Re: [silk] Where is the US economy heading?
Dear Shiv, Having just seen one of those Maternity Hotels, your email struck a chord... PS - I have a garden with a lake for sale - about 240 acres in all. It's called Lalbagh. Anyone interested? I'm selling it cheap because I'm emigrating to the US I want. If you could just throw in your home and garden, too... Deepa. On 5/1/07, shiv sastry [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Tuesday 01 May 2007 12:06 am, Srini Ramakrishnan wrote: The US maybe headed for a fall, but a similar fall in India will have rather more pronounced and dire consequences. This may be a simplistic assessment. If you drive up towards Yelahanka past Mekhri circle you will see, on your left a grey ghost of a building that was supposed to have become the much vaunted Cauvery Medical Center financed by US based NRI's. That project died after there was a property value crash in the US about a decade or so ago that wiped several million dollars from the assets of the prime investors. However, it did nothing to other people and there are dozens of new corporate hospitals popping up around the ruins of Cauvery medical center. These new corporate hospitals are being built to cater to a very small and very wealthy group of Indians - and in keeping with the fact that these wealthy Indians are young and are beginning to have families, newer hospitals are coming equipped with birthing suites so that the wealthy young Indian can cough up a cool 1.5 lakhs (150,000 Rupees for the uninitiated) for luxury for 5 days while your wife delivers and brings home a baby. This is in addition to the 25,000 a month he pays for his Toyota Camry. These hospitals and facilities are aimed at less than one percent of the population and that one percent is greatly dependent on the US economy. For the rest, its business as usual whether the property market in the US goes up or down. The one lesson from all this is Make hay while the sun shines, and with any luck the sun won't stop shining, and new suckers will continue to be born inside or outside those birthing suites. PS - I have a garden with a lake for sale - about 240 acres in all. It's called Lalbagh. Anyone interested? I'm selling it cheap because I'm emigrating to the US shiv
Re: [silk] Where is the US economy heading?
Can someone point me to a couple of examples of instances where the real estate market went belly up? I am more interested in examples where investments lost value over a large period of time rather than short-term losses. I ask because I keep hearing dire warnings of real estate meltdown, but have personally only seen short-term losses. Long-term, real estate investment (like investment in the stock market) seems to increase in value. The question is not whether real estate increases in nominal value, but whether it increases in real value. Shiller attempted to take the inflation out of the time series, and eyeballing his graph: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/9/9e/Barrons_shiller_06-20-2005.gif/320px-Barrons_shiller_06-20-2005.gif suggests that if one had bought a basket of US real estate around 1900, it would have taken until 1950, maybe even 1990, to break even in real terms. (one might argue that the reason for the equity premium over this same time period was also due to inflation -- everyone would have done better given a more peaceful century, but stockholders at least retained some value while bondholders wound up with wallpaper) -Dave
[silk] How much is too much?
Nice things this guy learnt from random stock pictures. Enjoyed everyone of them and I think it is hard to just notice these things if you are not looking for it. I am sure that I will look at the pictures in ads with more interest now. :-) http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=stock_photos (text is ineffective without the pictures, no point posting it; sorry) Venkat
Re: [silk] Where is the US economy heading?
Can someone point me to a couple of examples of instances where the real estate market went belly up? I am more interested in examples where investments lost value over a large period of time rather than short-term losses. I ask because I keep hearing dire warnings of real estate meltdown, but have personally only seen short-term losses. Long-term, real estate investment (like investment in the stock market) seems to increase in value. The question is not whether real estate increases in nominal value, but whether it increases in real value. I am currently looking for a home and have been doing some reading. With respect to the US, till around 2001, the value of a home bought a century ago remained even when adjusted for inflation. I have a reference somewhere for it. Since 2001 there has been a real estate bubble which has started correcting about a year ago. It is expected to take 6-8 years to correct completely. Whether the correction will lead to the much ballyhooed US economy meltdown remains to be seen. Shyam __ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
Re: [silk] Where is the US economy heading?
On 5/1/07, Shyam Visweswaran [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I am currently looking for a home and have been doing some reading. With respect to the US, till around 2001, the value of a home bought a century ago remained even when adjusted for inflation. I have a reference somewhere for it. Since 2001 there has been a real estate bubble which has started correcting about a year ago. It is expected to take 6-8 years to correct completely. Whether the correction will lead to the much ballyhooed US economy meltdown remains to be seen. I am in the market for buying a house as well. I need a roof over my head, and I could either acquire this roof through renting or buying. There is no value preservation or appreciation with renting. While buying gives me some nice tax breaks (and induces some fiscal discipline). Even if the market turns south in a few years and I have to sell my house at a reduced value, I will still be getting back some of the money I invested rather than none. Thaths -- Homer: He has all the money in the world, but there's one thing he can't buy. Marge: What's that? Homer: (pause) A dinosaur. -- Homer J. Simpson Sudhakar ChandraSlacker Without Borders
Re: [silk] Where is the US economy heading?
Thaths wrote [at 01:17 PM 4/30/2007] : Can someone point me to a couple of examples of instances where the real estate market went belly up? I am more interested in examples where investments lost value over a large period of time rather than short-term losses. This is a long, data-laden (and scary) argument that the US real estate market is going to fall off a cliff: http://www.safehaven.com/article-6329.htm For Cheeni: reading through this might just convince you that the kinds of housing loans that have been made in the US are much, *much* more risk-laden than the ones that have been made in India. Udhay -- ((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))
Re: [silk] Where is the US economy heading?
--- Srini Ramakrishnan [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 4/28/07, Venkat Mangudi [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: but what we have in India is a spiraling inflation of urban land prices while rural land continues to lie untouched by the Indian economic miracle unless it has some potential of touching the margins of our ever expanding urban zones. This is completely untrue. In and around Bandipur where I work, which is 80 kms from anywhere, land situated 2 kms from the highway, accessible only through a dirt track, sells for 5-600,000 Rs. an acre. Merely two years ago, it was 75,000 if there was water below. What such a dramatic escalation, driven almost entirely by urban buyers, has done to the local dryland agricultural economy is utterly tragic. Farmers sell to plug decades-long, high-interest loans, and then find themselves without a patch even to grow food for subsistence. Migration and the rest of that downward spiral inevitably follows. If the sale didn't cover both the loan and the daughter's wedding, suicide is the preferred solution. I also know that this isn't true of Karnataka alone...it is the case all over Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and anywhere south of the Vindhyas. Pavithra __ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
Re: [silk] Where is the US economy heading?
On 5/1/07, Pavithra Sankaran [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [...] This is completely untrue. In and around Bandipur where I work, which is 80 kms from anywhere, land situated 2 kms from the highway, accessible only through a dirt track, sells for 5-600,000 Rs. an acre. Merely two years ago, it was 75,000 if there was water below. Granted there are exceptions. Bandipur is a nice weekend jungle getaway that's within driving distance of Bangalore and Mysore where the urban affluence exists. The key observation is that the rural land hasn't appreciated because of wealth created by the rural people, for example, farmers aren't competing to buy up their neighbors plots because they are seeing a sugarcane bubble. I'd like to show you plenty of land in North Karanataka that has not seen rain in many many months and has absolutely no tourism nor industrial value and remains barren and unappreciated. Bandipur is merely a minor side effect of urban affluence. Cheeni
[silk] HD-DVD and Digg
Via Slashdot: An astonishing number of stories related to HD-DVD encryption keys have gone missing in action from digg.com, in many cases along with the account of the diggers who submitted them. Diggers are in open revolt against the moderators and are retaliating in clever and inventive ways http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/07/05/02/0235228.shtml
