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Strategies & Market Trends : The Residential Real Estate Crash Index -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: KyrosL who wrote (30343)	4/29/2005 6:59:31 AM
From: Elroy Jetson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

What is your preference for FAX over actually investing your money in Australia - convenience? Personally I've never been sold the FAX diversification into Korea and the Philippines. Incidentally, debt in Australia is distributed differently on the consumer and business side as well. Business debt is far higher. Consumer installment debt is 75% lower, yet investment debt is higher. The Australian Reserve Bank gets on the front page when ever Consumer Installment debt rises and continues until it falls. .

To: KyrosL who wrote (30343)	4/29/2005 10:11:56 AM
From: GraceZ	Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 306849

That 12% difference in population growth goes a small way to explain the difference in mortgage growth but I doubt it can explain away the difference between 1574% growth and 5,908% growth in mortgages outstanding. Any reasonable person not looking for a way to justify their position would have to attribute that breath-taking rise to inflation in housing prices. This implies monetary inflation. So whatever the Fed down there is doing, good intentions not-with-standing it ain't enough. But this is typical in this era of CBs fixing the cost of money, that a regime of gradualism is chosen, whereas the free market might have risen rates far higher, faster and sooner effectively killing off a housing asset bubble before it got a chance to start. Without a free market for money they have absolutely no way of knowing what the rate should be. A free market will discover price by exploring the extremes, which turn out to be less extreme than would be discovered with the gradual path that the CBs chose to take you to. In the 70s-80s our own CB made gradual changes right up to 21% without ever killing off speculation. The economy effectively died and speculation was all that was left! I do agree that the more conservative government in Australia has gone a long way to undo the damage that the more left leaning party did in the 80s to the Australian balance sheet but it's still a socialist country and socialism always is accompanied by inflation. What bailed them out for the most part was being on the receiving end of a commodities recovery. - they have NO long term social security liabilities. Their pensions are private. The government mandates contributions by all the employers which right now stand at 9%. The government runs a means tested pension scheme for the poor. Private in what regard, can I take out my money at any time? Can I put it in any investment I see fit? Are they guaranteed and by whom? Who picks up the cost of pensions for those who never work? What happens in the event that a private pension fails? Socialism always has future liabilities regardless of whether or not they are officially recognised. So maybe what you meant to say is that their future social security liabilities are more adequately covered than ours are because they didn't choose the ponzi scheme transfer system we chose but instead chose to put their pension money in something that actually benefits from the time value of money. So I'm assuming you are firmly behind the efforts to privatize our own system, right? Over the past 18 years, as I've aged from 32 to 50, my private health insurance for myself and my husband has gone from $2000/year to $4200/year and I get a tax break of 33% on that cost. The tax break makes my effective health insurance cost $2814 or $1407 per plan participant. I dare say no state subsidized national health insurance plan (including our own)can beat that price and I can use virtually any provider any where and they will pay ....minus my very reasonable deductible ($500 per year-with an 80-20 co-pay up to $2000 per plan year). Needless to say I don't think that the government is the only way to make healthcare universal. What a lot of poor people spend per year on cigarettes and alcohol would go a long way to cover private health insurance if they entered the plans early enough. People choose to spend that money elsewhere. I have no problem with that, but I do have a problem with them then needing me, someone who choses not to spend my money on drugs that are damaging to my health, to bail them out of their bad habits. How do they limit healthcare in Australia, do they have a committee of government appointees that decides who gets what? Is it as bad as in England where Tony Blair promises to get the waiting period for dental appointments below 2 years? Do people from Australia take surgery vacations like they do in Canada so they can get angioplasty in a place without a six month to a year wait time?