Top Economist Steve Keen exposes how “help-to-buy” style policies in Australia (and beyond) inflated house prices, enriched landlords, and pushed home ownership out of reach for younger generations. Using BIS data and Ravel demos, Steve shows why the real driver isn’t “shortage” — it’s mortgage debt growth and the political choice to treat housing as an asset class, not a basic need.
In this hard-hitting breakdown, you’ll discover:
✅ Why first-home buyer grants and LMI waivers pump prices instead of helping buyers
✅ How mortgage debt growth (and its acceleration) drives house prices in multiple countries
✅ Why the US subprime story is only mid-pack globally — and why Australia, Canada, NZ, UK went further
✅ The landlord windfall effect: policies that look helpful individually but are disastrous collectively
✅ Ownership reality check: outright owners down, mortgages and renters up since the late 1980s
✅ How “credit-based demand” props up GDP while trapping households in decades of debt
✅ Why politicians keep doing it — and what a price-down policy agenda would require
Credit to : ProfSteveKeen