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Archived Articles
Simeon Mitropolitski is a Canadian analyst, of Bulgarian origin, and a former syndicated columnist with the Bulgarian News Agency (BTA). He is the author of several hundred articles dealing with hot political and economic topics, both national and international.
He was part of the first group of Bulgarian intellectuals and students that began the opposition movement that finally put an end to the communist regime in this country in 1989, and in 1996-1997 participated in international observation teams during the elections in several Balkan countries - Romania, Albania and Bulgaria.
In 2002 Simeon and his family moved from Bulgaria to Canada where they live now in Montreal, province of Quebec. Simeon is a Master of Political Science from McGill University and a B.A. of Political Science and History.
Global Real Estate Project
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World's Most Expensive Cities
First, there is a truth in the statement about the recent Euro rise. In fact more appropriate should be to say that the US dollar has fallen, because the recent trend has been triggered by the lowest in more than a generation interest rates in the United States. The dramatic fall of the US dollar has been monitored not only against the Euro, but also against many other major international currencies like the British pound, the Swiss franc and the Canadian dollar. Second, if this explanation was enough, then all cities in the world could remain at their previous places except the cities in the US, affected by the weak dollar. The internal dynamic shows that the currency explanation has only a part of the credit. Not all Eurozone cities have advanced at the same speed, not all cities with stronger national currencies have reached the top of the list. Quite the contrary, the Canadian cities although helped by the stronger Canadian dollar, have maintained their previous positions in the bottom of the list. Third, Moscow is a very special case that can't be explained only by the strong Ruble. If that was the case, then all major Russian cities could have entered the top of the list. In fact only St. Petersburg has good scores but it's quite normal given the political will of the Russian president to celebrate the city 300th birthday. On the other hand, Moscow is a unique city in Russia given the political and economic power it has over the country. The Russian economy in general is isolated from the global markets so any ups or downs on the real estate market there have rather internal than external reasons. Never mind now deep we dig in, we couldn't find any purely economic reason for the fact that Moscow is more expensive than London. If in the capital of Britain the price levels are result of the huge amount of money competing for smaller space, in the Russian capital these are the administrative regulations that push up and down the prices. The cities in Switzerland are also special case that can't be explained only by the weak US dollar against the Swiss franc. Switzerland benefits from other factors that have nothing to do with the currency's volatility. The first is linked with the low stock markets because the luxury real estate is considered to be a safe investment in times like ours. Second, staying outside EU, Switzerland still offers better opportunities for some European investors. Thus, the picture we have in the world is far more complicated than just a mechanical transfer of US dollars into Euros. The new exchange rates play a certain role in the new most expansive cities' list but they can't explain everything.
World's 10 Most expensive cities --------------------
See also the directory of companies providing real estate services in, and general real estate information of Europe.
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