BarnsleyLass & the World of Politics, House Price Crashes, Recession & Despair.

Really???

2010-01-02T20:29:00.000Z

Afghanistan: what has been

achieved since 2001?

Since the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 more than
200 UK soldiers have been killed in action, 100 of those deaths this year alone.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Currently the UK has 9,000 troops deployed in the region and in the last eight years has spent more than £740m in development aid, with an additional £510m promised over the next four years.

But have efforts to improve security and rebuild the country led to any improvements in daily life for Afghan citizens? Here is a snapshot of how some areas have changed.

POVERTY

Afghanistan remains one of the world's poorest nations, but more Afghanis believe they are better off now than they were in 2001. The UK has donated £40.5m for loans to individuals to set up small businesses as part of a bigger project that has seen more than 440,000 people take up loans.

INFRASTRUCTURE

The UK has donated £32m towards local projects to improve water supply, roads, health and education but infrastructure is still a major problem. A third of the country has no access to a regular electricity supply, but that has improved from 42% three years ago. The UK has also spent £30m in Helmand building 59km of roads and more than 1,850 wells. There are plans to build a road from Lashkar Gah to Gereshk and refurbish the Gereshk power plant.

OPIUM

After rising for many years following the fall of the Taliban, opium production has begun to show a decline from its peak in 2007. According to EU figures however, 10% of households are still involved in growing the crop. Most opium is grown in the seven areas where security is worst.

HEALTH

Infant mortality has barely changed since the war began, but child immunisation programmes are saving the lives of about 35,000 children a year. In Helmand, where most UK troops are based, a new district hospital and 45 clinics have been built.

EDUCATION

The adult literacy rate in Afghanistan is one of the worst in the world - but the youth literacy rate is showing signs of improvement. New schools have been built: in Helmand there are now 93 schools, up from 34 in 2006. Latest figures¹ show 52% of children enrolled in primary school in 2009, up from 37% in 2005.

SCHOOLS

Under the Taliban, women were not allowed to vote or work and girls were not allowed to attend school. Rates of literacy and female education are now rising. Enrolled pupil numbers have grown from 1m in 2002 to around 6.6m in 2009 and about a third of those are girls.

SECURITY

Security is still one of the country's biggest problems but 44% of the population still feel improved security is "a reason for optimism". In spite of reports of vote-rigging in this year's election, confidence in the government remains high¹ but the government's ability to deal with the insecurity problem remains one of people's key concerns.

Sources: (1)Asia Foundation 2009 (2)UNOCD (3)Unicef (4)CIA World Factbook (5)World Bank

Barnsley xmas

2009-12-25T09:31:00.000Z

Image via Wikipedia

Barnsley Xmas

Paris not as we remember it.......

2009-12-22T15:33:00.000Z

Image by fatboyke via Flickr

PARIS not as we remember it in the Spring.........2008

Dark energy out there......

2009-12-18T17:24:00.000Z

Dark energy in the universe

What can you do with cardboard?

2009-12-02T14:30:00.003Z

The Press Association: Gordon Brown makes Reese gaffe

2009-12-02T14:30:00.002Z

The Press Association: Gordon Brown makes Reese gaffe

Not another Gaffe!

Bit of Colour in December

2009-12-02T14:20:00.000Z

Be Patient and wait before buying a house.....

2009-04-12T09:05:00.001Z

Housebuyers may have to wait a year for better market conditions, say economists

David Budworth

Homeowners hoping for a revival in the housing market could have to wait at least another year, economists have warned, as rising unemployment, a squeeze on household finances and problems in the mortgage market continue to exert pressure on prices.
Economists have cautioned that it is too early to say that the market, which has already fallen about 20 per cent, has turned a corner. Most are sticking to forecasts of a 25 to 35 per cent drop in prices from top to bottom. They think monthly mortgage approvals must double to 70,000-80,000 before prices can stabilise or start to rise.
A barrier to that scenario is the continued shortage of good mortgage deals, especially for first-time buyers. At present, homebuyers with a deposit of less than 40 per cent are excluded from the most competitive deals, while good loans for those with a deposit of 10 per cent or less have all but vanished in recent months.
Easter traditionally marks the peak time for house sales and before this year's holiday there have been tentative signs that the property market is awakening. Nationwide Building Society said house prices rose 0.9 per cent last month, the first increase since 2007. A separate, closely watched survey from the Bank of England showed mortgage approvals jumped 20 per cent in February to 37,937, the highest level since May 2008.

Related Links
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Adding to the more positive mood, the Halifax index for the first quarter of this year showed the smallest quarter-on-quarter fall in prices since the first quarter of last year. Meanwhile the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) said that interest from potential buyers rose for the fourth month in a row during February.
But Howard Archer, chief UK and European economist at IHS Global Insight, thinks house prices will not bottom out until mid-2010, by which point they will be 15 per cent lower, at mid-2003 levels.
He said: “Housing market activity is still very low by long-term norms and any pick up in activity over the coming months is likely to be gradual and fitful. Soaring unemployment, muted wage growth and unwillingness of many people to commit to buying a house when they are fearful are likely to continue to weigh the market down.”
Jeremy Leaf, of RICS, said: “Potential buyers continue to come through estate agency doors but without mortgage finance, transaction levels are likely to remain close to all time lows. Worryingly, the lengthy process of obtaining a mortgage, even for those with big deposits, is contributing towards the blockage in the market.”
That could begin to change after HSBC unveiled a 4.99 per cent deal for borrowers with a 10 per cent deposit. A survey from the Bank of England showed that banks and building societies expected to lend more to homebuyers over the next three months. However, this has yet to be seen.
There is evidence that cash buyers have started dipping their toes back in the market. This perhaps explains why new buyer enquiries have been strongest in London and the South East, areas popular with the sort of wealthy buyer with money to spend. Cash sales now account for 40 per cent of transactions as some older, richer buyers turn to property as a more lucrative alternative to low-paying deposit accounts.
However, the critical state of the economy, which is expected to remain in recession until next year, means that even buyers who are convinced that property is cheap are treading warily. Unemployment recently hit 2 million, and some analysts think it could climb to 3.3 million next year, the highest level since official records began in the 1970s.
Household budgets also remained under pressure as food prices have continued to rise. Even though housing affordability is improving it it still not back to the levels at the bottom of the last downturn.
Roger Bootle of Capital Economics said: “There is little evidence that the rise in buyer interest is feeding into sales activity. House prices will fall further.”

Green Shoots ~ not even a Glimmer!

2009-04-12T08:59:00.000Z

April 10, 2009
Don't be fooled by 'green shoots' in housing market
There is still some way to go before house prices stabilise and we are a very long way from a recovery
Andrew Ellson

Facts, Mark Twain once observed, are stubborn things. But statistics, he noted, are more pliable. It is with this caution that we should observe the latest data on the housing market.
Last week Nationwide reported that house prices rose by 0.9 per cent in March. The Bank of England, meanwhile, said that mortgage approvals jumped 19 per cent in February. Some commentators, including the Centre for Economics and Business Research, interpreted these statistics as evidence that the housing market is near the bottom. The same commentators even put a positive spin on separate figures from the Halifax showing that prices actually fell 1.9 per cent on the month - an annualised rate of 25 per cent - by arguing that at least the pace of decline was slowing.
The truth, sadly, is that we still have some way to go before house prices stabilise and we are a very long way from a recovery.
Apart from the folly of looking at a single month's statistics in isolation, it should be noted that the Nationwide and Halifax measures are no longer as reliable because the volume of home sales has fallen so much. Neither lender will reveal exactly how many customers their figures are based on, but the Land Registry reports that property transactions are down about 60 per cent on their long-term average, suggesting that the sample size of both surveys has reduced significantly. As any statistician will tell, you, the lower the sample size, the greater the chance of error.

Related Links
Mortgage rates fall to five-and-a-half year low
HSBC drops interest on low-deposit mortgages
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Given that the customer base of each lender is also geographically skewed - with the Halifax traditionally lending more in the North and Nationwide in the South - the figures are far from a reliable indicator of what is happening in any one town. Perhaps a better reflection of the state of the housing market are the figures from Hometrack that show that vendors are receiving an average of only 88 per cent of asking prices and that it takes a record three months to sell a home.
Nor should anyone be fooled into thinking that a recovery is imminent because of what appears to be a large increase in lending. The total number of mortgage approvals may have risen by 19 per cent in February, to 37,937, but this was from a low of 31,791 and is still 44 per cent down on a year ago and 67 per cent down on the year before that. Lending still needs to increase substantially before there is a positive impact on house prices, and that is before rising unemployment is taken into account.
That is not to say that there are no positive signs. As we report on page 74, a number of banks, including HSBC, Abbey and RBS, have slowly started loosening their lending criteria by reducing the size of deposits needed to qualify for loans. Though these developments reflect lenders' growing confidence in the housing market, they should be viewed in perspective. With the notable exception of the HSBC deal, the rates remain prohibitively high and first-time buyers would still need to raise an average deposit of more than £15,000. Even the HSBC deal has a series of tough conditions attached that make the loan more attractive to higher earners. The bank knows that these borrowers are better placed to cope if house prices fall farther, so the deal is hardly a huge vote of confidence in the housing market.
Buyers must still beware.
Pension savers can ill-afford another blow
Would you accept a cut in your employer's pension contributions to save your job? The answer, most likely, is yes. Sadly, increasing numbers of workers could soon face such a demand as companies try to cut costs as the recession bites.
Employees of Aon, the insurer, became the first to suffer this fate when the company cut contributions by half this week. The move was doubly significant because Aon is the UK's leading pensions consultant, advising other big companies.
But as lower employer contributions are equivalent to a pay cut, nobody should accept this lightly. Reducing pension benefits ought to be a last resort, taken only to save a business from going bust. Employees who find that cuts are unavoidable would be wise to try to make up the shortfall by increasing personal contributions, not least because stock markets are now exteremely low by historic standards.
There is little that the Government can do to stop companies from such action. However, with saving for retirement facing this new assault, now would be entirely the wrong time to cut tax relief on pension contributions, as some believe may happen in the Budget. Pension saving needs more support, not less.

Take it Seriously!!!!!!!!!

2009-03-10T14:10:00.001Z

Taking a Depression Seriously

By DAVID BROOKS
Published: March 9, 2009

The Democratic response to the economic crisis has its problems, but let’s face it, the current Republican response is totally misguided. The House minority leader, John Boehner, has called for a federal spending freeze for the rest of the year. In other words, after a decade of profligacy, the Republicans have decided to demand a rigid fiscal straitjacket at the one moment in the past 70 years when it is completely inappropriate.

David Brooks

The G.O.P. leaders have adopted a posture that allows the Democrats to make all the proposals while all the Republicans can say is “no.” They’ve apparently decided that it’s easier to repeat the familiar talking points than actually think through a response to the extraordinary crisis at hand.
If the Republicans wanted to do the country some good, they’d embrace an entirely different approach.
First, they’d take the current economic crisis more seriously than the Democrats. The Obama budget projects that the recession will be mild this year and the economy will come surging back in 2010. Democrats apparently think that dealing with the crisis is a part-time job, which leaves the afternoons free to work on long-range plans to reform education, health care, energy and a dozen smaller things. Democrats are counting on a quick recovery to help pay for these long-term projects.
Republicans could point out that this crisis is not just an opportunity to do other things. It’s a bloomin’ emergency. Robert Barro of Harvard estimates that there is a 30 percent chance of a depression. Warren Buffett says economic activity “has fallen off a cliff” and is not coming back soon.
Stock market declines are destroying $23 trillion in wealth, according to Lawrence Lindsey. Auto production is down by two-thirds since 2005. In China, 20 million migrant laborers have lost their jobs. Investment in developing countries has dropped from $929 billion in 2007 to $165 billion this year. Pension systems are fragile. Household balance sheets are still a wreck.
Republicans could argue that it’s Nero-esque for Democrats to be plotting extensive renovations when the house is on fire. They could point out that history will judge this president harshly if he’s off chasing distant visions while the markets see a void where his banking policy should be.
Second, Republicans could admit that they don’t know what the future holds, and they’re not going to try to make long-range plans based on assumptions that will be obsolete by summer. Unlike the Democrats, they’re not for making trillions of dollars in long-term spending commitments until they know where things stand.
Instead, they’re going to focus obsessively on restoring equilibrium first, and they’re going to understand that there is a sharp distinction between crisis policy-making and noncrisis policy-making. In times like these, you’d do things you would never do normally. When it’s over, we can go back to our regularly scheduled debates.
Third, Republicans could offer the public a realistic appraisal of the health of capitalism. Global capitalism is an innovative force, they could argue, but we have been reminded of its shortcomings. When exogenous forces like the rise of China and a flood of easy money hit the global marketplace, they can throw the entire system of out of whack, leading to a cascade of imbalances: higher debt, a grossly enlarged financial sector and unsustainable bubbles.
If the free market party doesn’t offer the public an honest appraisal of capitalism’s weaknesses, the public will never trust it to address them. Power will inevitably slide over to those who believe this crisis is a repudiation of global capitalism as a whole.
Fourth, Republicans could get out in front of this crisis for once. That would mean being out front with ideas to support the wealth-creating parts of the economy rather than merely propping up the fading parts. That would mean supporting President Obama’s plan for global stimulus coordination, because right now most of the world is free-riding off our expenditures. That would mean eliminating all this populist talk about letting Citigroup fail, because a cascade of insolvency would inevitably lead to full-scale nationalization. It would mean coming up with a bold banking plan, rather than just whining about whatever the Democrats have on offer.
Finally, Republicans could make it clear that that the emergency has to be followed by an era of balance. This crisis was fueled by financial decadence, and public debt could be 80 percent of G.D.P. by the time it’s over. Republicans should be the party of restoring fiscal balance — whatever it takes — not trillion-dollar deficits as far as the eye can see.
If Republicans were to treat this like a genuine emergency, with initiative-grabbing approaches, they may not get their plans enacted, but voters would at least give them another look. Do I expect them to shift course in this manner? Not really.

