of factors to manage and price for risk."
Related: A record 107 million Americans have car loans
Moody's points out that this doesn't mean it's time to panic. The auto loan industry is much smaller than the home loan market. Even if a lot of people do default on their car loans, it wouldn't rock the global economy in the same way the mortgage crisis did.
"The size is not comparable," says Nicky Dang, a vice president at Moody's.
People don't need to take out nearly as much debt to buy a vehicle. While the typical American home costs around $200,000, the average new car is about one-sixth that amount, or under $35,000.
Dang also says that while auto loan defaults have risen recently, they are "definitely not that high" compared to historical trends.
The other key difference is that nearly all home mortgages were being packaged together on Wall Street and sold on to investors globally on a mass scale. That's not happening at nearly the same extent with auto loans. Less than 20% of subprime autoloans are "securitized" on Wall Street, according to S&P Global.
In its report, Moody's was looking specifically at income verification of car loans that were packaged together into bonds.
May 27
NEW YORK

 

[tiznow]

[h=1]All Hell Breaks Loose In Toronto's House Price Bubble[/h]Authored by Wolf Richter via WolfStreet.com,
“It’s fear.”
During the first two weeks in May, according to preliminary data from Toronto Real Estate Board, home listings surged 47% from the same period last year even as sales plunged 16%. The average selling price dropped 3.3% from April – and this, after a 33% year-over-year spike in home prices in March and a 25% surge in April. Something is happening to Toronto’s blistering house price bubble.
Canada’s largest alternative mortgage lender, Home Capital Group, which focuses on new immigrants and subprime borrowers turned down by the banks, is melting down after a run on its depositsthat crushed its funding sources. The industry is worried about contagion.
At the same time, the provincial government of Ontario announced a slew of drastic measures, including a 15% tax on purchases by non-resident foreign investors to tamp down on the housing market insanity that left many locals unable to buy even a modest home.
It comes after Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz warned in April that home prices are in “an unsustainable zone,” that the market “has divorced itself from any fundamentals that we can identify,” that there was “no fundamental story that we could tell to justify that kind of inflation rate in housing prices,” and that “It’s time we remind folks that prices of houses can go down as well as up. People need to ask themselves very carefully, ‘Why am I buying this house?”’
A few days ago, Moody’s Investors Service downgraded Canada’s six largest banks on concerns over their exposure to the housing bubble and household indebtedness that ranks among the highest in the world.
[h=3]Now even the relentlessly optimistic industry begins to fret:[/h]

“We are seeing people who paid those crazy prices over the last few months walking away from their deposits,” Carissa Turnbull, a Royal LePage broker in the Toronto suburb of Oakville, told Bloomberg. She said they didn’t get a single visitor to an open house over the weekend. “They don’t want to close anymore.”
“Definitely a perception change occurred from Home Capital,” Shubha Dasgupta, owner of Toronto-based mortgage brokerage Capital Lending Centre, told Bloomberg.
“In less than one week we went from having 40 or 50 people coming to an open house to now, when you are lucky to get five people,” Case Feenstra, an agent at Royal LePage Real Estate Services Loretta Phinney in Mississauga, Ontario, told Bloomberg. “Everyone went into hibernation.”
“I’ve had situations where buyers are trying to find another buyer to take over their deal,” Toronto real estate lawyer Mark Weisleder told Bloomberg. Some clients want out of transactions, he said. “They are nervous whether they bought right at the top and prices may come down.” Home Capital had “a bigger impact on the market” than Ontario’s announcement of the new rules, he said.
“Home Capital is affecting things because people who can’t get mortgages from the banks rely on them and other b-lenders,” Lorand Sebestyen, an agent with iPro Realty in Toronto, told Bloomberg. “If you can’t get the mortgage then you obviously can’t buy anything and it’s going to affect the market, especially for the higher-priced properties.”
“It’s fear,” said Joanne Evans, owner of Century 21 Millennium, about the impact of Home Capital on housing. “It’s another contributing factor to the fear of ‘what’s going to happen?”’
​

[h=3]And it’s ever so slowly sinking in more broadly.[/h]In Canada, the theory has spread that real estate values can never-ever go down in any significant way – on the theory that they always go up – because they didn’t take a big hit during the Financial Crisis, and because the prior declines have been forgotten. So optimism about rising home prices had been huge. Now weekly polling data by Nanos Research for Bloomberg is showing the first signs of second thoughts. Two weeks ago, the share of people saying home prices would rise in the next six months was a record 50.1%. The following week, it dropped to 47.7%. In the most recent poll, it dropped to 46%.
But those who are able to sell at what appears to be the very tippy-top of the market are not complaining. Bloomberg cites business school professor Michael Hartmann who put his north Toronto home up for sale on May 17 sold it on May 22 for C$1.65 million, C$10,000 above asking price. He and his wife are planning to rent and see.
What are homes & mortgages worth when push comes to shove? Read… Chilling Thing Insiders Said about Canada’s House Price Bubble

 

[tiznow]

Cracks starting to form in the everything bubble

been reading up a lot on blockchain/ethereum lately my general conclusion is that while the technology is very promising and will likey have a very large market with many players making good bank I feel at this stage it's sort of in a 90s dot com boom phase.. scalability is the big issue I see.. and there is a lot of money looking to go places right now since everything is a bubble/extremely overvalued.. better to just continue to watch it for now IMO .. who knows anymore.. at the peaks of bubbles not a whole lot makes much sense...

