Real Estate in Austria

I came across the following real estate statistics for the Austrian market. There is no general trend across provinces. While some provinces saw a drop in home prices, others saw an increase. In Q4 of 2009, apartment flat prices Vienna increased more than 5% while at the same time the rent prices remained flat. From Jan 2008 through Mar 2009 prices for flats in Austria increased 7%. During the same period prices for houses in Austria fell 7%. During the same period the price of rent in Vienna went up 10%. It seems certain that there are many factors at work here. In comparison to other countries Austria's real-estate market seems to be slower moving with drops and rises in the single digit annual percentages.

Food

Good food is a good investment. It assures that you are energetic. It keeps the future medical bills low. It can help to avoid long-term illnesses and the suffering that comes with diseases like diabetes, heart failure, etc. Good food is simply good for you. And as a side effect it can be good for the environment too. 18% of all greenhouse gases come for life stock productions (think of cows grown for beef). As such life stock produces more greenhouse gases than all transportation combined.

Here are two videos, each 20-minutes long, that can motivate you to make a step closer to healthier food. We all need a motivational push now and then. I felt energized by these two videos to make an extra effort to a path of eating good and healthy food.

• TED documentary "Ann Cooper talks school lunches"
• TED documentary "Mark Bittman on what's wrong with what we eat"

Internet Censorship by Obama

There is already a lot of censorship on the Internet and there will be a lot more. This blog article already gave some prediction about the direction of the Internet and government control over it. We have seen a lot of direct censorship so far. China and UAE are typical examples. These countries filter internet traffic and don't allow pages from certain sites to enter the country. If you try to see photos on the popular Flickr site in Dubai you will get a "Not allowed due to inappropriate content" message sent to you, thanks to the local government. YouTube and Skype are blocked as well in the city of the world's tallest skyscraper. Burma is known to have turned the internet off completely during unrest and times of protests against the government.

Censorship, corporate as well as governmental, also exists in the US. Now Obama is requiring and enforcing reverse censorship, prohibiting information to leave the country. Read all about it this article entitled "Obama enforces trade embargo against open source". In this case the US government disallows the world's leading open source site Sourceforge to deliver content to blacklisted countries named by the US government. So, if you live in Syria and your profession is school teacher and you would like to download some open source educational software from Sourceforge, Sourceforge as required by US regulation must return an "access denied, forebidden" message. As one can see governments and corporations can be very inventive to control the internet or the use and distribution of open source software. More resources in internet censorship: Wikipedia, Wikia and Cship.

We are standing only at the very beginning of control and regulation of the Internet. How does the song go: You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet.

Spanish Real-Estate Rent

Here is a nice chart showing home real-estate rents for Spain. Rent prices are given in Euros per square meter and by city (for all capital provinces). Rent prices are given for 2009 and 2010 and comparing the numbers one can see that on average rent went down from Jan 2009 to Jan 2010 by some 7%. Full details in this report. Here is a spreadsheet with historic figures 2006-2009 on Spanish rental prices. A Pdf version with a few more details is also available.

Happiness

With so much mismanagement and materialism around us we easily lose sight of happiness. Here is some scientific background on happiness from Nancy Etcoff. Science suggests that happiness comes from being integrated, being part of a community, being active, cooperating with others. Another source and genetically programmed process of happiness is biophilia, receiving happiness through being in nature or part of nature. In the simplest example, one receives positive stimulation by going to the zoo. Another example is that patients in a hospital with a view of a natural setting (trees) recover faster than patients with a view of a wall. If we have this pre-programmed love for nature and living things, how come we as a society do so much harm to nature and nearly all living things? Clearly there are many forced at work.

Watching the 20-minute TED video entitled "The surprising science of happiness" is a good starting point to ponder happiness.

Hayek vs Keynes

A friend just dug up this lovely video. An economic message spiced up through rap. It's anything but stiff. Watch it: "Fear the Boom and Bust" a Hayek vs. Keynes Rap Anthem.

Having and Needing

"If you don't have anything, you don't need anything." This phrase is used in a conversation between father and daughter at the end of the movie Brokeback Mountain. The phrase comes from the book with the same title: Brokeback Mountain. It is an interesting quote. It seems to originate in this 1997 published short story as a little search discovered no earlier appearances of this phrase. This philosophical sentence is kind of stimulating and there is some truth to it. It goes against the flow and first impression. But clearly, if one has few possessions he or she is - by force or choice - used to few material things and adjusted to this simple life style. If one is used to it, one can live with it, and one doesn't need more. And with a little bit of luck one might even appreciate it. There is a lot of beauty in simplicity. People following voluntary simplicity have discovered this truth and find happiness through it.

