Buyers Markets (Seller/Vendor speak for "its going off and going cheap").

Mike Shedlock is on fire on this, in this comment taking to pieces a spruik in the Age.

Real Estate bulls pop out every cliche know to man.

Select Clichés from the Article 

• "It's definitely a buyer's market" - Richard Wakelin, director of Wakelin Property Advisory
• "This is a really good time for people to be trading up" - Richard Wakelin, director of Wakelin Property Advisory
• "Buyers should be sitting back and watching for opportunities, looking for properties that have been passed in on the weekend" - Mark Armstrong, from Armstrong Property Planning
• Century 21 director Charles Tarbey suggests buyers focus on the $400,000 to $600,000 range in coastal and tourist properties.

Decoded

Alternative Mish Suggestions

1. Trading up now will greatly increase losses
2. Tourist properties will be especially hard hit
3. Now is a poor time to buy in general
4. Wait 5 years, then see what prices are
5. In the meantime, rent

Our banks have borrowed over a $Trillion to make this bubble happen. Village idiots to NeuroSurgeons have made money from Real Estate over the last 15 years and "know where they are coming from when it comes to Real Estate".

You see, they, like me bought a house 15 years ago. It wasn't Warren Buffet or Bill Gates in insightfulness. Then the mother of all credit avalanches occurred and everything went to the moon. This is the problem. You aren't Warren Buffett and you/we got lucky. Steady growth (3-4% pa) is good and what we bought into, hyper growth is a euphoric bubble and it ALWAYS ends in tears because it becomes a Ponzi scheme that requires greater fools to participate so we can get our cut. See my previous, history never repeats.

The aphorism "A Rising Tide Will Lift All Boats" comes to mind.

A lazy $1,000,000,000,000 borrowed overseas in 15 years and dumped on you to play Ponzi Jenga with is a lot of tide considering our GDP is about that number.

The incentives to not be the Greater Fool* have never been better.

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_fool_theory

Maxed out the Credit Card?

Today the US has reached its debt limit of $14,294,000,000,000. And if Congress (a hostile Congress) doesn't approve a higher limit (Obama and Turbo Timmy Geithner want $21Trillion) things will get ugly at the house of Uncle Sam.

How ugly?

Emergency measures to dip into Pension assets.

The Honorable Harry Reid
Democratic Leader
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510

Dear Mr. Leader:

I am writing to notify you, as required under 5 U.S.C. § 8348(l)(2), of my determination that, by reason of the statutory debt limit, I will be unable to invest fully the portion of the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund (“CSRDF”) not immediately required to pay beneficiaries. For purposes of this statute, I have determined that a “debt issuance suspension period” will begin today, May 16, 2011, and last until August 2, 2011, when the Department of the Treasury projects that the borrowing authority of the United States will be exhausted. During this “debt issuance suspension period,” the Treasury Department will suspend additional investments of amounts credited to, and redeem a portion of the investments held by, the CSRDF, as authorized by law.

In addition, I am notifying you, as required under 5 U.S.C. § 8438(h)(2), of my determination that, by reason of the statutory debt limit, I will be unable to invest fully the Government Securities Investment Fund (“G Fund”) of the Federal Employees’ Retirement System in interest-bearing securities of the United States, beginning today, May 16, 2011. The statute governing G Fund investments expressly authorizes the Secretary of the Treasury to suspend investment of the G Fund to avoid breaching the statutory debt limit.
Each of these actions has been taken in the past by my predecessors during previous debt limit impasses. By law, the CSRDF and G Funds will be made whole once the debt limit is increased. Federal retirees and employees will be unaffected by these actions.

I have written to Congress on previous occasions regarding the importance of timely action to increase the debt limit in order to protect the full faith and credit of the United States and avoid catastrophic economic consequences for citizens. I again urge Congress to act to increase the statutory debt limit as soon as possible.

Sincerely,

Timothy F. Geithner

 
Identical letter sent to:

The Honorable John A. Boehner, Speaker of the House
The Honorable Nancy Pelosi, House Democratic Leader
The Honorable Mitch McConnell, Senate Republican Leader

cc:       The Honorable Dave Camp, Chairman, House Committee on Ways and Means

The Honorable Sander M. Levin, Ranking Member, House Committee on Ways and Means
The Honorable Max Baucus, Chairman, Senate Committee on Finance
The Honorable Orrin Hatch, Ranking Member, Senate Committee on Finance
All other Members of the 112th Congress

Watch those numbers roll:

http://www.usdebtclock.org/

Look! Even the nodding dashboard poodle is on board...

