Tigers

Moody's downgrades Ireland to "junk" ("Tiger" to Junk in 4 years)

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Moody's Investors Service on Tuesday lowered Ireland's foreign- and local-currency government bond ratings by one notch to non-investment grade of Ba1 from Baa3. "The main driver of today's downgrade is the growing likelihood that participation of existing investors may be required as a pre-condition for any future rounds of official financing, should Ireland be unable to borrow at sustainable rates in the capital markets after the end of the current E.U./IMF support programme at year-end 2013," said Moody's in a statement. The outlook on Ireland's ratings remain negative.

The Celtic Tiger:  Irish Property Bubble

The fact that property valuations were steadily increasing tended to create a systematic feedback loop, where rising prices affected the psychology of market participants, causing further increases in prices.

Never seen that in Australia (*walks away whistling*). What! Our property debt exceeds GDP?

The banks have mortgaged 4 generations so you deluded folk that bought a property at least a decade ago (like me), and saw it go celestial in value could feel good about your perceived wealth last year. Note, LAST year. You are now losing equity at a rate of $000s a week.

Make sure you watch the videos on my post To be sure, to be sure

And, Unstable Pillars.

It will happen here.

The main stream media and the dopeys in suburbia (and Alan Kohler on the ABC) are obsessed with the Carbon Tax. WRONG! A halving in house values to NORMAL levels is the monster, and if that starts to happen there will be no carbon tax because we will become like the Irish. Hypothetically HALVE the values in your Real Estate holdings and see what you have. Feeling happy?

Up to a $400,000,000,000 hole in the finance sector. Bank failures. Credit freeze.
I wrote about this on Whats that on the horizon Captain?.

Keep sitting on your investment properties and snarl invective every evening at the Carbon Tax .

If you don't get it....

Now when the property slide gets to full cry... make sure you blame the government.

Its not YOUR greed or failure to interpret the bubble market. It wasn't the easy credit, the Liberal party policies of 2001 of FHOG, baby bonus, increase money supply etc... they were good policies (The KRudd stimulus of 2008/9 just added the cherry and foolishly kicked the can down the road and created Aussie sub-prime). It was never your failure to learn the history of the markets you were using equity to invest in. It was never your fault.

Blame the government. Its as Australian as a Meat Pie.