nyonyamansor09

Time is beautiful. Given enough time you can get fat, bald and start to sprout hair from your ears. Suffering those indignities is worth it because time also builds something else - an artillery. As Sun Tzu said, "while you sweat an imprint into your couch, your enemies sow the seeds of their destruction." Predictions have been made and forgotten by most. Those without shame and something to sell can forever make those predictions without fear of second guessing. Welcome to Tasmania, where the print media is a contemptible landscape of irrelevant whiskey-nosed boozers and their fresh faced, empty headed underlings. You know the type, tweeting while watching Q&A on Monday night allows them to believe they're the state's intelligentsia. Luckily there's me. Thoroughly lazy, yet occasionally motivated by the chance any of Tasmania's lamentable journalistic stock will rip me off and highlight something original. The odds aren't good. The Mercury's pumpe...

I pulled the covers down and flicked on CNBC this morning, just to catch trader, Mark Fisher being asked how he’d get the US housing market moving again. While I found his answer slightly odious, it was clear he’d nailed how to get anyone to buy anything. Make them believe it will be more expensive tomorrow and they’ll buy it today – which let’s be clear, also pushes up the prices today. Fisher’s plan was simple – hand out green cards to any foreigner who wanted to live in the US and intended to buy, and live in (no renting out), a house. If people had no incentive or concern pushing them to buy today, they wouldn’t – especially if they thought prices would be cheaper tomorrow. The idea green card would probably work – high net worth individuals having access to US residency on the purchase of a house, clearly there would be some house price pressure. Yet, it’s the psychology behind the ‘more expensive tomorrow’ idea that the real estate and building industries understand and conti...

Some worrying stats regarding family violence were released this week, these could be linked to any cause - if you were so inclined to draw long bows. So like any blogger worth his salt, I'll interpret them on behalf of the barrow I'm pushing. Overpriced housing. Reports of family violence in Tasmania are up 500% in the past decade. Scary statistics, but thankfully Ruth Forrest MLC was on hand to interpret the reasons for the rise. Predictably, unemployment and drug use got a run, along with the vague and redundant term 'life pressures'. If you can't be more specific, why bother giving throw away quotes to the media? Considering Forrest sat on the Housing Affordability Select Committee, you'd expect she may be able to offer a little more insight as to what 'life pressures' consist of. During those hearings, in 2007, the HIA acknowledged that: ...Tasmania is now sitting around seven times the household income so we are actually rated as one of the least a...