From the Wall Street Journal via Paul Kedrosky:
London real estate has actually bounced off the bottom in the last nine months. Prices are now down a mere 9% or so from their 2007 peaks, according to data tracked by mortgage giant Nationwide Building Society. The average home in London, including all those dreary outskirts that go on and on and on, is $436,000. That’s even higher than it was as recently as 2006, when the bubble was in its late stages.
As a homeowner in those ‘dreary outskirts’ I like the phenomenon if not the description.
(Incidentally, if a UK paper was reporting the US market, it would give the foreign-denominated price first, then the local equivalent in brackets. Is it standard US practise to show only dollar amounts? If so, that annoys me more than it should.)
Naturally the only currency of any importance to Americans is the USD. Just as the only language of any importance to the French is French.
Self-importance is a prelude to decline. Pride comes before a fall.