Barack Obama has warned of global financial chaos if the United States' $14 trillion debt ceiling is not raised soon.

The US president says any signal that the world's largest economy might default on even some of its debt could spook financial markets and plunge the nation into another recession.

America's debt clock is racing towards midnight - with the current limit for borrowings of $US14.3 trillion set to be reached on Monday US time.
Soon, US debt will be through the ceiling with the government adding about $US135 billion every month just to keep current programs running.

President Obama is in a battle with both Democrats and Republicans to have the ceiling raised to around $US21 trillion.

But speaking in a town hall meeting broadcast by the CBS 60 Minutes program, president Obama spoke of the unthinkable and the potentially catastrophic impact that even talk of a US debt default would have on the global financial system.

From Australian ABC.

(sorry that the pic doesn't show the Goldman Sachs puppetmaster's hand jammed up his arse)

I hope the grizzled Navy SEAL or Army RANGER retiring after 30 year in, gets his pension or someone in treasury is going to get a can of whoop ass opened in his proximity.

They did it to GM where the workers that accumulated decades of retirement benefits were given the heave ho via chapter 11 bankruptcy and restructure.

Lets eat into the public service coffers. Take Master Sergeant Hammer's money off him, I dare you. 

Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD)

Yesterday Eurostat disclosed that in order to hide its debt over the past decade, Greece had entered into not one, not two, but a total of 13 different currency swap contracts with Goldman Sachs, all based on the exchange of assorted currencies against the euro as well as one involving a dollar-CHF swap. This was a topic that was all the rage back in early 2010 when it was unclear just how deep the Greek insolvency runs, and was pushed into the open after Zero Hedge first exposed Titlos PLC, an SPV securitization deal by the National Bank of Greece which not took a shady "off the books" currency swap and then securitized it. Since then this story has died down as it has become all too clear just how insolvent not only Greece but all other European countries are, and it no longer matter to haggle over pennies when entire countries subsist day to day purely due to the generosity of the ECB. Yet while Eurostat disclosed the number of the swaps it did not provide detail into just what was contained within these swaps. Which is why back in December, Bloomberg, which recently won a lawsuit against the Fed and achieved release of top secret bank bailout documents, sued the ECB, asking "the European Union’s General Court in Luxembourg to overturn a decision by the ECB not to disclose two internal documents drafted for the central bank’s six-member executive board in Frankfurt this year. The notes show how Greece used swaps to hide its borrowings, according to a March 3 cover page attached to the papers obtained by Bloomberg News." Yet even now that it is all too clear just what the true fiscal situation of Greece and the periphery is, the ECB is still scrambling to hide its secretive and potentially fraudulent practices.

So let's get this straight: the ECB's decision-making process relies on shady transactions that involve the use of currency swaps? Interesting. So while we know that the Fed uses curve options to sell volatility and keep rates low, we wonder if the ECB is doing a comparable off-market intervention using the same mechanism that "nobody" knew was being used by Greece for nearly 10 years.

"Releasing the papers could damage the commercial interests of the ECB’s counterparties, hurt the region’s banks and markets, and undermine the economic policy of Greece and the EU, the central bank said." And so the mutual assured destruction pantomime continues unabated,

 The rest is here at ZeroHedge.

The Eurozone is on the cusp of a shady, covered up, financial shitstorm (as news comes to hand that IMF's Strauss-Khan, and French presidential favourite is fond of oral sex with unwilling couterparties) but 100 million Euro idiots are having an oragasm tonight as Azerbaijan's Ell and Nikki win the village idiot musical eisteddford.

Yay.

IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn was taken into custody on Saturday at JFK airport in New York and was being questioned in regard to a sexual assault, a New York police spokesman told Reuters.

Spokesman Paul Browne said the woman who filed the complaint against Strauss-Kahn, 62, was a 32-year-old chambermaid who fled the room after the incident.

Strauss-Kahn, a possible Socialist candidate in the French presidential election next April, left the hotel after the incident and boarded an Air France aircraft scheduled to depart for Paris, the police spokesman said.

"The NYPD realized he had fled, he had left his cell phone behind," Browne said. "We learned he was on an Air France plane. They held the plane and he was taken off and is now being held in police custody for questioning."