Orwell Rolls in his Grave

"Orwell rolls in his grave" is a 105-minute video directed by Robert Kane Pappas. This documentary from 2004 highlights the US media system showing the partiality of the media, the conflicts of interests of the media and how media, politics and big business are merging into one power pool. Double-speak is a reality in the media today. News is all managed and steered. It does not inform anymore, it is very close to a propaganda tool controlled by a handful of people. Here is the video (or alternatively here).

What is the next step of media? Control of the internet. Government already has full tracking control on when and where every individual is online and which web sites are visited. The next steps will be that all financial transactions will be tracked and laws released to enforce paying taxes on every penny that is exchanged through interactions on the internet. The final objective is the control of the content, i.e. the news and political views. For this purpose it will be made difficult for small media players and independent individuals to get their voice heard on the internet. This can be implemented via gateway control of the ISPs, access control, deals between big media content providers and ISPs, or plain old censorship. It can be foreseen that any kind of regulation will be given an Orwellian double-speak name like "The Net Neutrality Act", "Global Online Freedom Act" or "Global Internet Openness Act" while in reality it will reduce choices and voices while increasing monitoring and tracking. As reasons we will be given arguments like war on terrorism, spam control, or protection from cyber attacks. In the near future news and content on the internet will be like on TV today: there will be 100s of channels all owned by 5 companies, all presenting the same preselected and prepackaged news that big business and big politicians want you to hear. These are my predictions. Do you agree?

There is no Right Answer

Stefan Molyneux argues in this video entitled "The Myth of the Free Market: Fractional Banking and Private Currencies" that there is no correct answer to many questions, even more so, he makes the case that there is no right answer to any sufficiently complex question (such as education, currencies, financial systems, health care, etc.). This is a valid point. Often I seem to get frustrated because I cannot find a fair, just, environmentally good and efficient solution to a problem. Frequently it seems to be "chose one or the other, but you can't have both". A possible solution might be socially fair, but violates personal freedoms; or it might be democratic but extremely inefficient. Stefan argues that one has to be humble and admit that we do not know the right solution. He argues that we should allow for a framework permitting multiple (all) solutions and letting the people continuously chose individual solutions from the multiple choices. It boils down to the fact that we must eliminate state monopolies and statism. No one answer is the right answer, but the right answer is the infinite multitude of all answers.

PS: I like his example of state planned marriages he brings up in the video.

Aspartame

Aspartame is an artificial sweetener found in many products like Diet Coke, Diet Pepsi, sugar-free chewing gum, yogurts and generally in many sugar-free and/or "light" products. Some claim that aspartame is linked to brain illnesses ranging from nervousness to brain tumor. Some argue that all the negative talk about aspartame (better known under their commercial names NutraSweet, Equal and many others) is just bad-mouthing the sweetener industry. Even if some of the evidence against aspartame is pushed aside for not being conclusive in court, as an individual it seems to make sense to avoid all sweeteners just to be on the safe side. Artificial sweeteners are chemicals that human bodies have not been exposed to in such quantities throughout evolution. It seems to be good common sense to stick to "real" food and healthy juices rather than "light" soda pops.

Even before watching the 90-minute documentary "Aspartame: Sweet Misery A Poisoned World" (or here) produced in 2004 I already decided to avoid sweetener-containing products. But watching the movie brought out another interesting fact: Guess who was involved in pushing aspartame through the FDA approval process and profited personally from its approval? Donald Rumsfeld. Why do the same names always show up everywhere? It is just another example of the revolving door strategy of individuals moving back and forth between industry and politics to create public policies favoring certain industries and to receive well-paid executive jobs thereafter. Have a look at minute 57:00 of the video to see Donald Rumsfeld in action.

Ancient Futures

I stumbled across this video produced in 1993, based on the book with the same title: Ancient Futures - Learning from Ladakh. The video is old, yet it touches so many issues still relevant and up-to-date today: interdependence (at a social, material and political level), local resilience, permaculture, finding social agreements on scarce resources (water and cattle herding in their case), government decision making reducing individual freedoms and liberties, globalization creating single-sided dependence, influences of modern media, modern materialism reducing leisure time instead of creating it, and sources of happiness. The video lasts exactly one hour and is worth watching. It will shed light on some true values of life and question what is frequently called progress.

