sulla bolla immobiliare mondiale
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Quick: Think of an international economic trend of the last decade that has hit every continent but Antarctica, upended lives and savings, caused unprecedented dislocation, made multi-millionaires of a few and paupers of many.
There's one answer that's so simple you can miss it: it's proliferation of housing bubbles. Name a country and most likely there's been a recent housing boom and crash. The U.S. housing crash is an obvious example. So is Spain's. And so is the still-inflating bubble in China (How do you know it's a bubble? One good sign is China' government restricting purchases and adding new taxes to keep prices in check).
Earlier this week Bloomberg reported on the efforts to curb the markets in Shanghai and Beijing, monsters that keeps growing even as almost everyone agrees they will eventually blow up. Today brings two more dispatches from the international mortgage front. In Denmark, as Bloomberg's Frances Schwatzkopff reports, a 20 percent drop in housing prices has met a national reliance on interest-only mortgages -- a toxic combination for banks. Meanwhile, in Mexico, home repossessions have doubled as buyers abandon homes built far from city centers.
In the protracted international housing bust the dominoes are still falling. One question worth asking now is just what kind of changes in finance and culture have led to property bubbles everywhere from the most luxurious neighborhoods of London and Mumbai to the marginal exurbs in Ohio and Mexico. There's not likely to be a single explanation, but when a pattern is so conspicuous in so many places, it's worth thinking seriously about what might tie them all together