Open Topic

FFFA! Ben! CMHC! BOC! Fear! Fraud!

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232 Comments

It’s that time of the week again! Let’s do our regular end of the week news roundup and open topic discussion thread for the weekend. Here are a few recent links to kick off the chat:

–North Americas #1 Bubble
–Who will be the next BOC head?
–Fear, not foreign investment
–Historical inventory graph
–Cooling house prices not bad
–Rabidoux/lepoidevin talk impressions
–CMHC MI levels drop 37%
–Short the banks?
–RBC 22% profit increase
–Flaherty asks for budget input
–Flipping and fraud
–

So what are you seeing out there? Post your news links, thoughts and anecdotes here and have an excellent weekend!

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rp1

@Ketel One: “China imports 6 mil barrels per day and has billion and change population. US imports 20 mil barrels per day and has 300 mill pop. Whose oil consumption is not sustainable?”

China’s, because oil is expensive and those billion people can not afford it to the degree that the Americans can. If China gets cheap energy then it can develop like the US did. They are clearly working hard on that. But their economy right now is an investment fuelled mania managed by the government and funded through financial repression of households. They are repressing the development of a the consumer society, which is what the US did that was the cause of all the US oil usage. I’d bet that China becomes old before they get rich. Then they won’t use oil like North Americans do.

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Vote Down The Facts

@/dev/null:

Or you can just hit the “stop” button before the paywall pop up has finished loading.

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BLISTINGAGENT

I’m reading Robert Shiller’s “Finance and the Good Society” and thought I’d pass on this mention of Canada (though it is only the footnotes) 🙂 Securitization was indeed never really popular in most parts of the world. The movement towards securitization of home mortgages debt became particularly strong in the United States thanks to powerful impetus from government support. But, lacking the subisdy effectively given by the U.S. government via Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, mortgage securitization has not been common anywhere else [6]. Footnote 6 then reads: [6] Canada has an entity similar to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the Canadian Housing and Mortgage Corporation (CMHC), which insures mortgages and buys pooled mortgages and resells them to the public as its bonds. It is not bankrupt, as there was no comparable collapse in Canadian home prices, but the possibility… Read more »

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Ketel One

@rp1
let’s put in numbers.
China imports 6 mil barrels per day and has billion and change population.
US imports 20 mil barrels per day and has 300 mill pop
Whose oil consumption is not sustainable?
Somebody has to give.

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rp1

#219 @Ketel One: I don’t think the Chinese economy is sustainable, and I don’t believe their oil usage can continue to grow the way it has. They are going to hit the wall I think.

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Peak Turbine!

@TPFKAA: Forget Peak Oil’s effect on Canadian exports. Peak Oil is definitely real but that is a minor concern compared to Peak Turbine!

http://climatecrocks.com/2012/05/02/reposted-wind-turbines-will-blow-earth-out-of-orbit-the-onion/

Sign the petition to stop wind turbines before Peak Turbine stops the earth’s rotation!

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/dev/null

@vangrl: FYI: Chrome browser’s “Incognito mode” gets you around the Sun’s paywall (and the Globe & Mail’s too). 🙂

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Many Franks

I don’t remember seeing this here: Oh No, Canada! Are We Watching Another North American Financial Crisis Unfold?
Not much that hasn’t been covered elsewhere, but hey, it’s Time Magazine.

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TPFKAA

@TPFKAA: that one was @ mclovin sorry.

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TPFKAA

“I agree there is a finite amount of oil and gas on the planet. Where we disagree is that I believe that technology will relentlessly drive down the finding and production costs while the resource becomes scarcer. Therefore keeping oil and gas within a wide but reasonable range. Oil went to $140 then $50. The cure for high prices is high prices. There will be technologies in 10 years to bring oil and gas to market that is currently non-economically viable and 10 years after that.” So, has technology been “Relentlessly driving down costs” over the past 100 years of oil production? If not, why will it start to do so now that the oil is in harder to reach spots? As for finding oil: the number of barrels discovered per year peaked in the 1960s. Not a single 5… Read more »

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Ketel One

@Guy

Another piece of hard data. People talk about small bump in production in US but forget that combined net oil exports from the seven major net oil exporters in the Americas:
Canada, Mexico, Venezuela, Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, Trinidad & Tobago
from 2004 to 2011 DECREASED from 6 million barrels per day to 5 million. Not good 🙂

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PeakOil!

@Not much of a name…: re: “aggravating articles that blame the feds for eroding affordability … the real cause of poor affordability which is simply high prices” What is a high price? High compared to wages I presume? OK. If wages were the problem, then definitely don’t blame the feds. No level or branch of government is paying a bonus on wages to wage earners. Government always reduces net wages – it’s called taxes! Homes are definitely higher than a year’s wages, so where does the extra money come from? Every asshole who can fog a mirror is buying. Are some people printing their own money or is the government printing money for some people? The problem is NOT prices. Price is always relative. The problem rests SQUARELY ON THE FEDS for enabling easy financing. If not for the idiotic… Read more »

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Guy Smiley

@Ketel One:

Damn. You’re absolutely right.

