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Missile Defense

Technology has always found its greatest consumer in a nation's war and defense efforts. Since the last attempts at a "Star Wars" defense system, has technology changed considerably enough to make the latest Missile Defense initiatives more successful? Can such an application of science be successful? Is a militarized space inevitable, necessary or impossible?

Read Debates, a new Web-only feature culled from Readers' Opinions, published every Thursday.

lchic - 09:36am Jun 2, 2003 EST (# 12278 of 12280)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

House of cards - house_price_bubble

"" ... curiously, there has been much less economic research into the property market than into the stockmarket, the bond market or the foreign-exchange market. One reason is that until recently much of this property investment was held fairly passively.

Over the past few years, house prices have been booming almost everywhere except Germany and Japan. Since the mid-1990s, house prices in Australia, Britain, Ireland, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden have all risen by more than 50% in real terms. American house prices are up a more modest 30%, but that is still the biggest real gain over any such period in recorded history. .....

.... the after-tax return from housing over the past decade has exceeded that from shares in most countries.

How long can the party last?

... The price you pay for a property should reflect the future rent at which you could let it. The fact that in many countries prices of homes and commercial buildings have been rising much faster than rents should be ringing alarm bells.

Housing is just as prone to irrational exuberance as is the stockmarket.

rising property prices around the globe have helped to prop up the world economy. Rising house prices have boosted consumer spending by making people feel wealthier, offsetting the effect of falling share prices. Consumers have also been able to borrow more against the higher value of their homes, turning capital gains into cash which they can spend on a new car or a holiday. For firms, property is the main form of collateral for borrowing, so swings in commercial-property prices can also influence corporate investment.

But just as rising house prices help to boost spending, so falling house prices can cause economic pain.

.... output losses after house-price busts in rich countries have on average been twice as large as those after stockmarket crashes.

There are three reasons why a house-price bubble might cause more harm on bursting than a stockmarket bubble.

• First, house prices have a bigger wealth effect on consumer spending, largely because more people own their homes than own shares.
• Second, people are much more likely to borrow to buy a home than to buy shares. Some of them inevitably borrow too much and later have to curb their spending.
• Third, a decline in property prices also leaves some households with homes worth less than the amount they have borrowed, so housing busts have a greater effect on banks, which are typically heavily exposed to real estate. Falling house prices lead to an increase in banks' non-performing loans, and as their collateral shrinks, so does their capacity to lend.

http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=1794873

lchic - 10:00am Jun 2, 2003 EST (# 12279 of 12280)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

NK http://abcasiapacific.com/koreas/

mazza9 - 10:22am Jun 2, 2003 EST (# 12280 of 12280)
"Quae cum ita sunt" Caesar's Gallic Commentaries

Ten looneychicks in a row. Has Bush's success caused a recurrence of that awful stutter? Looney you can seek help, or at least check yourself into a sanitarium!

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