"Around noon today, a maid at the hotel [the Sofitel by Times Square] knocked on the door of Strauss-Khan’s room. After letting the maid in, Strauss-Khan allegedly threw the maid on the room’s bed and forced her to perform oral sex on him, said police sources. Strauss-Khan let the maid leave — and soon afterward, headed off to Kennedy Airport for his flight to Paris."

From ZeroHedge, BBC, CNN etc etc.

Financial Drought and Australian Banks

Its time to worry about that foreign debt - SMH.

There is no doubt Australia is one of the most heavily indebted countries. A list compiled by the American Central Intelligence Agency puts us at No. 14 on the foreign debt scale with about $1.2 trillion owing to offshore lenders.

When you consider our relatively small population, and our strong but comparatively tiny economy, that means we are punching well above our weight in the spendthrift stakes. In fact, total foreign debt easily outstrips national income. The CIA reckons we owe the rest of the world 132 per cent of our annual gross domestic product.

That's not too far behind Greece which, at 165 per cent, finally appears to have tipped the balance and is heading towards bankruptcy (more politely expressed these days as a debt refinancing).

But hang on, I hear you say. Didn't the Treasurer boast the other night that we are one of the least indebted nations in the developed world?

Indeed he did. Australia's net foreign debt would peak at just 7.2 per cent of GDP in the coming financial year, he claimed.

That's a long way shy of the figure calculated by the CIA, and far too big a gap to be explained by rounding or the rubbery calculations involved between net and gross debt. So who is telling the truth?

The simple explanation to this conundrum is that the Treasurer was only talking about government debt, the loot he's responsible for borrowing. At about $120 billion, it's certainly a lot bigger than the $38 billion debt in the first year of the Rudd government. But despite the theatrics from Tony and Joe, government debt is negligible compared to the size of our economy and barely makes an impression when calculating who owes what to the rest of the world
.
The real culprits in the foreign debt splurge are you and me.

Between us, with our mortgages, the renovations, our investment properties, our margin loans, the new car, the credit cards and that interest-free loan on the new fridge, we account for the vast bulk of that $1.2 trillion foreign debt.

Big companies are in for a hefty slice as well, but nowhere near as much as ordinary folk like us.Again, I hear you scratching your heads. How could that possibly be the case? Haven't we all been complaining about the dominance of the big four Australian banks, and how they have a stranglehold on the market? Who on earth is borrowing all this money offshore?

I'll tell you who. The Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Westpac Banking Corporation, ANZ Banking Group and National Australia Bank. For years now, they've been running around the world, raising vast amounts of cash, and then bringing it back home to lend to us
.
Depending on the bank, up to a half the money they lend us comes from offshore markets. The other banks were all into it as well before they were rudely interrupted by the financial crisis three years ago.

The author, Ian Virrender, must realise that $1.2T in foreign debt is gross debt and we have foreign assets as well. So whats the net position?

Australia's net foreign debt (foreign liabilities minus foreign assets) is a cool $650B on latest data. Thats about $31,000 for every man, woman and child.

http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/5302.0

• 
  

  Australia's net IIP declined $5.7b to a net liability position of $782.1b in the December quarter 2010. Australia's net foreign debt liability decreased $26.7b to a liability position of $650.3b. Australia's net foreign equity liability increased $21.0b to a liability position of $131.8b.

Australia's Net Foreign Debt as a % of GDP

When the Howard govt took office in 1996 it was an approx net $100B.

Its increased 6 fold in 15 years (coincidence that house prices increased by 4x to 6x in the same time frame you think?)  Theres your housing bubble.

The banks just borrowed it and flicked it onto the schmuks. As long as new schmuks keep playing, a Ponzi scheme is technically sustainable.

June 2010 composition of bank foreign debt.

What happens to the Ponzi scheme if the foreign cash dries up or the schmuks lose their enthusiasm?

$31,000 per person owed overseas to keep the dream illusion alive. If you have large exposure to bank stocks and Australian Real Estate you better hope that the flow of foreign capital into Australia doesn't dry up and the boomers don't start panic selling in the mean time (as they watch $30,000 to $50,000 a year per house retirement asset 'disappear').

Sending €100 to random folk in Greece, Spain, Portugal and Ireland may help and there is always prayer.

ειρήνη και αγάπη

Wall St Journal

ATHENS—A largely peaceful protest Wednesday by tens of thousands of Greeks against new government austerity measures was marred by violence in central Athens late in the day, when hundreds of youths wearing ski masks hurled water bottles, firecrackers and other objects at police, who responded with tear gas and pepper spray.

