Tuesday 12 May 2009

Troubling Trouble from Krugman to "Statistic Finland"

First "Statistic Finland" scheduled the release of the quarterly housing price on 09 of May, then pushed it to 11 May to only rescheduled to an unknown date "As soon as possible".

Finland is supposed to be a leader on the ICT front yet "statistic Finland" is unable to provide such data. Is Finland being hit by the syndrome of too much outsourcing and ending up with the technical "know how" having to be imported back?

There is as well the conspiration theory from my friend "Juha the pike", he is saying there are delaying because of infinite pressure from the construction, media and real estate agencie lobbies while at the same time the press is trying to mislead the consumer into thinking that prices are going "north" again as in 2003....which will be a fatal mistake to think in such a way.

But back to reality, lately Euphoria has grown into a dangerous bubble. People start slowly to remove their defence at a time when high vigilence should be high. It is true as I said once, the real opportunities are greater in the stock market than the housing market, and yet I think the "great" opportunities, both in housing and stock market, are still ahead and not yet fully materialized (although we were quite near with regard to the stock market, regarding the housing market we have not yet passed 1/4 of it...)...

The real impression that I have of the current economical environment is clearly summarized by the following :

"“It looks to me now as if the markets are now pricing in a rapid recovery, that they’re pricing in a V-shaped recession, which I consider extremely unlikely,” Krugman, 56, said at a forum in Shanghai today. “The market seems to be looking as if this is going to be an average recession, but it’s not.”"

"Krugman, who won the 2008 Nobel Prize for economics, joins New York University’s Nouriel Roubini in calling for a more cautious outlook on growth. Roubini said last week analysts expecting the U.S. economy to rebound in the third and fourth quarter were “too optimistic.” Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the author of “Black Swan,” said the current global crisis is “vastly worse” than the 1930s."

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

It is clearly an sucker's rally for the stock market. What makes me very concerned is the sucker's rally has been created mostly by the governments to "suck" the remaining blood of those so-far survived. This makes me very much scared, and it shows the actual scale of the huge problem from certain side as well. I bet the stock will go south in big speed soon...

By the way, you mentioned Finnish "national" statistics? Do take it any serious. It may be a private company owned by YIT, S-Group, etc. It once told us the inflation rate in 2007 was quite low in Finland...

HousingFinland said...

I agree with you that a correction will occur in the days to come although I still think that this rally will grow until September albeit at a slower pace.

The stabilization that we are witnessing is mainly due to artificial stimulus put in place to counter a "catastrophique" situation that took place in the past two quarters.

Every governments around the world are using their last bullets (on the interests rates front it is almost finished for most developed country) so the illusion that the economy is recovering will be cleared up in the last quarter of this year when the market will wake up to realize that we are having a very serious economical situation, and the market will plunge.

THAT IS WHEN I will advise to start investing in stock market and accumulate energy, petrol, and in general commodities oriented company...

Regarding the housing market in Finland it either readjust in an healthy way and lose about 20-40% to allow the construction industry to grow again and bank to attract more customers...

HousingFinland said...

In general Statistics Finland is pretty reliable..now their formula for calculating inflation is most probably flawed, no doubt about it as everybody who visit this country will tell you that prices are outrageously expensive in almost all area however the inflation figures shows that Finland is more or less inline with continental Europe: a CONUNDRUM ...

Regarding the data not published, it definitely raise some concerns in term of transparency but then there is no choice as no independent, reliable institution is providing such data...

Anonymous said...

Note that there is no Nobel Prize concerning the subject of economics. The Nobel Foundation awards no such prize.

The Central Bank of Sweden awards a prize "in honour of Alfred Nobel" in the subject of economics.

And a central bank is about as political as you can get. And notice how they try to deceive the public by associating it, via the name Nobel, with the real Nobel prizes. But deception is the bankers' main business.

novus