Today’s news of a continued slump in home prices - nearly five years after their peak in the winter/spring of 2006 - is undoubtedly another surprise, except for those who have read our latest annual forecast. In that inaugural issue, we identified the systemically irreversible Macro and Micro Economic Forces that utterly ordain a decades-long collapse of ALL “Bubble” priced Commercial and Residential Real Estate (RE).
This still unfolding and little understood phenomena will prove to be a horrific and totally unexpected drama for all those who were ‘all in’ at the top of the RE “Bubble” and for all those who continue to buy more RE at these levels because they are thinking that today’s collapsed Commercial and Residential RE prices are at the bottom, which they are NOT; there is a long way to go - yet!
And that is so because the scorned and ridiculed theory of a Long-Wave business cycle, that was first identified by Nikolai Kondratieff in the 1920’s, is right now being proven true – by the ineluctable facts. Kondratieff’s discoveries have been totally ignored by economists because the existence of such a cycle would have proven to be inimical to ALL their economic theories and wrecked havoc with their most treasured life’s work.
And that is EXACTLY why Stalin had him shot on the very day of his being sentenced to ten years at hard labor. The Communists were very efficient with any perceived threats. They greatly feared more books from this genius that would have disproved the basic foundation of Marx’s Dialectical Materialism (DM) that predicted the eventual and total decay of Capitalism, which supposedly unavoidable decay was very neatly contradicted by Kondratieff’s Long-Wave cycle of decades-long downturns followed by equally powerful decades-long upturns of new growth and regeneration.
Kondratieff posited that such a Long-Wave business cycle would be evidenced in all economic systems, whether they be Capitalistic or Socialistic or Communistic or a ‘Bastardization’ of all three, which we currently suffer from in America. Stalin’s minions recognized that the very core of Marx’s DM would have been eviscerated if a secular economic Long-Wave of the “Kondratieff” type could have been logically presented in sound and acceptable theoretical form. And it was rumored by his wife’s friends that Nikolai had more books, in which he would do just that. His first book had merely reported the evidence in the long-term data of a Long-Wave that was universally exhibited in all economic systems.
Stalin and his Communist brethren obviously would not have welcomed these revelations and had him summarily executed.
I am quite certain that the ‘Powers That BE’ in 2011 America do sometimes earnestly wish for equally effective means of suppression of unpopular proponents of unpopular economic concepts. Most especially do they wish to silence the promulgation of those economic concepts that threaten everything that they do and reveal everything they say to be Balderdash; such as, the truth of the Long-Wave systemic power of the “Kondratieff“ generational cycle, which does totally demolish the value and the accuracy of their every pronouncement of the last five years.
Many details of the “Kondratieff“ Long-Wave and what to expect over the next few years are covered in our latest yearly review and forecast – available by subscription.
As we very clearly emphasized in that forecast, it is very important that all those companies dependent on an understanding of the real world’s “New Normal” economic landscape not be fooled by the coming rise in collapsed “Bubble” priced RE in 'absolute' Dollar terms when RE prices begin to rise, just a tad, in roughly the 1st QTR of 2013. And we can assure all, with GREAT confidence, that when the FED’s (2008-201?) ZIRP is finally exploding the prices of everything into the stratosphere RE will rise, but only in ‘absolute’ terms - NOT in ‘inflation adjusted’ terms.
Additionally, we can predict with TOTAL confidence that the pundits and assorted ‘talking heads’ that will be paraded out by the MSM, at that time, will uproariously celebrate the return of rising RE prices that will still be ACTUALLY falling in real ‘inflation adjusted’ terms but probably not in the bogus CPI inflation numbers!
In a related matter, by identifying this coming delusional specter of returning ‘good times’ in the RE sector and intently focusing on the incipient “Roar” of FED induced inflation bearing down on ALL the world, our annual forecast recommended the necessity of the creation of a “REAL Consumer Price Index”(RCPI) since the CPI issued by the US Commerce Department is so very obviously incorrect. Our proposed RCPI vs. the CPI was covered in great detail in that issue, and we are now constructing the elements of the Polestar RCPI.
As is so very evident in the today’s news article below, the economists are just now trying to get ahead of this continued collapse in “Bubble” priced RE by predicting that the weakness will continue into 2012.
Boy, have they got a surprise coming!
Because, despite all the evidence of the last few years that stares them in the face day after day, they have not even come close to realizing that collapsing Commercial and Residential “Bubble” priced RE is in the grips of the “Kondratieff” Long-Wave with many years and several decades to go.
The economist’s many dismal failures, of their predictions based on the failed theories and failed econometric models of their “Dismal Science,” will contribute to the ultimate failure of many companies that continue to follow them. Disappointment is assured for those companies that do depend almost totally on CDS. For, consumer’s real and ‘inflation adjusted’ incomes will erode year after year and many more jobs and incomes will very simply disappear in the depression spawned by “Kondratieff” Long-Wave.
In a few quarter’s time, these effects will be visible to all, with the imminent resurgence of the Credit-Crisis of 2007-08 that never actually dissipated and the reemergence of the ‘Greatest Recession’ that never abated and will eventually be known as the 'Greatest Depression!'
Will your company be one of those that fail because they planned Advertising and Marketing Strategies and built inventory levels and structured product and service offerings to meet the economic expectations of these failed prophets?
U.S. Home Prices Decline More Than Forecast
Bloomberg; By Alex Kowalski - Nov 29, 2011 9:18 AM ET
“. . . Residential real estate prices dropped more than forecast in the year ended September, showing the industry at the center of the 2008 financial crisis continues to struggle. . . . The S&P/Case-Shiller index of property values in 20 cities dropped 3.6 percent in September from the same month in 2010 after decreasing 3.8 percent in the year ended August, the group said today in New York. The median forecast of 32 economists in a Bloomberg News survey projected a 3 percent decrease. . .
. . . Atlanta, Las Vegas and Phoenix posted new post peak lows in September, the report showed.
. . . Eighteen of the 20 cities in the index showed a year-over- year decline, led by a 9.8 percent drop in Atlanta.
. . . Builders, which are competing with the 3.33 million unit glut of previously owned homes, sold fewer new houses in the U.S. than forecast in October, Commerce Department data showed yesterday. Demand is on pace to reach 301,000 this year, less than the 323,000 homes sold in 2010, which marked the fewest sales since data-keeping began in 1963.
“We’re in a market that’s quite fragile,” Ara Hovnanian, chairman and chief executive officer of Hovnanian Enterprises Inc. (HOV), said during a Nov. 9 investor conference. . . “
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