Ask HN: The Australian economy has becoming a housing ponzi. Where does it end?

If interest rates go down, the dollar is going down, and if you are all in on "aust small caps" or similar in your super, you could and up trapped here, because your pacific pesos will be buying fuck all if you don't have ten million of them.

So to me, it is looking pretty fucked going forward either way. (Interest stays high, or comes down but dollar crashes)

Not saying you should, but I changed my entire portfolio to overseas growth funds to hedge against AUD going to USD20c.

Last 12 months returned 22%, won't be like that every year but I am not expecting minus 25% any year soon.

If I'm wrong, I feel that there will be bigger problems at hand, if I'm right I can retire to a vibrant lower cost centre experiencing growth, eg Cambodia or Vietnam, that's looking like a much better life.

Now that's a bit extreme, but 40 is easy to see, so maybe 20-30 isn't out of the question. But if it does, then the farmers get a bonanza.

It's not a Ponzi scheme, it is a simply a result of basic economics, supply and demand. With population growth demand is growing, but the supply is hampered by lack of sufficient trades persons. From reading news from around the world, the problem is not limited to Australia. Globally workers are tending to avoid work that requires physical exertion in a wide range of outdoor weather conditions.

In the post-war years, immigrants often pooled their resources and built their own homes. These days most immigrants just want to move into comfortable new homes.

REI profits on a 10years have been higher than interest rates for quite some time https://www.spglobal.com/spdji/en/indices/equity/sp-500-real...).

At today's rate, that will likely change and it will end with people loosing their equity "retirements" in their main asset.

Financilization of the economy, is when the finance sector(real estate,stock market,banks,insurance) grows faster than all other sectors of the economy. Cycle ends in 2 ways valuations reset after a bust or debt is written off after a bust.

That said what happens at the scale of the economy is like talking about an ocean. What an individual fish does is upto the fish.

Are we sure this is an appropriate "ask HN" question?