Fairy Tales

When the exchange market is attacked by speculators, economies intervene through their monetary authorities.
It happens all over the globe and has already happened several times in Hong Kong, a region considered to possess the freest economy in the world.
During these interventions, the monetary authorities try to penalize or discourage speculators. Nobody protests and everyone thinks that the stability of the exchange rate should be maintained at all costs.
Exchange rates are prices!
The fact is that speculators in this exchange market are faceless men that nobody knows, which facilitates the intervention of the authorities.
Despite this intervention and the measures taken to stop speculation in this market, the economy still remains free.
There is an intervention, but this does not violate the logic or the principle of a free economy or the freedom of markets.
The intervention serves to regulate and keep the market and its participants under control!
The question then arises: why is it not the same in the real estate market, when prices rise, distorting the internal price relations in the local economy?
Why should we not intervene in a free economy?
Of course there is no intervention here because men in this domestic real estate market are not faceless…!
Look at the outcome of the “lease law”!
Given that little is produced in Macau and the main industry is in the hands of casinos, which have created immense opportunities for Macau – although there are many people who fear spitting on their own plates by speaking out against the casino industry – the rest of the economy is mostly reserved for real estate hunters, that distort the prices of housing, offices and commercial spaces.
This destruction of prices prevents the community from having access to adequate housing that does not eat through their wages over the course of their lives, and doesn’t allow them to have their own economic and commercial activity.
Thus, when our parliament discussed the control of rents and the need to create a mechanism to limit their growth, I even thought that gift was too big for the poor beggar that requested it.
What was not said in this parliament was that the government, if it wanted to act in the leasing market to control it, would have to act simultaneously in the buying and selling market as well.
Defenders of the left free-wheeling housing market confuse the free economy with the right of unbridled exploitation of their neighbors, without rules, or ethics, or limits of social acceptance!