Spain's depressed!!!

2009-03-10T14:04:00.001Z

Clear signs of global depression: Spanish minister
Tue Mar 10, 2009 6:45am EDT

MADRID (Reuters) - There are clear signs of a global economic depression , Spanish Industry Minister Miguel Sebastian said on Tuesday.
The global financial crisis has caused a generalized fall in economic confidence, industrial production, trade and led to job destruction, Sebastian said in a speech to Spain's Congress.
"These factors are unmistakable symptoms of a global depression that demands a combined and coordinated response by all countries," Sebastian said.
(Reporting by Andrew Hay; Editing by Victoria Main)

UK housing trends ~ Down, Down, Down......

2009-03-10T13:54:00.001Z

House Price Reports

UK house prices continue to crash at an alarming pace

Well that was short lived, no sooner had the "green shoots of recovery" appeared last month (in relation to house price growth) then the true overall trend re-emerges, downwards...
House prices have fallen 17.7% year on year and approx. 20% from their peak - in September 2007. It's also useful analysing the 'swing' from positive to negative; from 15% positive to 17.7% negative has taken twenty months, this is unprecedented during the (circa) twenty five years of house price data collation.

With falls now accelerating it's more important than ever that first time buyers remain increasingly vigilant ensuring they buy at future 2010 prices; perhaps negotiating a discount of 15% off the asking and or valuation price in order to insulate themselves from further falls.

Martin Ellis;
"The average UK house price declined by 2.3% in February. This monthly decrease more than offset January's 2.0% increase. Prices in the three months to February compared to the previous quarter, which provides a better indicator of the underlying trend, were 3.6% lower...
Whilst market activity remains at very low levels, there are some tentative signs that activity may be beginning to stabilise. The house price to earnings ratio - a key measure of housing affordability - has fallen to its lowest level for six years.

Continuing pressures on incomes, rising unemployment and the negative impact of the dislocation of the financial markets on the availability of mortgage finance are, however, likely to mean that 2009 will be another difficult year for the housing market."

LLOYDS BANKING GROUP HOUSE PRICE INDEX
Ket Statistics
February 2009 (seasonally adjusted)
Annual change
-17.7%
Monthly change
-2.3%
Average Price
£160,237
.
Key facts
House prices declined by 2.3% in February. This fall more than offset January's 2.0% increase (revised from 1.9%). Historically, house prices have not moved in the same direction month after month even during a pronounced downturn. For example, prices fell for seven successive months in 1989 but subsequently increased in three of the first ten months in 1990 even though the overall trend in prices was downwards.

Prices in the three months to February compared to the previous three months - an indicator of the underlying trend - were 3.6% lower. This is slightly below the quarterly rate of decline of 5-6% recorded consistently between June 2008 and January 2009.

House prices in February were 17.7% lower on an annual basis. The annual rate of change (measured by the average for the latest three months against the same period a year earlier) fell from 17.2% in January to 17.7%. The UK average price has returned close to the level in August 2004 (£159,799).

-The house price to earnings ratio - a key affordability measure - is at its lowest for six years. The house price to average earnings ratio has declined from a peak of 5.84 in July 2007 to an estimated 4.42 in February 2009; a fall of 24%. The ratio is at its lowest level for six years (February 2003: 4.41). The long-term average is 4.0.

-Tentative signs of a stabilisation in activity albeit at a very low level. Bank of England industry-wide figures show that the number of mortgages approved to finance house purchase was unchanged between December 2008 and January 2009. Approvals in January, at a seasonally adjusted 31,000, were also identical to the monthly average recorded in the second half of 2008.More details about UK house prices continue to crash at an alarming pace (opens a new window)

No recovery in GLOBAL housing markets

2009-03-10T13:49:00.002Z

Speedy recovery in global housing markets unlikely

The collapse of the world’s housing markets is still accelerating according to the Global Property Guide’s latest survey with only Germany and Switzerland achieving a positive momentum in 2008.

Many house-price falls during 2008 were extremely severe. Countries with house price falls of over 10 percent were Latvia (Riga), 37 percent), Lithuania (Vilnius), 27 percent, the US, 20 percent, the UK, 18 percent, Iceland,16 percent, Ireland, 12 percent, and the Ukraine (Kiev),12 percent. (All figures inflation-adjusted).

During the final quarter (Q4) of 2008, the downward price momentum significantly accelerated, as compared to Q3, suggesting that the situation is deteriorating.

The Baltic countries of Latvia and Lithuania suffered the hardest price falls both in nominal and real terms. In Riga, Latvia, the average price of standard-type apartments plunged 37 percent during 2008. Prices have been going down in Latvia since late 2007, after a remarkable increase of about 70 percent in 2006.

The most alarming decline took place in the 4th quarter, when prices declined by 15 percent, the steepest quarterly drop in real terms in any country.

These price falls were triggered by increased interest rates, and by the tightened credit rules which Latvia imposed in 2007.

In the US, the centre of the global financial crisis, 2008 house prices fell 20 percent according to the Case-Shiller house price index, which emphasises urban areas. OFHEO and FHFB figures, which are associated with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans and have somewhat lost credibility, suggest a smaller decline of 6 percent and 3 percent respectively, during 2008.

The US government recently approved a $ 787 billion economic stimulus package, of which $275 billion will be allocated to rescue the ailing housing market.

Canada has been much less affected than the US.
Both Australia and New Zealand saw house price declines during 2008, of 7 percent and 8 percent respectively.

Housing markets in Asia have not been insulated. Singapore’s private residential prices dropped 9 percent during 2008, in sharp contrast to the 26 percent price increase of experienced during 2007.

Hong Kong has been badly hit by the crisis. During the last quarter, Hong Kong experienced a severe decline in prices of 14 percent.
In Makati, Philippines, prime 3-bedroom condominium prices fell by 2 percent during 2008, after an 11 percent price rise during 2007.
Japan recorded modest Tokyo condominium price rises of 1.2 percent during 2008.
In Shanghai, China, house price rises slowed to 5 percent y-o-y by the end of 2008, after peaking at 30 percent y-o-y to May 2008. However Shanghai is likely to be somewhat exceptional and Xinhua News Agency reported house prices declines in 70 major cities during 2008.

In Dubai, UAE, despite the bleak global picture, saw surprisingly large dwelling price rises of 41 percent during 2008. However during the year’s final quarter, prices fell by 8 percent in nominal terms. This downturn is attributable to strongly tightening lending criteria, an increase in interest rates, multiple layoffs, and alarm among buyers.

History suggests that in a crash, housing markets take many years from peak year to full recovery. In view of this and of the pessimistic IMF forecast for the global economy, no real recovery is likely in the global housing markets this year.

The Global Property Guide - www.globalpropertyguide.com -is an on-line property research house, specialising in analyzing residential property valuations around the world.

House prices fall record 17.7 percent on year in February | UK | Reuters

2009-03-05T11:01:00.000Z

House prices fall record 17.7 percent on year in February UK Reuters

House prices fall to April 2004 levels - Telegraph

2009-03-05T11:00:00.000Z

House prices fall to April 2004 levels - Telegraph

Money Central - Times Online - WBLG: 50 tips to ride out a recession

2009-02-10T15:25:00.000Z

Money Central - Times Online - WBLG: 50 tips to ride out a recession

Money Central - Times Online - WBLG: The 10 people most responsible for the recession

2009-02-10T15:16:00.000Z

Money Central - Times Online - WBLG: The 10 people most responsible for the recession

Why the Bank of England's latest rate cut is a big mistake - MoneyWeek

2009-02-05T13:46:00.000Z

Big.....Big......Big.........Mistake!!

Why the Bank of England's latest rate cut is a big mistake - MoneyWeek

Why house prices may fall another 38% - This is Money Blog

2009-02-05T13:30:00.000Z

I'm interested in this article because it comes from a relatively conservative viewpoint.

Why house prices may fall another 38% - This is Money Blog

BBC NEWS | Business | UK reduces interest rates to 1%

2009-02-05T13:27:00.000Z

Unprecedented moves.....What an economic mistake this is!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11

BBC NEWS Business UK reduces interest rates to 1%

FT.com / Canada - Canada set to unveil stimulus package

2009-02-02T12:56:00.000Z

FT.com / Canada - Canada set to unveil stimulus package

FT.com | Willem Buiter’s Maverecon | YES WE CAN!! have a global depression if we really continue to work at it…

2009-02-02T12:50:00.000Z

FT.com Willem Buiter’s Maverecon YES WE CAN!! have a global depression if we really continue to work at it…

Olduvai Theory: Sliding Towards a Post-Industrial Stone Age, by Richard Duncan

2009-02-01T15:50:00.000Z

Olduvai Theory: Sliding Towards a Post-Industrial Stone Age, by Richard Duncan

2009-02-01T15:00:00.000Z

Newsweek's Clift Bemoans Media Sexism Against Hillary, and Even Palin

By Tim Graham (Bio Archive)January 31, 2009 - 22:02 ET

A Commemorative Inaugural Edition of Newsweek arrived at the office in the mail this week, and it included a column by Eleanor Clift titled "Suffrage, Hillary Style" which touted Hillary Clinton’s "18 million cracks in the glass ceiling" and sang the same old song about how sexism is still more acceptable than racism:
Hillary’s campaign illustrates how far we’ve come and how far we haven’t come. The tone and tenor of the debate around Hillary, and around Sarah Palin, was far more personal and mocking than toward their male counterparts. Maybe the material was richer, but there was no attempt to dance around gender issues the way there is with race. As a society, we still condone sexism; we view it as a part of nature, a given that isn’t worth bothering our pretty heads about.
Bringing Palin in for sympathatic treatment on sexism is a little strange for Eleanor, since this is how she greeted the choice on The McLaughlin Group last year:
This is not a serious choice. It makes it look like a made for TV movie. If the media reaction is anything, it's been literally laughter in many places across news....In very, very many newsrooms.
Clift complained that the media clearly favored Obama over Hillary when she was "equally serious," but she didn’t ponder whether Hillary was equally smooth or equally appealing:
Older women whose lives and careers were constrained by sexism felt disrespected by a media captivated by a serious black candidate in a way they weren’t by the prospect of an equally serious woman contending for the job. Younger women who haven’t experienced as much sexism wondered why their mothers thought it was such a big deal;’ if not Hillary, there’ll be someone else.
Earlier, she illustrated the generation gap among women Clift knows: "A Hillary campaign worker who objected to a Hillary nutcracker with its stainless-steel thighs was chided by her own grown daughters for not having a sense of humor. "
Clift began by recounting the American history that recalls Obama reaching the White House before a woman:
The fact that she lost out to a black man recalls the hurt felt by the early suffragists when the 15th Amendment passed after the Civil War extended the vote to freed black males. Women were told it was "the Negro’s hour," and they should step aside. Allowing former slaves to vote while denying educated women the same right enraged suffrage leaders and divided the movement between those who accepted the disparity and those who raged against their second-class status. The rift last for 20 years, with bitterness far more deep-seated than the hard feelings exhibited by Hillary’s hardiest campaign supporters.
—Tim Graham is Director of Media Analysis at the Media Research Center

Happy New Year ~ Not in Ireland!

2009-02-01T14:02:00.003Z

Best to ignore the cheerleaders for the property sector
By Proinsias O'Mahony Saturday January 31st, 2009

Proinsias O’Mahony doesn’t share the optimistic assertions of some in the property business about recovery in the housing market

HAPPY new year? Not really. The banks are at death’s door. Unemployment is rocketing. Cuts much more severe than those proposed in the recent budget are inevitable. The recession is deepening, with fears that Ireland is on the verge of a so-called ‘lost decade’ growing increasingly realistic.

We’re up the creek. Auctioneers and developers, however, have a different vision for 2009, one where ever more affordable homes will be snapped up by a willing populace.

After all, construction firms cannot cut prices further as they are “down to their bottom line” on prices, according to one builder recently. Indeed, those who are “stupidly waiting” for prices to fall further should cop themselves on and realise that prices are bottoming. This stupidity has been disappointing developers for some time now. In August, property tycoon Derek Quinlan noted that first-time buyers must be given the confidence to buy as “negative media commentary force them to sit and wait, believing that prices have not yet bottomed out”. Impartial ‘experts’ have been beating this drum for some time now.

Tom Parlon, former minister and now Director General of the Irish Construction Industry Federation, warned last March that “there’s not much more scope for further cuts” and that “now is the time to buy, there is real value out there”.

Politicians, too, are puzzled by this ignorant penny-pinching. “If I was to give advice to people, I would say, go out and buy some property now”, said Galway TD Frank Fahy last May. Frank has a pretty extensive property portfolio, as does his Fianna Fáil colleague Donie Cassidy. Donie, perhaps better known for his masterful management of Foster and Allen and other show-band giants than his political accomplishments, said last April that there was “unbelievable” value in the marketplace, something he would remind us all of in 12 or 18 months “when prices have again increased by 25% or 30%”.

