The Housing bubble and a Dollar crash prediction

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I don't truly know if the predictions of a US dollar crash are true, but this comment has some internal logic to it:

Rising house prices won't make you rich (at least not for the average person), and housing bubbles are almost certainly not a sign of a healthy economy. In this particular case it's a really bad thing.
This isn't about Tory vs Labour, rent controls, building more homes, immigration, or whatever. This chaff is peddled by the media to keep you bamboozled, sedated, or angered by some arbitrary distraction. To understand what is going on first you have to take a giant step back, and observe what has happened to the global economy since 2008.
Various rounds of QE have thrown trillions into economies to get them 'moving' again. Without even getting into the 'logic' of solving debt problems by creating significantly more debt, let's just consider where this money came from, and where this money went.
The origin of the money used in QE is increased government debt. The form of this money is government issued bonds, often ending up in countries like China. Except there is a problem. QE means our debts have become colossal and we are having difficulty paying the interest, hence the cuts we experience. Interest rates are also at record lows which implies we will have extreme difficulty servicing this debt when interest rates inevitably rise.
(And yes I'm talking about housing here, please bear with me).
Before we return to bonds, where did all this money from QE go? Governments gave it to bankers to gamble on the markets. After all, the banks just about tapped out their mortgage scams by 2008 (causing the crash), what else could they do with all this money? The net result is that banks (and other speculators) have massively inflated the markets. Even banks realize this is untenable and some of them are sitting on vast amounts of QE unable to do anything with it. They daren't lend it, and they daren't speculate with it.
What does this mean?
Consider a speculator. Where are they going to put their money? Bonds are looking dodgy given the size of government debts. The markets have been pushed up about as far as they can go. So investors put their money into land and property (and anything else they can think of). This has led to numerous property bubbles all over the planet, not just London.
It's very important to realize that no new wealth has been created here. No jobs, no businesses, no production, no construction, nothing. Basically governments, banks, and other speculators have all been playing silly buggers in a desperate attempt to perpetuate this whole epic saga as long as possible.
Governments, banks, and the media, will all tell you that we recovered from the crash, the economy is growing, growth is good, and blah blah blah. The truth is that WE ARE STILL IN THE 2007/8 CRASH!!! Except we didn't just hit the pause button with QE. We doubled and tripled our debts without addressing the root cause of the crisis, and now it's monstrously worse than in 2008.
As a direct consequence of this extraordinary behaviour, the American dollar WILL FAIL as the world's reserve currency. We are literally watching history in the making, events more significant than landing on the moon.
Or to put it a different way, in an attempt to solve the 2007/8 crash we responded by making the BIGGEST TRANSFER OF WEALTH IN THE HISTORY OF MANKIND (from taxpayers to the banks that caused the crash).
So you see why rising house prices aren't making you rich? There is no new wealth here, only a whole load of new debt. It's a zero-sum game at best. Obviously you can make a lot of money in this environment if you're in a position to buy and sell houses. But most people can't given they actually have to live in their house, and will still be living in their house when prices start falling.
What happens next?
House prices are going to keep rising, and probably by a large amount. Investors will not want US bonds given the US debt is looking untenable. China is getting nervous, slowly pulling out and looking for an alternative global reserve currency. The markets are already starting to fall. One of the next best places to invest cash is property...
Bottom line, if you're poor and living in London then you're screwed. Outside of a housing bubble zone you'll be much better off in terms of stability.
Regarding the global economy, watch out for the collapse of the US dollar. It's impossible to know exactly what will trigger this, but when it happens it will be rapid and catastrophic, as the now amplified 'suspended' 2008 crash implodes the entire economic system.
Here in the UK the result will range from bad to hideous, depending somewhat on faith in the Euro and Sterling.

Breaking Bad to Benefit Street

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Benefits Street has inevitably touched a nerve. I saw a bit and found it compelling - not as an indictment of welfare or the people on the street but as an indictment of society as a whole.
Charlie Brooker's column sparked some interesting comments, like the one I've quoted in full below. We are in a conundrum. The problem thus far with attempts at replacing 'irrational' capitalism is that we have not found a way to overcome 'irrational' human urges by the powerful few to game every system designed to create more fairness and a better life for all. The media would have us believe the problem is Benefits Street - poor people 'gaming' welfare. But the rich are gaming the system to the tune of billions. So too are bankers, who charge us billions for the free creation of debt money, which we guarantee anyway.

