A holiday topic starting with the Herald Tribune in Florida. "After back-to-back double-digit yearly growth coming out of the pandemic, real estate prices in Sarasota-Manatee will round out the year mostly flat. Robert Goldman, a local Realtor with Michael Saunders & Company, said the 2021 and 2022 real estate markets were fueled by a once-in-a-lifetime event, pointing to COVID lockdowns across the country as well as the many people who accelerated retirement during that period of uncertainty."

WSPA in South Carolina. "Home sales have been slowing nationwide, but the Spartanburg County market is stronger than most. In 2020 the housing market was booming everywhere, Brian Hurry, a realtor at Coldwell Banker Caine in Spartanburg, said. 'During COVID it was just the unicorn years of real estate. There were 20 buyers for every for sale sign that we put in front of a house,' he said. 'When we do the research and we look at what’s for sale and what’s under contract what has sold, 45% of our home sales have been new construction. 'They have either priced their homes well, given you incentives on an interest rate, helped you with closing costs. So how’s that impacted the market, it’s made it harder for someone that has a house to compete against them to sell because they can’t offer as many incentives as a builder.'"

"'There are 5,000 homes in Woodruff right now under construction,' David Britt, Spartanburg County Councilman said. 'If there wasn’t a need for all this housing whether its single family multi family townhomes trust me those developers would not be building.'"

The News Times. "A group of residents at Cambridge Crossing who are suing developer William Ferrigno to gain control of the homeowners association scored a victory in Waterbury Superior Court Thursday. Judge W. Glen Pierson ordered Ferrigno, owner of Sunlight Construction, to turn over control of the Cambridge Crossing Association Inc., provide a full accounting of funds received by and held for it, and allow for the election of a new board by Jan. 18, or face a contempt of court charge. The group of 44 plaintiffs at the half-finished neighborhood near the International Skating Center of Connecticut had filed suit in October to gain control of the association's books and governance, which has been held solely by Ferrigno since its establishment in 2019."

"Ferrgino had been charging the plaintiffs monthly fees to cover the cost of snow plowing, trash removal, and landscaping for multiple years, they contend, but the contractors have left due to a lack of payment. Ferrigno, who did not respond to a request for comment, is also facing at least 22 civil suits from potential home buyers, contractors, suppliers, the towns of Avon and Simsbury, and two banks. Ferrigno is also facing criminal charges, including a felony larceny charge in Avon for allegedly selling property that did not belong to him, and three misdemeanor charges for allegedly failing to return deposits he had collected from dissatisfied clients to buy land and build homes."

The Daily Mail. "A wealthy Masschusetts couple found dead alongside their teenage daughter in a 'violent domestic incident' in their $6.7 million mansion had filed for bankrupcty and had a foreclosure notice on their home. Teena Kamal, 54, her husband Rakesh, 57, and daughter Ariana, 18, were found dead in the 27-room home at 8 Wilson's Way in Dover - the state's richest town, just 19 miles from Boston. On Thursday night, a family member went to their home to check on him around 7.30pm, although it's unclear why. Once there, he discovered one of the bodies and called 911. Police later discovered the two other bodies, as well as a firearm."

"Over the past two years, the Kamals faced financial trouble and in 2022 filed for bankrupcty. Teena, 54, filed for Chapter 13 bankruptcy, listing between $1 million to $10 million in debt, in September 2022. The Wilson's Way Homeowners Association was listed as a creditor in documents obtained by DailyMail.com. The case however was dismissed in October and eventually closed this month because the correct forms and documents were not filed. There was also a foreclosure notice on their home, assessed at $6.7 million according to town records. It sits on a private road dotted with about eight mansions that sell for upward of $5M each, and are sprawled across acres of land. Both Teena and husband Rakesh were listed on the EduNova website - a defunt tech company that hawked a 'student success system' to help them improve their grades. The company, which Teena founded and launched in 2016, dissolved in December 2021. Raskesh was listed as being the company's chief operating officer."

