Bubbles: Florida Real Estate Bursts as Chinese Stocks Inflate
Only two years ago, many thought residential real estate had entered a new era.
“South Florida,” said a realtor quoted in the New York Times, “is working off of a totally new economic model than any of us have ever experienced in the past.”
The dimensions may have been a bit stretched, but the model was the same boom-bust model Florida had followed in the 1920s. And now, the fabric is snapping back to its normal size. Just two weeks ago, an auction of Miami condos shrank prices down to half their level of 2005.
In the late ‘90s was another new era – one based on communications technology and centred on dotcom start-ups. The technology proved remarkably resilient and productive. Even Alan Greenspan said he thought we were onto something new. But the bubble in tech stocks blew up anyway – as they always do.
One bubble bursts only to puff up another.
Now, the bubble du jour is in China.
In Shanghai, cab drivers offer stock tips. People stand in line in brokerage offices to open accounts. China’s largest brokerage, CITIC, is bigger than Bear Stearns (NYSE:BSC) and Lehman Bros. (NYSE:LEH) combined. And stocks are soaring... Now they’re trading at an average of about 50 times earnings. Pretty rich.
“Déjà vu” is a French expression, well known to investors in the West. We wonder if there is an equivalent in Mandarin.
Bill Bonner
The Daily Reckoning Australia
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About the Author
Best-selling investment author Bill Bonner is the founder and president of Agora Publishing, one of the world's most successful consumer newsletter companies. Owner of both Fleet Street Publications and MoneyWeek magazine in the UK, he is also author of the free daily e-mail The Daily Reckoning.
Comment by Alan on 5 October 2007:
Not only the stockmarket.A property bubble too."Home equity" withdrawals to invest in stocks,maybe worse than that.Maybe no house.Loose lending by the banks and a central authority trying to rein in credit growth by raising rates.Sound familiar?Is it heresy to(quietly)suggest that base commodities and energy might have a bubble of their own?Not yet,though,after the olympics.