You are one of the only economists that makes 100% sense. Thankyou for getting your views across to others on the sbs insight show.

I am 29 year old but was lucky to have been influenced strongly by a parent and grandparent who lived through the great depression. You are absolutely 100% correct in all of your analysis. People my age cannot understand why I am not doing what they are by getting into silly amounts of debt to buy overpriced houses. I found a great spreadsheet by the bank for international settlements which I think everyone in Australia needs to see and understand: http://www.housingbubble.com.au/tellfriend/BISHOUSE_PRICE_DATA.xls

keep up the great work!

cheers

Clarke

I’m looking forward to listening to your podcasts but I did see Insight last night and enjoyed your contribution.

Congratulations on the way that you handled the “fundamentals” thing. That word is just a weasel word which means nothing and sucks all of the meaning out of a sentence while giving an air of omniscience to the speaker making it impossible challenge the statement. But you did challenge it and you challenged it very well. To use another weasel word you had at least one stakeholder deep in thought.

Saw you last night. Have you seen this exposition of the problem by Martenson.

http://www.chrismartenson.com/crashcourse

I thought it was a good show, obviously there wasn’t enough time to unpack all of your argument and it was mostly verbal exchange (no graphs) but I thought you got your point across about how private levels of debt are a part of fundamentals and ignoring them is crazy.

I noticed the CE of ANZ looked interested in what you had to say, did you get to talk with any of the other participants after the show?

Well done Steve!

The last 3 podcast files are a bit funny. All of them have the same duration because they’re identical to one of podcasts 1,2 or 3. When I was listening to podcast 4, I realised that I’ve heard them before months ago. The same goes for 5 and 6.

Also, good to see you at SBS’s insight! It’s a pity that you weren’t given more time to speak.

Not surprising, the most bullish among the experts is the guy from real estate/housing (can’t remember who that was). Ross Gittins was quick to point out his argument as propaganda. As Ross Gittins was speaking, that guy was clearly very very very unhappy. It’s very obvious that this real estate/housing guy’s view is the odd one out among the experts.

Also, as you were questioning the perception of Australia’s good economic ‘fundamentals’ the camera was zoomed into Saul Eslake’s face. I feel that he was thinking about your point.

I like it when the guy (I think his name was McNamara) was saying that infrastructure, satellite cities and transport is very important part of the equation.

The last comment by Ross Gittins was quite memorable. He was saying along the lines of:

If house price falls 40-50% in 15 years, that’s one thing. But if it falls that much in such a short time, it will scare the pants of everyone.

Overall, good food for thought.

Good luck on insight.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/08/opinion/08krugman.html