That didn’t quite pan out. A mule could have told you that Donie was in la-la land but he wasn’t the only one. “The time to buy is now”, said estate agent Pearse Wyse last April, warning that the “great value” didn’t “mean people can dilly dally.” “It makes little sense to hold off making a purchasing decision”, said another in summer 2007, when the bubble had already burst. “There is no better investment than Irish property at present”, said high-profile estate agent Ken McDonald in the same year, going on to ask why “we allow scaremongers and doomsayers with unfounded pessimism and unbridled negativity” to talk down the economy. Never mind, said Ken: “the Irish love affair with property will continue undaunted despite the knockers.” Hmmm. Of course, this love affair was encouraged by good old Bertie, our dearly departed Taoiseach.

“The boom is getting boomier”, he said in 2006. “We should have an examination into why so many people got it so wrong”, adding that people “should have bought last year.”

By April 2007, he was predicting a “soft landing”.

By July, he asked why those who sit on the sidelines “cribbing and moaning” don’t “commit suicide”.

Two months later, we were told that there “is no place for politically motivated attempts to talk down the economy and the achievements of our people across all sectors.” What a crock. It’s one thing to have to listen to such garbage from those in the property sector.

It’s another thing entirely when the leaders of our country were encouraging one of the greatest housing bubbles in history, a bubble whose bursting has plunged Ireland into a crisis of incalculable proportions.

Ahern is famously pally with developers, whose one-dimensional thinking seems to have informed government policy. Take Bertie’s buddy Sean Dunne, who said just last month that he was “prudent” when he splashed out almost $600 million for a 5 acre site in Ballsbridge at the height of the boom. In 2006, Dunne lashed out at the economists who had “mistakenly forecast the end of the housing and property boom in Ireland” for the last six years. This deluded bunch of “hyenas”, those “harbingers of doom and gloom”, included the Economist magazine, the IMF and the OECD. “The hyenas have stopped laughing…each and every one of them was wrong.”

They weren't wrong though – just early. David McWilliams, who had been warning for years that the housing bubble couldn’t last, likes to use the analogy of a doctor who advises a patient to change his lifestyle. Smoking 20 fags a day, the patient ups it to 40 as the years pass. After all, the doctor’s been warning him for years and nothing’s happened. By 2007, our patient is puffing on cigars aplenty and downing a daily bottle of whiskey into the bargain. Why not? Sure he’d been hearing the same old warnings for the best part of a decade… It was obvious that a serious property bust was a question of ‘when’, not ‘if’, just as it was obvious to decent economists that a financial crisis would likely be triggered by this bust. Study after study has confirmed as much. 2007 was full of guff about a soft landing even though studies of international housing bubbles show that there has never been such a thing. Bubbles are followed by crashes just as day is followed by night. The global financial crisis hit the headlines in 2007, creating a perfect storm for Ireland in the process. And yet, politicians and regulators appear to have been taken unawares. When UCD economist Morgan Kelly published a study showing that house prices typically fall by between 40-60 percent in a crash, he was dismissed as a scaremonger (it’s now very likely that Irish falls will be even greater). Also dismissed were his comparisons with Finland, which saw unemployment rocket from 3 to 20 percent and house prices halve in the aftermath of its housing crash in the early 1990s.

It wasn’t rocket science. Between 2000 and 2006, house prices doubled relative to income and rents. Construction accounted for nearly a fifth of our economy (the international norm is just 5 percent). First-time buyers became priced out of the market so banks invented 110 percent mortgages to be paid back over a forty-year period. The signs of an unsustainable bubble were everywhere. And yet, politicians trumpeted that the fundamentals were sound. What were they smoking? Other countries, of course, also had their fair share of paid housing cheerleaders. Take David Lereah, former chief economist with America’s National Association of Realtors. Lereah, author of the 2005 bestseller, Why the Housing Boom Will Not Bust and How You Can Profit From It, used to routinely trot out wildly bullish forecasts that mirrored the hallucinatory abominations of his Irish counterparts. He left his job in 2007. Was he wrong to be so bullish, he was asked recently? “I worked for an association promoting housing, and it was my job to represent their interests”, he admitted. “I put a positive spin on it. It was easy to do during boom times, harder when times weren’t good”. And now? “I’m pretty bearish and have been for the past year and a half. Home prices will continue to drop.”

Kudos for his new-found honesty, if nothing else. There are many David Lereahs in Ireland. Developers, estate agents, dizzy television presenters with their own property agendas, economists working for the banks – the same old clowns will trot out the same old claptrap, rabbiting on about ‘value’ and the dangers of waiting too long and how a bottom is near and how it’s a great time to buy. It’s not a great time to buy. It’s a great time to wait. Property remains over-priced by any conventional valuation yardstick, some places more than others (West Cork comes to mind). Property crashes play out over a period of many years, partly because sellers become anchored to old prices that are no longer relevant. There’s also a large element of wishful thinking involved – a recent US study found that people expected prices in their locality to fall but believed that their own house would appreciate in value or stay the same. The facts are, however, that house prices do not rise in real terms (after inflation) in the long run.

Countless international studies confirm this. A couple of booms aside, real house prices were flat or falling most of the time in the US in the 20th century. Booms occur periodically before prices revert to their historical mean. The bigger the bubble, the bigger the bust. We’ll still have to put up with the cheerleaders, however, even as the market deflates. Morgan Kelly puts it well. “We can start looking forward to estate agents telling us that the worst is over, a necessary correction to an overheated market has taken place, there has never been a better time to buy, and so on until most of them go out of business.”

Oh to live in Japan......

2009-01-24T16:20:00.002Z

From The Times
January 24, 2009

Taro Aso gives Japanese £100 each to spend way out of recession ................
For £200, a couple could have a sparkling day at the Yunessan spa

Leo Lewis, Asia Business Correspondent

With Japanese exports plunging and companies retrenching, the fate of the world’s second-biggest economy may now lie in an electronic cigarette, a ripe musk melon or a bag of dumplings shaped like the Prime Minister’s face.

Government efforts to stimulate the economy and insulate it from the ravages of recession have failed. The pace and scale of decline, say economists, has proved too big for the country’s creaking, deadlocked political system to cope with and deep recession is now a certainty.

But Taro Aso, the increasingly reviled Prime Minister, believes that he has hit upon a scheme that will solve the crisis in an orgy of consumer spending.

The move, which he has described as “the best economic measure of all”, involves a handout of at least 12,000 yen (£100) to every citizen over the age of 18. The prospect of the windfall has unleashed a national wave of speculation about how the money might best be spent, and the eccentric world of Japanese retail is pushing hard to attract the cash.

Related Links
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Among the more extreme recommendations on how to spend the money is to applaud Mr Aso’s plan by buying a gift box of Aso-themed goods: Y12,000 would buy a magnificent spread including a coffee mug, dumplings, shopping bag, tummy-warmer and dog-sized T-shirt bearing his image.

The notoriously pricey Japanese fruit industry is also vying to be among the winners of an overnight sense of opulence. The price of a much prized Shi-zuoka Crown – the self-declared king of musk melons – has suddenly been brought down from Y30,000 to a convenient Y12,000.

The service sector, too, has a number of seasonal opportunities: taking advantage of a discount travel coupon, a couple could enjoy the romantic and antiageing effects of a day at the chocolate and wine baths of Yunessan, buy a souvenir and expect little change from Y24,000.

The same sum would also pay for a family to spend the night in sleeping bags on the floor of the Enoshima Aquarium on the outskirts of Tokyo. The presence of hundreds of rippling squid in their tanks offers purportedly healing effects – a Y24,000 necessity.

Meanwhile, offerings from the often imaginative world of Japanese electronics that fit the bill include a cigarette which glows and emits grapefruit steam into the user’s mouth.
The scheme, however, has plenty of doubters. Richard Jerram, the chief Japan economist at Macquarie Securities, believes that it is doomed to failure and is a sure sign that the Japanese Government “just does not understand how staggeringly the world has changed”.
The problem, says Naomi Fink, a strategist at Tokyo Mitsubishi, is not that the Japanese do not have cash, but that they are too scared to spend it. Japanese households are already sitting on cash savings estimated at Y778 trillion (£6.5 trillion).

Have your say
The truth is that, as a nation, Japanese people are undoubtedly some of the most frugal in the entire world. + They set a great example to the rest of the world in terms of their industrious nature and sense of patriotism. Mr. Aso will be perceived as being a kind man - who would argue that point?
NDG, Tokyo, Japan

Have your say

There's no new motor to drive the economy | Matthew Parris - Times Online

2009-01-24T16:06:00.000Z

There's no new motor to drive the economy Matthew Parris - Times Online

TheSpec.com - Business - House prices, sales plunge across Canada

2009-01-19T19:28:00.000Z

TheSpec.com - Business - House prices, sales plunge across Canada

Should Banks be lending at all????????

2009-01-19T17:02:00.000Z

Should banks be lending to house buyers?January 19th, 2009 by Peter King
Should the UK government really be encouraging households to borrow money to buy houses in the current climate? And should it be encouraging banks to lend to them as part of the latest bailout package?

Clearly there is considerable pent up demand for housing and this will grow over time. But a responsible government would surely be telling first-time buyers and others to put off their purchases. What is the sense in taking out a mortgage to pay for an asset that is declining in value by 15% a year?

And instead of exhorting the banks to offer cheap finance so households can saddle themselves with negative equity, the government should be congratulating them for their entirely rational behaviour of limiting their exposure to the housing market.
Tags: bailouts, credit crunch, financial crisis, housing, Peter King
This entry was posted on Monday, January 19th, 2009 at 1:55 pm and is filed under Political economy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Gordon Porridge........

2009-01-19T17:00:00.000Z

January 19, 2009
What Gordon Brown and Richard Nixon have in common
Just after the Premiere of Frost/Nixon I reflected on the similarity between Tony Blair and David Frost that must have made it easier for Michael Sheen to play both characters.
Now the author of the play, Peter Morgan (who also wrote The Deal about the so-called Granita Pact), has noted the shared easy charm of these two characters.
Fascinatingly he made this comparison as part of a discussion of the shared characteristics of Richard Nixon and Gordon Brown (another likeness I have remarked upon):
They are people who are hard to like, people who have complicated emotional inner landscapes, and somehow have had trouble accessing them.
"People will hate me for saying this, but there are emotional similarities between Gordon Brown and Richard Nixon. Gordon Brown finds it hard to be liked and yet he's a brilliant man. But people don't warm to him, they don't like him.
Posted by Daniel Finkelstein on January 19, 2009 at 01:40 PM in Gordon Brown Permalink

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Its funny but I was beginning to think there is a physical resemblance now too. Brown's jowls and that fake smile are increasingly Nixonesque.
Posted by: Simon 19 Jan 2009 13:55:30
The similarity, for me, is that Dr James Gordon Brown, like the late Richard M. Nixon, is a bare-faced liar.
Posted by: Keith Darby 19 Jan 2009 14:06:56

Documentary # 3 - Casino Capitalism

2009-01-19T14:22:00.001Z

Worth spending time on this view.......

Market Skeptics: Hyperinflation will begin in China and it will destroy the dollar

2009-01-19T14:17:00.000Z

Market Skeptics: *****Hyperinflation will begin in China and it will destroy the dollar*****

RBS suffers biggest loss in UK history - Telegraph

2009-01-19T14:12:00.000Z

RBS suffers biggest loss in UK history - Telegraph

Warning that house prices may fall by 80% - The Irish Times - Tue, Jan 13, 2009

2009-01-19T14:09:00.000Z

Warning that house prices may fall by 80% - The Irish Times - Tue, Jan 13, 2009

Bloomberg.com: News

2009-01-16T16:29:00.000Z

Bloomberg.com: News

HBOS PLC - Regional House Price Data - House Price Map

2009-01-16T16:28:00.000Z

HBOS PLC - Regional House Price Data - House Price Map

House prices 2009 ~ 2012

2009-01-06T13:25:00.000Z

UK House Price Crash and Depression Forecast 2007 to 2012

In conclusion, the sum of the above analysis suggests that house prices having fallen by 19% are about half way to the lows, and therefore suggest that house prices will decline by 38% from the August 2007 peak. The housing market trend is clearly currently in the panic stage as we are witnessing near unprecedented house price falls at the rate of more than 16% per annum, far beyond that of the 1990's bear market. This rate of decline is not sustainable, and I am expecting this phase of the housing bear market to come to an end during the second half of 2009. However my expectation is that following the crash the market will enter a period of depression spanning several years after the market puts in a nominal price low and then embarks upon a weak up trend as the below graph illustrates.

Risks to the Forecast

The prime risk to the nominal house price forecast is the currency crash induced inflation, as earlier analysis suggested that house price falls can be brought to a halt by a significant currency devaluation, which has already taken place to the tune of 30%. This will mask the real terms house price falls that will make itself evident in the protracted housing market depression where house prices are not able to keep pace with inflation and therefore continue to erode in real-terms.
My next newsletter will aim to forecast the major trends for financial markets during 2009. To receive this on the date of publication subscribe to my always free newsletter.

By Nadeem Walayathttp://www.marketoracle.co.uk

UK Biggest hose price drop in History....

