Options for Economy Trends in 2011

The Economist magazine brought an interesting article titled with : “Betting big on bonds“ – an economist advises investors to expect deflation” http://www.economist.com/node/17853304,

A paragraph which provokes thinking: “Debt ratios, relative to GDP, are so high that it seems unlikely that most developed economies can grow their way out of the mess. That leaves the unappealing options of default, Japanese-style stagnation or rapid inflation to erode the real value of the debt burden.”

Debt of developed countries looks bad. If investors stop covering that debt, the country has an option to default. Usually better option is inflationary mechanism– printing money to cover debt. If the inflation rate is higher than interest rate of government bonds, it is not in favor of investors to buy government bonds. Some investors might still buy government bonds even if interest rate is below inflation since it is considered as low risk investment. They do so to diversify their portfolios.

At the other way, modern global economy is highly competitive which by itself deflatory process. If you can produce a good or make service cheaper, most likely you’ll sell much better than competitors. It was obvious in expansion of big supermarkets (so called hypermarkets). They provided goods cheaper than competitors. Modern economy is deflatory – market wants cheaper goods.

So the market does deflatory mechanism and government does inflatory mechanism.

So which is most likely future? Inflation? Deflation?

Possibilities:

Defaults of governments and financial institution – this will most likely happen unless government is printing money, since printing money is better for a country than default, countries will print money

Japanese style stagnation –real estate, stock and general market deflatory mechanism combined with no government default, slow money printing machine and investors preferring government bonds in spite of insane debt to GDP ratio

Rapid inflation - sounds like a real possibilities unless certain types of assets are over valuated.

If certain types of assets are over valuated as housing, it brings unprofitability to many financial and insurance institutions and in general brings stock value down. In the other way, price of commodities goes up due to money printing mechanism and overvaluation of other assets… isn’t it what is happening now? Isn’t the price of housing going down and the price of commodities going up? Isn’t the price of stocks bind to housing going down as well? Which trends do you predict in 2011?

Numbeo's Economic Predictions For 2011

1. EUR/USD rate will raise to at least 1.45, since USA has big trade and fiscal deficit and EURO zone has trade sufficit (and smaller fiscal deficit).
2. EU bailout of Spain and Portugal (after Greece and Ireland).
3. Gold price will start to fall (comparing to EURO), since what goes up has to go down eventually.
4. Housing prices will decrease in most countries, especially in East Europe.
5. Oil prices above 120$ per barrel. With weaker USD and more consumption in 3th world countries the pressure on oil will continue in spite of clean energy incentives.
6. Increase of food prices worldwide due to food commodities increase - bread price will increase
7. More governmental interventions in the economy to speed up post Great Recession economical recovery.

Numbeo’s 2010 Cost of Living International Rankings

In Numbeo’s survey, New York is used as the base city for the index and scores 100 points, all cities are compared against New York and currency movements are measured against US Dollar and EURO. Copenhagen scores 138.91 points and is nearly three times as costly as Buenos Aires in Argentina with an index score of 47.15.

In the beginning of 2010, most expensive cities (excluding rent) are :
- Stavanger, Norway (CPI 169.20)
- Oslo, Norway (152.85)
- Breda, Netherlands (139.70)
- Copenhagen, Denmark (138.91)
- Zurich, Switzerland (132.03)
- Paris, France (130.30)
- Geneva, Switzerland (122.69)
- Milan, Italy (122.58)
- Dublin, Ireland (120.79)
- Brussels, Belgium (120.00)

The least expensive cities in 2010 are Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Delhi and Pune in India, followed by Kiev (Ukraine), Dnipropetrovsk (Ukraine), Bangkok (Thailand), Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) and La Paz (Bolivia).
Rent is most expensive in Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates) followed by London (United Kingdom), Geneva (Switzerland), Stavanger (Norway) and New York (United States).

Cities with lowest rent are Ahmedabad and Hyderabad in India. Other international citites with low rent are Medellin (Colombia), Constanta (Romania), Asuncion (Paraguay) and Banja Luka (Bosnia and Herzegovina).

On country level most expensive countries in 2010 are Norway, Denmark, Netherlands, France, Switzerland, Belgium, Ireland, Italy and Finland.

The least expensive countries in 2010 are India, Ukraine, Pakistan, Thailand, Malaysia, Bolivia, Indonesia, China, Belarus, Ecuador and Romania.

For complete rankings please visit Cost of Living Index 2010.

