6 ms·

In the US, the federal government has acted in a big way to prop up home prices when they threatened to fall. It's hard to imagine how we can have it both ways

by jlebar 10y ago

In the US, the federal government has acted in a big way to prop up home prices when they threatened to fall. It's hard to imagine how we can have it both ways: If the government effectively insures real estate against loss, then investors (i.e., people with money) will take advantage of that, increase demand, and raise the price of the investments (i.e., houses you and I want to buy).

pen2l 10y ago
hkmurakami made a very astute comment a few days ago about this: > It seems that we made a pact with the devil by positioning housing as an > investment asset. By doing so, we've encouraged people to commit a very large > fraction of their net worth into a rather illiquid asset, tying their financial > fates to the future assessment of that asset. As a result, protecting the price > and appreciation of this asset has come to overshadow the other crucial roles > that housing plays in our society. > If I bought shares in AAPL at $50 (now > $100+) and someone comes along asking that AAPL let them buy some shares for > say, $65, I'm obviously not going to be happy since the value of my investment > is under threat. This is the kind of reaction we've unfortunately promoted for > ourselves. It didn't have to be this way, as other countries have shown us. > But now that we're here, it's hard to imagine a way to turn back time. I live in Boston. My peers and family are pouring out their savings of the last 10 years to buying property in Quincy and Jamaica Plains because they feel it'll gentrify soon and in another 10 years they'll be making good money from it (by either renting or selling). I feel extremely conflicted about this. I think they're probably right. This housing situation is the most fucked up thing I know of, and I just cannot think of any happy answers to solve these problems for the benefit of everyone in society - it seems any and every decision will favor one party and fuck the other.
- paulddraper 10y ago
  It sounds like we're well balanced then. Markets are efficient.
  - 001sky 10y ago
    public policy variables are outside the market efficiency hypotheisis because. markets are therfore not efficient wrt to public policy in general. they only are efficient with repsect to a specificially dilineated (analytically tractavle) public policy context at a single points of time.
    - paulddraper 10y ago
      And specifically what externality do you think is at play here?
      - 001sky 10y ago
        Market effeciency concepts have to do with incorporating information into a (well defined) market. Breaking the logic sequence of "well defined market", which can be done with trivial levels of "real world complexity", is problematic for EMH. This means you cant use EMH as a sort of backward logic to defend the status quo. As to the concept of a market externality, I'm not sure I understand the question. If you just mean "uncaptured incentives", well surely there are myriads. But the bigger point is that this is not a simple solution. You cannot re-solve the maths as per a case of omitted variable bias. The reason that this is so may be intuively grasped with an example. Let us posit that rent-seeking is a behavioral consequence of 'opportunistic' principals. And that rent seeking public policy architects are inevitable, because our politician is opportunistic (qua politician--behavioral assumption). OK, but now I've just made mess for EMH, and this is why EMH has an 'H' in its name. Because general economic theory requires that we assume away several things we just introduced. And if you understand EMH you understand why having opportunistic, strongly authorized, unrestrained public policy makers is a problem. Namely, (1) they hold private information (outside emh); and (2) they are free to play zero-sum dynamic games with market participants; and (3) they can charge economic rents by implementing a 'protection racket' scheme whereby donor/lobbyists avoid (large) zero-sum losses by taking (smaller) zero-sum losses that benefit the policy holder (so called diversions).

by jlebar 10y ago

pen2l 10y ago

hkmurakami made a very astute comment a few days ago about this: > It seems that we made a pact with the devil by positioning housing as an > investment asset. By doing so, we've encouraged people to commit a very large > fraction of their net worth into a rather illiquid asset, tying their financial > fates to the future assessment of that asset. As a result, protecting the price > and appreciation of this asset has come to overshadow the other crucial roles > that housing plays in our society. > If I bought shares in AAPL at $50 (now > $100+) and someone comes along asking that AAPL let them buy some shares for > say, $65, I'm obviously not going to be happy since the value of my investment > is under threat. This is the kind of reaction we've unfortunately promoted for > ourselves. It didn't have to be this way, as other countries have shown us. > But now that we're here, it's hard to imagine a way to turn back time. I live in Boston. My peers and family are pouring out their savings of the last 10 years to buying property in Quincy and Jamaica Plains because they feel it'll gentrify soon and in another 10 years they'll be making good money from it (by either renting or selling). I feel extremely conflicted about this. I think they're probably right. This housing situation is the most fucked up thing I know of, and I just cannot think of any happy answers to solve these problems for the benefit of everyone in society - it seems any and every decision will favor one party and fuck the other.

paulddraper 10y ago
It sounds like we're well balanced then. Markets are efficient.
- 001sky 10y ago
  public policy variables are outside the market efficiency hypotheisis because. markets are therfore not efficient wrt to public policy in general. they only are efficient with repsect to a specificially dilineated (analytically tractavle) public policy context at a single points of time.
  - paulddraper 10y ago
    And specifically what externality do you think is at play here?
    - 001sky 10y ago
      Market effeciency concepts have to do with incorporating information into a (well defined) market. Breaking the logic sequence of "well defined market", which can be done with trivial levels of "real world complexity", is problematic for EMH. This means you cant use EMH as a sort of backward logic to defend the status quo. As to the concept of a market externality, I'm not sure I understand the question. If you just mean "uncaptured incentives", well surely there are myriads. But the bigger point is that this is not a simple solution. You cannot re-solve the maths as per a case of omitted variable bias. The reason that this is so may be intuively grasped with an example. Let us posit that rent-seeking is a behavioral consequence of 'opportunistic' principals. And that rent seeking public policy architects are inevitable, because our politician is opportunistic (qua politician--behavioral assumption). OK, but now I've just made mess for EMH, and this is why EMH has an 'H' in its name. Because general economic theory requires that we assume away several things we just introduced. And if you understand EMH you understand why having opportunistic, strongly authorized, unrestrained public policy makers is a problem. Namely, (1) they hold private information (outside emh); and (2) they are free to play zero-sum dynamic games with market participants; and (3) they can charge economic rents by implementing a 'protection racket' scheme whereby donor/lobbyists avoid (large) zero-sum losses by taking (smaller) zero-sum losses that benefit the policy holder (so called diversions).