2009-01-02T15:38:00.001Z

Biggest house price drop on record

House prices plunged by 16.2% during 2008 in the biggest drop for a calendar year on record, Halifax said.
Last year's price plummet, which came after the average value of a property in the UK fell 2.2% in December, was the biggest year-on-year fall since the Halifax began recording data in 1983.
Britain's biggest mortgage lender said the typical price of a property now stands at £159,896 - back to August 2004 levels.
The drop in annual house price inflation measures prices in the previous three months compared with the same period a year ago. But if house prices in December are compared with prices in December 2007, the fall is even more dramatic at 18.9%.
And Halifax warned that the property market will come under further pressure in 2009 as the financial crisis continues to restrict lending in the UK.
Bank of England figures on Friday revealed that just 27,000 mortgages were approved for new house purchases during November, which was a new record low.The Bank also said in its credit report that banks and building societies plan to cut back further on lending as the economic outlook worsens.
However, the Halifax offered hope that the downturn in the property market could be limited as housing affordability improves. The lender said the house price to earnings ratio - a key affordability measure - had declined to its lowest level for more than five-and-a-half years.
First-time buyers (FTBs) may also be in line for some relief, with the proportion of local authorities where housing is affordable for FTBs more than trebling in 2008, according to the Halifax.
Economist Howard Archer of IHS Global Insight cautioned that, despite the interest rate falls and property price reduction, the outlook for the housing market remained "bleak". He predicted house prices to fall by a further 15% on the Halifax measure in 2009.
This would see property prices plummet by 32% in nominal terms from their August 2007 peak of £199,612 to stand at £135,912 at the end of this year, he said. House price falls would then ease at the start of 2010 and flatten out in the latter months of the year, added Mr Archer.
Copyright (c) Press Association Ltd. 2009, All Rights Reserved.

Good Bye to 2008......

2009-01-01T14:14:00.000Z

2008: An Extraordinarily Long Year

2008 is rapidly winding down. If it seems like it's been a long year, it's because it has been.Tick tock ... tick: Extra second added to 2008

Those eager to put 2008 behind them will have to hold their good-byes for just a moment this New Year's Eve.The world's official timekeepers have added a "leap second" to the last day of the year on Wednesday, to help match clocks to the Earth's slowing spin on its axis, which takes place at ever-changing rates affected by tides and other factors.The U.S. Naval Observatory, keeper of the Pentagon's master clock, said it would add the extra second on Wednesday in coordination with the world's atomic clocks at 23 hours, 59 minutes and 59 seconds Coordinated Universal Time, or UTC.That corresponds to 6:59:59 p.m. EST (23:59:59 GMT), when an extra second will tick by -- the 24th to be added to UTC since 1972, when the practice began.The first leap second was introduced into UTC on June 30, 1972. The last was added on December 31, 2005.Five Themes For 2009Please take more than an extra second to ponder

Five Themes You Need to Know for 2009.
Before we get to 2009, first, think back to a year ago. Deflation was barely on the radar of mainstream economists and financial media. Most viewed it as an impossibility, focusing instead on what was supposed to be the resurrection of the commodities bull market.Even today, while paying deflation minor lip service here and there, the vast majority of economists and financial media are ill-prepared for just how severe this ongoing deflationary credit contraction and debt unwind is going to be.Consequently, if there is one theme that stands above all else in 2009, it will be this: The despair that unfolds as the point of recognition emphasizes the "de-" in deflation. The fat is in the fire.....2. Putting the "De-" In DeflationAs declining risk appetites manifest in nearly everything in 2009, from our collective views on financial risk to our tastes in culture, music, film and fashion, we will see a focus on declines, destruction and devaluation. Perhaps nowhere will this be more obvious than in the disintegration of large-scale social networks into smaller, more focused and intimate groups.While peak social mood helped propel the movement toward increasingly open social networking platforms and large scale interactions, the rush to disassociate from the crowd will inevitably manifest as a reduction in broad network exposure and a preference for close-knit, tighter communities. Beneficiaries of this movement will be families, small groups and, to an extent, neighborhoods....5. Markets: Gold Declines, Dollar Rises, Interest Rates Hover at Unimaginable LowsI recently covered in the article, "Bear Markets Ain't Over 'Til They're Over," the reasons why I believe probabilities favor dramatic new stock market lows in 2009, but what about the other asset classes, gold, currencies and bonds?It is no secret that in a deflationary debt unwind all asset classes suffer absolute declines. In a relative sense some asset classes may fare better than others, but the problem remains that you can't spend negative relative outperformance.As for commodities and precious metals, look for 2009 to begin optimistically with commodities retracing some of their disastrous declines this year. Gold is also in the late stages of another attempt at cracking the $1,000 level. Unfortunately, the purpose of deflationary debt unwinds is to crush the spirits (and speculative juices) of all who attempt to participate in financial markets. The point of recognition for this deflationary debt unwind will culminate in another wave of intense selling pressure as the last speculators standing give up.There has been no shortage of top callers in the bond market of late. From a technical standpoint bonds certainly begin the year with the rubber band stretched painfully to the upside. But do not underestimate the power of deflationary forces to keep a floor under bond prices as interest rates hover at lows that, as recently as a year ago, seemed unimaginable.So there you have it. Only 366 days until 2010. That's the good news. When all is said and done, perhaps the best thing that will be said of 2009 is that it only lasted a year. Kevin Depew is always a great read. I encourage you to read the above article in entirety. There's three more points well worth reading. You may even wish to consider bookmarking him. I have.However, I would be remiss if I did not point out the following: 2009 will be one day and an additional second shorter than 2008. We can all be thankful for that.

Mike "Mish" Shedlockhttp://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Bad in Wales

2009-01-01T14:08:00.001Z

Slump is worst since 1930s - veteran estate agent

Jan 1 2009

by Nick Machin, South Wales Echo

THE current economic slump will be worse than the Great Depression of the 1930s, a South Wales estate agent has warned.
And Saul Magrill should know – because he was there.
Mr Magrill, 94, thought to be Britain’s oldest working estate agent, is shocked at the downturn in the housing market.
He blamed the banks for being “greedy” and spenders for lacking self-discipline.
Mr Magrill started work as a property consultant when he was just 17 in 1931, at the height of the pre-war economic downturn.
But Mr Magrill, who works one day a week for the Chris John Estate Agents in Pontcanna, Cardiff, as a consultant, says that was nothing compared to what Britain is going through now.
He said: “It’s much, much worse now than it was in the 1920s or 1930s.
“I started work when I was 17 in 1931 during the height of the Depression.
“But I have to say that I think 2009 will be much worse than 1931 because people don’t know the old-fashioned rules of budgeting.”
Mr Magrill said property prices had been too high for years and a slump was only a matter of time.
“I’ve been saying for a long time that the bubble had to burst. People were taking out mortgages more than 10 times their annual salary – which they just couldn’t afford.
“In the 1930s people mainly rented property anyway, which was more affordable than it is today, so there wasn’t this risk of lots of people losing their homes and having negative equity. The banks have been deviant. They have been very greedy.”
Mr Magrill added that people today would find it harder to adjust to budgeting.
“In the 1930s it was always hard and everyone struggled so you would stick together,” he said.
“But now people are buying things on credit they can’t afford and are being encouraged to by retailers.
“There was never that option or temptation in the 1930s – you had to make do with what you had.”

Gordo gets this one right!!!!

2009-01-01T13:31:00.002Z

Brown warns 2009 'won't be easy' ~ True Gordo and you're to BLAME!!

pa.press.net

Gordon Brown has warned the country that 2009 "won't be easy" as it faces up to the economic crisis.

In the Prime Minister's traditional New Year message, he insisted that Britain would pull through - but admitted the challenge was "enormous". He wrote: "This coming year won't be easy, but I am determined that this government will be the rock of stability and fairness on which the British people can depend."

"The scale of the challenges we face is matched by the strength of my optimism that the British people can and will rise to meet them. Because we're not a do nothing people and we've always risen to every challenge. We can meet the security challenge, the environmental challenge and the enormous economic challenge."

Amid widespread pessimism about 2009, the premier sought to strike an optimistic note at the start of what will be a make-or-break year for the Labour government. The prospects for a fourth consecutive term in office are likely to turn on the eventual length and extent of Britain's first recession since the early 1990s.

But Mr Brown insisted the British people, and the Government, had demonstrated their ability to get through similar challenges in the past. He said the task for 2009 was to "build tomorrow", with jobs for the digital age and the green agenda, new transport and communications infrastructure and enhanced skills.

Working together with Britain's world partners, he said, such actions would ensure the UK would "hit the ground running" after the downturn. He wrote: "Today the issues may be difference, more complex, more global. And yet the qualities that are needed to meet them have been demonstrated in abundance by the British people before."

The Prime Minister also set out his ambition to see a new economic philosophy replace the "unbridled free market dogma" which has been discredited by the financial crisis, "I want 2009 to be the year when the dawn of a new progressive era breaks across the world," he said.
That would mean governments investing through economic lows and offering "real help" to families and businesses when they were most in need. In a swipe at the Tories, the Prime Minister insisted failure to act would lead to a worse downturn and a weaker economy in the future.

He portrayed the Government's response to the autumn banking crisis - such as the recapitalisation of high street banks - as a "decisive" strategy to quell people's fears. He said: "The scale and speed of the global financial crisis was, at times, almost overwhelming. I know that people felt bewildered, confused and sometimes frightened. That is why the response had to be swift and decisive."
Insisting that his "guiding principle" was the wellbeing of British families and businesses, he added: "What keeps me up at night, and gets me up in the morning, are the hopes and aspirations of the British people."

And the Good news for Drinkers

2009-01-01T13:15:00.001Z

Pub chain slashes beer prices...........What????? Tell me that again!!!!!!!!!!

Pub chain slashes beer prices.....Yes.....it's true!!!!!!!!!
pa.press.net

Leading pub chain JD Wetherspoon is to slash prices on some drinks and food, offering a pint of beer for less than £1, down to 1989 prices, the company revealed.

The company, which operates 713 pubs across the UK, said the price reductions on some beer, bottled lager, wine and spirits will run "indefinitely".

A number of meals will also be offered at £2.99, said the firm, which opened 20 new pubs in the last few months of 2008, creating hundreds of new jobs, despite the economic downturn.

Wetherspoon's chief executive John Hutson said: "People enjoy going to the pub. However, we appreciate that the economic downturn means that they now have to be more careful with their money.

"We believe that our new food and drink prices will allow people to enjoy a visit to a Wetherspoon pub without it costing them too much.

"Unlike most sales that start in January, our offers will not be ending within days, but will run indefinitely."

Greene King IPA will be cut to 99p a pint, as will a bottle of San Miguel, the company announced.

New Year Newish Problems.....Welcome to 2oo9

2009-01-01T13:12:00.001Z

1,600+ retailers expected to go bust in 2009

REUTERS

January 01 2009

LONDON (Reuters) - The downturn in consumer spending will drive over 1,600 retailers out of business in 2009, triggering thousands of job losses and leaving more than one in ten shops empty, a report said Thursday.
Market researchers Experian said trading conditions for survivors would be the worst for at least 30 years and there would be knock-on effects at suppliers, manufacturers and service providers.
"There is no doubt that the impact on retail will resonate through the entire economy," said Jonathan de Mello, Director of Retail Consultancy at Experian.
Retailers are slashing prices as indebted shoppers curb spending amid rising unemployment, sliding house prices and fears of a deep recession.
Experian said big discounts had lured some consumers back into stores, with shopper numbers leaping 12.8 percent in the last week of December. But that was not enough to prevent a 3.1 percent drop in footfall for the month as a whole.
"The last minute surge in shoppers came as a relief to retailers but for most it was not nearly enough," de Mello said.
"The boost in numbers was driven by massive unprecedented discounting all at the expense of retailer margins."
Some retailers have not survived, with sweets-to-DVDs chain Woolworths and furniture group MFI falling into administration, a form of creditor protection, in the run-up to Christmas and several smaller companies following suit in recent days.
Experian said 1,137 non-food retailers went out of business in the year ended December, up 21.2 percent on the year, and forecast 440 more would become insolvent over the next four months and the total for 2009 as a whole would be about 1,400.
Some 194 food retailers failed in 2008, up 10.9 percent, and Experian predicted that number would rise to about 230 in 2009.
"The collapses we've seen so far are just the tip of the iceberg," de Mello said.
"At the moment there is too much space in the market and not enough demand. Many retailers are either making no margin or losing money. We anticipate that January will be the toughest for 30 years."
Experian said the vacancy level on shopping streets was around 7 percent, but with a flurry of businesses recently going into administration that would rise to about 10 percent -- "a figure which is likely to increase as more retailers go into administration in January."
"This large scale retail business failure is expected to have a significant impact on high street returns, affecting everything from investors' yields on rents to revenues to local authorities," it said.
"This is not to forget the devastating impact on people's jobs and livelihoods," de Mello. "Britain is still a nation of shop keepers and the retail sector is one of the UK's largest employers."
(Reporting by Mark Potter; Editing by Mike Nesbit)

Deflation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

2008-12-17T12:54:00.000Z

Deflation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

2008-11-23T14:02:00.000Z

Kirstie and Phil's Location, Location, Location Returns as UK House Prices Crash Housing-Market / UK Housing Nov 20, 2008 - 01:12 AM
By: Nadeem_Walayat