About Numbeo.com –
Numbeo.com (http://www.numbeo.com) is the largest free Internet database about cost of living and property prices worldwide. Numbeo.com allows visitors to estimate their own cost of living expenses if they are relocating. It uses data contributions from people all around the world to make statistical analysis of these data for free availability to everyone in a structured manner. Getting these informations earlier was far more expensive and difficult. Numbeo provides different tools around its data like Cost of Living Calculator and Cost of Living Comparison. Numbeo publishes yearly indexes such as consumer price index and property market index per city and per country.

The founder of Numbeo.com is Mladen Adamovic. Mladen was a software engineer in Google Inc., Dublin, Ireland between Feb 2007 and Feb 2009. Before joining Google he spent three years teaching and researching at University of Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina. He obtained M.Sc. Electrical Engineering from University of Banja Luka in 2006 and B.Sc. Math from University of Belgrade in 2003.

Travel Costs Rankings for 2010 (Numbeo) : NYC is the most expensive, Delhi is the least expensive

Numbeo.com uses data provided by community members about prices in many cities worldwide. Among indexes it calculates are travel costs index. Travel costs index is a relative estimation of expenses for visitors in a given city and includes prices of hotels, restaurants and transportation.

In Numbeo’s survey, New York is used as the base city for the index and scores 100 points, all cities are compared against New York and currency movements are measured against US Dollar and EURO.

Places which are most expensive for regular visitors (assuming mid-range restaurant and 3 or 4 star hotels, taking some taxi and public transport) :

• New York, United States (100.00)
• Stavanger, Norway (94.81)
• Oslo, Norway (80.89)
• Paris, France (78.97)
• Copenhagen, Denmark (76.69)

The least expensive places for visitors are :

• Delhi, India (14.77)
• Hyderabad, India (14.80)
• Beijing, China (17.53)
• Bangkok, Thailand (17.79)
• Gurgaon, India (18.53)
• Bitola, Macedonia (19.84)

Backpacker’s travels index assumes visitor is using only public transportation, hostels and 1 and 2 star hotels and eating in inexpensive restaurants.

The most expensive places for backpacker’s are : Stavanger, Norway (256.60), Copenhagen (149.40), and Oslo, Norway (138.51). Caracas ranked very high 194.90 since hotels providers used in research (Kayak) didn’t offer more affordable accommodation.

The least expensive places for backpacker’s are Indian cities Ahmedabad, Delhi, Gurgaon followed by Dnipropetrovsk in Ukraine and Bangkok in Thailand.

For complete rankings please visit http://www.numbeo.com/travel-costs/rankings.jsp

What are good housing indicators?

Rental yield :

3% = do not buy
6% = borderline
9% = ok to buy

House Price to Income Ratio:

11x = do not buy
8x = borderline
5x = buy

Is you area full of speculations? What was the price 1997 and add 3.5% of annual inflation. What do you get?

How well are weights for cost of living index balanced?

Perhaps you are curious if weights for cost of living index at this website are well balanced? The weights are best guess. So how good is our best guess for weights? For example today I wanted to check gasoline consumption per capita to see if weight for it is well balanced. The relevant document is at : consumption of gasoline per capita.

Consumption in Europe is most likely most relevant as middle income countries with average fuel consumption. Europe had per capita is 257 liter of gasoline consumption per year in 2005.

Weights in Numbeo.com statistical model are based on consumption for family of 4, and in Europe it is 1028 liter yearly or 85.66 liters monthly. And our best guess was 80 liters per month for the family. Since between 2000 and 2005 gasoline consumption per capita lowered in Europe, I’m concluding that our weights for gasoline are excellently balanced.

I hope you can now trust more the way how cost of living index at Numbeo.com website is calculated. If you think that some weights are not good balanced, just drop me an email with explanation. I performed some research for weight balancing. It hope you will find interesting cost of living indexes next year at Numbeo.com.

Q1 2010 Numbeo.com Website Statistics

In Q1 2010 Numbeo.com had 60.583 visitors (344.228 pageviews) according to Google Analytics. Current month to month traffic increase is 26%, but it was bouncing between -8% and 35% this year. Therefore I’m expecting more than 300.000 visitors this year to Numbeo.com website. Since data at this website are provided from community (and automatically and semi-automatically moderated), data are getting very reliable.

The visitors contributed 5019 new data entries in Q1 2010, (not counting data which were classified as spam and end-up trashed).

And Numbeo’s Cost of Living Index was accessed 12.438 times.

The website is using highly sofisticated automatic data validation techniques and high number of visitors ensure data are correct, however, like in Wikipedia, not all data are perfect. Dear readers, thank you for all contributions so far to this website.