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Has the much-speculated-on property bubble burst?

Update: 3 May 2011
 The March 2011 quarter Australian housing prices show the biggest price decline in 12 years.

The economist, Steve Keen, says this is what he has been expecting for a long time. House prices, he says, are the outcome of the amount of bank mortgage lending and not so much a result of supply and demand.

Does Australia have a property bubble?
If so, will it burst?

8 April 2011
 Australian economist Steve Keen says 'yes'. He explains that the Reserve Bank is not worried but says why he disagrees. A new US publication tracking the current debt crisis of the US and the EU also says the Australian property market is a bubble! Australia will go the way of the USA, the UK and the EU. Endgame. The end of the debt Supercycle and how it changes everything (by John Mauldin and Alan Tepper. published John Wiley and Sons) says:
  • '... it is here that we find one of the biggest modern-day bubbles yet to burst.'
  • 'The rise in Australian house prices is extreme no matter how you look at it: price to income, rental yields, whatever. The Economist House Price Index shows that Australian housing is 63 per cent overvalued.'
  • 'On the surface, Australia looks like an extremely well-run country with very low public debt. Ireland and Spain did as well and had very low debt-to-GDP levels. However, if you let a housing bubble get out of hand and the state has to intervene to prop up the banks, then the state's debt levels will balloon'.
  • 'The weak link in the Australian economy is the banking sector.'
  • 'Australia's banking sector also has the highest loan-to-deposit ratio in the G20, with more than $A180 of loans for every $A100 of deposits.'
  • '...Australian banks remain very geared to the domestic economy. Any problems in the property market would be catastrophic for them.'
  • 'Australia is a house of cards. We are confident that the bubble will burst and that it will be spectacular, but we do not know what will be the spark.'
USA 60 Minutes explains the extent of the mess in the US housing/mortgage market.

Testimony before the US Congress on the path of US debt is eye-popping. It's from Erskine Bowles, the co-chair of President Obama's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility.


With all this, there's a lot to be cautious about. Merv King, the Governor of the Bank of England says the developed world averted a Depression but ....! He says that banks have acted like casinos.

Is capitalism to blame? A self-confessed Marxist gives a clever video explanation, but he himself admits that he has no solution.