The more we look at ourselves as a specie, the more we can see that as intelligent apes, we are not primarily 'rational' even though we have the capacity to be rational and, more importantly, selfless. The problem with appeals to rationalism is that they need not be ethical. Secular enlightenment produced imperialism, justified slavery and the right and left wing atheist dictatorships of the 20th century.
All human societies require rules - legal or religious - that bind human behaviour and prevent abuses. Totalitarian dictatorships allowed unlimited abuse by leaders who were, in the worst case scenario, acting out a kind of Walter White version of will to power. Breaking Bad's White claimed to be doing it for his family, Hitler did it for Germany, Mao and Stalin did it for the new socialist state they had built.

Sometimes I just yearn for the all powerful priest-king who can rule for the benefit of all, and punish the greedy wrongdoers, while ensuring everyone is part of the plan. Why? Because I actually think we are often happier knowing a father (or mother) figure is there to keep an eye on things, and to ensure justice prevails. Mythical rulers (even bad ones) give us a sense of belonging and meaning, being part of a community.

Our system of 21st century capitalism adheres to a form of competitive savagery, something that in the past was exercised through inter-tribal war. But such wars, although apparently common, were a million miles from the total war of modern times. Meanwhile our more gentle and communal nature was exercised within and amongst friendly communities where everyone was part of a kind of extended family (see David Graeber's Debt: The First 5000 Years.) More than 90 per cent of human history saw us live as primitive communists, sharing the little we had. War and debt (and the trading of slave captives) changed that, starting some 6000 years ago.

Capitalism and imperialism have spread an alternative idea of our 'true' natures, built on the self-justification of gentleman pirates and merchant adventurers. Darwinian science has been used to try to show that this is our true natural state.
Our rulers need to continually reinforce the idea that rather than being a community or a group of communities, as nations we are involved in a global competitive race in which success is measured in GDP growth and corporate profit. That is true, as far as it goes, but the measuring is now decoupled from human welfare.
How do we recreate human sympathy for our fellow man and woman, including those on Benefit Street? Can we afford to care for others in a planet of 7 billion, in a globalised economy? The newspapers and the Tories demonise migrants and welfare claimants - divide and rule - while imposing permanent austerity. Hate and fear must be stoked, in Britain as in North Korea.

*****

"The "hard truth" is that the state has effectively declared war on society for the benefit of the rich. While the rich are protected (given open, free and unlimited access to all the best that our civilization has to offer; free to exercise their money power without responsibility or restraint), the rest of us are lectured about the virtues of personal responsibility and austerity.
However, if we really want to understand what is happening, not only to UK but in the capitalist world in general, then we have to look beyond monied individuals (who should nevertheless be held to account) and look at the whole picture.
As a world economic system capitalism is inherently and increasingly crisis prone: that's its “natural” state. In fact, since the 1970s the rate of crises has speeded up with crises regularly occurring throughout every decade. So, what does that mean for contemporary capitalism and the future of the welfare state.?
According to David Harvey: A crisis is “(a)n irrational, rationalizer of an irrational system; the irrationality of the system right now being masses of capital and masses of labour side by side in the midst of a world that is full of social need.
How stupid is that?
The rationalization that capital is looking for is the re-establishment of the basis for the extraction of surpluses: to re-establish the profit rate. The irrationality in which they (capitalists) are going about this is to actually suppress these possibilities by suppressing labour and suppressing the circulation of capital.
As socialists there is another way of rationalizing; the big question is how to take all that equipment and all that labour and put it together so that it meets human need? That is the rationality that we should be looking for right now, at a moment of crisis, at a moment of opportunity to think about the transition to socialism”.
Make no mistake, austerity is a class project the aim of which is to roll back the advances made by working people for the further enrichment of the ruling class. Austerity isn't intended as a short/medium term measure, it is, as Cameron said, forever.
Surrounded by the opulence of the Guildhall’s grandest room, Cameron addressed 900 rich and well-pampered guests enjoying a sumptuous banquet, courtesy of the City of London Corporation. He used the annual speech at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet to declare that the devastating austerity being imposed by his government will be “permanent.”
Chancellor George Osborne’s Autumn Statement announced further billions in spending and welfare cuts. The “recovery” hailed by Osborne is actually the slowest in more than 100 years, with the economy more than 3 percent smaller than before the 2008 crash.
The UK economy has only been able to remain afloat through a guarantee of cheap money via the £375 billion of quantitative easing that been made available to the banks. This could rise to as much as £425 billion.
Through the progressive commodification of the means of social reproduction (education, health, welfare, etc.), the neoliberal state has engineered a social catastrophe. The goal is to finally destroy what remains of the Keynesian welfare state that emerged during the long post war boom, and replace it with a neoliberal "workfare" state.
Whereas the role of the state in the Keynesian model was to try to extend the social rights of its citizens, the "workfare" model is concerned to provide welfare services that benefit business, both national and international. The net result is that the needs of the individual/society will take second place to capital accumulation forever.
Permanent austerity is a class project under taken by states on behalf of the rich. It is class war pure and simple.