Kirstie and Phil self professed property experts make a return to the UK's TV screens with a more muted version of their long standing delusionally bullish UK property candy floss show titled location, location, location that helped feed the get on the property ladder frenzy of the last few years.
Finally, Kirstie has been forced to recognise the fact that house prices can actually fall which follows earlier near religiously opinionated programming that fed on and reinforced the fervour that gripped much of the country as annual house prices roared ahead every month by more than that which people earned in wages, that house prices are a one way bet.
The credit crash is clearly leaving the presenters in an air of frustration that the wood be buyers are in increasing numbers failing to act on their suggestions of buying found properties as people increasingly realise the risks of buying into a crashing UK housing market. Kirstie is still not getting the message that no matter how much you want house prices to rise, you can't talk up the market. But still the impression is that the presenters desperately want the potential buyers to BUY the located properties upon which the programme still hinges, when most are not wanting to once they do the sums away from the glare of the TV cameras, that BUYING does NOT stack up as the analysis of November 2007 showed and concluded that house prices need to rise by more than 2% per annum to beat renting, anything else and buyers lose money.
housepricecrash.co.uk video
Whilst Kirstie's now infamous emotional and angry response against anyone that suggested that house prices could fall on ITV's London Tonight 'appears' to have gone. Still both Kirstie and Phil are attempting to talk people into lemming like house buying decisions that they will likely regret as the housing bear market progresses, as in fact the most recent program illustrates which showed that had prospective buyers acted on Kirstie's and Phil's 'suggestion to buy', they would have lost £20k ! Let alone many of those that acted during the programming's boom years that are now probably sitting in negative equity.
Perhaps Channel 4 should have commissioned a show titled Repossession, Repossession, Repossession, so as to revisit those of Kirstie and Phil's clients that are in the process of handing their keys back as they pack their possessions and head off to some rundown council estate. Instead Channel 4 is holding onto an old programming formula that has been tinkered to at the edges for primarily an era that has now GONE ! No longer exists, instead of focusing on the housing bear market.
The return of the property show location,location, location follows Channel 4's other new money series titled the Ascent of Money, unfortunately again Channel 4 have commissioned a series led by an academic called Niall Ferguson, who appears to have little real world experience of actually trading the financial markets but purports to know the answers that led up to the credit collapse and what is likely to transpire. This from someone who apparently stated in late 1999 and early 2000 that Gold was dead as an investment and held no future other than as jewellery, and in fact published a book to the the same effect in 2001 as this was his conclusion after 'studying' over 500 years of monetary history.
It just goes to show the wide difference between academia that basically does not understand what they are talking about as they have never actually gained the experience and insight that comes with actually trading the markets over a number of years by reacting to price movements in real time. Instead academics rely on sanitised historic events without any of the associated experience of actually being immersed in events in real-time which is from which accurate forecasts are generated, rather grandiose theories of what should happen are employed that usually never stand up to a real market environment.
Given the poor quality of mainstream programming, its no wonder than people are waking up to find out that their banks are bankrupt and the housing market has crashed.
As to where house prices are going ?
The most recent house price data released by the Halifax shows that UK house prices have fallen by more than 16% from the peak of August 2007 and October 2008. The crash in both US and UK housing markets over the last 12 months was increasingly followed in September by the bankrupt banks collapsing one by one like a chain of dominos with governments rushing to their rescue during September and early October to the tune of unheard of amounts of tax payers money that now runs to collectively over $3 trillion. This triggered the near panic co-ordinated interest rate cuts in October of 0.5%, which was followed this month by an near unprecedented 1.5% cut.

The whole trend for the house price crash has been forecast well in advance of events, right from the very peak to the initial down-trend path amidst prevailing mainstream denial that house prices were actually falling as recent as of March of this year, and right up to the most recent data that fulfills the original forecast of a 15% fall in average UK house prices as projected in August 2007.

The current house price forecast is now complete, therefore work is underway towards completing in-depth analysis geared towards generating the next accurate forecast for UK house prices to cover the next 2 to 3 years, to get the analysis in your inbox subscribe to our always free newsletter.

By Nadeem Walayathttp://www.marketoracle.co.uk

Cameron

2008-11-23T13:59:00.000Z

Cameron draws up battle lines.....

2008-11-23T13:56:00.001Z

News Review interview: David Cameron
Unfazed by his falling poll lead, the Tory leader is turning tough, dour and aggressive to challenge an increasingly cavalier Gordon Brown
Dominic Lawson

David Cameron prides himself on treating Kipling’s two impostors, triumph and disaster, just the same. So in the week when the Conservative lead in the opinion polls has crumbled to three points and the entire business establishment has seemed to line up behind Gordon Brown’s plans to borrow still more to reflate the economy, the Tory leader appears as relaxed and self-confident as ever. But with all the political turbulence, is he still relishing the job and managing at the same time to enjoy family life?

“Yes, these are turbulent times and there are huge challenges facing the Conservative party, but I feel more confident than ever that I have found a good team and I’m happy in the job. And I do feel I still spend enough time with the family. Last night I got home at seven and read Noddy for the millionth time to Elwyn and put the children to bed and then Sam and I had supper together and just watched televi-sion. That doesn’t happen every night, admittedly.”

Immediately outside the tight-knit family unit, one of Cameron’s closest friends is George Osborne, the shadow chancellor. Notwithstanding Cameron’s remarks about his “good team”, how worried is he about the loud murmurings within the Tory party that (partly as a result of ill-advised talks about party donations on a Russian oligarch’s yacht) Osborne should make way for a political heavyweight with government experience, such as Ken Clarke?

“It doesn’t worry me too much.

You have these times in politics when you go through the wringer; but the fact is that George is a tough, confident and robust person and he’s got good judgment and he will come through this.”
I point out that Cameron and Osborne are each godparents to one of the other’s children. In such circumstances is it possible for him to be as objective as he needs to be as a boss?

“Funnily enough, I’d almost say the opposite in a way. That makes me sound rather cold and heartless – you know, I had to sack a friend from the shadow cabinet [fellow Old Etonian Hugo Swire] and I did. I mean, I hope I’m a kind and gentle and friendly and compassionate person but I’m also very tough. And George is also able to look at the situation objectively, knowing that he’s been through a tough time and he’s got to come through it.”

The Batman and Robin of the modern Conservative party are now united in a politically high-risk strategy to oppose outright the fiscal stimulus – otherwise known as hand-outs – that Alistair Darling, the chancellor, is set to announce to parliament tomorrow. Hold on a second, though: wasn’t Cameron only the other day saying that the Conservative party would try to forge a “bipartisan consensus” on the economy in such dire national circumstances?

“Look at exactly what I said. When I gave the speech at our party conference about all-party support, it clearly applied to the immediate banking crisis, the need to rescue the banks. It did not mean that we backed the fact that the government are borrowing so much. It did not mean that we backed their broader economic policy. But Gordon Brown, he’s a very cunning politician. What he always does with any offer of support about anything is to say, ‘Ah, well, if you support this thing over here, you support everything I do.’ It’s a tactic he has.”
I suggest to the Tory leader that his strictures about Brown’s fiscally irresponsible behaviour would sound more convincing if he had not earlier committed his party to matching Labour’s spending plans through to 2010 – plans that he now argues are partly responsible for the nation’s overborrowed state.

“I switched policy because they had become unaffordable. We can have an argument about whether they became unaffordable earlier and whether we should have moved earlier. But the Conservative party is doing what an opposition party ought to be doing, which is to warn of the huge cost of what the government seems determined to embark upon.
“We’re talking about a public borrowing requirement of maybe £70 billion this year and over £100 billion next year. And the question is: what are the risks of going ahead? I’ve been very careful not to say – considering such hideous consequences there could be as a result, for sterling, long-term interest rates and the ability to fund the debt – not to say that these things will happen, but that these things might happen.”
However, Brown’s point, backed by serried ranks of economists, is that the greater risk to the economy lies in not borrowing more money to avert a slump, isn’t it? “He says the risk of inaction is worse than the risk of action but he doesn’t even want to admit to the affordability problem because the reason why it is so potentially unaffordable is because he’s put us there.”
There is a sense in which Brown is successfully painting himself as the FDR fighting to get the world out of a slump, with Cameron as a pale imitation of the do-nothing approach of the US Republican party in the 1930s, isn’t there?

“I just think that’s wrong. We are being extraordinarily active in terms of ideas to combat unemployment and rising repossessions, helping small businesses’ cash flow, making sure that money flows from the banks into businesses.

“Of course the prime minister will try to paint one of his famous dividing lines because he sits in Downing Street endlessly scheming up dividing lines. The real dividing line is that I’m telling the truth about the bad state of the public finances and he’s taking everyone for fools. That’s a dividing line I’m happy to debate between now and the next election.”
Ah, the next election. Many prime ministers before Brown have run the economic cycle to fit the political cycle: that is, they have cut taxes in the year or two leading up to a general election without worrying too much about how to pay the bill afterwards, just so long as it wins them another term in office. Does Cameron think that is what is going on now?
“I think he has the sense . . . he knows he has a huge share of the responsibility for the mess we’re already in. He knows it’s going to get worse and I think he knows the longer this goes on, the more he’s going to get found out. I think that’s why the kitchen sink is being dispatched with such haste. He must know this, having given us lectures about prudence for so many years, having said so many times that you can’t spend your way out of a recession, having said so many times that unfunded tax cuts are irresponsible. He must know the frustration of talking to other world leaders, who’ve got surpluses and can afford to do what we can’t, which is to distribute those surpluses.”
Cameron used to work in the Treasury as a special adviser to Norman Lamont, then the chancellor. Does his experience there lead him to believe that Darling and his officials are nervous about the borrowing that Brown seems determined to increase still further?
“Oh yes, it’s Gordon at the controls with his foot hard on the accelerator and I think Alistair Darling and the Treasury are desperately worried that this could impair the finances for years to come and we’ll be paying increased taxes for years and years as a result. You can almost hear the concern in the Treasury. In fact you can read it in the papers.”
Yet, I say, some MPs are now saying this could be Labour’s Falklands war – a crisis that was in large part caused by British government policy errors, but that was the making of a prime minister and led to election victory. Cameron lets out a shudder of distaste at the analogy.
“The key thing for me is: why are we where we are? There are two arguments being made: one by the Conservatives, which is that there were international causes but that we made some profound mistakes in Britain and Gordon Brown is responsible for that. It wasn’t America that made us the most indebted country on earth or said we should remove the Bank of England from its role of regulating debt in the economy.
“Gordon Brown’s argument that this all comes from America, like the movie The Monster that Came from the Deep, it’s nothing to do with me: this is a ludicrous argument and this will be understood by people.”
If it’s so obvious that Brown is “being found out”, why are the opinion polls moving in inverse relation to this apparent fact?
“I think at this stage of a crisis, governments can benefit. A foreign prime minister said to me the other day that while it’s all about trying to take coordinated measures with other world leaders, that looks good for governments. But then after that . . .”
Isn’t it equally possible that Cameron and his colleagues simply underestimated Brown? This provokes the only occasion in the interview when Cameron raises his voice sharply.
“Never! I was asked this question when he was 10 points ahead in the polls, I was asked this question when I was 28 points ahead. I never underestimate my opponents. I don’t think anyone can legitimately claim, in any way, that I’ve taken my foot off the gas for one day in the three years I’ve been doing the job.”
I hadn’t, in fact, accused Cameron of a lack of vigour. Indeed it seems to me that his weekly hectoring of Brown at prime minister’s questions has become increasingly strident and aggressive: how does this square with his claim that on becoming Tory leader he would end “Punch and Judy politics”?
“The idea that there’s a nonconfrontational, more chummy way of doing PMQs, it’s just not the case. I thought it might be possible. I was wrong. I thought maybe it could be different, and actually it can’t be. The fact is, prime minister’s questions is an adversarial occasion. It’s about me asking quite tough questions on behalf of the public. It’s the questions they want answered. And you can’t pull your punches.” Doesn’t Cameron accept, all the same, that the spectacle of him and Brown almost shouting at each other at PMQs over the fate of Baby P was perhaps the best illustration of how this approach alienates the public by producing more heat than light?
“I thought I was asking in a nonpartisan, nonaggressive way a perfectly reasonable question – the reasonableness of which was demonstrated when, four hours later, the government took up my suggestion of an independent inquiry. And I thought that the prime minister’s charge that I was playing party politics over Baby P was completely wrong and appalling and I thought he should withdraw it.”
Which he hasn’t? “He hasn’t. He doesn’t do that sort of thing.”
Vastly different people though Brown and Cameron are, they are both keen students of history. I wonder if Cameron feels that he is in a similar position, albeit in opposition, to Margaret Thatcher and Geoffrey Howe in 1981, when 364 economists wrote a letter urging them to stimulate the economy. Thatcher and Howe, unbending, insisted that their overwhelming priority was to reduce Britain’s debts.
“I do study history carefully, but it never repeats itself exactly: there was a much bigger problem with inflation then. I have spoken to Geoffrey recently: he was desperately trying to be fiscally prudent in order to get interest rates down and they kept creeping back up again because the fiscal situation was so bad. My thinking is perhaps more straightforward: I am a fiscal conservative. I believe profoundly in cutting taxes and would like to do it as prime minister. I don’t believe in unfunded tax cuts, just hoping the money’s going to come back.”
So the battle lines are drawn for the next election: adventurous, tax-cutting, risk-taking Gordon Brown versus Mr Prudence himself, dour David Cameron. Who would have believed it?

House Crash ~ How much further to go?

