It's BAD, it's VERY VERY BAD - The be very afraid thread!
Discussion
NoelWatson said:
So, the Children and Schools Secretary is let loose on the economy again.His comments are far bleaker than the warning last year by Alistair Darling, chancellor, that the economic outlook might be the worst for 60 years.
Mr Brown has accused the Conservatives of “talking the economy down” and last night the prime minister’s office was anxious to point out that Mr Balls was talking about the global economy and the turmoil in the financial sector.
“He is not suggesting the impact on the real economy here or elsewhere will be worse than the 1930s,” Mr Brown’s spokesman said. In the 1930s, Britain’s gross domestic product fell about 5 per cent.
A Times/Populus poll on Tuesday shows that the recession is taking its toll on the government, with the Conservatives on 42 points, Labour on 28 and the Liberal Democrats on 18.
Typical. They save the good news until right at the end.
Shadytree said:
Now, I've piped up a few times of the last few months on just what a sh*t state the World Economy is in.
FTSE has broken 4000 (3911.38) , DOW has broken 8000 (7997.28)
Ahh, the good old days. It appears the latest bit of US government meddling hasn't saved the day, quick call for more taxpayer money.FTSE has broken 4000 (3911.38) , DOW has broken 8000 (7997.28)
"US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has unveiled a comprehensive bank bail-out plan worth at least $1.5 trillion (£1.02 trillion).
Under the plan, the size of a key Federal Reserve lending program will be expanded to $1 trillion from $200bn.
In addition, a public-private investment fund of $500bn will be created to absorb banks' toxic assets and could be expanded to $1 trillion."
"It's not big enough. There are few details. The administration is trying to buy time and they don't get the fact that we need to get something yesterday," said Joseph Lavorgna, chief US economist at Deutsche Bank Securities in New York.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7880969.stm
Edited by Fittster on Tuesday 10th February 18:37
Maxf said:
Fittster said:
NoelWatson said:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/co...
"British Land sells Meadowhall to property magnate Raymond Mould"
"The sale values the 1.5m sq ft Sheffield shopping centre at £1.175bn, 16pc lower than its valuation in British Land's interim results in November and only marginally above the £1.07bn it paid in 1999 to acquire the shopping centre."
Who would have valued it in November? 16pc drop in 3 months seems a little steep even in the current climate."British Land sells Meadowhall to property magnate Raymond Mould"
"The sale values the 1.5m sq ft Sheffield shopping centre at £1.175bn, 16pc lower than its valuation in British Land's interim results in November and only marginally above the £1.07bn it paid in 1999 to acquire the shopping centre."
And it wasn't me
ETA from what I understand it isnt a straightforward sale either - some other factors at play which may skew the yield/cv.
Edited by Maxf on Monday 9th February 21:40
Underlying value is probably down by c.25%.
Our local newspaper (like many up and down the country, I'm sure) has started asking for business 'good news' stories.
They also said how fed up they are with the BBC's negativity and have created a logo for their theme in a deliberate attempt to turn the tables on them.
I think it's pretty good!
They also said how fed up they are with the BBC's negativity and have created a logo for their theme in a deliberate attempt to turn the tables on them.
I think it's pretty good!
Not sure if it counts as a fight back but things could be worse:
"UK unemployment rose to 1.97 million between October and December, but less than expected, figures show.
The jobless number climbed 146,000 for the three-month period, data from the Office for National Statistics showed.
For December, the number of those getting jobseeker's allowance added 73,800 to reach 1.23 million.
The internationally recognised unemployment rate reached 6.3%, the highest since 1998, in a further sign of the weakening economy.
Many analysts had forecast that unemployment could reach two million for the three-month period - which would have been the highest since 1997.
But there are fears the situation will worsen further in the months ahead as the economy cools.
Peter Mooney, head of consultancy with Employment Law Advisory Services, said: "From early in December, the number of firms seeking our help in making redundancies simply exploded."
He added: "Things will certainly get worse before they get better. We would expect to see another significant increase in the number of people out of work in the figures published next month, as many more firms were forced to cut staff early in the New Year."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7882745.stm
"UK unemployment rose to 1.97 million between October and December, but less than expected, figures show.
The jobless number climbed 146,000 for the three-month period, data from the Office for National Statistics showed.
For December, the number of those getting jobseeker's allowance added 73,800 to reach 1.23 million.
The internationally recognised unemployment rate reached 6.3%, the highest since 1998, in a further sign of the weakening economy.
Many analysts had forecast that unemployment could reach two million for the three-month period - which would have been the highest since 1997.
But there are fears the situation will worsen further in the months ahead as the economy cools.
Peter Mooney, head of consultancy with Employment Law Advisory Services, said: "From early in December, the number of firms seeking our help in making redundancies simply exploded."
