China’s catastrophic deleveraging has begun. Jesse Colombo is a wonderful researcher of housing bubbles which always precede recessions, and his piece on housing in a range of countries is outstanding. Beijing housing prices are up 800% since 2003. There are bubbles in Hong Kong, Australia, South Korea, Finland etc etc. China. After Spain’s housing bubble collapse their cement use dropped 60%. China’s cement increase in one year was 25 times what America uses. This site is always being updated. Steve Keen is following the Canadian housing bubble and is closely watching house prices and unemployment in Australia. Also go to http://thebubblebubble.com. One quarter of homes  built in US last month were bigger than 3000 sq feet.

Annette Sykes thinks John Key should either get a law degree or stay quiet about Maori water rights.

Goldman Sachs executives in 2010 took away $15.3 billion in bonuses, enough to feed every hungry person on the planet. They are setting up office in Perth. The film by Renegade Economist’s Ross Ashcroft, The Four Horsemen,won a prize for the best documentary at the Galway Film Festival.

There are freak tornadoes in Poland, droughts in US, floods in the North Island. A record amount of Arctic Sea Ice was melted in June.

There is a website called http://unlearningeonomics.wordpress.com. I guess there is a bit of unlearning to do!

Various people are working out if Australia and NZ are being hit by the LIBOR scandal. Paula Bazarotti writes on the Democrats for Social Credit website that “Vast sums of money – up to $500 trillion are notionally attached to Libor. If the Libor rate is manipulated by just the tiniest amount – 0.0001 per cent – it can create a profit or loss of $50 billion.”