From The Guardian:
Nick Clegg and Danny Alexander have dismissed a call by their Liberal Democrat colleague Vince Cable to restrict the second phase of the government's Help to Buy mortgage scheme to areas of the country with depressed property prices.
In a sign of tensions over the economic policy at senior levels of the party, Clegg and his close ally Alexander rejected Cable's warnings that Britain was facing a dangerous housing bubble.
Does not compute.
The justification for Help To Buy was that houses are too expensive and so first time buyers have to be "helped". The very existence of the scheme is the government's tacit admission that house prices are in a bubble.
If prices were "affordable" by whatever measure, then there'd be no need for such schemes. So Cable's idea about restricting it to "areas of the country with depressed property prices" is even more stupid than Clegg and Alexander's state of denial - because people don't need help to buy a cheap house.
The only way that any of this makes sense is if "Help To Buy" is in fact "Help To Sell", then it makes perfect sense from the point of view of a Home-Owner-Ist government trying to win a general election from a majority Home-Owner-Ist electorate.
H/t Alan at HPC.
Once I dipt into the future
32 minutes ago
6 comments:
First have of BoJo's latest rant is on it as well...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/nick-clegg/10311123/Condescending-Lord-Clegg-the-invincible-loser-of-British-politics.html
and here is an even more depressing take on the "problem":
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/constructionandproperty/10310821/John-Cridland-Scrapping-Help-to-Buy-would-be-like-taking-a-patient-off-life-support-before-hes-out-of-intensive-care.html
G. Yeah, I saw that tripe as well, but by then I'd begun to lose the will to live...
To be fair to Uncle Vince, he is dealing with the problem as it is, not as it is promoted. The problem is how to get house prices rising to generate a feelgood factor and what Uncle Vince is pointing out is that you don't need to bother in some areas of the country, because prices are rising already, therefore "Help to Buy" (it doesn't matter what you call it, it's just the name of the shop, dearie) is unnecessary in all areas of the country. Of course, what Uncle Vince has highlighted is that even this realpolitikal view of HTB is not correct, because the aim is not only to generate aforesaid feelgood factor, but also to make those solid chaps who own building land in the South East lots of money.
Simple imperative, does H2B make the capitalised value of the land monopoly bigger or smaller?
Bigger bad, smaller good.
Vince and Cleggers are Presidents of LibDem ALTER.
How is it they can't even come to an agreed position on this?
That Vince Cable who opposes Help to Buy, i.e. calm down bank lending to house buyers: presumably that’s the same Vince Cable who has been vigorously opposing safer bank capital levels with a view to ENCOURAGING bank lending. Tw*t.
For the views of a professor of economics at Stanford university about Cable the tw*t, see 3rd paragraph here:
http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/the-failure-of-bank-reform-since-2008-by-anat-admati
Post a Comment