Here’s a response by Harper.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story.....using.html

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No. From The Globe and Mail:

The ratio of house prices to rents is now 25 per cent above the average. The ratio of house prices to incomes is also a troubling statistic: It is now about 4:1, meaning that the average house price is four-times the average household’s annual income. During the previous cyclical peak, in 1989, the ratio topped out at 3.2:1. Even more troubling, the U.S. market topped out at 3.9:1 in 2006, just before doom set in.

RBC has the affordability of major Canadian markets since 1985 here. The following cities have record low affordability:

Saint John
Halifax
Saskatoon
Calgary
Edmonton
Vancouver
Victoria

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Once again, it would be interesting to have some data to compare the two jurisdictions. Alas.

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Not a big deal though. In time, everybody will learn and will be discussing Credit Default Swaps.

Gadwin, you are ahead of your time.

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For the past 25 years we have lived through a glorious party.

We have all — governments, companies, banks and, of course, consumers — lived beyond our means and are paying the price.

There it is in a nutshell. The party is over. And nowhere has the party been more excessive than in BC.

Gordo’s “golden decade” is going to end in the hangover of a lifetime. Think the 80′s were bad? This is going to be a lot worse.

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*Approved immune system*Economy is not bad here *Unemployement rates are more than 30 year low*Child benefits are up*Income tax is down*Student loan is down/*Cdn university to offer free tuition for top students *Gst is down by 2%*Tax rebate for first time buyers is up*Increased amount of basic personal income /*save more by sharing with spouse*Interest rates are low.

When real estate bears complain about insane prices the above bundel is a relief for common people,I am not restricted to any political party but you can read the election result from the bundel above.

And oye that is my opinion so please do not yell at me like angry bear.

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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new.....tions.html

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http://www.abc.net.au/rn/count.....369074.htm

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What’s up buddy? Someone’s numbers bothering you?

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Not a big deal though. In time, everybody will learn and will be discussing Credit Default Swaps.

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Contrary to what a lot of people think, there is no “right to property” in the US Constitution. If you think there is a “right to property”, try growing dope in your back yard and see what happens.

What it actually says is this (Bill of Rights):

“No person shall be… deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation”

Which means that
(1) the government can seize property as punishment for an offense and
(2) the government can take private property for public use provided the owner is paid market value for it.

A recent Supreme Court ruling has said that “public use” means any purpose for which the government sees fit, including giving it to private developers.

In fact the situation in Canada is exactly the same, except that property rights are not defined in the Constitution but in statute law.

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One other point I think is a major player in all of this is outlined at The Big Picture.

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Some amazement on the longetivity of Harper’s government ensues till Bill comes back to comment on how after he built his home some years ago, his builder commented on how much more it would cost to build if he were to start then (prices of building materials have gone up). Garth replies things can change quickly…Rona profits are down 90%, Linen & Things has gone belly up and Home Depot is hurting.

Sadly, at that point my 15 minute commute was up and so was my access to the radio!

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“Congratulation North Vancouver Prices are up-some time ago”
To whom the fuck were you telling all that bs?

“Excellent North Vancouver +3%” what the fuck was that?

North Vancouver is 3% down oh now what to do?

Mother fucking Realtors like you and jeff stand for best filthy idiots on earth.Tell us….
What do you tell to your client as buyers?
what do you tell to your clients as sellers?
if you know the answer in your mind, you and jeff should figure out properly who the fuck you are? you fucking filthy idiot.Did you ever talk to your dad Cameron Muir about this I am sure you are registerd with some othername to the board.

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“Think you own that house or condo? Think again, because in Canada, the Crown actually owns all the land. That mortgage you’re paying is just for a leasehold from the Crown.”

Whoa, nelly!

If you own in fee simple, you own. Full stop. The state does not own anything. This is not the USSR. It is not a leasehold. The state cannot arbitrarily take the land back.

There is a difference between ownership and having your own little empire, though. You do have to abide by the laws of the state, still. And there may be laws that permits the state to impair those ownership rights, and do things like trespass or expropriate. However, like Dave said, that is true of all nations — you couldn’t have a functioning state without it (imagine no more roads, or power lines, or the ability of emergency services to access property). However, most legislation in this vein will have checks on the use of this power — limited purposes, consultation, compensation. And this stuff tends to get litigated up the ying-yang. Governments don’t take messing with the underpinnings of economic system lightly (uh, never mind the past week). True, it is not part of the Charter, but that does not mean that property is “owned” by the state. Just that the rights in the Charter don’t protect property rights. Other laws will continue to apply. For example, animal rights aren’t in the Charter either, but that doesn’t mean that you can be cruel to animals — there’s laws against that. There are other legal doctrines that can be used to defend an abuse of the legal power to trespass or expropriate.

