Is a bubble a bubble if the extra bubbly-ness is from stuff that doesn't get used?
EDIT: actually, answered my own question. QE raises asset prices (even if the sellers aren't really doing anything with the money), and at one point people will be like "wait, none of this is worth the price it's at" and then panic (unless QE Infinity).
The reason why I think a panic is unlikely is that the current bubble is a "search for safety" rather than a "search for return". That's why the Swiss central bank can get away with negative rates - they are charging a premium for asset safety of the CHF. It also compensates Switzerland from the negative effects of its currency appreciating.
Previous asset bubbles burst when the second derivative goes down: when the returns go down, the rush to buy the asset stops and the price collapses.
The rush for safety is different. There's nowhere else to go but other, riskier asset classes. Even trying to hold it as cash has problems when done on that scale.
Negative rates are also I think your leading indicator for the net asset loss that's going to come from global warming. Not just "unburnable" fuel and lost investment in industries that must be transitioned away from, not just the sunken beachfront property, but the requirement to build new renewable infrastructure just to maintain our current standards.
There's a huge investment needed, but since the return it offers is collective and can't easily be captured by the investor it's not going to come from the private sector. Wealth can only be preserved in the context of preserving society, so the wealthy are going to have to take a small haircut in order to preserve the whole.
When we look at SF, what we see is a city that has A LOT more people wanting to live there than there are houses: Heck, I'd move there if the prices weren't insane. Investors/speculators are just a sliver of demand, and they only invest there precisely because the real demand to live there is that high. When there's high demand, and no increase in supply, prices go up to the levels we see now.
If the only people that wanted to buy a house in SF were software developers, prices would still be high, and we'd have enough of those that we'd see prices go up so that mortgages are about 50% of household income, just like in every other place, ever, that had high demand. And guess what? that's the current prices already.
So while I am sure the fed would be able to lower prices across the board by doing something that craters the economy, housing prices in desirable places to live are not the problem.
As far as retirement goes, it doesn't really matter if you own a house, or the equivalent in stocks. I can't tell you if you are saving enough, you are living beyond your means, or should just move somewhere else, as I have no details in your situation. All I can say is that it's a wonderful time to be a software developer in the US, economically speaking. It's pretty possible to work remote or at a satellite office of a big tech employer and save crazy amounts of money.
And so will the wealthy foreigner--with a lousy phone call.
I've given up on more building. I think we need to open up areas where people can camp without breaking the law. Or, at least allow people to legally sleep in their vehicles. The fines/fees for breaking over stringent municipal laws are just not fair.
(I don't believe lightening up municipal laws will cause the average person to sleep on the sidewalk to save money. Yes, we will always have homelessness. I have known two people who were between rentals, and were ticketed for sleeping in their cars. It's just not--what's the word--the America I thought I was proud of.)
Where are you allowed to sleep for free in the US? You could perhaps get a wilderness permit and live in a national park for a time, but I'm not sure what the maximum period of validity is on them. Cities will cite you under anti-camping rules. There isn't really a frontier to go to where a person can live off the land, at least so far as I'm aware.
People who do not find the system of "I have to work because I have to have money because I have to pay rent/own a home because I have to have somewhere to sleep" satisfactory no longer have a frontier to which they can escape. This is worrying if you like the idea of preserving liberty, and especially worrying if (as this article suggest) the whole monetary system on which our civilization is built rests on weak foundations.
At least prison's still more or less free.
http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/us-laws-criminalizin...
https://www.landcentury.com/under-1000-land-deals/
Though some local governments will go after you for zoning violations, check first.
Most central banks buy government bonds. As a result of this buying, the returns on these bonds are reduced and supposedly less attractive to the investors that previously would have bought them (or did buy them and then sold them to the central bank).
The issue is that an investor that previously would have bought a government bond, doesn't suddenly decide to spend that money in the general economy because government bond returns went down. They instead put it into other financial assets, like corporate bonds, the stock market, or perhaps real estate, thus driving a bubble in these asset classes.
In places like Japan, the central bank buys nearly all bonds issued by the government (effectively financing the government deficit). This distorts markets tremendously. Japan is the most indebted developed government in the world with close to zero GDP growth for 20 years and yet you need to pay them to loan them money for 10 years (i.e. negative return on their bonds).