2008-11-16T14:42:00.000Z

Five experts predict how much further house prices will fall

UK house prices are now nearly 15 per cent lower than 12 months ago, according to the Nationwide, with the price of an average house dropping by £30,000 to £158,872.
But when will the house price crash end and how far will prices fall? Should buyers grab a bargain now, or wait another year, or even longer. Times Money asked five experts for their predictions on when the market will hit rock bottom. Here are their answers. And have your say in our poll below.
Martin Ellis – chief economist, Halifax
Prediction: Another 8% fall
“We are predicting a 20 per cent fall over 2008 and 2009 – so as we calculate that prices have already fallen by 12.4 per cent, we would expect roughly another 8 per cent fall before prices start to bottom out at the end of 2009.
“There’s a lot of uncertainty surrounding the economy and unemployment figures in particular at the moment, so it’s very hard to say when prices will start to recover. Prices certainly won’t bounce back quickly.”
Jonathan Davis – housepricecrash.co.uk
Prediction: Another 35% fall
“The market will not bottom out until spring 2011, by which point there will be a 40 to 50 per cent drop from when house prices were at their peak in August last year.
“If you remember the last house price crash in 1988, it took until 1994 for the market to recover, so a good four or five years. There is no reason whatsoever to suppose the market will recover any quicker this time.
“It is far too early to bag a bargain – people should not be buying for at least another two years. We are only one year into the crash, and it has a long way to go yet.”
Yolande Barnes – Savills
Prediction: Another 10% fall
“We are forecasting a 25 per cent drop from when house prices were at their peak last year, so that means we’ve got about another 10 per cent to go. Whilst we expect prices to bottom out during 2010, the prospect of recession means we do not expect prices to start recovering anytime soon. Houses will not regain their 2007 value until about 2014, or possibly 2013 in the south-east.”
Nicholas Leeming – propertyfinder.com
Prediction: Another 10% fall
“There will be a further drop of about 10 per cent throughout 2009, before the market starts to level out at the end of the year. It will take a while for the effects of the Government bail-out to filter through – the capital markets will not be freed up until maybe the third quarter of 2009, when we can expect to see more mortgage transactions and a gradual recovery of the market.”
Nick Bate, UK economist, Merrill Lynch
Prediction: Another 10% fall
“There will be a 25 per cent drop from the market peak last summer – we have already seen about a 15 per cent drop, so we have about another 10 per cent to go.
“However, no one can say with any confidence exactly where prices will be in a year’s time – but it will certainly be a long time before prices recover to the levels we saw last year. With unemployment rising and people becoming less credit worthy, banks may continue to be reluctant to lend for some time, and this will lead to a very muted recovery.”

Nick Louth predicts on housing

2008-11-16T09:28:00.000Z

More house price falls to come
By Nick Louth, exclusive to MSN
November 13 2008
The big rise in unemployment this week and the Bank of England's admission that Britain is in recession are clear reminders that those hoping for a quick end to falling house prices are likely to be disappointed.
Whether we look at other housing booms in the UK, experience in other countries, or the relationship between the economy and house prices, evidence suggest we are still a considerable way from the bottom.
The UK economy in depth
Recession for real"It is very likely that the economy entered a recession in the second half (of 2008)," Bank governor Mervyn King said. He said that the economy could shrink by 2% next year, compared with the broadly flat forecast the bank had previously. Earlier, a 140,000 rise in the jobless total in September put unemployment at 1.82 million, the highest in 11 years.
Those who lose their jobs are of course under immediate pressure on mortgage payments, but those who merely fear their jobs are under threat are more likely to act more cautiously too. That means fewer new buyers, delays in transactions and a temptation for sellers to lower asking prices.
Why the recession is needed immediately
Average prices drop, more to comeAverage UK house prices peaked at just under £200,000 in August 2007, according to the Halifax. Prices in October, at £168,000 were 16% down from this, matching levels last seen three years ago.
Nationwide, the largest building society in the country, reckons prices will fall by 25% in total, and there may be no bounce-back before 2010, according to chief executive Graham Beale
Based on the Halifax index, that would put average prices down to £150,000. However, it could easily be a lot worse because of the size of the bubble that preceded the August 2007 peak and the severity of the current economic downturn.
Bubbles past and presentThe last slide in UK house prices was a rather modest affair, though it lasted six years from May 1989 to July 1995. House prices as measured by the Halifax fell by 13%, from an average of £70,000 to £61,000 over the period. That might be a comforting precedent, except that it is already clear that the UK has in one year experienced a house price fall which took six years to occur in the 1990s. And it is still getting worse.
The difference this time is that we have had a major banking crisis which has rationed credit, while a recession is building which looks to be in a different league to the modest economic slowdown of the early 1990s.
Research by professor Morgan Kelly of University College Dublin shows that house price bubble across the world have similar characteristics. On average prices lose 70% of the gains made from trough to peak before bottoming out. This research is backed up by an international study made by the Bank of International Settlements in 2004, which found a strong positive correlation between the size of a housing bubble and the subsequent fall.
The doomsday scenario?So if Professor Kelly's 70% figure is accurate, where would that leave UK house prices? The last downturn in the housing market ended in July 1995, when average prices according to the Halifax were £61,000. That gain, trough to peak over 12 years, is £139,000. So if this is a typical bubble, the fall would be 70% of that, £97,000, taking the price of the average house at the low to just £103,000.
There are plenty who would see this as too much of a doomsday scenario, especially as houses would become affordable long before such low prices were reached. House prices have averaged 4.0 times average earnings over the long term, and since prices peaked the ratio has already dropped from 5.84 to 4.92 in August.
"Housing affordability is improving significantly," said Martin Ellis, chief economist at the Halifax. "The house price to average earnings ratio has fallen below 5.0 for the first time for four and a half years. We expect a further improvement in the ratio over the coming months."
Affordability issueIf average earnings do not change, which is itself a hefty assumption given the recession we are entering, prices would hit the long-term affordability average with a further 20% fall.
The trouble with this argument is that once houses became an investment asset, with the buy-to-let boom of the late 1990s, they became subject to the same speculative forces that drive share prices.
Instead of being guided by "fundamentals" such as the ratio of income to price, they were driven by price expectations. What that implies is that we can expect an overshoot, in which prices having been way above typical affordability averages for several years, then spend some time well below them.
Mortgage troubles drag onOne additional difficulty this time around is in mortgage finance. Though the Bank of England has cut interest rates sharply, stubbornly high inter-bank rates mean that rates offered to borrowers have yet to fall significantly. With buyers having to stump up larger deposits too, and credit generally harder to come by, this augurs badly for those who expect prices to soon stabilise.
Weakening activity underlines this. The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors said its sale-to-stock ratio, which measures transactions as a proportion of homes offered for sales, fell in October to the lowest level since December 1992. This seems to reflect a mis-match between the asking prices of sellers, and what buyers are willing or able to spend.
Some commentators, however, see the gloomy headlines as far too alarmist. One is Stuart Law, chief executive of property investment specialist Assetz.
"Our view is that house prices will drop by around a total of 10 to 15% from the peak this time last year, based on the Financial Times house price index data," he said. "We therefore think that prices will fall no further than a further 5% or 10% at most."
The FT Index, which uses the actual mix of property in England and Wales, rather than the mix based on sales, has recorded only a 4.3% fall in the year to September, less than half that recorded by most other indices.
Law noted that the complexities of the housing market produce some temporary pricing effects. "Auction pricing and distressed house builders are selling for much greater discounts than is visible within the house price indices," he said. "Even today we are sourcing property from house builders at greater than 30% discount to current valuation, never-mind from peak value last year."
The good news for most...The one piece of good news is that for most people, most of the time, house prices don't matter. You need a home to live in, and higher or lower prices are reflected both in the home you sell and the one you purchase. For first-time buyers, where they have job security, falling prices remain good news to be taken advantage of.
However, for those who have purchased recently, over-stretched buy-to-let investors, those who are having trouble making mortgage payments and those who have lost their jobs, price falls mean trouble. The fear of negative equity - in which the value of the home sinks below the size of the mortgage - ensures a cash loss if the home has to be sold.
The more prices fall in the months and years to come, the more people are going to be facing that anxiety.

2008-10-06T09:24:00.000Z

Halifax And Nationwide House Fall Graph - House Price Crash forum

2008-10-02T12:29:00.000Z

Halifax And Nationwide House Fall Graph - House Price Crash forum

2008-10-02T12:27:00.000Z

Halifax And Nationwide House Fall Graph - House Price Crash forum

House price crash source

2008-10-02T12:25:00.000Z

Not sure if this is a repost. I don't really care either. Just enjoy the fall.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7647251.stm

Any mortgages out there?

2008-10-02T11:26:00.000Z

Why even mortgage brokers are struggling to find mortgages for their clients...

A massive two-thirds of brokers have been unable to source a mortgage for clients in the past two months, according to the Intermediary Mortgage Lenders Association. This surprising statistic highlights just how difficult it is to secure mortgage finance for many borrowers, with even the experts struggling to find us a deal.

The main reasons brokers quoted for the inability to find their clients mortgages are the tightening of lending criteria and the increase in deposits required, as loan-to-values (LTVs) have been cut – a problem mentioned by 51% of respondents. After that, 23% of intermediaries cited the withdrawal of products as the biggest impediment.

And this survey was released last week, before the B&B crisis and before hundreds more products were pulled from the market on Monday, wiping out 11% of available mortgages according to some estimates.

So the situation has just got a whole lot worse!

Problem areas
Brokers said that they are having problems finding deals across all product types with remortgages mentioned by 72% of respondents. Over half claimed they had been unable to source a loan for a first-time buyer and 50% couldn’t help a sub-prime borrower to find a deal.

Perhaps most worrying is that over a quarter (26%) of intermediaries had struggled to find deals for standard status borrowers -- the average Joes who are perceived to be least affected by the credit crunch.

What happens to these borrowers?
If brokers are unable to help a borrower get a deal, what can they do?

Well, they could try going direct to lenders to see if there are any products available that brokers cannot access. Earlier this year, many lenders introduced what was called a ‘dual pricing policy’ making their direct-to-consumer deals cheaper than those offered through brokers. This clearly made life extremely difficult for good brokers, who were forced to tell their clients they could get a better deal by going direct to the banks and building societies.

But dual pricing has become less of an issue in recent months and it’s fair to say that brokers now have access to most (if not all) of the competitive products on the market (HSBC being one significant exception). While deals may sometimes look different in terms of headline rates, broker deals sometimes come with added extras, like free valuation and legal fees for example, that might offset a difference somewhere else in the product.

The bad news is that the IMLA survey showed that customers who were unable to obtain a mortgage mostly ended up remaining with their existing lender on their Standard Variable Rate as a result. This is likely to be around 1.5% to 2% higher than the most competitive deals on the market. A massive 83% of brokers admitted that borrowers they couldn’t help fell into this category. This means that when they come to the end of a deal, such as a two-year fixed rate, they are being forced to move onto a much higher rate, and in most cases will pay significantly more each month.

For first-time buyers, a large proportion (40%) continued to rent instead of buying if their broker couldn’t find them a deal. Interestingly, a small percentage of existing homeowners who couldn’t get a decent remortgage deal decided to sell up and rent (15%), according to the brokers surveyed.

And sadly, they admitted that in 14% of cases where they could not help, the customer is facing repossession.

How can you avoid this?
Is there anything you can do to prevent yourself being one of the borrowers that brokers, or indeed lenders, cannot help to find a decently priced mortgage?

Well, it’s easier said than done. There are ways you can ensure you can have access to the best deals, but they may not be easy to achieve. Here are three key considerations:

Borrow less.
We would all like to have a whopping 40% deposit but it’s not that easy, is it? However the best and most competitive mortgages are available to those who only need to borrow 60% of the property’s value. However, there are plenty of extremely good deals for those who have 25% to put down. It gets tougher to find a deal the smaller your deposit so it really is essential that you try to save as much as possible. If you have a deposit of 5% for example you will have a pretty small selection of expensive mortgage to choose from. The good news is that with house prices falling, first-time buyers may be able to continue saving for longer, rather than feeling pressured to rush into the property market right now.

Clean up your credit record.
Lenders love whiter than white borrowers with no history of bad credit. This has always been the case and they have always charged ‘sub-prime’ borrowers more to offset the lending risk. Now they simply won’t lend to people with anything other than the minimum of credit problems. If you do have outstanding late payments on any credit agreements, settle them before you even apply for a mortgage. Although remember that lenders can still see past payment discrepancies on your credit file.

Become Mr and Mrs Average.
Unusual requirements are not what lenders want at the moment. Although there are self-cert mortgages out there for those who can’t prove their income, for example, they are expensive and the cheapest deals are available to those in full-time employment, on the electoral roll where they live, and preferably having lived in the same property for a while. Credit scoring often penalises those who move house, and jobs, frequently.

More: Buy-to-let Gets Busted

Biggest since I don't know when.....

2008-10-02T11:23:00.000Z

House price fall biggest in 17 years
By Christina Fincher

LONDON (Reuters) - House prices fell 1.7 percent in the month of September to post their biggest annual drop since comparable records began in 1991, the Nationwide building society said on Thursday.

Interest rate futures rallied as investors speculated the figures increased the chance of an interest rate cut by the Bank of England next week, although analysts cautioned that a cut in itself would do little to halt sliding property values.

"Even if the Bank of England cuts interest rates as early as next week, as we now expect, this is likely to provide only very limited support to the housing market given that elevated money market rates are exerting upward pressure on fixed rate mortgages," said Howard Archer, economist at Global Insight.

