After a 10% Market Decline in Late 2015 to Early 2016, Hong Kong Home Prices Resume Their Relentless Upward Trend in late 2016

After a 10.12% market correction from its peak of 350.31 in the 3rd Quarter of 2015, Hong Kong home prices bottomed out in the first half of 2016 to 314.84 (2016 Q1) and 315.30 (2016 Q2).  In the third quarter of 2016, they resumed their relentless upward trend, jumping 6.91% in just one quarter to reach 337.09% but still below the peak of 350.31 posted in the 3rd Quarter of 2015.

How low can Hong Kong Property Prices Go? Some Clues from the Not Too Distant Past

If Filipinos Are Getting Richer, Why Are There Fewer Filipino Students in the USA Every Year?

If Filipinos are getting richer, why are there fewer and fewer Filipino students studying in the USA every year?

According to the latest Open Doors Report, the number of Filipino students studying in US Colleges and Universities, at 2,866 students in 2015, is even lower than what it was in the year 2000: 3,139 students.

This runs counter to the trend in the ASEAN. Other ASEAN countries, particularly Vietnam, have been enrolling more and more of their students in US Colleges and Universities.

This happened despite a dramatic surge in Philippine GDP per capita in the last ten years.

So what happened?

The Mysterious Decline of Filipino Students in the US

At What Point Will People Not In Labor Force Break 100 Million?

At what point will people who are not in the labor force break the important psychological barrier of 100 million?

The short answer? By November 2018, just in time for the mid-term elections.

Great Depression vs. Great Recession GDP Growth Rates - Updated As of the Third Quarter 2016

In March 2015, two illustrious economists, both Former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers have been duking it out on the blogosphere about secular stagnation.  In layman's terms, both are attempting to describe why does the US Recovery from the Great Recession feel so sluggish.

Although the overall collapse in REAL GDP was relatively shallow  (-3.1% from peak to trough in real terms and -0.4% in nominal terms) and took place over two years (2008 to 2009), the recovery in the seven years since then has been very anemic.  The economy reached parity with its pre-recession peak GDP in nominal terms in 2010, only three years after the Great Recession started in December 2007.   In real terms, it took an additional year, by 2011, to reach parity with its pre-recession peak.  By the 3rd Qtr of 2016, the US economy is only 29.52% larger, in nominal terms, than the bottom in 2009, averaging only 3.76% growth every year since the Great Recession bottomed out. In real terms, the US economy is only 16.41% larger than the bottom in 2009, averaging only 2.19% growth every year since 2009.

The overall economic contraction during the Great Depression was much more severe (-46% in nominal terms and -27% in real terms from peak to trough) and took much longer (four years from 1930 to 1933).  In real terms, economic parity with its pre-depression peak was only reached in 1936, seven years after the start of the Great Depression. Despite the severity and depth of the economic contraction, it only took three years after the 1933 bottom for the US economy to reach parity (in real terms) with pre-depression peak in 1929.  Recovery, in terms of economic growth rates, was a lot more robust, averaging 10.9% annually during this period.  In the four years since the US economy bottomed out in 1933, the US economy was 43.5% larger than the bottom in 1933, averaging 9.44% growth per year every year. In nominal terms, the US economy only recovered its pre-depression peak only sometime in 1941, when WWII spending began in earnest.

Great Depression vs. Great Recession