Singapore and southeast Asia and tapering

This is from a comment by mbka at Scott Sumner’s blog, I had exactly the same impression:

…here in Singapore, the consensus of semi official and private chatter on investment matters, newspaper analysis etc., has long been that QE has fuelled Singapore’s real estate boom through unnatural capital influxes and that it caused all sorts of bubbles elsewhere in the region too. Further, consensus is that all this is going to come down now that QE is about to end. All this is practically presented as fact. (Counter-measures are being taken as well, for instance Singapore just introduced much tighter credit checks to limit the escalating debt service ratios of families to a maximum of 60% of income. That is because everyone expects interest rates to rise globally.)

Come to think of it, this means that bankers and officials in the region have an Austrian model of the world (printing hot money in the US leads to bubbles elsewhere).

Scott’s post is interesting too, as it represents his attempt to come to terms with the apparent bubble collapse from the unwinding of QE.

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