Still, the one-day protest was restrained by the standards of recent Greek actions. It came a year after a mass antigovernment demonstration turned deadly as unknown assailants firebombed a bank building, killing three workers.

"There have been 24 detentions and two police officers have been hurt," said police spokesman Panagiotis Papapetropoulos. "There was a small group of protesters that threw objects at police, and there was some use of tmaneargas, but the clash was fairly minor."

Police estimated a modest turnout in the capital of some 20,000 people, while organizers put the number at around 30,000. The protest was backed by a nationwide general strike that effectively shut down most government operations.

The strike, the second called this year by the country's two main umbrella unions, comes just days before the government is to present Parliament with €26 billion ($37.4 billion) in further spending cuts and tax increases to slash the budget deficit over the next five years.

"These neoliberal and barbarous policies, which are driving workers and society into poverty for the benefit of creditors and bankers, are taking us back to the last century," said public-sector union Adedy in a statement. "They must not pass!"

In May last year, Greece narrowly avoided default with the help of a €110 billion bailout from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund in exchange for measures to cut its bloated budget deficit and reform its economy.

The country has cut its budget deficit by about a third, to 10.5% of gross domestic product last year. New measures—expected to be outlined Monday—aim to bring the deficit to below 1% of GDP by 2015.

The measures will include some €15.6 billion in spending cuts, and €10 billion in new taxes. Many of the cuts would come from reduced wage costs in the public sector, cuts in operating expenses at state-owned enterprises, and lower defense and health-care spending.

Measures taken so far have weighed heavily on Greece's sputtering economy as reduced wages and pensions, along with higher taxes, have hit consumer spending, which accounts for about four-fifths of the economy. The country is entering its third year of recession after shrinking a worse-than-expected 4.5% last year, and with only a modest recovery expected later this year.

The Guardian

"Athens has failed its young people. It has nothing to offer them any more. Our politicians are idiots … they have disappointed us greatly," said Dikiakos, who will soon be joined by 10 friends who have also decided to escape the capital.

They are part of an internal migration, thousands of Greeks seeking solace in rural areas as the debt-stricken country grapples with its gravest economic crisis since the second world war.

"It's a big decision but people are making it," said Giorgos Galos, a teacher in Proti Serron on the great plains of Macedonia, in northern Greece. "We've had two couples come here and I know lots in Thessaloniki [Greece's second biggest city] who want to go back to their villages. The crisis is eating away at them and they're finding it hard to cope. If they had just a little bit of support, a little bit of official encouragement, the stream would turn into a wave because everything is just so much cheaper here."

Ironically, it is the medicine doled out under last year's draconian EU-IMF €110bn (£96bn) rescue programme, implemented to modernise a sclerotic economy, that has made their lot worse. Twelve months of sweeping public sector pay and pension cuts, massive job losses, tax increases and galloping inflation have begun to have a brutal effect. GDP is predicted to contract by 3% this year – making Greece's the deepest recession in Europe.

In Athens, home to almost half of Greece's 11 million-strong population, the signs of austerity – and poverty – are everywhere: in the homeless and hungry who forage through municipal rubbish bins late at night; in the cash-strapped pensioners who pick up rejects at the street markets that sell fruit and vegetables; in the shops now boarded and closed and in the thousands of ordinary Greeks who can no longer afford to take family outings or regularly eat meat.

"We've had to give up tavernas, give up buying new clothes and give up eating meat more than once a week," said Vasso Vitalis, a mother-of-two who struggles with her civil servant husband to make ends meet on a joint monthly income of €2,000.

"With all the cuts we estimate we've lost around €450 a month. We're down to the last cent and, still, we're lucky. We've both got jobs. I know people who are unemployed and are going hungry. They ask family and friends for food," she sighed. "What makes us mad is that everybody knew the state was a mess but none of our politicians had the guts to mend it. It was like a ship heading for the rocks and now the rocks are very near."

Greeks also know that with their economy needing another financial lifeline, and few willing to lend to a country in such a parlous state, it will also get much worse before it gets better.

"In the past, the future always implied hope for Greeks but now it implies fear," said Nikos Filis, editor of the leftwing Avgi newspaper. "Until this week people thought that with all the measures the crisis would be over in a year or two. Now with the prospect of yet more austerity for more aid, they can't see an end in sight."

