Tim Worstall

Blair and House Prices.

Tony Blair has shown a stunning lack of knowledge about economics. Not too surprising as he has been a politician most of his life, barring a couple of years at the Bar (sorry). One doesn’t actually expect even good economists to accurately call the top or bottom of a market, but we do expect them to get the general trends right. It is therefore something of a surprise to me to realise that by watching the actions of The Dear Leader we can actually make useful economic predictions. Soon after he arrived at Downing St he sold his house in Islington. The moment of that sale marked the beginning of the housing boom. As we see today:

The prime minister’s purchase of an unexceptional house for £3.6m in Bayswater is the ultimate act of confidence in the chancellor and his stewardship of the economy.

Thanks you Prime Minister. You sold at the bottom and now you’re buying at the top. For the rest of us the advice is obvious. Get out of UK property now, before the crash.

In

One response

  1. gene berman Avatar
    gene berman

    Don’t know anything about UK prices except have an experience to relate.
    ‘Way back bout 1968, I picked up a hitch-hiker outside Kennedy airport.
    He was a young man of about 16, lived in Grimsby, where his father was a tug-boat captain (and had made a nice pile by going to sea to do a “salvage” of a vessel for an insurance co.)
    I brought him home for dinner with the wife and kids. He was very interested in how much our house was worth on the market. I told him right about $13, 000 (just a slight bit less than my yearly salary of the time). It was a modest 3-bedroom brick rancher on a standard lot in a decent suburb (Cherry Hill, NJ). He was astonished. He said their house (bought from the reward proceeds) had cost almost $150,000 and was “not quite as nice.”
    We took him 100 miles west the next day and that evening saw his face and name in the paper. He was a stowaway and this was actually his third attempt he’d been caught before getting out of the airport on the first two.
    He was a very nice kid. If he ever comes back this way, I’ll take him to meet my grandkids.

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