Mortgage approvals are already less than a third what they were a year ago and figures from the Bank of England Thursday showed lenders expect to restrict credit even further in the coming months.

A survey of construction, meanwhile, showed the sector contracted for a seventh consecutive month in September as commercial activity fell at the fastest pace since the survey began a decade ago.

Nationwide said house prices in September were 12.4 percent lower than a year earlier. Before 1991, Nationwide conducted quarterly house price surveys. The largest annual fall on that measure was a 10.7 percent drop recorded in the early 1990s.

The 11th consecutive monthly decline highlights the sharp reversal of fortune for the property market since the credit crunch took hold last summer, bringing an end to a decade in which property values almost trebled.

"Casting back one year there have been some astonishing and unpredictable developments in the housing and financial markets," said Fionnuala Earley, Nationwide's chief economist.

"We would need to see a significant shift in consumers' sentiment before we begin to see any real recovery in activity and subsequently house prices."

September's decline pushed the average price of a property to 161,797 pounds, the lowest since February 2006.

The precipitous drop in house prices both in Britain and overseas has been a key element of the crisis that is rocking the global banking sector and threatening to send many industrialised economies into recession.

A reluctance by banks to lend to each other had led to a sharp increase in wholesale funding costs in recent weeks. Several mortgage providers have responded by raising their own mortgage rates.

Policymakers are concerned a weakening property market could feed a vicious downward spiral of falling consumer demand and rising unemployment.

Futures markets suggest the Bank of England will cut interest rates to 4.75 percent next week and to 4 percent by this time next year.

A Reuters poll this week showed 45 of 66 economists polled September 29-October 1 said the BoE would hold rates at 5.0 percent next week. A cut by the end of the year is now almost a certainty with forecasters in the poll.

(Reporting by Christina Fincher; Editing by Mike Peacock/Toby Chopra)

New Channel 4 Progrmme on housing

2008-09-06T14:19:00.000Z

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/sep/05/housing.houseprices

Well worth a read......

Starts next Monday........

Collapse of a lego house!

2008-09-04T15:12:00.001Z

Watch what happens when the real house price crash occurs!!

Peter Schiff ~ Eye of the Storm

2008-09-04T11:27:00.000Z

In The Eye of The Storm
Peter Schiff
Sep 4, 2008

As we enter the height of the hurricane season, it may be worthwhile to recall, when considering the economy at large, the particular deception that lurks in the "eye" of the storm. After a raging tempest, the sudden appearance of the calm 'eye' can all too easily encourage people to leave their shelter in order to assess and even repair damage, exposing themselves to the often more devastating second leg of the hurricane.

We have long warned our readers of a coming real estate crash which would then lead to a credit crunch, and eventually a major round of bank failures. We have argued that these developments would be the precursors to a major recession, and perhaps a depression.

As predicted, the collapsing values of bonds backed by subprime mortgages did indeed lead to a collapse of the entire mortgage market, a bank liquidity crisis, a credit crunch and a steep fall in consumer confidence. This was the first leg of the storm, but the full blown banking collapse and the deep recession are not yet manifest. The conventional wisdom holds that the bullet has been dodged.

The markets are buying this hypothesis. Tempted by the latest crop of economic data that seems to show expansion, U.S. stocks have moved sideways, and even climbed slowly. The U.S. dollar has risen from its lows, and the rate of bank failures appears to be under control. In short, with gold off almost twenty percent from its highs, it looks as if many investors have concluded that the worst of the storm has past, and have decided look for good deals amid the stock market wreckage. Proceed with caution.

At its core, our economy is simply showing the effects of a national depletion of wealth caused by decades of consuming more than we produce and spending more than we earn. The natural corrective mechanism to such a condition is a recession. But recession is very bad for politics, especially in an election year. So, the potential corrective recession has been postponed by a massive injection of billions of dollars into the economy. At a time when we needed serious physical therapy, the government instead offered four massive pain killers:

First, the debased U.S. dollar has boosted exports and helped the GDP to remain positive.

Second, by setting interest rates below the rate of inflation the Federal Reserve discouraged savings and encouraged borrowing and spending.

Third, massive government lending kept the financial service industry solvent and the mortgage lenders operating.

Fourth, stimulus checks have kept American's spending money that they have not earned.

Although these government palliatives have succeeded in calming the immediate crisis (by saddling American taxpayers with massive liabilities), they have not cured the disease. If anything the huge doses indicate that the patient is getting far worse, even if in silence!

Last week, the FDIC announced that bank losses have tripled to $26.4 billion, leading to a fall of 86.5 percent in bank earnings. The Case-Shiller home price index shows American housing to have fallen in value by some 20 percent and still sliding. These massive movements have yet to be felt along the entire economic spectrum... but it is inevitable that they will be.

Don't be lulled into a false sense of security and start buying U.S. equities at seemingly knockdown prices. We are in the eye of the hurricane. Beware of the second leg!

###

For a more in depth analysis of our financial problems and the inherent dangers they pose for the U.S. economy and U.S. dollar denominated investments, read my book "Crash Proof: How to Profit from the Coming Economic Collapse." Click here to buy a copy today.

More importantly, don't wait for reality to set in. Protect your wealth and preserve your purchasing power before it's too late. Discover the best way to buy gold at www.goldyoucanfold.com, download my free research report on the powerful case for investing in foreign equities available at www.researchreportone.com, and subscribe to my free, on-line investment newsletter.

Sep 3, 2008
Peter Schiff
C.E.O. and Chief Global Strategist
Euro Pacific Capital, Inc.
1 800-727-7922
email: pschiff@europac.net
website: www.europac.net
Archives

Mr. Schiff is one of the few non-biased investment advisors (not committed solely to the short side of the market) to have correctly called the current bear market before it began and to have positioned his clients accordingly. As a result of his accurate forecasts on the U.S. stock market, commodities, gold and the dollar, he is becoming increasingly more renowned. He has been quoted in many of the nation's leading newspapers, including The Wall Street Journal, Barron's, Investor's Business Daily, The Financial Times, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, The Dallas Morning News, The Miami Herald, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Arizona Republic, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and the Christian Science Monitor, and has appeared on CNBC, CNNfn., and Bloomberg. In addition, his views are frequently quoted locally in the Orange County Register.

Mr. Schiff began his investment career as a financial consultant with Shearson Lehman Brothers, after having earned a degree in finance and accounting from U.C. Berkley in 1987. A financial professional for seventeen years he joined Euro Pacific in 1996 and has served as its President since January 2000. An expert on money, economic theory, and international investing, he is a highly recommended broker by many of the nation's financial newsletters and advisory services.

321gold Ltd

Gangs war on streets of London

2008-09-04T11:24:00.000Z

Gang warfare on the streets of London as Asian and black youths battle outside Julie Christie's house

By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 10:28 AM on 04th September 2008

Comments (23) Add to My Stories

Armed with metal poles, sticks, a screwdriver and even Wellington boots, two gangs of black and Asian youths fight it out in broad daylight on the streets of London.

The terrifying scenes were captured by a photographer who had been waiting in the street to take a photo of the actress Julie Christie, who lives nearby.

Instead he was faced with a brutal illustration of life in modern Britain as gang warfare erupted around him in broad daylight.

In one picture, a gang member threatens another with a screwdriver, while in another, even a Wellington boot is used as a makeshift weapon.

Enlarge A group of Asians take on a group of Black youths with screwdrivers, spades, metal poles and sticks outside Julie Christie's home

Enlarge
One gang member attacks another with a screwdriver as the two gangs confront one another

Some of the gang members wear masks as they charge down the street waving sticks and other assorted weapons.

The dramatic confrontation took place yesterday afternoon in streets near Columbia Road, in East London, home to the popular Sunday morning flower market.

The battle lasted around 20 minutes and involved at least 10 youths.

According to reports the fight appeared to have its origins in a dispute between a local Asian man and some youths who he had accused of vandalising his property.

Enlarge
Metal poles and sticks are used as weapons as the running battle continues

While the area lies in the heart of London's East End, its terraced houses sell for up to a million pounds each and it is surrounded by fashionable cafes and shops which have sprung up around the flower market.

Scotland Yard said it had received numerous calls about the battle and officers were investigating.

Bank Rate Held....September Meeting.....

2008-09-04T11:20:00.000Z

Thursday, Sep 4, 2008
MPC holds UK interest rates at 5%
BBC: Bank keeps UK interest rate at 5%
The Bank of England has kept interest rates on hold at 5% for a fifth month as it struggles to deal with a slowing economy and soaring inflation. But with reports signalling the economy is heading for recession, expectations are rising that the cost of borrowing will be cut by the end of the year. Economic growth ground to a halt in the second quarter of this year, its worst performance since the early 1990s. However, inflation is more than double the Bank's target of 2%.

Property Price drop accelerates

2008-09-04T11:17:00.001Z

Property price drop has accelerated
By PA News
September 02 2008
Government help for homebuyers follows 12 months which have seen prices tumble and loans restricted.

- The average UK property has lost 10.5% of its value during the past 12 months, the biggest drop since the final quarter of 1990, according to Nationwide Building Society.

- Property prices fell by 1.9% in August following drops of 1.5% and 0.9% in July and June respectively.

- The average property in the UK currently costs £164,654.

- London house prices dropped by 5.3% in the last month, a report by property agent Rightmove showed.

- The top five worst affected areas in London, when comparing July to August, were Wandsworth, Brent, Kingston upon Thames, Richmond upon Thames and Greenwich.

- Property firm Savills said profits in its estate agency slumped 88% during the first half of this year.

- Buyers are currently putting down average deposits of 20%, falling to around 10% among first-time buyers, according to the Council of Mortgage Lenders.

- Figures show that 144,400 first-time buyers got on the property ladder between August last year and the beginning of this year, and many of these could now find themselves in negative equity.

- Around 552,000 people bought a property with a 100% mortgage between the beginning of August last year and the end of March, meaning they have no equity cushion against house price falls.

- The Halifax estimate 300,000 first-time buyers entered the market in 2007, the lowest since 1980. This compares with an estimated 900,000 at the peak in 1988.

Related links
The government's plan, region by region
Govt raises stamp duty threshold for a year
Why the government decided to act
Message board: has the government done enough?
Stamp duty relief Q&A

The interview with Jack today..........

2008-08-31T13:53:00.000+01:00

Straw says UK can 'weather storm'

Justice secretary defends Labour's "experienced pilot and co-pilot"
Justice Secretary Jack Straw has said Labour is best placed to see Britain through the current economic downturn.

He told BBC One's Andrew Marr Show that economic management under Labour would help the UK to "weather these storms".

He said Chancellor Alistair Darling did not speak out of turn saying economic conditions were the worst for 60 years.

The Tories have said it shows a split between him and Gordon Brown. Mr Straw also ruled out any Labour leadership challenge to the prime minister.

Experience

Mr Straw likened Britain's current economic situation to an airliner passing through turbulence.

There won't be a leadership challenge from me or from anybody else

Jack Straw, Justice Secretary
"The question for the country is who is better to take us through this turbulent period?" he said.

"Is it an experienced pilot and co-pilot in Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling, who have had the experience… or is it two people in David Cameron and George Osborne, who have had no experience of flying a large plane whatsoever."

The Tories have claimed Alastair Darling's comments to the Guardian newspaper "let the cat out of the bag" about the economy and proved that government was divided at the top level.

But Mr Straw insisted the Cabinet was completely in step and stressed that Mr Darling had been referring to the worldwide impact of the credit crunch and soaring food prices, rather than Britain's situation specifically.

This coming 12 months will be the most difficult 12 months the Labour party has had in a generation, quite frankly

Alistair Darling

Darling defends economy warning
Analysis: Darling's frank comments

He said: "We talk to each other all the time, each of us talks for the other. I'm sorry about this, but we're not clones of each other, and we sometimes use different adverbs and adjectives.

"The message from Gordon, from Alistair, from colleagues like myself, has been the same: we've had a very good period of economic management and economic success which has, for sure, provided us with a really serious platform to weather these storms."

Asked if he could rule himself out of any leadership challenge, Mr Straw said: "Yes. There won't be a leadership challenge from me or from anybody else."

Housing market

Mr Straw refused to speculate on possible measures to bolster the ailing housing market. But he said the government had already announced plans to allow local authorities to buy unsold homes to let to tenants.

"This is actually really important. Because of the credit crunch, because of the difficulty people find in getting mortgages, there is a market in the private sector that is, to say the least, not as buoyant as it was.

"Local authorities have said to us… why can't we go into the market to buy some of these houses. We have listened and we have acted very quickly."

Evidence of House Price Crash......

2008-08-31T13:49:00.001+01:00

House prices crash by 10.5% in just one year - faster than the crash in the 1990's
Thursday, August 28 2008 @ 06:32 AM UTC

Latest Nationwide data shows month-on-month fall on 2% bringing the yearly fall to a staggering double digit value of 10.5%, a value that was predicted for the next 3 years and also a value that was denied could ever happen by estate agents and other mortgage dependent businesses.

At this rate, 30% - 50% within the next 32 months is now almost certain. Prices only go up eh? Missed the boat? Thats one boat I am glad I did not buy a ticket for.

If you have bought in the last 18 months you are probably in negative equity.

If you are a first time buyer, who has resisted the pressure from parents and friends, well done and here are some dinner party quotes to get your own back.

Message for Declan Curry, BBC: You berk.

