Southern Europe Has Not Seen Net Job Creation in over a Decade

Re:Southern Europe Has Not Seen Net Job Creation in over a D... by vivafrance on Thursday June 28, 2018 @04:59PM (#17420448)

> When house prices go up, this measure goes up by a similar measure.

That’s only true if you assume interest rates aren’t falling. Artificially low interest rates have inflated the actual price of housing while keeping monthly payments fairly steady.

The Fed is then able to say “look, no inflation!” despite actual prices rising very rapidly.

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Re:Southern Europe Has Not Seen Net Job Creation in over a D... by JumpCrisscross on Thursday June 28, 2018 @05:04PM (#17420477)

> Artificially low interest rates have inflated the actual price of housing while keeping monthly payments fairly steady

There's a case to be made for each approach. Given we have excellent ways of measuring house prices, but no great ones for cost of living, having CPI measure the latter and thus usage--instead of user costs--seems reasonable. (We don't include stock appreciations and declines in inflation, for example.)

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Re:Southern Europe Has Not Seen Net Job Creation in over a D... by djrogers on Thursday June 28, 2018 @10:12PM (#17421895)

Those interest rates didn’t fall over the past decade, they stayed very consistently low, so the rise in house costs caused a rise in mortgage payments and imputed rents.

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