Usually, it’s the Economist that writes about possible house-price bubbles. But the New York Times had an interesting article about the same subject a few days ago. Here a couple of quotes: There seem to be three major paths that housing could follow over the next year: a soft landing, the start of . . . → Read More: Picture of a housing bubble
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Finally someone has gone to court rather than allowing themselves to be bullied by the RIAA (the body respresenting the recording industry in the USA). The RIAA likes to scare people into settling out of court by threatening to sue those they think have uploaded music into the internet for mega-massive sums of money . . . → Read More: Record industry gets egg on it’s face The Economist has regularly published reports on how property prices are developing in different countries, and it has been very frustrating for us to see that while in the last 25 years, the average price of a house in the UK has increased from £23 000 to £158 000 (a factor of over six times), property prices in Germany have remained stagnant. (If you live in Germany, you might find that a little difficult to believe, but you can download an Excel sheet of UK prices since 1952 from the Nationwide Building Society and check the UK figures yourself). In fact, when we sold an apartment we bought in Munich in 1982 a couple of years ago, we sold it for 20% less than we paid for it. If only we’d kept our money invested in property in the UK, instead of transfering it to Germany… What I haven’t understood until now was why the German market was performing so abysmally, when the USA, Australia and most European countries have been behaving like the UK market. However, this week the Wirtschaftswoche published an article (WiWo Nr. 27, 2006-07-03: Konjunkturkommentar – Kräftig durchluften) pushing for deregulation of the German property market and things became a little clearer. What is different between Germany and the rest of those countries where the market has boomed for 25 years or more? The micro-budget film Tarnation directed by Jonathan Caouette and shown at the Cannes Film Festival in 2004, cost $400,000. The cost of making the film was around $200, the rest was fees for music and video clip royalties. It is time legislators put more restraints on greedy music and video companies. Currently the . . . → Read More: Big business out of control The Economist has been saying for several years that the US dollar is overvalued and that what goes up must come down. Now the Managing Director of one of America’s leading fixed income managers (Bill Gross at Pimco), has expressed the same opinion, finishing his article called “As GM Goes, So Goes the Nation” . . . → Read More: Time for the dollar to fall? I don’t know if this is a general phenomenon at the moment, but I’ve noticed that garages locally charge the highest prices for petrol and diesel on Friday afternoon, and the lowest prices on Monday morning. The differential can be as much as 6-8 cents. The price then goes up later in the day . . . → Read More: Cyclic fuel prices A proposal to introduce flat-rate income tax in Germany may have contributed to the completely unexpected failure of the CDU/CSU to win a workable majority in the recent elections. The proposal was fought tooth and nail by Gerhard Schröder, arguing that it would mean that an industry boss would be paying the same rate . . . → Read More: Why flat-rate tax is a bad idea The New Scientist has published an article on e-money (subscription needed to read the full article) – using chip cards to make “micro-payments” to pay for tickets, meals and so on. This isn’t the first English language article to report on e-money, but for some reason the authors have always managed to overlook Germany. . . . → Read More: e-money A common practice in the UK is to use credit cards to pay off credit card debt. The idea is to use the interest-free grace-period of new debts to pay off older debts before interest becomes due on them. The British are, according the Guardian, the most credit-intensive country in the world, with 8 . . . → Read More: Rolling over credit card debt Digital photography is slowly but surely killing off the traditional variety. In May, AgfaPhoto GmbH (made cameras and film) filed for bankrupy. Yesterday, Kodak announced that from 2006 they will no longer produce B&W photographic paper: “As the imaging industry transitions from film to digital technologies, demand for B and W paper is . . . → Read More: Get a print while you can |
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