Juggling Dynamite

Weak wage growth, expensive home prices, utilities, taxes and upkeep, along with high household debt and low savings levels, are all excellent reasons not to buy a house.

The solution is to rent, split costs and share with room-mates or family until one is able to pay down debt and build up savings and eventually amass a down payment to buy a home when the facts make good financial sense to do so. Those suggesting the answer lies in lowering lending standards and reducing down payment requirements even further in order to allow people to buy homes sooner are dangerous and clueless or wilfully blind about how the world got into its current debt mess in the first place. Here is a direct video link.

I can’t emulate many female vocalists, but Neil Young is a key element of my Karaoke repertoire. Yep, sound just like him…

A conversation with Neil Young about getting the world off oil “time to move on” and why North America’s evolution is being stymied by fossil fuel corporations. Here is a direct video link.

Speaking of Canadian musicians. We took our kids to see brilliant, world renowned, Canadian guitarist Liona Boyd in concert Friday night. To our shock and horror, she has restyled herself as a singer, songwriter. Someone needs to be honest and tell Liona that she is neither. We had to leave at the intermission.

Not only are 70% of Americans earning less real wages, but they are more indebted, so spending power is much less than in 1979. This is why demand is weak. And no Central Banks can’t fix that. To the contrary, their lax monetary policies aimed at stimulating increasingly suicidal levels of debt and levered spending over the past 30 years have been a major cause of present financial weakness. The more they try to do, the worse these trends become. Here is a direct video link.