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VinChainSaw

Listed below are comments made by VinChainSaw between Friday, 11th September 2009 and Friday, 2nd October 2009.

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House prices: Too good to be true? 12:15pm on 02 Oct 2009 37. At 11:51am on 02 Oct 2009, Hawkespeter wrote:

2 How many of those who are likely to be unemployed for a long time are likely to be home owners? Unemployment among those who are renters will not affect the sale market.

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Not sure I agree wholly with this. As renters default on their rental obligation property becomes less attractive as an investment opportunity and this in itself should bring down prices as demand will suffer.
House prices: Too good to be true? 10:15am on 02 Oct 2009 During a classic recession house prices are a lagging indicator i.e. house prices drop as a result of the recession, normally for several years after the recrovery has begun simply because of the time it takes the housing market to turn around, the effect of rising unemployment, affordability issues etc.

The current recession was caused by a housing market bubble.
The drops we saw in the housing market over the last 18 months are the primary crash as an overheated housing market led to the crash. The drops we've seen are not as a result of the recession but rather the cause of it.

I dont believe we've even started to see the lagging indicator effects on the housing market of the current recession.

We're printing money so inflation will rise and with it interest rates wil rise. I believe when we see that we'll also start to see the lagging effects of the recession on the housing market.
BAE: Can't pay, would like to pay 4:44pm on 01 Oct 2009 136. At 4:19pm on 01 Oct 2009, birt4president wrote:

I agree.
I seem to remember Jacob Zuma, the South African president, and his financial advisor being involved in a corruption scandal related to their dealing with Thint, a French arms dealer.

His finacnial advisor was even found guilty and spent a stretch in jail because of it.
Yet nothing was done to Thint...
BAE: Can't pay, would like to pay 3:22pm on 01 Oct 2009 I do find it amusingly ironic that the Americans claim the moral high-ground on this.

Go read a book called 'Confessions of an economic hitman' to learn more about the business practices of the likes of Haliburton and the other US defence contractors.

They didnt just stop at paying bribes - they lobbied congress to invade sovereign countries in order for them to rape them of their wealth!
Panama, the Saudis, Java and more recently Iraq - the list of countries that were pillaged is almost endless.

Their business model was to walk into a country and offer them infrastructure that was very much too developed and expensive for their needs.
When the infrastructure didnt deliver the economic growth that the Americans promised there wouldnt be enough money to cover the repayments.
The Americans would then 'negotiate' payment in kind which related, for example, free passage through the Panama Canal negotaited from Panama or land on which to build military bases etc.
BAE: Can't pay, would like to pay 1:41pm on 01 Oct 2009 Having lived and worked in Africa for a few years I can confirm you simply cannot do business in many African countries without greasing the wheels to some extent.

I've been to African countries where I had to pay a bribe just to get through immigration even though I had a valid visa.
It's distasteful and difficult to comprehend but that's the way in which you go about your business in many developing countries.
What could/would/should central banks have done? 3:38pm on 23 Sep 2009 18. At 1:16pm on 23 Sep 2009, chris911t wrote:
Blimey. I said that a while ago on this site - either on Robert Peston's blog or this one. Basically that...

The problem I see is bankers lending at a vastly different rate than they are paying to savers, and at a vastly different rate to the base rate.

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Blimey, a fundamental lack of understanding of how a bank's financing works.

The money lent from the government is a very small percentage of the funding that a bank has.
The other funding is via secured lending, inter-bank markets, debentures, mezz debt, any number of sources, including shareholders.
Those funds are lent at a very much higher rate of interest than what the government lends at.

For example, if 20% of a bank's funding is from the BOE (with the rest raised elsewhere), then if the BOE drops its rates by 1% the saving to the bank overall is only 0.2%.
But now you expect them to drop their standard variable rate by the full 1%... does that makes sens to you (or to you Alistair Darling)?
Therefore if the BOE drops its rates and the retail abnk follows suit they'll be worse off by 0.8%

These are fictitious numbers and only used to illustrate a point.
All I'm saying is that the base rate is very, very different from the bank's cost of capital and comparing the base rate to the standard variable rate is a pure waste of time.
What could/would/should central banks have done? 3:32pm on 23 Sep 2009 It's very easy to spot a bubble. Asset prices climbing like crazy, people that have no business buying and selling the assets making a bundle, a belief that the party will never end etc.

What not so easy is to spot when it will burst and thus protect against it. The reason for this is that it usually depends on an event to predicate the crash and nobody can predict such an event.
Semenya's sex test explained 4:59pm on 11 Sep 2009 71. Sorry allow me to clarify: Armstrong's heart is 30% larger than it should be for his size. In other words he has the heart the size of a 6'6 man when he is only 5'6.
Genetic anomaly - but is it doping?

I'm not saying Semenya should be able to run against women - just refuting Kiselev in that he/she claims this is doping.
Semenya's sex test explained 4:53pm on 11 Sep 2009 70. At 4:46pm on 11 Sep 2009, Kiselev wrote:

Lance Armstrong has a heart that is 30% larger than the average man. Is that also doping?
Semenya's sex test explained 4:32pm on 11 Sep 2009 66. At 4:23pm on 11 Sep 2009, titotheragingbull wrote:

That's actually quoted verbatim tito... South African politicians still think they're in the "struggle" and everyone is against them.

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