With unemployment officially nudging 790,000 – although believed to be far bigger with the closure of some 150,000 small and medium-sized businesses over the past year – there are fears that Greece, the country at the centre of Europe's worst financial debacle in decades, is slipping inexorably into political and social crisis, too. Rising racist tensions and lawlessness on the streets this week spurred the softly spoken mayor of Athens, Giorgos Kaminis, to describe the city as "beginning to resemble Beirut".

UK Telegraph

European finance ministers are due to meet in Brussels on Monday to discuss the possibility of more support for the embattled country a year on from its first bail-out.

Though the Greek economy grew 0.8pc in the first quarter, according to figures released on Friday, with more austerity measures likely, few expect the expansion will be sustained.

The S&P 500 closed down 0.8pc to 1,337.77 in New York, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed 0.79pc weaker at 12,595.75. The index had fallen as much as 1.2pc in afternoon trading.

Investors’ appetite for safer assets has been intensified by the whip-saw movement in the price of major commodities during the past two weeks.

The dollar, a popular destination for money during moments of uncertainty, gained almost 1pc against a basket of currencies, with the euro falling to a six-week low against the greenback.

“You’ve got these major financial shattering events potentially lurking out there that you don’t know how to play,” said Paul Mendelsohn, a strategist at Windham Financial Services. “When in doubt, get out,” he added.

Der Spiegel

"Me first" Europeans have also gained ground in Germany, for the same reasons. After three bailout plans since the euro first wobbled -- and hundreds of billions of euros in loans and support for Greece, Ireland and Portugal -- Merkel's opponents fear that Berlin will become the paymaster for an increasingly hopeless euro zone.

The threat is real for Merkel. A total of 19 members of parliament from the chancellor's coalition -- which consists of the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), its Bavarian sister party the Christian Social Union (CSU) and the business-friendly Free Democratic Party (FDP) -- have supposedly said they are no longer prepared to support Merkel's plans to save the euro. But the ruling coalition has only a 20-seat lead over the combined caucuses of Social Democrats, Greens and Left Party members. If more politicians from the CDU, CSU or FDP decide to defect, Merkel's domestic majority for measures to save the euro will crumble, and she would be dependent on opposition votes to get legislation passed.

Which, of course, would be dangerous. "Germany is the most important anchor for Europe," says Friedrich Heinemann at the Centre for European Economic Research. "The whole crisis mechanism (for the euro) stands or falls on German support for EU bailout policies." Complications with the crisis mechanism would send shock waves through financial markets.

The European experiment is showing severe signs of strain, not just among politicians. The euroskeptics in Berlin and Brussels are only reacting to the mood on the street. A recent poll conducted by Germany's Forsa Institute found that there was widespread approval among Germans for certain positions voiced by right-wing populist politicians. Thirty percent said they wanted an "independent Germany, without the euro, where the EU holds no legal sway."

Interesting times. Anyone with their money in risk assets in these precarious times is a bloody fool. I class Australian housing and the All Ords/ASX200 as the riskiest of all.

What do you think a global credit freeze will do to bank lending and the Aussie dollar (think carry trade and our 4 pillars overseas funding to feed a property Ponzi scheme just like the 4 Irish pillars) ?

Greeks Bearing Gifts

PIIGSUK = Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, Spain, United Kingdom.

A collection of six financially precarious economies in the Euro zone, most of which have their financial bollocks firmly grasped by a handful of bankers in Germany and France.

Well Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain were in the news this week.

Mike Shedlock ran with some data here.

S&P Cuts Greek Debt 2 Notches Deeper in Junk Cites 50% to 70% Haircuts: CDS at Record High, Probability of Default is 68%

Last week Trichet reiterated for the nth time "restructuring is not on the agenda". This follows his February pronouncement the "whole world" approves the bailout program.

Today, once again, the market refuses for the nth time to believe Trichet's nonsense, and Credit Default Swaps on Greek debt and Irish debt hit a new record high. Greece is now the lowest rated country in Europe.

UPI had more good PIG news here.

PARIS, May 9 (UPI) -- Having got themselves into a hole, the leaders of the eurozone countries have spent the last week digging it deeper by the day.

They began by signaling that Portugal would get a much more lenient interest rate on its bailout loans than Greece or Ireland. This in itself amounted to an admission that the onerous rates charged earlier would, as many economists warned, so depress their economies that they would never get out of debt.

But once Portugal had been given the easier ride, the Irish and Greeks understandably began to demand the same treatment. But even the Portuguese are facing a grim future. They don't at present have a sovereign debt crisis but they soon will. They are being lent $116 billion, which is almost 50 percent of the country's gross domestic product. The loans will take Portugal's debt to more than 120 percent of GDP

.

and...

