Katherine Sampson - Founder of "Healthy Habits"
Jack Delosa - Founder of "The Entourage"
Petar Lakovic - CEO of MBE Education and The Entourage, an absolute sales genius!
+Dorry Kordahi - Founder of DKM Blue
The entrepreneurs told about their successes and failures and how they were able to climb to such heights, as well as passing on valuable knowledge and strategies to use for inexperienced entrepreneurs .
The event was full of energy and served as an inspiration to many, as well as presenting an incredible opportunity to network with like minded people, and maybe even finding that Technical Co-Founder you have been searching for... All in all, the best free event I have ever been to with no mass marketing for their exceptional business education program.
But now back to other news... :)
MARKETS
The Global Property Obsession Continues...
You won't be surprised to hear that Cyprus' banks passed a
stress test in 2011. They were tested to see if they could survive a bit of
economic turmoil, and they passed. Now they're failing anyway. Clearly, bank
stress tests are about as reliable as Lululemon's quality testing.
You see, Lululemon makes tights. The kind you would wear to
a yoga or flying trapeze class. Unless you're a 12-14 year old girl, in which
case wearing tights is fashionable generally.
Apparently, wearing slightly sheer tights is also fashionable.
But Lululemon's quality testing and design team made an error. Their tights are
just a bit too sheer, triggering a product recall. 'The truth of the
matter is the only way you can actually test for the issue is to put the pants
on and bend over,' Chief Executive Officer Christine Day said in a
conference call. The mistake is set to cost the company up to 27 cents per
share.
Now, given the whole point of wearing these tights (yoga),
you'd think that people might want to test them by...bending over. That's what
people do when they do yoga. It's also why we don't do yoga.
It's the same story with the banks' stress tests. So if Cyprus' banks passed stress tests,
but find themselves in need of a bailout, what did the stress testers miss? You
guessed it, a sovereign debt crisis - the kind that Europe is going through.
Just like Lululemon's quality testing team, the stress
testers didn't test for the one thing that really matters: What happens when
your biggest and best asset is at its most vulnerable.
All this should sound familiar. In America, houses and
mortgages were the biggest and best asset of the financial system.
When Ben
Bernanke was asked what would happen to the financial system if house
prices on a nationwide basis fell, he replied 'I guess I don't buy
your premise'. He wasn't even willing to consider it. Australians are suffering
from the same delusion. But before we get to Australia, let's take a global property tour to see what's going
on.
Double Double Toil and Trouble, Let's Reflate the Housing
Bubble
The whole world is going on another property binge.
Politicians and central bankers are adding 'eye of newt and toe of frog' to try
and pump their economies the way they know how. Yes, governments are struggling
financially because of the last housing bubble they
inflated, so they've decided to inflate another one.
Are they really that dumb? You betcha!
In America, government backed mortgage behemoths like Freddie
Mac and Fannie Mae are buying up the overwhelming majority of new mortgages.
Without them, who would be willing to lend the money?
Percentage of all new mortgages backed by the US government
Source: Inside Mortgage Finance
The other source of property buyers are hedge funds, also supported by government in the form of the central bank. Spurred on by stupidly low interest rates from the Federal Reserve, they buy vast bundles of houses and rent them out, pocketing the difference.
'Last year, institutional investors made up 19% of all sales
in Las Vegas, 21% in Charlotte, 23% in Phoenix, and 30% in Miami,' writes
ZeroHedge. The problem is, they're flooding the rental market, which is pushing
down rents.
There's a crisis in the making here. If interest rates rise
and rents stay low because of oversupply, the hedge funds will be in trouble.
Michael Krieger of Liberty Blitzkrieg calls this 'one of the biggest
disasters waiting to happen in the US economy.' If the hedge funds try to
escape en masse, house prices could fall just as interest rates rise.
The story would be the same as sub-prime, but with hedge
funds on the receiving end instead of poor borrowers. Of course, a fall in
house prices ends up affecting anyone who own as house, which is why the
sub-prime mess went viral.
In the UK, the government has come up with a plan to
engineer a 'housing boom' by subsidising the mortgages of people who buy a new
construction. To be clear, taxpayers will be explicitly guaranteeing loans. The Telegraph explains the details:
'...the Government would offer five-year interest-free loans worth up to 20 per cent of the value of new-build homes costing less than £600,000. From January, another scheme will see taxpayers underwrite mortgages to those with small deposits, including more than a million people trapped with so-called "zombie" loans, where the fall in the value of their homes has left them unable to move.
