You are right of course and I apologise, even though the aside was in brackets.

Re your second para., I think the only real difference to detect between the extreme European property bubbles (Ireland, UK, Netherlands) and that of the US is the scale of immigration. In the UK, the situation is straightforward: immigration is utterly out of control, which is one reason why there is confusion about the future of the housing market. However, in the case of Ireland, it is only a small factor. As a result, Ireland closely matched the US in the scale of its property bubble.