He added: "Things will certainly get worse before they get better. We would expect to see another significant increase in the number of people out of work in the figures published next month, as many more firms were forced to cut staff early in the New Year."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7882745.stm
NoelWatson said:
In terms of the effect on Britain he may well be right. Britain escaped the worst of the 'great depression' by abandoning the gold standard and retreating into an Empire Trade Block. Our memories of the depression are shaped more by what happened in other countries, particularly the US.Balls may be an idiot, but he may be the first politician to tell the truth about what we face.
JagLover said:
Balls may be an idiot, but he may be the first politician to tell the truth about what we face.
He wasnt exactly straight about the exam marking mess up, although the 3rd party responsible were fired. I just dont have him down as a truthteller so wonder what his agenda is by making that comment wearing his School Captain hatFittster said:
NoelWatson said:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/co...
"British Land sells Meadowhall to property magnate Raymond Mould"
"The sale values the 1.5m sq ft Sheffield shopping centre at £1.175bn, 16pc lower than its valuation in British Land's interim results in November and only marginally above the £1.07bn it paid in 1999 to acquire the shopping centre."
Who would have valued it in November? 16pc drop in 3 months seems a little steep even in the current climate."British Land sells Meadowhall to property magnate Raymond Mould"
"The sale values the 1.5m sq ft Sheffield shopping centre at £1.175bn, 16pc lower than its valuation in British Land's interim results in November and only marginally above the £1.07bn it paid in 1999 to acquire the shopping centre."
Zod said:
Fittster said:
NoelWatson said:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/co...
"British Land sells Meadowhall to property magnate Raymond Mould"
"The sale values the 1.5m sq ft Sheffield shopping centre at £1.175bn, 16pc lower than its valuation in British Land's interim results in November and only marginally above the £1.07bn it paid in 1999 to acquire the shopping centre."
Who would have valued it in November? 16pc drop in 3 months seems a little steep even in the current climate."British Land sells Meadowhall to property magnate Raymond Mould"
"The sale values the 1.5m sq ft Sheffield shopping centre at £1.175bn, 16pc lower than its valuation in British Land's interim results in November and only marginally above the £1.07bn it paid in 1999 to acquire the shopping centre."
However, I don't believe Meadowhall was a forced/distressed/fire sale - simply due to the length of time it had been on the market. We have seen plenty of 'motivated' sales, but no forced sales yet (of major retail assets) IIRC.
If the sale of the bullring goes through it will be interesting, as I understand that is a more straightforward transaction - albeit possibly not arms length.
Nothing done in the last few months sways me from my view that governments are attempting to fix "the problem" with more of what caused it: DEBT.
The debt explosion of the last years has pushed the monetary system outside its operating envelope. It no longer responds to conventional adjustment methods because it's beyond convention. It's FUBAR. The "unconventional" efforts at adjustment are simply to use unconventionally big versions of conventional adjustors - huge public borrowing, savage interest rate cuts, who-knows-how-much quantitative easing.
This has coincided with a few other long term f
k-ups coming to a head: interventionist government, the phantom of "post-industrial" economies and piss-poor education. Extra FUBAR.
Interventionist government believes "they" can fix anything and has led its ill-educated citizens to believe this. All of a sudden, the nebulous "they" can't fix this and the loss of face, revelation of the truth is too much for government hubris to handle. Years of dialing out personal responsibility with welfare-state handouts, ludicrous health & safety initiatives and a promotion of "blame someone else"/compensation culture have diminished the gumption of citizens to sort out their own st. The recovery actually needs to come from the bottom up, not the top down, and people have been discouraged/disabled from this kind of thinking/doing for years.
"Post industrial" economies - countries who make fk all - are not the heroic wonderlands they purport to be. Service economies are parasitic, dependent on other economies. A loss of self-sufficiency, even if it is "peacetime", is not a clever place to be just because you wear a suit and handle paper all day. It's worse than that because what we are supposed to have is "expertise" to trade. We don't have it. The so-called financial expertise that, apparently, made London's Square Mile a global finance centre has been exposed as a mirage. The means to trade out of this, to generate the wealth to settle vast and increasing debt, does not exist.
A couple of generations have passed through an education system that teaches by rote. It's all about remembering prescribed "facts" and thoughts, not about comprehension and application - learning skills that lead to innovation and that which government appears to fear: thinking. So on top of there being a lack of motivation in the population to respond to this situation, and on top of there not being the tangible means to do it anyway, the population isn't bright enough to even see it let alone act on it.
People hope "they" (the government) can fix it, just the way "they" will step in if an employer sends you up a ladder you fall from; people don't understand what creates wealth because their understanding of wealth creation doesn't go much further than receiving a pay cheque/dole cheque.
