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Not very helpful.

Also, “People die but we know that they do not all die from the same causes.”

Not true. We all die for the same reason, the route we take to get there varies. Likewise bubbles all die for the same reason, because they ARE. Perhaps a bit too existential for you but hey, that’s not my problem.

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Whatever the differences in our view and despite your perverse need to taunt others and indulge in playschool fantasy of dishing out imaginary grades, I have to admire you for your high work rate in this blog.

I have no problems with bears using a well tested model based on the simple premise of cycles of booms and busts. I subscribed to that model until lately (translation: I stopped being a bear). It defies logic and imagination that since 2004 Canada and BC can still stand tall when all around have succumbed. That’s why I believe we now need a more versatile model in order to capture more accurately what’s happening in the commodity-based Canadian economy.

Everything might crash for different reasons but because they all crash we can falsely conclude that they crashed for similar reasons (were they similar?). People die but we know that they do not all die from the same causes.

Also, a hypothetical or past example (market busts) should not be used to make a real life prediction, maybe, just to explain something. Hypothetically, a top team will beat a weaker team, but this need not happen.

So I predict a crash for 2013 instead of 2008-2012, your Doomsday scenario. Why 2013? “Well, it’s a few years after the Olympics, things will slow down and you know, a crash must happen since the others have long ago crashed but this is just the broad stroke, I’ll flesh out the details later”. Isn’t this the same fuzzy, airy-fairy Freudian logic to avoid?

I prefer to deal with hard core Numbers that are at the tip of my nose and revise my hypotheses accordingly as and when the Numbers change significantly. Isn’t this the reason why GDP reports are issued at quarterly intervals so that the authorities can tweak their monetary policy accordingly? They never make long term predictions.

If the Numbers remain roughly the same in 2-3 months, I’ll bet the present 58:42 ratio will change when some bears defect.

Anyway, everything in life is judged by their consequences. Time will tell if “your” team or the other 42% of posters called it correct. Good luck.

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It already is, the BOC keeps lowering prime but the banks refuse to lower their key lending rates. On top of that it’s becoming harder and harder to qualify for ‘discount’ rates. I would imagine the upwards push applies to all loan types, people applying for new loans will face increasingly higher rates or may be bumped beyond a ‘bankable’ category of risk entirely.

Especially in the case of condos, in Miami many of the major banks have blacklisted certain developments, they will not give a mortgage to anyone buying in those developments period.

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The words are there but the underlying issues are lacking.

Remember when I said he had the broad strokes but didn’t go into the finer details? That’s where you run into trouble.

His logic was based on an assumption that Vancouver would perform similarly to other North American and world cities which have been in the same bubble with us. Your argument is just a re-hashing of the typical bull, “we’re different” rhetoric. I’ll give you 50 points for style but minus several thousand for good thinking.

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Great, a master template exists! I’ll use the scenario that Anonymous mused over:

…On the other hand, if it ends up being just a matter of Vancouver prices having reached unaffordable levels, I think 20% of current would be the stablizing point.

and rewrite Betamax’s:

A 20% drop would cause speculators to bail and cause a drop in employment and consumer spending, making any slowdown/recession worse. The virtuous cycle becomes vicious and prices fall further before hitting bottom

A 20% drop caused speculators to bail out, but buyers who had missed out when the market dropped twice in the last 4 years moved in. A number of them had sold earlier or had saved wads of cash. They were not going to miss out again now that Vancouver property prices appear more affordable to them.
The virtuous cycle avoided becoming vicious and prices stabilized around this level and appear to regain some upward momentum. BNN (Business News Network) which had interviewed last March 4, 2008 a financial expert who predicted that Canada would narrowly avoid a recession in the next two quarters of Spring and Summer (expected GDP growth of 0.5% each quarter) now suggests that these figures can possibly be revised upward a little more optimistically. The DJIA also seems to have finally priced in the fallout from the subprime property market crash especially after the Federal Reserve had reduced interest rates by a further 50 basis points last March 18 2008…

At least now we can have two contrasting scenarios both framed within a very rational system. Maybe, just flip a coin to decide which scenario would emerge 3 months from now…

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in pink with Hello Kitty graffiti
yep enuf to scare the crap outa you!

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you’ll meet some real bikers!

presumably non-tattooed home owner type bikers

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picture of Cameron Muir at the top.

looks like a biker

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To see a couple of bears duking it out over some stalemate situation must mean that you’re really pumped, or that it must be getting a bit crowded in the bear pit.

Anyway, as a third bear, I’m asking you to knock it off already. Enough is enough.

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I simply made a comment about the news - and you decide to jump all over me - trying to prove how smart you are

only, you don’t have a stat or a figure to back it up either - because there aren’t any - we have no idea how much equity Vancouverites have in their homes today

you consider my logic fuzzy -I consider yours ridiculous - because I live here, I look around every day, and no one has been “sitting” on their equity - they’ve been spending like it’s the gold rush (my note about taking out a home equity loan to buy a hummer is a true story, it was a guy with a 60k a year job)

so - take your bully bullsh*t - and try to impress someone else - sometimes people are just having a conversation - you don’t always have to try to prove your intellectual superiority (cough cough)

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DoMain corner of Main/12th. Just a guess, but man that sure is a slowww project.

If I’m right I would say that the Mt Pleasant condo build-up is slowing…

Dwell - show rooms; but never started
Alyse - show rooms, but never started
Sophia - 85% complete; project in receivership
Jacobsen - show rooms have been up for nearly a year; construction started.
Domain - construction started; work progressing slowly
Stella - good looking project; behind schedule; but progressing.

As to my earlier post, if a receiver can only borrow at ~25%APR to finish a project, then any of these guys who are tight for cash must be thinking that the $dollars don’t add up to make a good margin. Maybe it’s easier to throw in the towel, ie. don’t chase bad money with more good money - or something like that.

Or I could be wrong…I thought the whole market was out of control in 2005…

Can the guy who has access to Builders Lien’s information post see if anything is askew at DoMain?

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Also, I just thought I’d mention in response to your tirade against joe (not a pseudo of mine btw). There are generally two reasons why people devolve to insults;

1) they can’t create a solid argument so resort to ad homenim attacks

2) they are frustrated at their counterpart’s inability to recognize very obvious and simple truths and unleash their frustration in the form of insults

Next time you score a “victory” in a debate maybe you should think about it and see if you might be missing something obvious.

Also you’re not a “messenger” you created that data point out of thin air and blind guesswork which is not usually the best kind of point to try to defend in a debate. You have no rationale for your argument except that you believe it which is about as far from “victory” as it’s possible to get in a debate. I know you’re technically on “our” (the bear) side but this is exactly the kind of fuzzy math and erroneous logic used by the bulls to justify their position.

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