Aram Zucker-Scharff

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“The report claims that low- to middle-income workers have been hit hard in the capital because rents are around 50% higher than in the rest of the UK. […] Rent now accounts for about 41% of their incomes.

It warns that ‘endies’ who do not own a home have almost no chance of buying one. ‘There are now only three boroughs – Tower Hamlets, Newham and Barking and Dagenham – where home ownership is potentially affordable for two people earning that borough’s median wage,’ the report says.”

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– ‘Endies’: Employed with No Disposable Income are struggling in London.  Centre for London report says a million workers can hardly make ends meet and feel politically disenchanted.

pewresearch:

About four-in-ten of those younger than 30 (43%) say there are plenty of jobs in their local communities, but just 27% say good jobs are plentiful. Among older age groups, there is less of a disparity in views of the availability of jobs …

Only Gen Xers Have Gotten Richer Since the Recession:
The onetime slackers are doing just fine

On the NASDAQ, the peak of the real estate bubble in late 2007 was about $2,800. When the bubble popped, the index lost 50% of it’s value.

At the current rate of market rise, we are on track to double the total value of the pre-bubble peak market midway into the next year, exceeding $5,000 on the index.

The only time the index, in the entirety of history, broke $5,000 was the late 90s/early 00s tech bubble, after which the index lost 80% of its value.

What’s the difference between the tech bubble then and the bubble now? The tech crash hurt a narrow piece of the market, its effect was proportionate on the industry causing it (visible in the DJ Industrial Index). The same was not true of the real estate crash which, because it was caused by heavy leverage in the banking systems, caused crunch across the board.

The DJI lost a little more than one quarter of its value in the dot-com crash. In the real-estate crisis it lost about half. It too has more than doubled since the late 00s.

Now imagine the bubble we are in now, the largest rise since 2000, having the same crash, but one in which not just the bad actors see their stock drop 80%, but the entire market.

Why think about this now? When I was born in 1987 the NASDAQ Composite was at ~$455. As of this month, it’s broken $4,555. A 1000% rise.