If you own, you own. Mkay? You don’t lease, and the Queen ain’t taking it back just to be a bitch. Don’t sweat it until you see the application from BCTC to put a Hydro tower in your backyard.

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Now how could the global economy rival the Great Depression? In a nutshell, this is what the U.S. Treasury Department, U.S. Federal Reserve, and SEC tried to avoid by bailing out Bear Stearns, AIG, and is now proposing a $700 billion bailout package. Their biggest fear, is the unregulated Credit Default Swap market that has the potential to cause another Great Depression and they are using all their ammo to prevent the “worse case scenario” from happening.

In a nutshell, a Credit Default Swap (CDS) is insurance against a bond or loan. Let’s say you are holding a bond from company XYZ. You are worried about XYZ going bankrupt, and defaulting on its bond payments. Thus, you go to a company, such as AIG, and purchase insurance for the bond, in case that XYZ defaults on its payments – in other words, you’ve obtained a Credit Default Swap from AIG.

Now here is where the problem for Credit Default Swaps has ballooned. Because Credit Default Swaps aren’t regulated, companies like AIG don’t have to back them up with collateral. During the “good times,” this was the perfect way for AIG to make money because they could sell a bunch of Credit Default Swaps, knowing that company XYZ would never go bankrupt. Thus, AIG would continue to collect premiums from you and things are hunky dory. As you can guess, everything goes to h*ll when XYZ indeed goes bankrupt, and now, AIG doesn’t have the collateral to pay your insurance. From your end, not only can you not collect from the XYZ bond because they went bankrupt, you can’t collect the insurance from AIG either because they never had the collateral to back up the Credit Default Swap in the first place. Thus, you may go bankrupt as well!

To add to this, Credit Default Swaps were offered on mortgage backed securities, CDOs, and other mortgage backed debt. That’s great during the housing boom when everybody is making their mortgage payments, but when there is a housing downturn …

To put in perspective of the sh*t hole the financial system is in, the “total outstanding balance of the CDS market is $50 trillion, compared with the entire U.S. home mortgage market at about $11 trillion.”: http://www.moneymorning.com/20.....n-problem/
Because Credit Default Swaps aren’t regulated, financial institutions worldwide have gone and ballooned the CDS market with little or no collateral. As you can guess, if companies like Bear Stearns and AIG, who offered CDS, go bankrupt, it will have a huge domino effect on the remaining financial institutions (AIG had issues paying off its CDS, it tried to collect collateral, rating agencies lowered AIG’s debt rating because of that, and AIG had to obtain more collateral, etc).

And this is the worst case scenario that the U.S. Treasury Department, Federal Reserve, and SEC are trying to avoid.

As for Canadian banks? Unfortunately, they are also exposed to Credit Default Swaps:

“Canadian banks have more than $800-billion in exposure to one of the most closely watched segments of this market — credit default swaps. It is estimated that Royal Bank of Canada has the biggest position — with about $300-billion of notional exposures to this market, an amount many times greater than the entire value of Canada’s largest bank.

Its peers are thought to be similarly positioned, with Toronto-Dominion Bank’s at $197-billion, Bank of Montreal at $118-billion, Bank of Nova Scotia at $110-billion and CIBC at $86-billion.

The banks said yesterday they would not disclose who their counter-parties were on these positions, but with AIG controlling about US$441-billion of this market through its financial products division, analysts said its demise would be laden with material risks.”

http://www.financialpost.com/n.....?id=794968

Hopefully, this doesn’t happen. As I said before, if Vancouver real estate declined 50% but we get out of this financial mess, that is really a best case scenario. Lets hope that the $700 billion bailout by the U.S. works and the CDS crisis doesn’t get any worse.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dG_-rq1ON9Y

“Hey thanks for nothing!
Morals in the dust
Two-faced bastards and syncophants
No trust”

We Canadians shouldn’t be too smug. Can the same thing happen here?

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Recently the BC government changed the staking process so that it could be done 100% online, without even setting foot on the property. This has led to some cases where homeowners get invaded by prospectors and have no real legal recourse.

Moral of the story – stake your own land!

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In that respect, you’d have to look at the empirical evidence to see whether the US offers more protection for property owners vis-a-vis expropriations by the State. There was a recent case on eminent domain in the US that suggested that the ‘right to property’ codified in the constitution may not offer protections beyond those found in other anglo-american jurisdictions. However, I lack any references to studies on the matter.

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