links for 2007-08-23
Thu, 23 Aug 2007.
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Holy crap this is really cool. The idea is simple: by removing and adding to the boring parts of an image, you can change its dimensions without losing any of the interesting parts. Just watch the video and you’ll get it.
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I don’t know how trustworthy this site is but I am at least a little bit skeptical about buying a house in the US.
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A parody blog of 37 signals. Some of these entries are pretty damn good. It helps that the 37s crew are getting a bit preachy these days.
The house thing applies nearly globally; Australia for one has had the widening gap all down to the (relatively) rapid drop in interest rates, and it is beginning to catch up.
The article confuses effect with cause - interest rates dropped, and as the price of credit (i.e. interest rate) globally fell to unseen levels, the banks could afford more risk for the same price. So what do you do when awash with funds? You lend to the “sub prime” market. It’s not that they loosened rules to lend, it’s that they had so much money they had to lend it to someone or just leave it sitting around (bad for returns).
The other point to make is that the article points out home ownership is at record levels, and yet is surprised prices have gone up. Land is a finite resource, and well-located land even more so. More demand for finite resource = higher price.
When the comparison is made to Japan, it ignores the fact that Japan was awash with money, and real-estate buying had become purely speculative. A boom which is sustained by real people buying for themselves doesn’t crash like the Japanese one. It also ignores the fact that Japan’s official interest rate is 0.25%, and most of the nineties it was in technical recession.
Storm in a bloody teacup.
I don’t know what you’re saying. I don’t read the Financial Review or whatever.
Alls I know is, when I buy a house, it’s going to be so I can live in it. I’m not going sign up for a sub-prime mortgage, I’m not going to be flipping and I’m not going to expect to get rich just by sitting on a big patch of dirt. I’ll leave that for the speculators.