M
morganist
Quote from piezoe:
That's starting to make some sense to me. Also, Morganist, can you restate that first sentence. I'm having a little trouble understanding it. Something about prices not reaching equilibrium fast enough during QE??
Prices of goods are pushed up by QE. It creates an artificial demand. In the UK they are creating low interest rates through providing funds through QE to make cheap debt available. That makes the price of houses higher than it would be if the QE and low interest rates were not there.
Normally in a recession there is natural compensation for the lack of income, in that the decrease in income reduces demand for housing and house prices fall. Because of the QE and the way they have gone about it (namely though mortgage debt, in the UK at least) the natural compensation has not happened and the cost of housing and rent does not reflect the populations ability to afford it.
This means the homes owners are still rich in comparison through this artificial compensation. However when the QE stops it will collapse. If you look at the statistics in the UK the homeless levels have rocketed. In a recession house prices should fall. They haven't this is not a natural recession and the intervention in by the Central Bank is like a political tool to keep the home owners rich at the expense of everyone else.
I wrote an article about this.
http://morganisteconomics.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/artificially-low-interest-rates-are.html