Top 10 at 10 to 2: Queenstown empire implodes; US housing ATM; Fiscal fallout; Dilbert
Friday, March 12th, 2010Here are my Top 10 links from around the Internet at 10 to 2. I welcome your additions and comments below or please send suggestions for Monday’s Top 10 at 10 to bernard.hickey@interest.co.nz We try to absorb everyone’s workflow energy…
1. End of empire – The Southland Times reports that New Zealand Resorts Ltd, one of the companies in Ross Wensley’s Queenstown property ‘empire’, has been placed into liquidation. It owns The Club development.
Mr Wensley’s developments have been hit hard by the credit crunch and a drop in apartment prices.
Last year Mr Wensley travelled to the United Kingdom to chase money owed by people who had bought apartments at the Marina Baches complex in Queenstown, leaving his company $23 million out of pocket.
2. Map of doom – Check out this county-by-county interactive chart of mortgage delinquency rates in the United States. It’s from the New York Federal Reserve. If you have any doubts about the scale of the disaster unfolding in the US then you need to look at this. Most of the West Coast, South West and South East have delinquency rates north of 10%.
3. Damaged credibility – Ron Hera makes the case at Seeking Alpha for eventual hyper-inflation in America and the destruction of the US dollar. There have been plenty of doomsayers predicting this, but so far the US dollar hasn’t collapsed and demand for US Treasuries remains strong, partly because all the money printed is sitting idle in Federal Reserve accounts. Hera reckons it’s all about credibility in the long run, rather than financial market confidence now. Eventually, the money printing will kill the US dollar, he says. It’s a long read but well worth it. HT Troy Barsten via email.