'The Government will offer £12?billion of guarantees covering mortgages worth more than £120?billion. They are intended to help 644,000 people over the next three years.'
This is known as an 'epic facepalm'. That's when you slap
your hand over your face in a display of dismay and incredulousness. We know
how this ends - in a housing bubble and crash. But hey, the
election cycle is only so long. Some other politician will have to deal with
the aftermath.
Here in Australia, the story only gets more absurd. The TV
show The Block is back spruiking the benefits of property investing.
And it's just the most beautiful little microcosm of Australia's housing obsession.
According to News.com.au, the Blocksters made a combined profit of
$815,000. That's impressive until you realise what's meant by 'profit'. You
see, the Block calculates 'profit' based on the difference between the sale
price and the auction reserve price.
In case you missed it, the difference between the sale price
and the RESERVE PRICE. Never mind the prices the houses were actually
purchased at before the teams were let loose with sledge hammers.
As the article explains, there was 'no real world
profit'. But it gets worse. Take out the costs of renovation and even their
fake profit disappears.
According to one 'Block Head' (fan of the show), after the
2011 campaign exposed the under performing property market the
producers changed the rules. Now they don't keep track of the purchase price
and just under-quote a reserve price to make the whole effort look profitable.
At some point, Australians will realise that property just
isn't affordable in Australia. The only thing making it affordable for now is
rising house prices - once you own a
house you become more wealthy.
But they can only keep rising for as long as people are
willing to go into debt. And signs of stress are already emerging. Banks have
had to target people who can't afford loans to keep the lending machine going.
That's what caused all the problems in America.
Fortunately, all this has presented an incredible opportunity
for Australians. Because of some bankers' dodgy practices, all sorts of mortgages could
be extinguished. Could
yours? There's one way to find out. Click
here.
But the biggest and best property bubble award goes to
China. All sorts of cracks are appearing in that country's property boom.
And without construction in China, who will buy Australian resources?
We'll leave that for another day.
Much more interesting is a new study showing that German
median net wealth is less than a third of Spanish and Italian median net worth!
And less than half the French equivalent. The Germans are being asked to
support countries that are wealthier than them. That's not going to go down
well.
By the way, if you'd like to see your editor in non-sheer
tights, come on down to the Flying Trapeze Centre Melbourne's show 'Fall'.
(That's 'Fall' as in 'Autumn', not 'fall' as in house prices.) You can find all
the details here.
The Daily Reckoning Weekend Edition
REAL ESTATE
All roads lead to
inner-city living say real estate industry experts
HOMEOWNERS are giving up on the great Australian dream of a
big back yard and turning to inner-city apartments.
Industry experts said traffic congestion and busy work
schedules meant an increasing number of West Australians saw city apartments as
more convenient.
Professionals WA chief executive David Hobbs said if he had
$500,000 to invest in the next 12 months he would be looking for a unit within...continue reading
Homeowners are not
moving as often as they did a decade ago
Perhaps it's due to the stamp duty fees, maybe it's the
renovation revolution, or it might just be because moving house is stressful.
But Australian homeowners are remaining in their houses longer.
Our grandparents might have spent the greater part of their
adult lives at one address but a recent study undertaken by RP Data's research
analyst, Cameron Kusher, showed the average length of home-ownership for both
houses and units was...continue reading
Top time to buy
investment property... but not here
Is property investment simply for the wealthy? According to
recent research from RPData, there's hope for us all.
Aussie executive chairman John Symond says right now
property investment is well and truly within reach for everyday Australians.
Gladstone, however...continue reading
SME
Small business
deserves better, oppn says
Federal opposition front bencher Bruce Billson says small
business deserves better than a revolving door of ministers supposed to be
looking after the sector...continue reading
Government slow to
embrace young innovators
Young innovative thinkers are yet to be fully embraced in
Australia, according to the head of a not-for-profit entrepreneur network.
Australia will host the G20 Young Entrepreneurs Alliance
(YEA) and G20 Leaders Summits in 2014, but...continue reading
University of Sydney
start-ups set to Incubate with $1 million funding
Student start-ups accepted into the University of Sydney’s
Incubate program have raised more than $1 million in funding, as well as struck
up a partnership with BlackBerry.
Incubate, which launched
in September last year, is the first student union-backed start-up
incubation program in...continue reading
We trust you will enjoy what is left of the weekend and thank you for your continued support :)
Until the next time dear readers...
No comments:
Post a Comment