Two reports came out today/yesterday from a couple of Swedish institutes.
The first one from the Bank SEB (which is one of the worst banks in Sweden) and the survey says that 53% of the populace thinks that housing prices will go up in the near future, in contrast to 41% last month. Both the bank and newspapers quoting these numbers interpret it as good news. I’m thinking to myself, why?
Since when is rising prices on a big investment good news for the buyer? Okay, it’s good news for the bank that can indebt the Swedish populace even further, rising prices will also increase GDP, provided that the quantity of morons buying is about the same. But for the market in general it’s hard to see why higher prices is a good thing, in fact, it’s a bad thing, and that’s only looking at it from this perspective. If we also add in the rising unemployment, a shaky financial future and that the total debt of Sweden is close to 150% of GDP, and I cannot help wonder where the money will come from? More debt is the only answer, and that’s a good thing?
The Swedish government is currently running a SEK 200 billion deficit, interest rates are ridiculously low (one reason for the increase in prices we have seen so far), and people keep losing their jobs, so how the hell is it a “good thing” that people believe that prices is about to continue upwards?
The other report at display among Swedish papers is the one coming from UC AB. According to this business and credit information agency; companies going out of business were a meager 11% higher this August than a year ago. For some reason this is also regarded as “good news”. How about that?
If one actually read the report (find that here: Swedish) and look at the numbers being presented two fun things stand out. Firstly, counted Jan-Aug we can read it’s a total increase of 43% which is a much better indicator then one single month. Since the increase was higher in June and July, one may assume the number is going down, which, of course, isn’t really the case. Because, secondly, the report itself claims that one of the mayor reason for this lower percentage was that the crisis had already picked up speed a year ago, hence lower numbers to compare with than usual already back in Aug. 2008 in oppose to June and July. This nit little fact is ignored by the media, in effect this is yet another lie! Or maybe they are just incompetent..?
When comparing the number over a couple of years it looks even worse. According to SCB (The Swedish Statistic) there was an increase 2007 to 2008 by 35%. Even considering that 2007 was a very good year, bankruptcy-wise, this is consequently the comparison number we need to look at to really understand how bad/good it really was in August this year.
In other words, from a bad number to an even worse number in two ways. A) August last year (2008) was a worse month than June and July was during the same year, and B) August last year was also much worse than August the year before (2007).
Okay, so, again, the same question needs to be asked; how the HELL IS THIS GOOD NEWS!?!?
Finally, here I do need to remember you all that Sweden is actually in great shape in contrast to many other countries. (“Great” in the sense that the numbers don’t look as horrid, just less bad) So the Swedish government, idiots in so many ways, is actually one of the better ones out there… But in a very export-dependent country whose two of the main trading partners are UK and the US, two countries going faster downhill than a ski jumper, we are going to regard such reports as the ones mentioned above as “good news”? Please.
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