As an investor, you currently have to pay the governments of most Western European countries to loan them money. In Switzerland for example, if you loan them $100 today, you'll get back $98 in 2 years and no interest. Even Spain and Italy which are in terrible shape fiscally, have a negative return on their 2 year bonds [1].
We now have extremely distorted markets. Heavily indebted governments around the world are borrowing money for free, enabled by their "politically independent" central banks. Some central banks are purchasing equities outright (Bank of Japan announced last month they would double their purchasing of equity ETFs).
There's also a great deal of research indicating that such QE policies increase wealth inequality, by driving up the price of financial assets (which are owned by the rich) and increasing the cost of living for everyone else that needs access to these assets (rent etc.) [2]
To most laymen, the idea that creating money and buying financial assets will somehow stimulate spending and inflation is clearly flawed. Central banks by design however, have few other options.
[1] https://twitter.com/MktOutperform/status/773577673587105792
[2] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-10/how-centra...
I think there's a logic to QE in scenarios like the credit crunch, since suddenly banks need cash and there's a bunch of illiquid assets on everyone's balance sheets. But I do agree that owners of treasury bonds aren't really going out and spending their proceeds at Wal-Mart for a while.
We have plenty of jails and very few bankers in them, despite widespread fraud. Again, not sure how this is a success.
We need banks, but we don't need the ones we have. Ruthlessly prune them, guaranteeing the people's deposits, and capitalize new ones with stricter rules. Of course, now it's too late. We've printed trillions of dollars, inflating our currency, and given it to the thieves without (meaningfully) changing the system.
I don't disagree with any of what you say, but this part in particular makes me think that at the end of the day, governments around the world (esp "developed") ones are having a hard time allocating their ability to acquire resources (with their fiat currency effective "infinite money") in a way that will appease their respective populous.
Is this a political failure of us all to hold our governments accountable? Are we witnessing the inability of fiat currency systems to effectively act as a way to distribute physical resources beyond this current threshold to those with a "need" that can't quite be satisfied with current availability of such resources on global markets?
What seems to be the case is that when notional value out paces market value (or price what people are willing or able to buy at, if any buyers at all at any given price points [beyond those who are able to borrow for free at large $ levels) in any given asset classes, there isn't really any good market incentive to correct such (but plenty of bad ones like defaults on contracts). I really don't see things changing soon without drastic changes to how we all consider resource allocation in general.
I do wonder what the end game is. In the absence of meaningful levels of inflation, central banks are confident in maintaining and increasing QE in the belief that if it's not working, it must be because it's not enough.
The problem is that at some point (perhaps already), governments and corporates wont be able to tolerate higher borrowing costs.
US government debt is double what it was in 2007 (~USD 18 trillion vs 9) and yet the annual interest cost is around the same. The Japanese government would need to spend every dollar of income and corporate tax revenue just to pay the interest if the interest rate on their debt rose to just 4.5%.
QE generally has the bonus effect (and some would say it's the primary motivation) of devaluing your currency. The problem though is that this only works if noone else is doing it. From Kyle Bass:
I had a fascinating out of body experience meeting with one of the world's top central bankers in a private meeting about three years ago. And he said, "You know Kyle, quantitative easing only works when you're the only country doing it."
[1] http://finance.yahoo.com/news/thing-top-central-banker-told-...
What's even scarier is that the ECB has started buying corporate bonds (https://www.ft.com/content/e551c28e-457a-3b62-a8b0-a8e8ca4e5...) directly, which I personally find crazy. I won't even comment on the financial situation in Japan, which I find even more crazy, and where I think that the economic system is partly nationalized "de facto". Under these circumstances the FED policy seems the more rational, which would have been crazy to think that would happen just after 2008.
IMO next step of the ECB will be equity buying, again Central European equity most likely. After that, only People QE is left (which they should have done first), but I don't think their ideology will allow that.
The question is why central bankers can't figure that out instead of doubling down on what is basically a transfer of wealth from working age to old.
They think of a country as a household, rather than a complex system. Economic orthodoxy is also very irrational atm.
Nobody will just print money and leave it in a vault.