For the Greeks, the question is becoming a matter of life and death. Their sovereign debts total $327 billion -- 160 percent of GDP -- and the markets simply don't believe that Greece can or will pay. Interest rates for Greece's two-year bonds are now more than 26 percent. The insurance rates on Greek debt have reached surreal proportions. To insure $19 million of Greek debt for five years now costs $1.37 million a year -- more than $7 million, with compounded interest.

But the Greeks have very few cards to play. The only serious one is the nuclear option: a unilateral withdrawal from the euro and a massive devaluation of the new national currency plus a default on all debt.

This would plunge the European Union and its central bank into crisis and force heavy losses onto a number of French and German banks. It would probably leave the Greeks condemned to fierce austerity for years to come but at least they would inflict some real pain on their EU "partners." Indeed, Jurgen Stark, chief economist of the European Central Bank, has warned that it would provoke the same kind of crash as the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy of 2008.

Note that last line.

Indeed, Jurgen Stark, chief economist of the European Central Bank, has warned that it would provoke the same kind of crash as the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy of 2008.

What of the Irish? The Daily Mail ran a rather poignant piece here.

We won't pay off our debt... Fine Gael Minister admits Ireland plans to restructure €250bn borrowings as economist warns Ireland is bankrupt

Ireland will never repay the €250bn it has borrowed from the EU and IMF, senior government insiders have admitted – but we will not default until our ­EU partners agree we have no choice.

A senior minister last night told the Irish Mail on Sunday that the Cabinet expects our crippling debts to be ‘restructured’ within three years.

However, Fine Gael is pinning its hopes on the EU being forced by outside events, such as the collapse of the Greek economy, into a realisation that Ireland cannot hope to pay off the debt mountain accumulated by our rogue banks.

Did you get that? The Irish are hoping the Greeks go under so their sucking chest wound will get more favourable treatment. If thats an union I'd hate to see them divided.

Restructure is finspeak code for if you invested in us, you're in trouble.

The admission came as Professor Morgan Kelly, the economist who predicted our property crash and the bank crisis, warned that without a restructuring, Ireland will be crushed by its quarter of a trillion euro debt.

And Spain? Mike Shedlock dug out some data on Spain this week here.

The deficit compromises growth objectives for 2012 through 2014.

Staff reductions are increasingly difficult.

Spain is in a very problematic situation.

Personal income taxes are down 19.4%

Corporate incomes taxes are down 42.7%

VAT collection is down 22.4%

Excise duties are down 40%

If credit froze in GFC Act I when a low level US investment bank went under what will Euro led GFC Act II bring? In 2008 commodities, risk currencies, stocks etc all went south and rapidly. However in July 2008 if you bought $US with $AU you made 70% in months as the AUD tumbled from 0.98 to 0.60. If you leveraged short you are probably retired.

Now couple a credit freeze with an Australian govt in deficit and tumbling Australian house prices, exposed banks and 0.60 on AUD could be generously high.

This could take a year or 2 but you can feel the first stirrings of an updraft.

What a crash [that brings down the banking sector and spikes unemployment from 4.5% to 13%] looks like.

Irish House Prices peaked in the period October 2006 to July 2007.

Changes in Irish House Prices QoQ.

Q4 2006 Flat (No Change)

Q1 2007 +0.7%
Q2 2007 +0.2%
Q3 2007 -1.0%
Q4 2007 Flat (No Change)

Q1 2008 -3.3% 
Q2 2008 -2.9%
Q3 2008 -3.2%
Q4 2008 -6.0% (The largest percentage drop)

Q1 2009 -5.4% 
Q2 2009 -4.9%
Q3 2009 -4.2%
Q4 2009 -5.0%

Q1 2010 -3.5% 
Q2 2010 -4.0%
Q3 2010 -2.8%
Q4 2010 -5.8%

Q1 2011 -2.9% 
----------------------

Changes in Irish House Prices YoY

Year 1 -1.5% 
Year 2 -11.5%
Year 3 -18.5%
Year 4 -14.5%
Last 6 Months -8.4% 

Total Losses -43.2% over 4 years and 5 months.

Quarter on Quarter and Month on Month those falls look insignificant with -6% being the biggest QoQ drop. But, string them together and you have a train wreck.

Has Australia seen any recent falls that compare?

How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.