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Ketel One

Guy Smiley: “it simply means the chinese and indians are drinking more compared to others around the world than they were 6 years ago”

Let’s try this way. The numbers below are Availabale Net Oil Exports NOT consumed by China and India. It shows that production can NOT keep with increasing demand. It means that the rest of the world is bidding for smaller and smaller pie.

2002: 39 mbpd

2003: 42

2004: 45

2005: 40.8
2006: 40.5

2007: 38.9

2008: 38.4

2009: 35.7

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Con-Rad

@Anonymous: and still you get 9 votes down. you guys are your own worst enemy. maybe it was my dissing zero hedge. maybe you don’t like my tone. it doesnt matter. I can make a case for a soft landing. I can make a case for a hard landing. The problem I have is people saying vancouver is going to be ground zero for the worst crash in the history of canada. ok maybe that’s true but it’s not the only option. As I said a few weeks ago when I first started posting here, if you really want to own and would move elsewhere if you knew things would take another 10 years, be prepared thats one of the scenarios thats plausible. Trying to keep an open mind. A soft landing would mean I don’t have to find other… Read more »

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vangrl

“: Man, that pumper article by Peter Simpson, ex-CEO GVHBA, is embarrassing. Just a random collection of facts and anecdotes miscegenating together. Most of the bulls on this blog manage to put together far more coherent arguments. I bet even the Sun’s normally shameless copy editor blushed.”

Can someone please copy and paste that article on here? seems i have to pay to read it

thx

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Guy Smiley

@Ketel One:

Hey, it’s an interesting stat and speaks volumes about demand and competition. I’m merely pointing out that it doesn’t talk about global production….. It’s only ratios, not absolute numbers. With the insane YOY growth in china they are buying vastly more oil in 2011 than they were in 2005.

Taking your own numbers …

If… In 2005, for every bottle of beer that the China/India region drank, there were 8.9 bottles of beer for the rest of the world.
And then … In 2011, for every bottle of beer that the China/India region drank, there were 5.3 bottle of beer drunk elsewhere in the world.

There could be more beer in the world or less, it simply means the chinese and indians are drinking more compared to others around the world than they were 6 years ago.

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Ralph Cramdown

@southseacompany: Man, that pumper article by Peter Simpson, ex-CEO GVHBA, is embarrassing. Just a random collection of facts and anecdotes miscegenating together. Most of the bulls on this blog manage to put together far more coherent arguments. I bet even the Sun’s normally shameless copy editor blushed.

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Not much of a name...

@southseacompany: The most aggravating thing about these articles that blame the feds for eroding affordability…not one author stops to actually look at the real cause of poor affordability which is simply high prices.

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southseacompany

More whining about the pull back on govt subsidzed mortgages:

“First-time homebuyers face continuing affordability problems.
Ottawa’s action to reduce mortgage amortization periods to 25 from 30 years particularly affects younger people looking for their first home” The Van Sub Dec 1.

http://www.vancouversun.com/business/First+time+homebuyers+face+continuing+affordability+problems/7638900/story.html

It must be tough out there. This is the second article in a few weeks blaming the feds for ‘hurting’ first timers. This one’s written by “Peter Simpson, former president and chief executive officer of the Greater Vancouver Home Builders’ Association.

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Ketel One

Guy Smiley: “That statistic says nothing about global production..”

How does not say it? If the share of Global Net Exports is reduced that means the rest of the world is bidding for the smaller share of the oil. It does not matter at all what is the US production. Oil is global commodity unlike natural gas. US is still huge importer and it is biding like the rest of the world for the dwindling global net exporting production.
Remember production is not the important piece of puzzle but net exports. If you reduce the amount of net exports on global level it will have an effect on the price.

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Guy Smiley

@jay:

Same reference that CG uses for that blog – from Larry Yatter’s Website.

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jay

@Guy Smiley:
“Of course, it’s more fun to use the average. Peak (Feb 2012) to the end of november is down 14.7%. ($1,235,244 vs $1,053,902)”

Thanks, but where did you get the number for November 2012?

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Guy Smiley

@Anonymous: Some people use the votes to agree/disagree with a comment but it really should be used to say the comment is relevant/irrelevant. Hmmm. This is so strange to say in the blogosphere but ……. i disagree. I agree that the buttons shouldn’t be used for the agree/disagree factor. It limits discussion and effectively banishes contrasting opinions. That is boring and it discredits the blog. If you disagree with somones opinion, counter it, don’t vote them into oblivion. Downvote the idiots who are just posting inflammatory dung. But why the relevant / irrelevant demand? All good conversations go on tangents. I like the side discussions about peak oil, investment ideas and where the dollar is headed. We always have a main theme, but hey – there is only so much new to be said about Vancouver RE on any given… Read more »

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nufio

Now that it is a buyers market we should have a buyers listing where sellers can bid on. and the seller with the lowest tender wins. The buyer can his requirements of floorplans, lotsizes, strata fees, assessed value etc. I propose having a site with a buyers agent attached to it the only purpose would be to forgo the buyers agent commission – minimal expenses. Or did someone think of this already?

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