Quote Originally Posted by Logen Ninefingers View Post
Inflation running hot at 3.3%
All that money printing, profligate government spending, and what became basically a free money giveaway to borrowers at the expense of savers - it's all now coming home to roost.
Something has to be done about these idiots paying any old price for aging housing stock & then using said house as an ATM to fund their lifestyles - the behavior (mania) of these people is bringing the country to its knees and destroying the purchasing power of our dollar. The housing markets out-of-control irrational exuberance has lead the Reserve Bank to act in crazy and outrageous ways to defend it, slashing the OCR to the point where credit issuance was unleashing a tsunami of new money & people were viewing borrowings on the same footing as earnings.

Let's get some sanity restored and if some people suffer of the consequences of their own decisions, then they only have themselves to blame. If you are weak enough to join in a speculative mania and end up paying the piper, look in the mirror to see the culprit.

I sense your anger however, NZ has long gone sold off houses as commodity for profiteering a LONG time ago. I had a strong sense this was going to happen when I first arrived in 1997. How could one not see this? A country with no capital gains tax on houses, no controls on how many could buy houses? New taxes to discourage investments in more productive assets (ie share ownership). The game is clearly rigged in advantage for those investing into house a LONG time ago.

Here's a fact I read the other day. In America, the top 10% own 85% of the wealth in their stock markets. In NZ, what % of wealth do the top 10% own houses in NZ? Then you will understand why NZ will always be a low productive economy.