Now I know your thinking what is this poor little sick puppy smoking. Both our solicitor and banker last November thought I was a nutter when I first started ranting about CDO's and adjustable rate mortgages. In recent months here in Melbourne a lot of people have started to take note of the syndicated articles called planet wall street that has been running in the age.
The information has been out there on the internet for well over a year but as my father who had a grade three education but a special ability to read people said. Common sense just isn't very common among educated people.
Most of the nonsense about things are improving, pumped out by the gang of seven from wall street; Merrill Lynch, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase and Citigroup, has been aided and abetted by the financial press. There is trillions of dollars in further losses coming as a consequence of hundreds of smaller banks failing throughout the western economies of North America and Europe. That is without counting the number of insurance companies that will also soon start to crash.
As far back as the mid 1990's Warren Buffet described Wall Street as an apple that is rotten to the core. Around 2003 he was quoted saying that derrivatives were financial instruments of mass destruction that one day would case untold suffering. Warren Buffet doesn't understand derrivatives and unfortunatly for the rest of the world neither did the gang of seven.
Which brings me to the Somersoft Property Investment Forum. There are a lot of posters who can't see the forest for the tree's. Many on this site think they are going to continue to make a killing in property. Like the product disclaimers on most investment sales literature. Past performances in property investing is no indication of future returns.
We are now entering a period of massive financial upheaval. You need to go back and read about businesses that thrived in the great depression. The days of easy money through mortgage originators like Aussie that used collateralized debt obligations are going.
If you want to grow your property portfolio you are going to have to generate your income from your internal operations ,be it your properties, business income or salary.
The use of negative gearing and using your existing equity to gear up is going to become much more difficult. The more senior posters on Somersoft need to warn the newies that you can lose your savings investing in property just as easily as you can speculating in the share market.
I also think a lot of Somersoft posters should visit the global house price crash forum and just read without commenting. By accepting some criticsim you can become a better investor. There is far too much arrogance on this site.... and yes I also plead guilty