SocGen analyst warns that central banks are ignoring housing bubbles amid market euphoria – just like in 2008
Many central bankers claim that they're making progress on the problems that caused the financial crisis – but Societe Generale analyst Albert Edwards doesn't believe them.
He says that "exactly the same bozos who missed the last bubble deny there is one now." In November 2008 Queen Elizabeth II asked why "no-one saw it coming".
Edwards says they did – "but were ignored amid the euphoria – exactly the same way they are being ignored now". He reflects back to five years ago when "we were standing in the ruins of the worst slump in living memory." He says we are now back to that point.
Now "signs of bubbles abound, the most visible one being house prices". Edwards thinks we "have truly slipped into another space and time dimension" where he sees headlines concerned with a German property price boom. London house prices have just risen by 10 per cent in just one month.
Edwards says we're "in the midst of the mother of all housing bubbles, and although the rest of the country has yet to follow, it inevitably will do so – it always does."
Driven by George Osborne's "moronic" Help-To-Buy scheme and "excessively loose monetary policy" Edwards says "no-one should have any confidence the authoriites will rein in this bubble".
In China Edwards think we're seeing the same – that the authorities have "lost control" of house price inflation. Since March first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen have seen annual price rises of over 15 per cent.
Societe Generale's Wei Yao has called these rapid house price increases "hopelessly strong" with policy makers locked in what Edwards calls "the same old failed credit simulative policies as the west to keep growth going".
Only the brave can react to what they see and leave the markets. The global macro looks an appalling mess and even more importantly, long-term equity investors can find nothing worth buying.