Is Another Housing Bubble Sneaking Up On Us?


Nick Timiraos points to an interesting IMF chart today. It breaks the world into two sorts of countries. The first, which includes the US, UK, Spain, and others, saw a big housing bubble during the aughts and a big housing bust during the Great Recession. The second, which includes Canada, Germany, and others, had only a modest runup in housing prices during the aughts and a correspondingly small decline during the Great Recession.

So what’s happening now? Well, countries that already had a housing bubble continue to struggle. Housing prices today are more than 20 percent below their 2007 peak. And the other countries? Well, they’re having their own housing bubble now, with prices nearly 30 percent higher than their previous peak.

Is this a problem? Maybe. With the exception of China, the IMF reckons that housing prices in the rebounding economies are still only modestly overvalued. Still, it sure looks as though there was a big pot of money chasing returns in one set of countries in the aughts, contributing significantly to the housing bubble. Now, with those countries no longer looking very attractive, the pot of money has moved on. More sensible controls on mortgages are supposedly what saved these other countries from the mid-aughts bubble, but I wonder if that’s enough now that lots of money is apparently sloshing its way in their direction? Stay tuned.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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