 

[PatsFan1283]

Putting a foreign tax on property purchases seems like a good idea. I think NY, SF, LA, Boston, etc would be smart to implement something like that.

Land is a finite resource, especially in coastal regions.

Can't really think of much downside to that other than the real estate industry not being able to sell tons of property to rich Asians.

 

[tiznow]

Our country isn't in the business of making positive policy choices for the long term that likely will have negative near term comsequences.. rather its number one goal seems to the complete opposite.. goose things as much as possible for the near term no matter how illogical/terrible these policy choices will be for the long term..

 

[tiznow]

Sounds like things extremely bubbly down under as well..

? Of when

-----

[h=1]"This Market Is Crazy": Hedge Fund Returns Hundreds Of Millions To Clients Citing Imminent "Calamity"[/h]While hardly a novel claim - in the past many have warned that Australia's housing and stock market are massive asset bubbles (which local banks were have been forced to deny as their fates are closely intertwined with asset prices even as the RBA is increasingly worried) - so far few if any have gone the distance of putting their money where their mouth was. That changed, when Australian asset manager Altair Asset Management made the extraordinary decision to liquidate its Australian shares funds and return "hundreds of millions" of dollars to its clients according to the Sydney Morning Herald, citing an impending property market "calamity" and the "overvalued and dangerous time in this cycle".
"Giving up management and performance fees and handing back cash from investments managed by us is a seminal decision, however preserving client's assets is what all fund managers should put before their own interests," Philip Parker, who serves as Altair's chairman and chief investment officer, said in a statement on Monday quoted by the SMH.
The 30-year investing veteran said that on May 15 he had advised Altair clients that he planned to "sell all the underlying shares in the Altair unit trusts and to then hand back the cash to those same managed fund investors." Parker also said he had "disbanded the team for time being", including his investment committee comprising of several prominent bears such as former Morgan Stanley chief economist and noted bear Gerard Minack and former UBS economist Stephen Roberts.

Altair chairman and chief investment officer Philip Parker.
Parker said he wanted "to make clear this is not a winding up of Altair, but a decision to hand back client monies out of equities which I deem to be far too risky at this point."
"We think that there is too much risk in this market at the moment, we think it's crazy," Parker said with a candidness few of his colleagues are capable of, at least when still managing money.
"Valuations are stretched, property is massively overstretched and most of the companies that we follow are at our one-year rolling returns targets – and that's after we've ticked them up over the past year. Now we are asking 'is there any more juice in these companies valuations?' and the answer is stridently, and with very few exceptions, 'no there isn't'."
Parker outlined a list of "the more obvious reasons to exit the riskier asset markets of shares and property". These include:

• the Australian east-coast property market "bubble" and its "impending correction";
• worries that issues around China's hot property sector and escalating debt levels will blow up "later this year";
• "oversized" geopolitical risks and an "unpredictable" US political environment;
• and the "overvalued" Aussie equity market.

But, to Parker, it was the overheated local property market that was the clearest and most present danger. "When you speak to people candidly in the banks, they'll tell you very specifically that they are extraordinarily worried about the over-leverage of the Australian population in general," he said. He flagged how exposed the country's lenders were to a correction.
"If they get a property downturn anything similar to 1989 to 1991 then they are going to have all sorts of issues," Parker said.
Parker's decision comes after a robust year of double-digit gains on the ASX. Not only that, but he is acting on his convictions by returning money to clients and abandoning the fees attached to a $2 billion advisory agreement.
Parker, however, displayed little nervousness about making such a significant decision. In fact, he said he has never been more certain of anything.
"Let me tell you I've never been more certain of anything in my life," Parker said. "I am absolutely certain we are in a bubble in this property market. Mortgage fraud is endemic, it's systemic, it's just terrible what's going on. When you've got 30-year-olds, who have never seen a property downturn before, borrowing up to 80 per cent to buy three and four apartments, it's a bubble."
In a rather dire forecast, Parker outlined a situation where the stock market could fall as low as 5200 points in the coming months, depending on the confluence of his identified risk factors.
"Australia hasn't had its GFC event, we've been living in this fool's paradise. But if China slows down the way the guys think it will towards the end of this year, then that's 70 per cent of our exports [affected]. You can see already that the commodity market is turning down."
Some speculated whether there is another motive behind the sudden shuttering, but Parker stridently denied any suggestion that there were other factors at play other than a pure investment decision. No personal issues, no position that has blown up and forced his hand. "No, God no," he said. "We've sold out all of our positions at huge profits for our clients."
"This game is all about reputation. I feel that we are right."
For now, Mr Parker said he was happy to take some time off. "I've never had more than five weeks off in a row. I'm probably going to have four months in a row, and if something happens in between, I'll think about it. Otherwise I'll enjoy the time off."
Come to think of it, in this "market", that may be the smartest thing to do.