Housing bubbles proliferate, except for the US and southern Europe

Neil Irwin of the Washington Post has blogged the following report on Nouriel Roubini's recent warning on where the excess liquidity is producing bubbles:

"Roubini doesn't see bubbles in the places where they were most severe in the pre-2008 period. He doesn't mention the United States or Spain or Ireland. Rather, Roubini sees housing prices getting out of whack in quite a few small and mid-sized nations that are well-governed and managed to avoid the worst economic effects of the financial crisis: Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, Finland, France, Germany, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the London metropolitan area in the U.K. He adds some key emerging markets that show the same dynamic: Hong Kong, Singapore, China and Israel, and major urban centers in Turkey, Indonesia, India and Brazil.

"In this view of the world, a better question might be where in the world is there NOT a housing bubble (the answers, apparently, are the United States, southern Europe, Russia and all of Africa).

"Roubini's argument boils down to this: The major economies have been growing only slowly. Yet with low interest rates and aggressive central bank action across the globe, there is a giant pool of money that has to go somewhere. That somewhere has not been productive new investments, like companies building new factories. Rather, it has come in the form of people taking advantage of cheap credit to bid up the price of existing real estate in cities from Stockholm to Sydney."