Investor appetite for London luxury flats ebbs

Judith Evans, Jennifer Thompson and Chris Brewer

From the FT

A 24-hour butler service. Interiors by Versace. A swimming pool suspended mid-air between buildings. These are some of the unusual features available with new London luxury apartments, tens of thousands of which are being built all over the capital. All that is missing are the buyers.

More than 50,000 homes are planned or under construction in the most expensive areas of London — after a building boom that followed the 2008 crisis, when prime property recovered quickly and overseas buyers piled into the UK capital.

More about the same:

http://thoughtmeme.blogspot.pt/2015/04/excess-supply-prices-go-down.html

What is unique in this cycle is the difficult relationship between business and government, the worst I have ever seen. Technology, productivity and globalization have been the driving forces during my business career. In business, if you don’t lead these changes, you get fired; in politics, if you don’t fight them, you can’t get elected. As a result, most government policy is anti-growth. In the U.S., we want exports but seem to hate trade and exporters; globally, governments love small businesses but then regulate them to death. And so, we perpetuate a cycle: slow growth, poor job creation, populism, low productivity, higher regulation, poor policy and more slow growth. We now live in a world where the most promising growth policy is “negative interest rates.” In the U.S., 2015 was the 10th consecutive year when GDP growth failed to reach 3%, a rate that used to be considered our entitlement.

We don’t try to pick a cycle, or time a market, or complain about elections. We will always act to get more out of this economy than our peers. We believe in “self-help.” We are aggressively managing our cost structure to capitalize on deflation. In 2016, we will fund a record level of restructuring.

Jeff Immelt GE 2015 Shareholder Letter

Yes in the business world i have seen 2 trends in the last 10 years

a)Big data is slowly winning. Information & knowledge will win against "experience" & habit

b)The best has open a big difference from the average. It is the best of times to be nº1

more about the same:

http://thoughtmeme.blogspot.pt/2016/01/why-cr7-can-make-more-money-than-any.html

Source: the Guardian

World population is going to stop growing, first in the rich countries and then in the EM countries. Only in the very poor countries population will continue to grow.

Why? because in the current world children cost huge money to educate. They study almost until they are 25 or 30 years. It's a huge burden and that is why we are making less children, it's a bad business.

In 20 years according to George Friedman from Stratfor countries will fight for immigrants, now no one wants immigration but soon countries will need people to pay the retirement of their citizens.

The best business for a country is to have a growing population. But countries are making life very difficult for the people who have children. In my country , Portugal, if you are not extremely poor you can't discount the education costs on your taxes or health costs. It's a huge burden.

Government is sending a clear message? If you are smart don't have children.

It's good to run from the cold & rain even just for a couple of days

i feel great and ready for the rest of the winter

need a diet now

Thinking about having a parrot (my father says it's very demanding)

In São Tomé there is much to be done, we visited some farms (Roças) and there is a big potential. they just need to do a bit more each year. just a bit more nothing radical, after 10 years they would be one of the great producers of cocoa again. Everything grows in São Tomé. No one is hungry. just a bit more than last year.

Real GDP grew 1,4% in 2013, 5,2% in 2014, 6,6% in 2015, and the Irish central bank now expects the economy to grow by a further 4,8% in 2016 and 4,4% in 2017.

from BCA Global Investment Startegy about Ireland

Of course a country can't copy everything about other country because each country has different characteristics & character but one thing looks universal

In countries with good public finances the economy does much better that in countries where the state is in a mess! Deficits don't generate growth in the year of the deficit and in the next years!!!!

I live in a country Portugal where the state does modernization programs and the country is less modern, where the country does job creation programs and we have less jobs, etc... do i need to say more

Just get your act together!

each time the government needs money they invent a new tax , a new contribution and changes totally ruin the growth.

Abenomics was always a confidence game. Now it seems that confidence has crumbled. Far from reinforcing investors’ belief in the power of policy to boost markets and revitalize Japan’s economy, the central bank’s decision at the end of January to cut interest rates into negative territory has backfired in spectacular fashion.

Gavekal Research

Markets are revolting against the Central banks. My scenario is a bit of more pain and then Central banks will use some Nuclear weapon and Governments will spend and spend big.