Unwinding Credit Bubble

I have here an interesting comment from one of my readers on the subject of housing options. My post on the US credit crisis is a strategy for truly ending the crisis with the resources of the Fed while simultaneously disciplining the creators of the crisis properly, but not destroying the system. I suspect such a program would turn out to be short lived since a restoration of confidence would quickly dry up the overhang in the market.

The way it is coming down now, we will keep revisiting this crisis until everyone has exhausted every option or we have a terminal insolvency situation on our hands. The problem is that the US credit system has allowed and promoted a huge mass of speculative debt that built up to the point it could no longer be sustained or spun one more time. When the music stopped, the first thing that disappeared was the banker’s reserves. Just like 1990 Japan.

The crippling of the banks means the onset of rigorous lending standards now. The destruction of individual credit is also taking place, impacting directly on sustaining housing and consumption. Without a drastic maneuver as I have suggested, this scenario will unwind over several years destroying individual fortunes faster than new individual fortunes can be created, causing a long lasting recession, perhaps to be called the Great Recession.

My proposal rapidly restores individual credit, igniting a fresh more prudent investment boom, while capitalizing the very real losses at the institutions immediately rather than hiding them. Remember that unwinding a failed mortgage is hugely damaging to both parties in a declining real estate market. There is no soft landing.

I do not concur with the idea of buildings designed to house 10,000 people, but do concur with the idea of urban nodes with a designed separation. What I have been promoting is the idea of linking the multi story condominium building directly into the local agricultural land base through a semi cooperative organization.

This emulates the natural support system associated with a village, while providing maximum flexibility and a modern living environment.

I am very conscious of the fact that the young thrive in a village social and agricultural environment were their contributions are valued. I am conscious that young adults need flexibility to earn purchasing power outside the village environment even while still residing in such a place. And I am conscious that retirees will also thrive in a village environment for the same reason as the young.

Our cities fail us because these needs are isolated from each other, putting excessive power in the hands of whoever is making money today. Rethinking the economic basis of modern city is overdue and appropriate now because all the economic reasons for the concentrated city are diminishing.

Dear Robert,

In your latest blog you go slightly off subject with an idea for getting the housing crisis out of trouble. It might work. I'm no expert, just a property speculator with houses, agricultural land, commercial land, industrial land and residential land, but only one mortgage so far. I will mortgage a second house shortly in order to finance a trees and shrubs in tubs business at a recently acquired horticultural site.

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The housing market here in the UK hasn't slipped as far as it has in the US, hardly at all in fact, but it's stopped rising and might fall back 30% or more over the next few years before increasing again, as it surely will in the next ten years or so.

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Maybe the same is true in the US, that eventually house prices will stabilize then rise again. More immigration would help. Immigration in the UK keeps house prices high through a shortage of houses.

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There are plans here to build ten green new-towns. I've not submitted my own plans yet, but I think mine would surpass any that have been submitted, though I don't have their details yet. My own engineering approach calls for nodes along a new underground transport system in which the transport system is paid for by those buying into the nodes. This is important as there is no other way to pay for it without putting up taxes.

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The nodes, (I call my design a circle city), house ten thousand people in a single building, in relative luxury. It will cost more than other housing and will attract the richest ten percent. This will benefit the other 90% in more than one way.

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Those who sell a house to move into the network of circle cities make that house available to the buyer, who in turn make their house available to another buyer. And so on down the values leaving only the worst housing unwanted. (These can be demolished to make way for more trees in urban areas) This will cause a boom in house moves but without the normal unsustainable increase in prices. In fact house prices might move down slightly and gradually.

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As houses change hands the new owners will upgrade them pumping money into the retail sector and therefore also the manufacturing sectors.

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The circle city design is extremely green, being not just carbon neutral but carbon negative on the terra preta principle, using pyrolysis on much of its organic waste and digging the biochar into the food production soils and also the forest soils. No biological waste would be wasted at all. All water would be treated and reused after capture. Crops would be mulched to save water. And on the whole the diet would be vegetable, with a possibility of wild meat but no large scale meat and dairy industry that is energy intensive, needs a lot of water and land.

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The land use ratio is very good with a 200 acre footprint for the building on a 29,000 acre site, mostly forest with the trees being sustainably harvested for fuel to augment the solar and heat storage systems.

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This would standardise housing at a very high level without wrecking the environment in the process. Not cheap but affordable, and work could be outsourced to where it's needed, on every continent so that people didn't need to become economic migrants.

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This plan has everything going for it and needs promoting while we have time. I don't think I can market it directly, I wish I could. I might have to take a different route. The route I'm planning is fairly simple. It is to get a few people into business in my area, up to 100 or so, running a necessary and viable business each, but in conjunction with each other sharing many facilities and recycling their own waste and growing their own food and so on. If it works here it should work elsewhere, especially if we help finance start-ups.

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If we can get the same thing working well in a number of areas we should at some point be taken seriously enough to attract the right level of investment to start work on our first circle city. It will be possible for the first section to be lived in whilst the building process goes on. In fact the tunnel transport system could also be started, or some temporary overground narrow gauge rail system used and several circle cities started almost simultaneously.

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This approach is almost guaranteed to cause quite a stir in the world, not least in the world of investment. There can be much in the way of spin off, industries being set up to supply this ever expanding new network. The number of new starts and general activity will be controllable and will help stabilise the world economy. Right now it could pull us out of a possible world recession. If things get really bad it might be the straw that will be eagerly clutched.

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This idea demands serious scrutiny. Don't you agree?

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Positively yours, Bob *****