For Tree Huggers

For all people appreciating trees and planning on planting trees, some helpful videos for planting trees manually or at an industrial scale: Darren Doherty on Tree Planting and Taranaki Farm videos.

Enron * 123

Last week I wrote about what goes up must come down and giving Enron and WorldCom as examples. I found a nice article by Jeff Clark, comparing last years bankruptcies and financial plunders to Enron under this title "Biggest Financial Deception of the Decade". If you look at the numbers and how they compare to Enron and WorldCom it becomes easier to understand the magnitude of the problems every dollar owner around the world is facing. US bailout funds in 2008 and 2009 total $8.1 trillion. That's almost 78 WorldComs. It's over 123 Enrons. And expect more in 2010.

15 Things

Film maker and activist Michael Moore posted a 15-point action plan he calls "15 Things Every American Can Do Right Now". I don't agree an all 15 items, in particular I see his view on the Democratic Party as too optimistic, but this  nonetheless is a good list to ponder and many of the suggested items are worth while our time and effort. Have a look and see if you can cherry-pick some items from this list for your own action item list.

Competition in Money

In modern society whoever controls money controls you. Whoever controls the money has so many opportunities to take advantage of you. There are inflation, taxation, confiscation (e.g. gold confiscation in US, mandatory conversion in Argentina) and many more schemes to control you and slowly make you hand over your earnings to the government. The government has a monopoly on defining what is legal tender and on money printing. And like a lot of monopolies it is abusive. How to bring a little bit of fairness back into money? Ron Paul suggests competition of money. If there are multiple currencies then people have a choice. And if the new currency or currencies (why stop at two?) are not government controlled the government no longer has the monopoly. An innovative thought. Here is the speech were Ron Paul presents the Free Competition in Currency Act.

Insurance or Jail

It is laughable how electoral campaign promises always turn into the opposite. Remember when the current president in his pre-election speeches promised health care for all. And now the solution discussed is that all US citizens must buy private health insurance or face high fines or jail terms. How is that a solution? How is this health care for all? How does that change the situation of the homeless or jobless out of money? But what is worst, it takes away more liberties. Nothing against private health insurance, but it should be voluntary. The person who prefers to pay his own medical bills, let him do it. They are just chiseling away at our civil liberties and making the fixed cost of living higher, forcing people into more rat-race slavery. The only guaranteed winner are the insurance companies who now will make a slice on every dollar spent on health care.

Want more food for thought on health care insurance? Here a video that highlights some aspect of why insurance makes the price go up.

Spanish Housing Prices

I continue to follow the real estate market. Years ago Spain was praised as the best real-estate market in the world. However, when something is repeatedly called the best there is usually a catch. Names like Enron, WorldCom come to mind and I remember when the WorldCom CEO was Business Man of the year, etc. The same happened to the Spain's real estate market. It is likely to be the worst real-estate market in the world today.

I did my own little pricing calculations on real estate I purchased in the past using a Price/Earning formula, a PE ratio. See the article here. Back then I computed that my flat was 57% overpriced. Since the truth is often so far from the portrayed reality, sometimes it is hard to believe in your own computations. The Economist magazine just published an article entitled "Ratio Rentals" where despite last years drop of 10% in private real estate prices, homes still are 55% overpriced. Looks like my computation was not far from the truth.

Here is a Spanish article discussing the same topic. It says that private real estate prices in Spain must fall an additional 35% from their current value in Dec 2009 in order to be in line with its historic long term rent-based PE ratio.

This article also provides real data on home prices for 2007, 2008 and 2009 for various Spanish provinces and cities in form of a spreadsheet. This data shows that some hot-spot cities like San Sebastian and Barcelona have seen home prices fall some 10% over the last two years. Other cities have seen drops of 20% over the last 2 years. In some extreme cases homes have lost 40% over the last two years.

But remember prices are still 55% overpriced on average and should fall 35% to get back to historic price/rent ratios. And if you look at the table you will see that Spain is the most overpriced real-estate market in the world. So remember, what goes up must come down. Whenever something is hyped to be the best, soon after it will be the worst.