Posted On: Tuesday - May 2nd 2017 8:24PM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity Global Financial Stupidity China
Back in a previous post, entitled Warren Buffett, crony capitalist, selling out the country, literally., PeakStupidity commented on a Warren Buffett (a.k.a. the "Orifice of Omaha") company that specifically sells real estate to foreign buyers. Now, Steve Sailer has a blog post on unz.com describing an article in the NY Times (again Sailer is our designated reader on all this) about the situation in the few big Australian cities, "The End of the Australian Dream".
ZeroHedge has been all over any housing bubble business for years now, as it goes along with their usual financial gloom-and-doom reporting. While Sailer and his commenters mull over the Australian sell-out, ZH had an article today, "The Vancouver Housing Bubble Is Back, And It's (Almost) Bigger Than Ever" to match. As much as I have touted ZeroHedge, they do tend to emphasize the doom side of all financial matters. Usually the writers are correct in principle, but the doom doesn't always happen when expected, which is why I laugh at the headline, or the "...it's back" part anyway. That bubble, for Vancouver, BC, Canada, was supposedly in the popping stage per other articles recently, but it's not "back"; the other articles, possibly written by other writers were premature, let's just say.
There is this huge influx of large chunks of money from China (can't say Chinese money, as these are US, Aussie, or Canadian dollars returning that have been accumulated via sales of anything and everything to our English-speaking countries) into these housing markets, in the US consisting of the West coast cities, but still quite a bit in medium-sized cities too (most places with a university). This money is not always, but usually non-fairly-earned money from Chinese men that are corrupt officials who make $600/month or something on paper, but a ton of bribe money in addition. They want to get their money out to a safe place where it could not be re-confiscated, even upon an arrest. It's not always this extreme, as with China pegging their currency, any inflation here (much larger than the numbers our Feral Gov't flaps it's gums about) causes inflation over there. The Chinese people, like anyone, would like to put their earnings into something tangible, and real estate in China can be a bigger gamble due to capricious gov't that can and has changed the rules willy-nilly.
Whatever the reasons, this big money bids up real estate prices in all these cities, Melbourne, Sidney, and what-have-you down under, Los Angeles, San Francisco (the entire bay area), and Seattle here, and Vancouver, Toronto,now Calgary, up there. For young couples or families in these places, the "Insert-English-Speaking-Country-Here Dream" is unobtainable, without taking a huge gamble. An interesting thing is that the Chinese like gambling quite a bit, so besides just an investment vehicle, the properties bought by them are probably an entertainment too, as the bidding-up gets crazy.
Here's the much bigger problem than just the housing problems themselves for these cities and the nations that contain them: It's one thing to have a few foreigners who eventually will fit in nicely and learn the customs eventually, or at least their kids will. This does not work when the numbers are large, however, and the Chinese (dot-Indian also) numbers can get as high as people will let them. A full 'nother Australia-size population of Chinese buyers could move in and that would be only a 2-3% dent in the population of China - easily made up, though it need not be, by a few horny Chinamen and women. Canada is about the same size in population, so ditto.
Why do the foreign buyers like the English-speaking lands to begin with? Well, the rule-of-law (quickly dissipating at this point, but still existent) is something that protects their bug-out investments, but the clean environments, the friendlier and mostly more-trustworthy population are things they can really appreciate. This could work for them and us, as written above, for small numbers. Guess what, once you have a large crowd of foreigners, the country becomes the same one they left in most ways. The people make the nation, that's what it comes down to.
Left China because of all the corruption, did you? Why do you bring the same attitudes and ways with you? (We've seen this with internal migration within America already - hey, former New Jersey or Massachusetts guy, quit telling us about how you came down South for the lower taxes, but then going to the school board meetings complaining about what your kid's missing down here, asshole - or Masshole, respectively!)
Lastly, a quick anecdote. A girl named Shanghai Connie came to the San Francisco bay area 5 years back from, you guessed it, Shanghai, China. When she called with the news of her arrival, she complained that there were just "too many foreigners here". "You're in America", we told her, "what do you expect?" "No, I mean too many foreigners, from China, India, all over the place!"
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