The whole principle of the "stimulus packages" is to somehow perpetuate how we've been carrying on for years, to make it all OK. It won't work, it can't work. All it can do is postpone the day of reckoning and it can't do that forever.
The debt explosion of the last years has pushed the monetary system outside its operating envelope. It no longer responds to conventional adjustment methods because it's beyond convention. It's FUBAR. The "unconventional" efforts at adjustment are simply to use unconventionally big versions of conventional adjustors - huge public borrowing, savage interest rate cuts, who-knows-how-much quantitative easing.
This has coincided with a few other long term f
k-ups coming to a head: interventionist government, the phantom of "post-industrial" economies and piss-poor education. Extra FUBAR.Interventionist government believes "they" can fix anything and has led its ill-educated citizens to believe this. All of a sudden, the nebulous "they" can't fix this and the loss of face, revelation of the truth is too much for government hubris to handle. Years of dialing out personal responsibility with welfare-state handouts, ludicrous health & safety initiatives and a promotion of "blame someone else"/compensation culture have diminished the gumption of citizens to sort out their own s
t. The recovery actually needs to come from the bottom up, not the top down, and people have been discouraged/disabled from this kind of thinking/doing for years."Post industrial" economies - countries who make f
k all - are not the heroic wonderlands they purport to be. Service economies are parasitic, dependent on other economies. A loss of self-sufficiency, even if it is "peacetime", is not a clever place to be just because you wear a suit and handle paper all day. It's worse than that because what we are supposed to have is "expertise" to trade. We don't have it. The so-called financial expertise that, apparently, made London's Square Mile a global finance centre has been exposed as a mirage. The means to trade out of this, to generate the wealth to settle vast and increasing debt, does not exist. A couple of generations have passed through an education system that teaches by rote. It's all about remembering prescribed "facts" and thoughts, not about comprehension and application - learning skills that lead to innovation and that which government appears to fear: thinking. So on top of there being a lack of motivation in the population to respond to this situation, and on top of there not being the tangible means to do it anyway, the population isn't bright enough to even see it let alone act on it.
People hope "they" (the government) can fix it, just the way "they" will step in if an employer sends you up a ladder you fall from; people don't understand what creates wealth because their understanding of wealth creation doesn't go much further than receiving a pay cheque/dole cheque.
The whole principle of the "stimulus packages" is to somehow perpetuate how we've been carrying on for years, to make it all OK. It won't work, it can't work. All it can do is postpone the day of reckoning and it can't do that forever.
bosscerbera said:
Nothing done in the last few months sways me from my view that governments are attempting to fix "the problem" with more of what caused it: DEBT.
The debt explosion of the last years has pushed the monetary system outside its operating envelope. It no longer responds to conventional adjustment methods because it's beyond convention. It's FUBAR. The "unconventional" efforts at adjustment are simply to use unconventionally big versions of conventional adjustors - huge public borrowing, savage interest rate cuts, who-knows-how-much quantitative easing.
This has coincided with a few other long term fk-ups coming to a head: interventionist government, the phantom of "post-industrial" economies and piss-poor education. Extra FUBAR.
Interventionist government believes "they" can fix anything and has led its ill-educated citizens to believe this. All of a sudden, the nebulous "they" can't fix this and the loss of face, revelation of the truth is too much for government hubris to handle. Years of dialing out personal responsibility with welfare-state handouts, ludicrous health & safety initiatives and a promotion of "blame someone else"/compensation culture have diminished the gumption of citizens to sort out their own st. The recovery actually needs to come from the bottom up, not the top down, and people have been discouraged/disabled from this kind of thinking/doing for years.
"Post industrial" economies - countries who make fk all - are not the heroic wonderlands they purport to be. Service economies are parasitic, dependent on other economies. A loss of self-sufficiency, even if it is "peacetime", is not a clever place to be just because you wear a suit and handle paper all day. It's worse than that because what we are supposed to have is "expertise" to trade. We don't have it. The so-called financial expertise that, apparently, made London's Square Mile a global finance centre has been exposed as a mirage. The means to trade out of this, to generate the wealth to settle vast and increasing debt, does not exist.
A couple of generations have passed through an education system that teaches by rote. It's all about remembering prescribed "facts" and thoughts, not about comprehension and application - learning skills that lead to innovation and that which government appears to fear: thinking. So on top of there being a lack of motivation in the population to respond to this situation, and on top of there not being the tangible means to do it anyway, the population isn't bright enough to even see it let alone act on it.
People hope "they" (the government) can fix it, just the way "they" will step in if an employer sends you up a ladder you fall from; people don't understand what creates wealth because their understanding of wealth creation doesn't go much further than receiving a pay cheque/dole cheque.
