About a month ago, I critiqued an article by Forbes which discussed U.S. cities "where the recession is ending."
Forbes remains a very popular publication despite the fact that it's very slanted, and features regular articles by Ken Fisher, who has no idea what he is talking about (check his track record from his Forbes publications alone and you will see he had no idea what was going on in the economy).
Of course, Mr. Fisher isn't really a guest contributor due to his investment wisdom. His articles are a form of soft dollar arrangement in exchange for advertising dollars. This is a very common practice used by the media. I consider it fraud (you might also note that Fisher reportedly kept his clients in the stock market the entire time, as all brokerage firms did; you won't ever have a large brokerage firm tell clients to get out of the market).
Nonetheless, Forbes generates millions of dollars each year from the sales of its useless magazine, and millions more from advertisement sponsors.
Hopefully after reading my analysis, you now realize that a publication does not need to furnish accurate content in order to be a successful venture (I'm speaking of Forbes of course, not AVA Investment Analytics). All it needs to do is create the perception of value. And that is precisely what the media does.
The media is only capable of achieving this illusion due to the countless sheep, who blinding accept what the media reports, without bothering to consider the financial and political agendas.
Anyway, a week after I wrote the critique, I thought to myself that it would be nice to see pictures showing the real estate market taken by from readers.
Recently, one of the readers of this site, a gentleman from the gorgeous port city of Rotterdam (home of course to the great nation of the Netherlands) emailed me numerous pictures illustrating just how bad the real estate market is there.
First, let's have a look at the post card view of Rotterdam.
I spent all day taking my own pictures, but I wanted to first show you the pictures of Rotterdam taken by Alejandro.
You should note that Rotterdam proper has a population of about 600,000, while the metropolitan area has around 1.3 million.
Alejandro mentioned that these pictures were taken over a 5 kilometer perimeter, and he ran out of memory in his phone or he would have taken more.
He also gave me a couple of translations, but I'm still not sure I understand the meaning of these words. Hopefully, he will add some material discussing these pictures and the state of the economy in Rotterdam.
te koop (to buy)
te huur (hire) - I'm guessing that means for sale.
In his email, our friend from Rotterdam noted that these pictures were taken from about a 5 kilometer perimeter. As well, he wanted to take more but his camera phone ran out of memory.
Let's have a real look at Rotterdam, as shown by a person who lives there.
These are just a few of the pictures Alejandro sent me. I will post the othes at a later time.
Okay here are more.
I did not post all of his pictures because there were too many. But you should get an idea that things aren't going so well even in the Netherlands, which is a lot better off than many nations.
After taking pictures of my local area, I can tell you that it is difficult to truly show how bad the real estate market is. I probably should have asked for videos. It would consumer less time (for both of us) and would better illustrate the proximity and scope of vacancies, for sale signs, foreclosures and so forth.
I'm still working on adding video formats to the site.** So if you prefer to submit a video, make sure it's FLV format.
It's a special treat for me to see these pictures. I hope you all agree.
As well, the picture quality was great. Alejandro must be a photographer.
I want to thank Alejandro for the time and effort he took to send these pictures.
** Currently, it can show FLV format (if there is anyone who is REALLY KNOWLEDGABLE and skilled with video editing, including pulling and converting videos, and ESPECIALLY editing them, please email me!).
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