Canadian Housing: Boom or Bust?

Scotiabank Hints At Housing Bubble
Canadian real estate prices are inflated, but they're unlikely to correct themselves in the short term, a Bank of Nova Scotia report suggests.Canadian house prices are rich no matter how one looks at it," Scotia economists Derek Holt and Karen Cordes said in a report titled Is There a Canadian Housing Bubble? Of the many ways of gauging the health of a real estate market, affordability is one of the least useful because any measure that essentially compares income with mortgage payments is dependent on interest rates, Holt said Tuesday. Rates are at record lows at the moment, as the Bank of Canada's benchmark rate sits at 0.25 per cent.

Housing Sales Are Set To Reach New Highs
November housing sales across the country are set to reach new highs based on fresh data from the country’s two most expensive markets. The national numbers from the Ottawa-based Canadian Real Estate Association are not due out until mid-December but the Toronto Real Estate Board said yesterday it had its best November on record. Toronto’s news came on the heals of a Wednesday release from the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver that said sales activity in the city rocketed up 252.7% in November from a year ago.

Chemical Baby

232 Toxic Chemicals Found In 10 Newborns
It’s no surprise to most MNN readers that the vast majority of American adults have BPA (bisphenol A) and other worrisome chemicals in their bodies. That’s what happens, after all, when you grow up in a chemical world. But a new study proves that our chemical romance actually begins in the womb, before we’re even born. A two-year study, commissioned by eco-nonprofit Environmental Working Group (EWG) and Rachel’s Network, studied the umbilical cord blood of 10 American babies of African-American, Asian, and Hispanic heritage born between 2007 and 2008 — to find 232 toxic chemicals. According to Alex Formuzis, EWG’s director of communications.

Too Fat To Graduate

College's Too-Fat-To-Graduate
Most college students expect to receive their diplomas on the basis of grades, but at a Pennsylvania school, physical fitness matters too.Students at Lincoln University with a body mass index of 30 or above, reflective of obesity, must take a fitness course that meets three hours per week. Those who are assigned to the class but do not complete it cannot graduate.

Higher IQ From Exercise

Young Adults Who Exercise Get Higher IQ Scores
The results were recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The study involved 1.2 million Swedish men doing military service who were born between 1950 and 1976. The research group analysed the results of both physical and IQ tests when the men enrolled.

Debtors Jails

Laid-Off Foreigners Flee as Dubai Spirals Down
Sofia, a 34-year-old Frenchwoman, moved here a year ago to take a job in advertising, so confident about Dubai’s fast-growing economy that she bought an apartment for almost $300,000 with a 15-year mortgage.Now, like many of the foreign workers who make up 90 percent of the population here, she has been laid off and faces the prospect of being forced to leave this Persian Gulf city — or worse.“I’m really scared of what could happen, because I bought property here,” said Sofia, who asked that her last name be withheld because she is still hunting for a new job. “If I can’t pay it off, I was told I could end up in debtors’ prison.”

CIA Secret 'Torture' Prison

CIA Secret 'Torture' Prison
The CIA built one of its secret European prisons inside an exclusive riding academy outside Vilnius, a current Lithuanian government official and a former U.S. intelligence official told ABC News this week.Where affluent Lithuanians once rode show horses and sipped coffee at a café, the CIA installed a concrete structure where it could use harsh tactics to interrogate up to eight suspected al-Qaeda terrorists at a time. "The activities in that prison were illegal," said human rights researcher John Sifton. "They included various forms of torture, including sleep deprivation, forced standing, painful stress positions."

Canadian Bankruptcies Soar, Rising Debt

Canada's (Sub-Prime) Mortgage Market
For most of this year the markets have been discounting an economic recovery. That is, they have been in rally mode in anticipation that the worst of the economic crisis is over. While that is likely, all that is left for debate is how meaningful the recovery will be and if it is sustainable. The G20 countries have committed to not let their collective foot off the stimulus gas pedal until they are confident that the economy is on a sustainable trajectory... Recently, the president and CEO of ING Direct Canada stated that he is seeing Canadian habits resemble those of US and European nations during their housing booms. The level of equity in Canadian homes is surprisingly low as more than 50% of all mortgages issued this year are longer than the 25 year range that has been the usual option for borrowers.

Bankruptcies Soar 43%
The number of bankruptcies across the country was 43 per cent higher in September than at the same point a year ago, government data shows. The latest figures provided by the Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy Canada show the increase is disproportionately slanted towards consumer bankruptcies over business insolvencies. The September figure for the former was up by 45.5 per cent in the last year; the latter by only 1.6 per cent.

Easy credit, Soaring Prices Raise New Housing Fears
Canadians are buying homes at a blistering pace, binging on new debt. But all that cheap money can come at a high cost.

Worlds Debt Crisis

How To Prepare For Potential 'Global Collapse'
In a report entitled "Worst-case debt scenario", the bank's asset team said state rescue packages over the last year have merely transferred private liabilities onto sagging sovereign shoulders, creating a fresh set of problems. Overall debt is still far too high in almost all rich economies as a share of GDP (350pc in the US), whether public or private. It must be reduced by the hard slog of "deleveraging", for years.


China Warns Federal Reserve Over 'Printing Money
Richard Fisher, president of the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank, said: "Senior officials of the Chinese government grilled me about whether or not we are going to monetise the actions of our legislature." "I must have been asked about that a hundred times in China. I was asked at every single meeting about our purchases of Treasuries. That seemed to be the principal preoccupation of those that were invested with their surpluses mostly in the United States," he told the Wall Street Journal.

Germany Warns US On Market Bubbles
Germany’s new finance minister has echoed Chinese warnings about the growing threat of fresh global asset price bubbles, fuelled by low US interest rates and a weak dollar. Wolfgang Schäuble’s comments highlight official concern in Europe that the risk of further financial market turbulence has been exacerbated by the exceptional steps taken by central banks and governments to combat the crisis.


'Debt Levels Risk Another Crisis'
Harvard economics professor Ken Rogoff said that the level of debt major governments have taken on to tackle the financial crisis is of considerable concern must not go unnoticed. In a series of recent comments, Prof Rogoff cautions that countries like the US have been running up such significant national debts as a proportion of their total economies that there is the potential for default at some point in the future.

The Canadian Housing Bubble?

Lou Dobbs Resign's From CNN