Housing Goes Mad

I was looking this morning at an email I received from the Daily Reckoning Australia, yes I do read some very left of centre stuff, but that is how you get to hear what others are thinking. And yes it is important as a trader to be abreast of what can make a big difference down the track.
Here is an excerpt of what was in that email.

From Dan Denning at the Old Hat Factory:

--With each passing day it becomes more obvious that Australia is in the grip of a housing dementia. Let the madness and unafforadability multiply!

--House prices were up 3.3% nationally in the second quarter of the year, according to Australian Property Monitors. The group said that the weighted average median house price in the most expensive capital city suburbs was $796,559. In the slightly less expensive suburbs the weighted average median house price was $405,872.

--Ouch.

--Aussie stocks are up as we write, bucking the global trend from yesterday. This comes after a 7% retreat by Chinese stocks in Shanghai and lower stocks in New York. What happened in China? Well, China's benchmark CSI 300 Index was up nearly 93% for the year before yesterday's retreat. China's monetary authorities have ignited a speculative bubble and made noises about reining it in yesterday.

--Bloomberg reports that Chinese stocks, "Plunged amid speculation the central bank is poised to order lenders to set aside larger reserves, Beijing-based Caijing magazine reported today on its Web site. Market News International said Chinese equities fell on speculation regulators will increase a tax on stock trading."

--Yesterday we asked the question of what would make Australia's economy grow in the next twenty years. We return to that question today. The Reserve Bank has said that Aussie banks will have to move cautiously as they repair their balances sheets. This suggests growth through debt may be harder to achieve. The RBA also said that the household sector's twenty year credit binge is over (now that asset prices are returning from orbit). Again, growth through debt is looking dubious as a national survival strategy.

--Let's also assume that the government cannot borrow its way to larger stimulus payments. With lower spending forecast for government, businesses, and households, you begin to wonder if Australia's economy has a home grown engine, or if it will rely on something else, or someone else beyond the borders. If domestic demand falls, that leaves housing as the only industry firing on all cylinders (for now).

--Now you can try building a national economy around the housing industry. But what you get is a nation or mortgage lenders, builders, real estate agents, speculators, and bombastic television presenters. You also get a huge speculative bubble. It's been tried in America and didn't work out so well.

--If not housing, then why not resources? "Over the medium term," said Glenn Stevens earlier this week, "the emergence of China (and other countries such as India) will continue, and will offer opportunities for Australia." This is not news. But what the Governor said next is newsworthy.

--"If commodity prices do stay at their relatively high levels on the back of strong emerging world demand, the mineral extraction sector and all those parts of the Australian economy that service it and feel its flow-on effects, will expand. Other sectors, will, relatively, contract over time."

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