thin poly-ethelyn. It's a tent, son. It's the future
of real estate for folks until they get their asses
in gear and learn how to build proper homes
on derelict land.
the tent suburb of Sacramento.
As a think-tanker said once, the rich are now looking to pile as
much as they can into their lifeboat before they cut loose from
the sinking politico-economic ship that is Western Bankocracy.
No attempt to fix things, and even some effort to make them worse,
because there's money in it.
what the rich are doing in the housing market, other than kicking
out squatters: the Slog
EXCLUSIVE: How the super-rich scramble for 5-star property, and siphon off the gold output
Safe houses and raw gold are being snaffled up by the 3%
I read this kind of analysis four or five times already today:
‘…gold will head towards $1,700 an ounce or higher as central bank moves into purchase and production problems increase the demand for gold, analysts said…’
As we’ll see, those ‘production problems’ are not all they seem.
Yes – these are factors about the resurgent gold price, no doubt about it. Also a third factor is folks gambling on the alleged certainty of QE3…although the logic behind the gamble continues to elude me: QE means messing with the Dollar and thus compromising its value, but rather more directly it leads to higher stock market dividends and consequently reduced interest in gold as a stock market hedge.
However, none of that explains the overall sentiment for alternatives to cash, stocks and commodities in the context of falling global confidence in fiat currencies per se.
The Spanish bank run is the start of the accelerator against the euro, but when any currency is withdrawn, do people just stick it under the mattress? Peasants do, but the sleazy elite doesn’t.
The growing appetite for glitzy bricks
Here’s some fascinating news about top-end property prices in Five-Star locations: there is a rush to buy. In France, for example, while anything up to €550,000 simply isn’t selling, stuff in the €950,000-€3million band over the last three weeks has been flying off the agency shelves. So-called ‘known’ or ‘famous’ locations have been reporting a rush since the middle of August at the top end: it doesn’t matter whether it’s Nice on the /cote D’Azure or Issigeac in the Dordogne, the money is pouring in – at over 80% cash levels, and not for occupation, but for investment.
A similar syndrome has been under way in central London, as well as top-end Los Angeles, the West Indies, Singapore, Zurich and Vienna. But it is especially marked in ‘Raj’ Manhattan. As Shaun Osher, the chief executive of CORE says, “A lot of high-end buyers and sellers want to get on the gilded bandwagon.”
