real estate

In the past several months we have dedicated numerous articles to demonstrate the sheer lunacy of the Vancouver real estate market with isolated cases in which Vancouver houses, whether abandoned or in phenomenal shape, would sell for millions of dollars above asking just because Chinese buyers would pay any price in their rush evade capital controls and launder cash in northeast Canadian real estate. Perhaps the most egregious example took place two weeks ago when we wrote "Valued At $16 It Sold For $68 Million "In 7200 Seconds" - The Inside Story Of Vancouver's Wildest Property Deal."

Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,

The US economy died when middle class jobs were offshored and when the financial system was deregulated.

Jobs offshoring benefitted Wall Street, corporate executives, and shareholders, because lower labor and compliance costs resulted in higher profits. These profits flowed through to shareholders in the form of capital gains and to executives in the form of “performance bonuses.” Wall Street benefitted from the bull market generated by higher profits.

Expanded Version: The US Economy Has Not Recovered And Will Not Recover

Paul Craig Roberts

The US economy died when middle class jobs were offshored and when the financial system was deregulated.

Jobs offshoring benefitted Wall Street, corporate executives, and shareholders, because lower labor and compliance costs resulted in higher profits. These profits flowed through to shareholders in the form of capital gains and to executives in the form of “performance bonuses.” Wall Street benefitted from the bull market generated by higher profits.

Last week we identified a “bargain” in Canadian real estate.

As you might recall, the Canadian economy is in a bit of a tailspin, and that goes double for the country’s dying oil patch. Indeed, we’ve documented Alberta’s painful experience with slumping crude exhaustively, noting that the steep decline in oil prices has triggered job losses (which hit their highest level in 34 years in 2015), depression, suicides, soaring food bank usage, and a marked uptick in property crime.

If ever there was any doubts about the narrative of freedom-seeking China capital outflows driving the irrationally exuberant prices of homes in some of the world's largest cities to record highs, the following two charts will extinguish them entirely.