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Strategies & Market Trends : Booms, Busts, and Recoveries -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TobagoJack who wrote (14057)	1/27/2002 10:58:50 AM
From: AC Flyer	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 74559

Jay: Thank you for your thoughtful response to my slightly intrusive question. In the interests of full disclosure, until about 12 months ago, I too was convinced that a crash was coming. My hedge strategy was to sell my large, fully-valued (in my opinion) residence in a pricey Boston suburb and move into a smaller house with fix-up potential - the proverbial least expensive house on the street. This freed up a good chunk of cash, tax free. Extrapolating this experience was largely responsible for me changing my mind and deciding that we were going to avoid a crash. Please allow me to explain. A very important factor in current US economic performance that is perhaps not too visible to those outside the US is the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997. This changed the tax treatment of capital gains on a primary residence in a very, very significant way. Prior to 1997, capital gains on a primary residence were fully taxable at the capital gains tax rate. The tax due was deferrable in full, however, providing that the seller purchased another primary residence at a higher price than the sale price of the prior primary residence. The tax was also subject to a one time exclusion for a married couple of about $154,000, I think. The practical effect of this was that homeowners would avoid moving unless they could trade up and then, when they traded down as empty-nesters, they would pay tax on a very sizable capital gain. The Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997 has changed all of this. The capital gain on the sale of a primary residence is now TAX-FREE, up to a maximum capital gain of $500,000 for a married couple. What's more, this tax-free capital gain can be repeated EVERY TWO YEARS. Think about the effect this has had on house prices and also on people's economic behavior. First of all, the implicit portion of the projected capital gain that would have been lost in capital gains tax on a future sale is being arbitraged into house prices across the country. The result of this is a one time acceleration in the rate of increase in house prices that will continue until the arbitrage process is complete. Second, people's house buying behavior has been totally changed as there is now NO PENALTY for trading down. Prior to the 1997 Taxpayer Relief Act, for example, my wife and I would have had to pay a six-figure capital gains tax following our recent trade-down. Now we can trade down tax-free, work to improve our new residence using contractors or the sweat of our brows and capture the results of our labors tax-free. There is a tremendous incentive for entrepreneurial homeowners to treat their residence primarily as a leveraged investment. In aggregate, this results (I believe) in people selling their primary residence more frequently with the attendant economic activity this generates and also an ongoing country-wide effort to improve the quality of the housing stock. I believe that this factor may largely explain the resilience of residential real estate pricing, of construction spending and of consumer spending during what has been a very nasty recession for manufacturing and for telecomm.

To: TobagoJack who wrote (14057)	1/27/2002 4:05:52 PM
From: elmatador	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

"advancement is not evolutionary, but rather is a "series of peaceful interludes punctuated by intellectually violent revolutions", and in those revolutions "one conceptual world view is replaced by another". Thomas Kuhn in "The Structure of Scientific Revolution" We can say that in the economic world the violent revolutions, wars of the past, are not going to happen. The paradigm shift is going to happen. But via peaceful means. This is the new thing. The pieces of the chessboard are going to be re-arranged and not via war, as it's been in the past. The difference now is that is going to be peaceful means. And for that, we don't have a frame of reference to which we could relate. We know how it happened before via violent means. But we know nothing about a paradigm shift by peaceful means, despeit people seeking Great Depression as a guide. The governing elites, from the OECD capital cities, to Beijing, to Buenos Aires and everywhere else, are scared shitless of the coming paradigm shift by peaceful means. They have already discovered that fine tuning by G7 (actually a currency cartel) no longer work. Their own source of power, SOVEREIGNTY will no longer be there. The Euros have already acknowledged that. The postal stamps, military, colored pieces of cloth, a.k.a flags, national anthems and languages will be there. Only every four years people could say we are nationals of this or that country when the the soccer World Cup happens. But for all practical purposes, the anachronic nation'state is dead. If it is going to be by peaceful shift, being a military might won't help very much. Neither if you have a large territory, natural resources or big population. But you can say it is possible to thrown money around -since throwing weight around won't be effective- to buy good behavior and, at least some social peace. I find throwing money around (see Mexico 1995 or Turkey post-911) to buy social peace and good behavior the most likely outcome. Conversely, you can arm twist bad behavior, starving the country for cash as per Argentina today. Slowly things start to clear up and Other alternative is just do not give a damn, such as Indonesia in the last 3 and half years. Of course we still have military around, most as a deterrent rather than a fighting machine. That because there is always someone to do the fighting for you, as per Afghanistan in the last couple of months. I've got only that far. But the fractal dimension is constant. Go at a transnational company level. Take Siemens for instance. It can build infrastructure in Thailand because it can buy the contract. Alsthom offered the lower price but Siemens provided financing. The national champion will still be there. And investing in a national chapmion could be the way to go. If times get rough, Siemens will get sales just by the sheer force of the taxes it pays in its home country. So if times get rough the Minister of Health decide to change the RX-machines in the hospitals or modernize some subway rolling stock and the company gets going. This is, at company level, how one throw money around. At the individual level it will be the same: Throw money at the people, which is why many people have two mortgages in their properties in the US and credit and debt is everywhere and half million dollars HK fixed term investment buys only a couple of burgers. So throwing money around is create purchase power to the economy prod along. Which leads to the conclusion that one individual has to have cash to throw around to accomodate himself in the new order. OK, you may ask if this will generate a Boom or lets us slide further in the current Bust, I don't know. But we should at least think about: 1) Paradigm shift by peaceful means 2) Brute force won't help (only in very specific case, it will) 3) Buy good behavior and social peace by throwing money around. I can't come out with any other outcome -and I have tried a lot- after six months of burning my brain to find a second possibility.