Permanent tsb/ESRI House Price Index

According to the latest edition of the permanent tsb/ESRI House Price Index the price of houses for First Time Buyers rose by 9.4% over the first nine months of this year compared to an increase of just 4.8% for second time buyers. The 'monthly standardised price' table is available here this dates back to 1996 when a 3 bed semi would set you back €69,350 compared to €263,715 in 2005. The average price paid for a house by a First Time Buyer is now just short of a quarter of a million euro – some €242,172.

What do all of these have in common?

Still not sure? Have a read of the articles below then make your own decision

Articles:
National Geographic
Time Magazine
MSNBC
Newsweek
New York Times
The Guardian
Wall Street Journal
Petroleum Review
Financial Times

ODAC: Publicly quoted oil companies all produced less crude

The top 22 publicly quoted oil companies all produced less crude and NGLs [Natural Gas Liquids] than they did in 2004," according to a report published in the October issue of Petroleum Review. Compared with 2003, ten companies produced less in the first half of this year. Nine companies produced less than in 2002. "Clearly, it is no exaggeration to say that the world's largest oil companies are now really struggling to hold production levels," the report says. Meanwhile, a recent study by energy consultants Wood Mackenzie shows that only a quarter of the 28 leading oil companies active in international exploration have fully replaced their production through new field discoveries. The group of companies studied represents more than 30 percent of total world oil supply. "Not only is exploration more expensive now, but it has become more difficult to achieve success, as the more accessible fields have been discovered," the study author Andrew Latham said, noting that the industry has not discovered any new "world-class" fields since 2000.

Taken from Oil Depletion Analysis Centre (ODAC)

DMcW: Banks are drowning us in debt

This Tuesday, the Central Bank (ireland) will publish what is probably its most important report this year. The bank will unveil its financial stability report on Irish banks. It will assess whether the banks have been prudent in their lending over the course of the past year and whether there is any evidence of risk to the system.

In a former life, I used to write economic reports for the Central Bank, so am reasonably well placed to give you an idea of what it will say. To get an idea of what the read will be like, imagine you are listening to a theatrical prosecuting barrister outlining a long list of offences he alleges were committed by the defendant, ‘Mr Banks'.

“M'lud, in front of me is this snivelling piece of financial delinquency, who has been engaged in practices so heinous, so depraved, so despicable that he threatens the integrity of the entire system. His profligacy knows no bounds; his self-serving greed is so transparent as to suggest that he is beyond redemption.”

Full article is available from here

The Economist: Worldwide rise in house prices is the biggest bubble in history

Never before have real house prices risen so fast, for so long, in so many countries. Property markets have been frothing from America, Britain and Australia to France, Spain and China. Rising property prices helped to prop up the world economy after the stockmarket bubble burst in 2000. What if the housing boom now turns to bust?

According to estimates by The Economist, the total value of residential property in developed economies rose by more than $30 trillion over the past five years, to over $70 trillion, an increase equivalent to 100% of those countries' combined GDPs. Not only does this dwarf any previous house-price boom, it is larger than the global stockmarket bubble in the late 1990s (an increase over five years of 80% of GDP) or America's stockmarket bubble in the late 1920s (55% of GDP). In other words, it looks like the biggest bubble in history. Click here for more

Guardian: The pressure mounts

North Sea oil production in all offshore fields is 30% down on 1999 and dropping daily. North Sea oil production has 'peaked' and is now declining. The same will happen soon to global supplies. John Vidal and Ian Sample examine the potential consequences of a worldwide shortage of fossil fuels. Click here for more details.

Time Online: Waiting for the lights to go out

We've taken the past 200 years of prosperity for granted. Humanity's progress is stalling, we are facing a new era of decay, and nobody is clever enough to fix it. Is the future really that black, asks Bryan Appleyard

The greatest getting-and-spending spree in the history of the world is about to end. The 200-year boom that gave citizens of the industrial world levels of wealth, health and longevity beyond anything previously known to humanity is threatened on every side. Oil is running out; the climate is changing at a potentially catastrophic rate; wars over scarce resources are brewing; finally, most shocking of all, we don't seem to be having enough ideas about how to fix any of these things.

It's been said before, of course: people are always saying the world will end and it never does. Maybe it won't this time, either. But, frankly, it's not looking good. Almost daily, new evidence is emerging that progress can no longer be taken for granted, that a new Dark Age is lying in wait for ourselves and our children.

Full article is available here

Times Online: Coldest winter for decade could spark energy crisis

The Times October 10, 2005

The British Government has summoned industrialists and generating companies to an emergency meeting next month amid fears of an energy crisis if Britain suffers a harsh winter.

Paul Simons, The Times weatherman, said that the shift in temperature was influenced by a phenomonon known as North Atlantic Oscillation, or NAO, influenced by a lowpressure system over Iceland and high pressure over the warm Azores islands in the sub-tropical Atlantic. When the Icelandic pressure rises and the Azores pressure dips, Britain catches blasts of bitterly cold air.

He said: “In the 1940s the NAO turned negative and brought some of the coldest European winters of the 20th century, including the bitter freezes that helped to defeat Hitler’s invasion of Russia. Another bout of negative NAOs in the 1960s included the worst winter for more than 200 years, when homes were buried under snow and ice floes drifted in the English Channel.

“The Met Office is forecasting a negative NAO this winter. Although they cannot tell how severe the weather will be, the past ten winters had such ridiculously mild weather that even an average British winter will come as a rude shock.”

See here for more details