The Real Deal on California. "The Federal Reserve raised rates, and loans broke. San Francisco’s commercial real estate market, like many others, was pummeled by a wave of defaults this year, as owners struggled to pay off debt tied to offices, malls and hotels. The largest default of the year was on a loan for Veritas Investments, San Francisco’s largest residential landlord. The firm defaulted on nearly $1 billion in loans tied to 95 apartment complexes across the city. But defaults were tied to some of the largest real estate players in the city — Brookfield, Unibail Rodamco-Westfield, Park Hotels & Resorts and WeWork."

Canadian Accountant. "Nearly half of Canadian workers feel as though the economic conditions in Canada are 'poor,' according to our survey of 2,500 Canadian workers in September of 2023. These findings are unsurprising, given the poor state of the Canadian economy and the growing pessimism among Canadians toward it. Inflation and interest rates both remain high, and job openings are struggling to keep up with the growing labour force. We asked participants: 'How has your experience of the cost of living changed during the past few years?' The number of Canadian workers who said their experience was 'much worse' jumped from 28 per cent in 2019 to 49 per cent in 2023."

"'We’re so careful with our money,' a 31-year-old operations assistant told us. 'Housing, food, utilities and fuel are becoming too astronomical to handle — we shouldn’t be suffering!' 'Everyone I know has been cutting purchases,' a 59-year-old delivery worker said. 'I haven’t purchased undergarments for five years, toiletries for three years, and I’m only able to eat one meal a day, not extras of anything.' Our discoveries support a recent report from Léger, a Canadian market research firm, that found two-thirds of Canadians feel like 'everything feels broken in this country right now.'"

From The BBC. "At the age of 31, Justin Dowswell never imagined he'd be living in a shared room in his childhood home. He had a full-time, well-paying job in Sydney, and had rented for a decade before an unprecedented housing crisis forced him to upend his life and move back in with his parents, two hours away. 'It's humbling,' he says. But the alternative was homelessness: 'So I'm one of the lucky ones.' It's a far cry from the promise of the Great Australian Dream. After decades of government policies that treat housing as an investment not a right, many say they would be lucky to even find a stable, affordable place to rent. 'The Australian Dream… it's a big lie,' Mr Dowswell says."

"Underpinning it all is that buying a house is astronomically expensive - the average property now costs about nine times an ordinary household's income, triple what it was 25 years ago. It's particularly dire for the three quarters of Australians who live in major cities. Sydney, for example, is the second least affordable city on Earth to buy a property, trailing only Hong Kong. Australian news has been awash with stories of massive rent increases and images of desperate people queuing to inspect properties riddled with defects and - in some cases - obviously covered in mould."

"Almost everything that could go wrong with housing in Australia has gone wrong, says Michael Fotheringham. 'The only thing that could make it worse is if banks started collapsing,' the head of the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute tells the BBC. 'It's Grapes of Wrath stuff,' Dr Fotheringham says, referring to the famous Great Depression-era novel about a family struggling to build a life."

The Telegraph. "Xi Jinping has admitted people are struggling to find jobs and 'meet basic needs' in China as fresh data pointed to a continued slowdown at factories and in the housing market. In a rare admission of economic weakness made in his New Year message, the Chinese President acknowledged that businesses had faced a 'tough' year in 2023, adding that 'some people had difficulty finding jobs and meeting basic needs.'"

Estonian Public Broadcasting. "Kadri and Tarvo Veski are raising three children. They've been building a life in the Valga County village of Karula, where both of them are self-employed; Tarvo works in the construction field, while Kadri runs a veterinary clinic in Antsla. And for Kadri, it's precisely the vet's office that gave the first tipoff that the economy has changed. 'People are trying to get things as cheaply as possible,' Kadri said. 'Sometimes they'll come in and just ask for stuff – that maybe they can just get medications [for free], maybe they don't have to make an appointment. Or they'll brutally try to stiff [us] – that they'll just stop in the clinic as they were passing by and ask a lot of questions and then simply go, 'Oh, but I don't even have my wallet on me!'"

"Their family has a mortgage on their home as well, but it is a small one, sparing them from the brunt of high interest rates. 'We have to pay around €50 more each month now,' Kadri said. 'But in that regard we feel like this situation is alright, at least for our family. Friends and family have seen tenfold hikes in interest.' The effects of the increased cost of living go beyond just the fall in purchasing power, however. 'Because life has gotten more expensive, then I need to try harder, work more, and as a result we don't have time for our family,' Kadri Veski admitted. 'Nothing goes unbought. Generally speaking, we can manage. But precisely that not having time for family, or to go out, or to go on a trip; we'd have to work really hard indeed to afford that.'"

