Five years on since the US recession ‘officially’ ended in June 2009, urban land prices are rising, the pattern of history is repeating, and this time, the players on the chessboard have changed.
But our Governments are turning a blind eye.
They have yet to acknowledge why the crisis happened, or put policies in place to prevent it happening again.
Expensive welfare systems, elaborate tax and transfer policies, and the financial ‘cures’ following the previous land induced crash in the early 1990s, did nothing to prevent the swiftest and sharpest synchronised global downturn in human history.
Taxpayers were punished, bankers got a “get out of jail free” card, and the largest real estate investment trusts spent $50 billion purchasing 386,000 foreclosed homes, to rent out to previous owners who believed and acted on the lie; “there is no bubble.”
The IMF, and policy makers are now twisting themselves in economic knots trying to pin down a ‘cure’ for the dangers of excessive house price inflation, they readily admit lead to most banking crises, with Australia featuring in the top five of each of their highlighted risk assessments.
