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Benjamin Cole's avatar

This chart actually gets at one of my main complaints about monetary policy over the past 25 years, which is that our housing supply problem creates “inflation” that is unrelated to monetary policy, or even to production. It is mostly an annual increase in the income redistribution to land rents that comes from our urban land regulation disease. It’s sort of like categorizing a tax hike as inflation.----KE

I thought I was all alone, wandering in the foggy wilderness, in gathering gloom.

Suddenly, a light! KE with a lantern!

I did not watch the GOP debates. But I gather from headlines etc that housing costs were not on the agenda.

To me that illustrates the yawning abyss between what is Washington and media, and ordinary people.

Also puzzling. Surely, even from a cynical aspect, housing is an issue that could be politically exploited, false promises made, blame assigned.

But nothing. Washington is not the capital of America. It is something else.

No wonder voters vote for oddballs.

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Dave Stuhlsatz's avatar

Maybe off topic, Kevin, but do you have any comments on the Chinese real estate market and the ongoing economic situation there? I know your research is mostly U.S. focused but it can be informative to review other countries. If I understand things correctly in China they actually might have a surplus of housing, but speculative zeal has created unsustainably high prices---in other words, it's a real bubble that contrasts with the false surplus the Fed was worried about in 2005-2006.

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