Everything's great. No doubt about it. Why? Because house prices are rising again. All the most recent surveys show strong rises almost everywhere, and that has made a good many commentators very happy. Not me. And, I am pleased to say, not Evan Davis either.
We don't always agree, but when I went on the Todayprogramme this morning, we were, I think, pretty much as one on the subject. A rise in house prices might feel nice to homeowners, but it is economically useless. We know why prices are going up, and it isn't because incomes are rising or because prices were getting too cheap (although in lots of places they have properly crashed and do represent some value).It is because a variety of state subsides from super-low interest rates to Help to Buy are pushing them up. But what use is a rise in asset prices really?
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