Housing Bubble

It wasn’t “disenchantment,” explained Euro Disney CEO Philippe Gas, but an “economic problem.”

Recent activity in asset markets suggests dangerous bubbles are building everywhere. It's time to bunker down and we look at ways to best protect your capital.

In case the world needed any additional proof that the latest housing bubble (not our words, Fitch's) was on its last legs, it came earlier today from Credit Suisse' Dan Oppenheim who in his monthly survey of real estate agents observed that October was "another weak month" for traffic, with "pricing power fading as sluggish demand persists." This naturally focuses on the increasingly smaller component of buyers who buy for the sake of owning and living in a home instead of flipping it to another greater fool (preferably from China or Russia, just looking to park their stolen cash abroad). Quantifying the ongoing deflation of the bubble, Oppenheim notes that the "weakness was again broad-based, and particularly acute in Seattle, Orlando, Baltimore and Sacramento.... Our buyer traffic index fell to 28 in October from 36 in September, indicating weaker levels below agents’ expectations (any reading below 50). This is the lowest level since September 2011."

Yes... a rating agency - the same entity that enabled the last housing market crash - just warned of a housing bubble. How the times have changed - maybe it is different this time?

The financial markets continue higher, and the excesses of the status quo continue expanding with little ill effect (so far). Why is it so difficult to predict the timing of crisis/collapse? The question is equally valid for both bears and bulls; how could all the boosters of housing be so wrong in 2008 when they asserted that "housing is not a bubble"? Here are ten possible factors in why it's so difficult to predict crisis/reset.

The Fed will have to increase QE (not taper it) because systemic debt is compounding faster than production and interest rates are already zero-bound. Lee Quaintance noted many years ago that the Fed was holding a burning match. This remains true today (only it is a bomb with a short fuse). Thirteen years after the over-levered US equity market collapsed, eleven years following Bernanke’s speech, five years after the over-levered housing bubble burst, and four years into the necessary onset of global Zero Interest Rate Policies and Long-Term Refinancing Operations, global monetary authorities seem to have run out of new outlets for credit. In real economic terms, central bank policies have become ineffective. In other words, the US is now producing as much new debt as goods and services.

While some harp on about the growing dangers of yet another housing bubble in the western world, there are other more important things perhaps that are going on in other countries in the world.

As we enter into the two final months of the year, it is also the beginning of the seasonally strong period for the stock market.  It has already been a phenomenal year for asset prices as the Federal Reserve's ongoing liquidity programs have seemingly trumped every potential headwind imaginable from Washington scandals, potential invasions, government shutdowns and threats of default.  This leaves us with four things to ponder this weekend revolving around a central question:  "Does the Fed's Q.E. programs actually work as intended and what are the potential consequences?"

Just a few days ago Alan Greenspan’s latest piece of work was published (October 20th 2013). It’s entitled The Map and the Territory: Risk, Human Nature, and the Future of Forecasting.

Looking at all non-equity asset classes, one would be left with the impression that the December taper is an increasingly likely outcome. Sure enough - bonds sold off again, and have been selling off consistently since the FOMC announcement. In fact they are poised to close at 2.62%, the highest yield since October 22. The dollar, inversely, ramped higher on both EUR woes and the expectation that its destruction may "taper" in the near future. As expected, gold did the opposite of the dollar, and Gartman's latest reco, and continued its sell off for the third day in a row: Thus the taper trade continued for the second day in a row in all asset classes, except stocks of course. Despite breifly dipping into the red shortly after today's conflicting manufacturing reports, the late day ramp was once again on location, and helped push ES nearly to a new intraday high in the minutes before the close, before a shakedown took place just after the close, sending ES sliding after hours, and wiping out the entire 3:30 pm ramp in seconds. It can be seen just where the rug gets pulled moments after the 4:00 pm close of trade. And so we close another week of mad fun with Mr. Chairman's, soon to be Mr. Chairwoman's manipulated, frothy, bubbly, markets.

The last two weeks have seen US equity markets on a one-way path to the moon, breaking multi-year records in terms of rate of change and soaring to new all-time highs. However, away from the mainstream media's glare, another 'market' has been soaring - but this time it is not good news. Chinese overnight repo rates - the harbinger of ultimate liquidity crisis - have exploded from 6-month lows (at 2.5%) to 4-month highs (6.7% today). The PBOC even added liquidity for the first time in months yesterday (via Reverse Repo - at much higher than normal rates) but clearly, that was not enough and the banks are running scared once again that the re-ignition of the housing bubble in China will mean more than 'selective' liquidity restrictions.

It is a common view that the shutdown, the debt-limit debacle and the repeated failure to enact entitlement and pro-growth tax reform reflect increased political polarization. John Taylor believes this gets the causality backward. Today's governance failures are closely connected to economic policy changes, particularly those growing out of the 2008 financial crisis. Despite a massive onslaught of legislation and regulation designed to foster prosperity, economic growth remains low and unemployment remains high. Claiming that one political party has been hijacked by extremists misses this key point, and prevents a serious discussion of the fundamental changes in economic policies in recent years, and their effects.

It would appear that the 'gambler's in these 5 cities were not told that the government would be shutting down, that confidence would drop, that affordability would plummet... instead they were told that nothing has changed and 29% YoY home price gains are for buying not selling..

No wonder investors don't take economists seriously. Or if they do, they shouldn't. Since Richard Nixon interrupted Hoss and Little Joe on a Sunday night in August 1971, it's been one boom and bust after another. But don't tell that to the latest Nobel Prize co-winner, Eugene Fama, the founder of the efficient-market hypothesis. No matter the facts, Fama has his story and he's sticking to it. "I think most bubbles are 20/20 hindsight," Fama told Cassidy. The rest of us, who lived through the tech and real estate booms while Fama was locked in his ivory tower, know that in a boom people go crazy. There's a reason the other term for bubble is mania.

There are people in the world that go to work every day to end up stating the damn obvious.