The whole principle of the "stimulus packages" is to somehow perpetuate how we've been carrying on for years, to make it all OK. It won't work, it can't work. All it can do is postpone the day of reckoning and it can't do that forever.
Are you listening to Merv at the moment?The debt explosion of the last years has pushed the monetary system outside its operating envelope. It no longer responds to conventional adjustment methods because it's beyond convention. It's FUBAR. The "unconventional" efforts at adjustment are simply to use unconventionally big versions of conventional adjustors - huge public borrowing, savage interest rate cuts, who-knows-how-much quantitative easing.
This has coincided with a few other long term f
k-ups coming to a head: interventionist government, the phantom of "post-industrial" economies and piss-poor education. Extra FUBAR.Interventionist government believes "they" can fix anything and has led its ill-educated citizens to believe this. All of a sudden, the nebulous "they" can't fix this and the loss of face, revelation of the truth is too much for government hubris to handle. Years of dialing out personal responsibility with welfare-state handouts, ludicrous health & safety initiatives and a promotion of "blame someone else"/compensation culture have diminished the gumption of citizens to sort out their own s
t. The recovery actually needs to come from the bottom up, not the top down, and people have been discouraged/disabled from this kind of thinking/doing for years."Post industrial" economies - countries who make f
k all - are not the heroic wonderlands they purport to be. Service economies are parasitic, dependent on other economies. A loss of self-sufficiency, even if it is "peacetime", is not a clever place to be just because you wear a suit and handle paper all day. It's worse than that because what we are supposed to have is "expertise" to trade. We don't have it. The so-called financial expertise that, apparently, made London's Square Mile a global finance centre has been exposed as a mirage. The means to trade out of this, to generate the wealth to settle vast and increasing debt, does not exist. A couple of generations have passed through an education system that teaches by rote. It's all about remembering prescribed "facts" and thoughts, not about comprehension and application - learning skills that lead to innovation and that which government appears to fear: thinking. So on top of there being a lack of motivation in the population to respond to this situation, and on top of there not being the tangible means to do it anyway, the population isn't bright enough to even see it let alone act on it.
People hope "they" (the government) can fix it, just the way "they" will step in if an employer sends you up a ladder you fall from; people don't understand what creates wealth because their understanding of wealth creation doesn't go much further than receiving a pay cheque/dole cheque.
The whole principle of the "stimulus packages" is to somehow perpetuate how we've been carrying on for years, to make it all OK. It won't work, it can't work. All it can do is postpone the day of reckoning and it can't do that forever.
NoelWatson said:
...
Are you listening to Merv at the moment?
Are you listening to Merv at the moment?
"Bank of England Governor Mervyn King says UK economy is in 'deep' recession "
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/r...
article said:
the Bank said in its latest Quarterly Inflation Report, and the economy may shrink by 4pc by the middle of this year.
4% in six months! Of course that is on top of an increase in government borrowing of about 5% of GDP. So really the economy should be dropping nearer (5+4) * 2 = 18% (lets round it up to 20%) in a year ! That's depression-ing... depressing ...Can I be doom monger of the day now please
?
RichardD said:
NoelWatson said:
...
Are you listening to Merv at the moment?
Are you listening to Merv at the moment?
"Bank of England Governor Mervyn King says UK economy is in 'deep' recession "
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/r...
article said:
the Bank said in its latest Quarterly Inflation Report, and the economy may shrink by 4pc by the middle of this year.
4% in six months! Of course that is on top of an increase in government borrowing of about 5% of GDP. So really the economy should be dropping nearer (5+4) * 2 = 18% (lets round it up to 20%) in a year ! That's depression-ing... depressing ...Can I be doom monger of the day now please
?http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/inflat...
Since 1940, the YOY low was -4.1% on 31/12/1980
NoelWatson said:
...Page 7
http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/inflat...
Since 1940, the YOY low was -4.1% on 31/12/1980
Thanks.http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/inflat...
Since 1940, the YOY low was -4.1% on 31/12/1980
Not sure where the Telegraph got that 6 month number from, it looks like its the yearly projection (which still seems quite optimistic).
The figures on the graph for 2011 are amusing. I'm assuming here this is "growth" based on massive money printing, oops quantitive easing. The question there being how much this will cause the currency to drop, but then if all western economies are doing the same....
RichardD said:
The figures on the graph for 2011 are amusing. I'm assuming here this is "growth" based on massive money printing, oops quantitive easing. The question there being how much this will cause the currency to drop, but then if all western economies are doing the same....
That is what Merv was saying earlier. Print enough and inflation will return.Gassing Station | News, Politics & Economics | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff