A weekend topic starting with Deseret News in Utah. "These days, just about anywhere along the Wasatch Front you can find workers building houses, pounding nails into wood-framed structures, installing sheet rock or putting finishing touches on homes designed to serve families for years. But do these skilled carpenters earn enough money to afford the homes they are building? Unfortunately, the answer is no in most metropolitan areas. It’s an emphatic no in Utah, especially along the Wasatch Front, where average home prices have outstripped the average wage of a carpenter by a long shot."

"The average carpenter in Salt Lake City, with an income of $78,000, could afford only 15.6% of a starter home, according to the 2022 AEI report. In Provo, the figure was 8.9%, one of the worst in the nation. The report says 'Provo is the least affordable metro in the Mountain West.' Los Angeles was the worst in the coastal West at 4%. Adding to this data, a recent report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta concluded that houses today are less affordable than they were during the peak of the housing bubble in 2006, which precipitated the Great Recession in 2008."

Business Insider. "Stocks are poised to tumble as economic pressures mount, and the historic surge in mortgage rates means many Americans are now 'prisoners in their own homes,' David Rosenberg says. The Rosenberg Research president laid out several reasons why he believes asset prices have soared to unsustainable highs. He underlined the Fed's decision to cut interest rates to almost zero in 2020 and 2021, which allowed homeowners to lock in long-term mortgages at rates of 2% to 3%. 'Fully 85% of mortgagors did so and while this enabled them to escape the impact of higher interest charges as the Fed tightened, these folks ended up becoming prisoners in their own homes,' he said. 'They can't move without a serious financial penalty.'"

"Rosenberg meant that potential home sellers have balked at parting with their dirt-cheap mortgages, and having to pay top dollar and take on a 7%-plus mortgage for a new place. The resulting dearth of existing houses for sale has led to a 'bubble in home prices that exceeded what we saw in 2005-07,' he said."

The Islander News in Florida. "'There are a number of challenges for us,' said Ron Shuffield, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices EWM Realty. 'We’re not seeing five offers on every house; we still have some multiple offers, but nothing like we were experiencing during Covid.' In 1984, when he said he came on at EWM Realty, an acre in Pinecrest was selling for $125,000, and now it’s $3 million. A 5,000-square-foot parcel in Coral Gables, which went for $65,000 in 1984, is now $1.2 million. 'Someone asked, ‘What’s going to happen in another 30 years? Will we be paying $30 million?’ The answer is probably yes.'"

"'Our interest rate is not expected to go higher (this year),' Shuffield said, pointing out that top officials say they weren’t concerned a recession would hit this year. 'When we flooded the market with liquidity during the pandemic … sure enough, inflation went up,' he said."

Yahoo Finance. "The US economy added 187,000 jobs in August. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg had expected the economy would add 170,000. The numbers are not expected to radically change the thinking of most Fed officials heading into their next policy meeting later this month. Last week, Fed Chair Jerome Powell described the labor market's rebalancing as 'incomplete.' Powell has repeatedly noted that getting inflation back down to the Fed's 2% goal will require 'some softening in labor market conditions.'"

Daily Mail Australia. "The first major speech of incoming Reserve Bank Governor Michele Bullock has been marred by furious protesters who hurled abuse and handed her a jobseeker form. The six angry demonstrators seized upon comments Ms Bullock had previously made saying she would like to see Australia's near-record low 3.6 per cent unemployment rate rise to 4.5 per cent to contain rising inflation. 'Hey Michele, you say 140,000 people should lose their jobs, how do you justify that?' the protesters yelled out. 'If 140,000 people need to lose their jobs, I reckon you should go first,' they said. 'We've started to fill out your form for JobSeeker.'"

Sky News in Australia. "Another Sydney building company has fallen leaving at least 60 creditors out of pocket and owing more than $1 million in debt. Simone Homes’ social media pages can also no longer be accessed. Construction companies have been collapsing at an alarming rate over the past 18 months with ASIC insolvency statistics revealing 2213 businesses went bust during the 2022-23 financial year. According to UNSW Business School banking and finance professor Dr Peter Swan, there are several factors contributing to the grim state of the construction industry."

"'COVID lockdowns and hundreds of billions paid to people not to work caused supply shortages, both locally and overseas,' he said. 'Lax fiscal policies and massive printing of money by the RBA led to inflation. The cash rate has been raised from almost zero to over 4 per cent per annum. All of these changes have put pressure on builders financially, as has the decline in house prices… far fewer properties are being listed for sale.'"

