Some more choice comments on the Australian housing market, this time from global fund management company GMO, which oversees some US$82 billion of assets. Chairman Jeremy Grantham predicts the worst here: “I was happily quoted in the Australian Financial Review as saying that the Australian residential real estate market could be the canary in the coal mine – that is, a harbinger of bad things to come for a lot of us,” Grantham says. Fine for a visiting banker to be so blasé, but what happens to the locals in a smallish regional economy if the bad times hit?