The Independent in the UK. "More big firms are likely to go bust next year amid the 'double whammy' of high borrowing costs and pressure on consumer budgets, according to insolvency experts. Official figures from the Insolvency Service earlier this month showed the total of company failures over the first 11 months of 2023 was more than reported during the entirety of 2022. Rob Hornby, partner of AlixPartners, said he expects company insolvencies to continue apace in 2024. 'That is likely to be across the board, both in terms of geographies and sectors,' he said."

"Mr Hornby said: 'I personally think we are definitely seeing an element of the dotcom bubble repeating itself. Since before the pandemic, there was plenty of investment money around, with VCs (venture capitals) worried about missing out. You ended up with some areas of tech, for example, where you had more competitors funded in one space than were ever likely to succeed sustainably in the longer term. Now some of that funding is running dry, you will start to see consequences.'"

From Philip Pilkington. "The weekend before the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee (FOMC) met, The Wall Street Journal published an article showing that Donald Trump had overtaken President Joe Biden in the polls, and that a key reason Trump had pulled ahead was because of Biden’s handling of the economy. This is the latest episode calling into question the independence of central banks around the world. If inflation takes off again – possibly driven by rising tensions in the Middle East – the Federal Reserve will have egg on its face, having missed two bouts of rising prices."

"Yet questions about the competency of central banks run far deeper. The latest round of rate hikes we have seen from central banks around the world are the culmination of 15 years of the largest monetary experiments since at least the Second World War. The fact of the matter is that we have never really had a public discussion of the merits and demerits of central bank quantitative easing (QE) programmes."

"Perhaps there was a solid case that large liquidity provision needed to be provided to the banking system in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. But this case could not be used to justify the fact that this liquidity was maintained for the next decade and a half. The rationalisation of this strange action was that leaving the sea of cash to slosh around the banking system would help the battered and bruised economy recover."

"Is there any evidence for this? Not much. The economy remained sluggish. But financial markets went wild. Everything from stocks to classic cars to Rolex watches massively increased in value. The sea of cash never flowed into the economy. Rather it stayed within the financial system itself, bidding up anything that investors could rationally designate as an asset. As we move into 2024 the experiments look like they have yielded wacky funny money programmes, grotesque asset bubbles, a seemingly broke Bank of England trying to snatch taxation powers from the King, and, despite all this, a sluggish economy that has recently experienced a painful bout of inflation."

From Mises.org. "Although the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank’s message regarding interest rate cuts seems clear, reiterating their commitment to reducing inflation, the market is expecting between five and six interest rate cuts in the next twelve months. This shows us the bubble bias of many investors. We live in a world where two generations of market participants have only seen rate cuts and massive liquidity injections. Central banks have created huge perverse incentives in markets that should have been prevented if they truly followed their mandate of stable prices."

"Central banks are placing all the focus on the price and not the quantity of money. Ignoring monetary aggregates is very dangerous, and centering decisions only on rates may create a larger problem: a market bubble and a real economy contraction. By ignoring monetary aggregates, central banks may cut rates with no real effect on the productive economy and solve nothing. There may be a significant contraction in economic activity even if rates decline, as credit availability worsens even with declining rates, but markets keep inflating the financial bubble."

"The greatest economic aberration of our time, negative interest rates, actually made the structural weakness in the economy worse, causing it to slow down. The economy has been accumulating poor and indebted growth data for years in which misguided so-called 'expansive' monetary policies have been implemented. Negative rates and extreme liquidity injection have not generated greater or better growth but have left states with enormous imbalances."

"Consumers are still suffering from the monetary disaster created in 2020. We are talking about a cumulative inflation rate of more than 22% since 2018 and a price rise that continues to be worrying, particularly in non-replaceable goods. Inflation is a monetary effect. What some call cost inflation, commodity inflation, or supply shock is nothing more than more units of issued currency than real economic growth going to relatively scarce assets."