Stuff New Zealand. "Kataraina Murray’s young age hasn’t stopped her from carefully mapping out her financial future, and home ownership is at the heart of the Pātea teen’s pathway to prosperity. It's fair to say this 17-year-old intends to go places, already working part-time while juggling her Year 13 studies at Pātea Area School. When she finishes her education in a few months’ time, she’ll head into full-time mahi with a focus on saving money, priming her to take her first step onto the property ladder as soon as she can afford it. In her eyes, home ownership is the most achievable way to build wealth and give her opportunities to realise other ambitions, including travel. Another of her aims was to own other properties and become a landlord, as a means to offer good housing to others."

"In South Taranaki the value to income ratio is one of the lowest in the country. But even at 4.3 it’s still nearly 50% more than its 2.9 long term average. Despite home ownership being a core facet of New Zealand’s much vaunted egalitarian identity, houses in Aotearoa are among the least affordable in the world."

The Express. "Mortgage payers face more pain after the Bank of England’s chief economist warned interest rate setters must 'see the job through' if soaring inflation is to be reined in. The Bank has already raised its base rate 14 times in a row. A typical new mortgage had a rate of 4.66 percent in July, up from 2.33 percent a year earlier. Lewis Shaw, mortgage expert at Shaw Financial Services, said another hike would be 'absolutely crazy.' He said: 'After everything that households and businesses have been through the past few years, this is the icing on the cake. It’s tantamount to kicking the country when we’re on our knees.'"

From Blog TO. "You don't need us to tell you how depressing the housing market is lately. With the gap between the cheapest and most costly cities in Ontario hitting $1.6 million and average home prices in Canada continuing to climb, you kinda just wanna lay down and give up. And what's more depressing is when you see a house like 146 Cummer Ave. (and how "meh" it is) for nearly $2 million. Listed for $1,880,000, the three-bedroom, two-bathroom bungalow is the house equivalent of the Midwest. The only selling features listed are a new kitchen counter, new floors, fresh paint and its 'move in condition.' And yet the thing that's most upsetting about 146 Cummer Ave. is the fact that this home, as is, isn't even overpriced. When you look at the comparables in the neighbourhood, it's pretty much bang on target."

From CTV News. "The federal Liberals are seeing a dive in popularity among younger voters, once the core of their base, falling 23 points behind the Conservatives by the end of August, according to new polling from Nanos Research. 'I would be very concerned if I were the Liberals,' said Nik Nanos, CTV News’ pollster and Nanos Research’s chief data scientist. 'The Liberal coalition that was built in 2015, the movement led by (Prime Minister) Justin Trudeau, is slowly unraveling, and they've got to reverse this trend if they want to have any chance to hold on to government.'"

"For voters in the 30-39 age range, while there’s been a closer back-and-forth between the Liberals and the NDP since January, the Conservatives have fairly consistently come out ahead, something Nanos chalks up to 'economic anxiety.' 'What type of young person can afford to buy a home when the value of homes are going up? And it's a double whammy because interest rates are going up,' he said. 'The dream of having affordable housing in Canada is just being shattered right now.'"

From CBC News. "British Columbia Premier David Eby is calling on the Bank of Canada to halt further interest rate hikes, saying people are already 'hurting' and another increase might worsen inflation. In a letter Thursday, Eby urged Bank of Canada governor Tiff Macklem to The letter said the Bank of Canada had raised rates 10 times since March last year, with the current interest rate at five per cent, the highest in 22 years. Eby wrote that a Statistics Canada update last month stated that the largest contributor to inflation in Canada was mortgage rates. 'A rate increase in September is more likely than not going to lead to higher mortgage rates again, directly causing further inflation.'"

"Wal van Lierop, a Vancouver-based venture capitalist, said further interest rate increases will hit most Canadians and affect future growth and investment plans of businesses and governments. 'The Bank of Canada has no plan other than trying to achieve a traditional goal of two per cent inflation,' said van Lierop. 'While that was laudable in the 1980s, I think it is now up to the Bank of Canada to start to innovate and not just use the methods they have used in the past 50 years — basically a sledgehammer of all-across-the-board rate increases.'"

From Newsweek. "A reckoning is coming for the housing sector, according to billionaire real estate investor Jeff Greene, who said the industry will soon 'get whacked' as Americans' savings disappear with the higher cost of living. Green said Wednesday on CNBC's Squawk Box that the trillions of dollars injected by the government into the U.S. economy during the COVID-19 pandemic are starting to run out—with consequence for the entire sector."

"'What's that going to mean for demand for everything? Retail, office, apartments—every aspect of real estate is going to get whacked, and I think we're just in the first inning,' Greene said. 'In the real world, for most of Americans, what's happening is the wages have gone up a lot, because we've had a booming economy,' Greene said, mentioning how salaries grew during the pandemic. 'But all of that happened because of the trillions and trillions of dollars that were going into the economy. If that goes away, you're gonna have unemployment, you're gonna have people making less money and pay higher rent.'"

"While wages and salaries grew by 4.5 percent between December 2020 and the first quarter of 2022, the cost of living outpaced them. Adjusted to inflation, wages fell by 4.3 percent at an annual rate over the first quarter of 2022, according to the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Mentioning Florida, whose housing market experienced a boost in demand during the pandemic, Greene said that demand was a direct consequence of the movement induced by the health emergency and it's now fizzling."

"According to Greene, all the people in big cities across the countries like New York and Boston who were thinking of retiring to Florida in the following years—between 2022 and 2025—decided to move immediately because of the pandemic. 'We've borrowed a huge amount of demand from the future,' said Greene, who has more than 80,500 residential properties between Los Angeles, New York, Florida, New England."

From Townhall. "China's economy is struggling post-COVID-19. Growth is slower than expected, demographic trends are negative, youth unemployment is high, overbuilding has created a housing crisis and government indebtedness is ballooning. These are only a few of the symptoms ailing the country, and things could get worse. Did any of the Americans who not long ago wanted to implement some of China's top-down economic policies see this coming? Of course not. We've seen these pessimists make similar mistakes before."

"Indeed, much of the economic narrative of the late 20th century was consumed by Japan's meteoric rise. Just a few decades ago, many in academic and policymaking spheres made similar predictions about how Japan's postwar resurgence portended U.S. demise. Many also advocated replacing our free-market policies with the heavy-handed economic interventions that they were confident formed the secret sauce of Japan's fast growth: industrial policy. A far more significant contributor to Japan's economic success was overall economic freedom between the 1950s and 1970s. Texas Tech economist Benjamin Powell notes that in 1970, Japan was the seventh-freest economy in the world."

"As the country transformed its economy into an export factory, it failed to shift to more of an innovation-based economy in large part due to government erected barriers, leaving average citizens with little to show for the 'success' of subsidizing the production of lots of stuff for foreigners to consume. As the country entered the 1990s -- what is now known as its 'lost decade' -- it also became known as an example of government mismanagement."

"Something similar is happening now in China, only on steroids. Japan didn't have an authoritarian communist government to make big problems even bigger. The only question that remains to be answered is this: Why do we Americans always seem to believe those who tell us that industrial policy is a surer path to prosperity than economic freedom?"

From Mises.org. "Earlier this month, I completed a three-week road trip across America’s east coast, driving through the states of New York, Pennsylvania, the Virginias, and the Carolinas, reaching as far south as Jekyll Island, Georgia. The American road trip is an enriching experience that provides ample opportunity for contemplation about economics and the structure of society. For those of us living in the West, it's important to recognize our standard of living, on a world scale, is significantly higher than most countries. The American Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, the principles of freedom, liberty, and capitalism can largely be credited for this progress."

"In 2023, it is disheartening to see how many beneficiaries of such systems strive to adopt economic policies from countries that do not adhere to free market ideals at the core; but lies and propaganda can hold more sway than honesty and logic."

"As for architecture, the house of the Vanderbilts, the Biltmore Estate, in North Carolina was remarkable. It was Peter Sellers’ movie Being There, where I initially became aware of the estate's existence. This highlights the influence of the power of film. Despite the present focus on Hollywood delivering social messages over artistic expression, the inextricable link between capitalism and creativity persists. No other country has ever managed to achieve a comparable balance."

"Lastly, the Jekyll Island estate: a building so beautiful, yet home to one of the world’s greatest atrocities, i.e., planning of the Federal Reserve. Sadly, it all really ties back to central banking. Discussions about central banks, their strategies, decisions, and the speculation regarding their next moves dominate news headlines. Central banking has woven itself so deeply into our society that only a few can, or even want to, consider a world without the Fed. Yet, as far as the American way, which values life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, there exists no greater menace, no more of an antithesis, and no larger adversary than a central bank. An entity that holds a legal monopoly over a nation's currency can hardly be said to provide any benefit to the masses. This reality is substantiated by history, rational thought, and the current state of world affairs."