For a while now I have generously been giving you the benefit of the doubt, thinking perhaps your hands were tied up by Auntie. But... this morning you removed all doubt from my mind, and I am now certain you a shameless non-independent VI, no wonder they let you work at the BBC.

You haven't quite been able to admit to the fundamentals over the past year clearly showing that house price falls are going to be deep, and 12 months ago you ridiculed anyone who thought 10% would happen - well look at the data today.

Your smirky little comment "so prices have fallen, your not going to be able to get a mortgage anyway" directed at people who chose to sit out the lunacy shows nothing but a nasty jealous streak running through you.

You should also know that a lot of people are shortly going to be wiping that grin of your face when they buy properties in cash, or have a hefty deposit for a cheap mortgage.

I hope your high leveraged BTL empire is weighing you down.

Seanator Karen Johnson

2008-08-23T14:18:00.001+01:00

A remarkable woman steps forward on 911

Senator Karen Johnson has served in the Arizona State Legislature for almost two decades. She is retiring at the end of this session. It has been my honor and privilege to know Senator Johnson. Back in April 2008, Karen was pummeled by the press in Arizona because she dared speak about 911 with some pointed observations and questions. On April 24, 2008, The Arizona-Republic, published a hit piece on her. This piece of drivel is titled, 'Drinking the 9/11 Kool-Aid.' As you can see by reading it, the author believes that no elected official should question any aspect of the Bush Administration's fairy tale of the events about September 11, 2001. This has been the prevailing attitude of the so-called mainstream media, including cable "news" networks since that day. Anyone questioning the hoax perpetrated on the American people is a Kool-Aid drinker or a traitor.

On June 10, 2008, Karen gave a floor speech on 911. She reinforced that millions, not a few "Bush haters," but millions of Americans want a real investigation into 911. She did not exaggerate. I hope you will take ten minutes to watch this amazing woman do what thousands of cowards in public service won't do: Demand a real investigation into the 911 crimes. Before she began her speech, Karen made a packet of information available to every member in the senate. She sincerely and politely asked them to take the time to look at the documentation. She asked them to open their eyes. Such an entreaty was also given by Patrick Henry, March 23, 1775:

"It is natural for man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a paintful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous strugle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those who having eyes seen not, and having ears hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth -- to know the worst and to provide for it."

In Michael Reagan's eyes, this courageous woman is a traitor to this country for questioning 911 and asking for a real investigation. She explains in her speech why a new investigation is needed and it's based on facts, not conspiracy theories. If questioning our government, even during a war based on nothing but lies, is considered an act of treason and we should all be hunted down and shot, then millions of Americans, me included, are guilty. We demand the truth and we will continue to fight for the truth. Senator Karen Johnson deserves our thanks and respect. Michael Reagan deserves our contempt and jail time.

Links:

1 - Must Watch Dr. Steven Jones on this 911 presentation - open your eyes, America
2 - Bio: Dr. Steven Jones
3 - Must watch this free video presentation (3) parts by David Ray Griffin on 911
4 - Wall Street Journal vs. 'Jersey Girls'
5 - State Says Hundreds Of 9/11 Rescue Workers Now Dead
Admits Undercount
6 - 911 Archives

KAL 007

1 - Incident at Sakhalin
2 - Kal 007 (Sakhalin Incident) - Follow-up
3 - What about the passengers of KAL Flight 007?
4 - Will Bush Demand Putin Release American Hostages?
5 - Anniversary of on-going Cover up Approaches
6 - Official KAL Rescue Site maintained by family members

© 2008 - NewsWithViews.com - All Rights Reserved

Indict Michael Reagan

2008-08-23T14:16:00.000+01:00

INDICT MICHAEL REAGAN, APPLAUD SENATOR KAREN JOHNSON

By: Devvy
June 16, 2008

© 2008 - NewsWithViews.com

“The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly - it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over.” Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda

It takes a lot to shock me anymore, but indeed, shock is what registered when I listened to talk show host, Michael Reagan, blast these words during the second hour of his show, June 10, 2008:

Partial transcript of Reagan’s statements which can be heard here (3:12 minutes):

“Excuse me folks, I'm going to say this. We ought to find the people who are doing this, take them out and shoot them. Really. You take them out, they are traitors to this country, and shoot them. You have a problem with that? Deal with it. You shoot them. You call them traitors, that's what they are, and you shoot them dead. I’ll pay for the bullets. ”Reagan adds, “How about you take Mark Dice out and put him in the middle of a firing range. Tie him to a post, don't blindfold him, let it rip and have some fun with Mark Dice.”

At the end when Reagan says "...these people are just outrageous," I assume it's Reagan's engineer says, "Now you know where the Ron Paul supporters went."

I don't listen to Michael Reagan's show. Like so many others, to me it's just more noise because the serious questions never get asked. The real discussions about issues like the privately owned Federal Reserve, the mis application of the federal income tax, his father's role in the cover up of what really happened to KAL Flight 007, will never happen on his show. He's just another useful fool with his partisan politics. Here and there I've seen Michael Reagan on gab fest programs like Shallow Sean Hannity (FAUX News Network) and never found him to be very intelligent. Fate dealt him a good hand when he was adopted by a popular movie star and future U.S. president.

When I first listened to this segment from his show, I thought, if I said the same thing about Dick Cheney on the air, the FBI would be at my door before the next commercial break. What else can you call what Reagan specifically outlined but solicitation for murder? He's telling his listening audience to go hunt down people who question the government's version of 911 and when you find them, shoot them. Shoot them dead. This wasn't satire. Michael Reagan went so far over the line, he shouldn't just be reprimanded by his boss, he should be charged and indicted.

Who is Mark Dice? I had never heard of him until this happened. It appears he's a 911 activist who has joined with others in a project to present information about 911 to the troops in Iraq. These packages going to active duty soldiers in a war zone was covered on FOX in a 5:12 minute interview with Dice and Megyn Kelly. You can watch this short video here. This is very reminiscent of what happened a long time ago which resulted in what became known as the 'Great Sedition Trial of 1944,' where the defendants were charged with trying to incite mutiny within the troops during WWII; they were not convicted. Dice has filed a report with the FBI.

911 is a very divisive issue and the raw hatred spewed by those who believe the government's version of events, whether their political loyalty is the "right" or "left" is thick as molasses in this country. Michael Reagan's soliciting the murder of Americans for exercising their First Amendment Right (not privilege) is by far and away the most extreme example to date. Americans who do take the time to investigate for themselves the credible research on this issue have found the government's version lacking, including family members who lost loved ones that day. I suppose if the "Jersey Girls" sent their DVD to the troops in Iraq (and Afghanistan), Michael Reagan would include these widows on his list of Americans to be hunted down, killed and he'll pay for the bullets.

One thing I find astounding is the absolute black out of ANY media coverage on Reagan's death threats and solicitation of murder. When I submitted this column two days ago to NWVs, I had been checking all the web sites that are popular, "left" and "right": Huffington Post, Truthout.org, Drudge, Worldnetdaily, FOX, CNN, ABC, MSNBC, etc. Nothing. The exposure has been on independent Internet web sites as well as Dice's, but not a single word has been said about Michael Reagan's call to kill Americans from any "mainstream" media source. Where is the condemnation from any of the MSM and all those web sites? They didn't know about it? Bollocks! It was broadcast live to a huge listening audience. Because Reagan is the son of a former president? That does not excuse what he's done and this is not "protected speech" under the First Amendment, which I fiercely defend even if I disagree with it.

Gordon Porridge on Holiday

2008-08-09T15:31:00.000+01:00

If Music be the food of the recession, play on.......

2008-08-05T16:56:00.002+01:00

Recession means depressing music

Fears of recession, grey summer weather and collapsing house prices have begun to depress the public so much that miserable music is topping internet playlists, it has been claimed.

What's your favourite playlist in these testing times?

Recession ~ How to walk backwards into a brick wall.

2008-08-05T16:52:00.001+01:00

The UK is "at serious risk" of recession with the future looking "grim", business leaders have warned.

People are spending less as credit crunch bites

The British Chambers of Commerce says falling orders and rising costs are putting companies under increasing pressure.

Services firms, which account for three-quarters of the economy, saw "alarming" declines in the second quarter of 2008.

Those reporting lower orders outnumbered those recording rises for the first time since 1990.

The BCC quizzed almost 5,000 companies as part of its survey, which found business confidence was at its lowest since 1990.

BCC economic adviser David Kern said the responses showed a "menacing deterioration" in UK prospects.

Firms were equally gloomy about the prospects for the future, he added.

The outlook is grim, and we believe that the correction period is likely to be longer and nastier than anticipated

BCC's economic adviser David Kern

The BCC warned the Government against hitting firms with more taxes in an effort to boost public revenues.

Director-general David Frost said: "The temptation for the Government will be to raise business taxes because the exchequer is running out of money.

"This would be a catastrophe.

"To put more pressure on business would not only restrict growth and hit the consumer hard, it would further crush what our economy is based on - confidence."

Firms are facing soaring costs from rising electricity bills and raw materials as oil approaches $150 a barrel, while banks hit by the crunch clamp down on lending.

This has put cashflow among UK firms under the most pressure since 1992, the BCC said.

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UK Banks ~ It's all down hill on the numbers

2008-08-05T16:04:00.001+01:00

UK banks – the story so far
Richard Hunter, head of UK equities, Hargreaves Lansdown
August 04 2008
With more than half of the UK banks' half-year reporting season now completed, the overall numbers have not made for good reading.

Admittedly, much of the bad news (which has subsequently been borne out) had been largely factored into share prices which have, on the whole, taken a mauling over the last year. Nonetheless, with eyes particularly focused on the likes of Barclays and RBS, it would appear that this season could prove to be one to forget.

Banking woes
The reports were kicked off when Lloyds TSB reported a 70% dip in half-year profits and as such these numbers represented a cautious opening, with profits largely pegged back by a hit in investment writedowns.

Whilst the group's exposure to the US subprime fallout is negligible compared to some of its peers, it nonetheless remains exposed to the UK consumer and the level of defaults is expected to increase, albeit on a manageable basis. It appears that Lloyds did not totally discount an overseas acquisition to achieve greater diversification, even though the reported German approach recently came to nothing.

Lloyds has not, of course, been totally immune to the wider credit crisis and the shares have dipped some 40% over the last year. Nonetheless, concerns regarding the sustainability of the dividend have been firmly quashed, with the clear attractions of a near 12% dividend yield remaining intact. On balance, the general market view towards the shares remains neutral for the time being.

HBOS followed, and rather strangely the current trend in global banking stocks diametrically to oppose the news continued again with the company posting a 51% decline in profits whilst seeing an 8% spike in its share price in early trade.

Stocks rise as profits fall
There was a Merrill Lynch type reaction to the numbers, in that there were no nasty surprises and therefore another contribution to the beginning of the end of the credit crunch may have been made. The actual profit figures were slightly ahead of expectations and the recent rights issue will help shore up the capital ratio to one of the healthiest in Europe, according to the bank's management.

Concerns still linger in the form of the group's exposure to the UK environment and, in particular, the buy-to-let market in which Halifax is a major player. Further disposals of assets have not been ruled out if the price is right, and if the economic landscape deteriorates sufficiently. Despite a 71% drop in the share price over the last year, the existence of better value in the sector leaves the shares as a weak hold in market consensus terms.

The next large bank to report was HSBC, whose results were something of a mixed bag. Some further hefty writedowns continued to negate the progress being made in certain parts of HSBC's global portfolio.

Whilst there were resilient performances in Asia in particular, even growth here is likely to lose a little momentum in the nearer term. This very diversification has been one of the reasons for the bank's relatively strong share price performance, with the shares having posted an 8% gain in the last six months during a period when the vast majority of HSBC's peers have been suffering.

The yield remains supportive at around 5.5% and the rumoured renegotiation on the Korean Exchange Bank stake is further proof of the bank's growth ambitions. Nonetheless, the US situation is proving to be an ongoing drag on profits and, with an economic slowdown in train in many of the developed economies, HSBC has not proved to be the bank to lift some of the gloom on this UK interim reporting season. The market view of the shares remains no more than a hold.

For Barclays and RBS - the latter of which is largely expected actually to post a loss for the period - there will be a late chance to turn sentiment around with some robust numbers. However, if the performance of their peers is anything to go by, this may be asking just a little too much yet.

House Prices ~ How low can they Go?

2008-08-04T19:24:00.001+01:00

Think of a number........say 10%
Think again..............say double it to 20%
Think again and compare it to the latest projection of say HBOS .........say 30%

That's probably not far out over the next 2 years!

Job cuts Looming in USA........

2008-08-04T19:15:00.002+01:00

Looming job cuts march on - report
The number of job cuts announced in July jumps 26%. Airlines and financial firms top the list, according to a monthly study.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The nation's employers continue to put jobs on the chopping block at a steep rate as the economy struggles, according to a new report.

Challenger, Gray & Christmas, an outplacement consultancy firm, said Monday that planned job cuts announced by employers in July jumped 26% to 103,312 from 81,755 announced in June. That's up 141% from a year ago, when employers announced planned job cuts totaling 42,897.
The July figure marks the second-highest number of planned job cuts this year, rivaling the May reading that showed 103,522.

"We have seen job cuts increase in the majority of industries that we track," John Challenger, chief executive of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, said in a statement.

Monday's report indicates that the downturn in the housing and financial sectors, "has spread throughout much of the economy," Challenger said.
Indeed, the report showed job cuts in the works increasing from a year ago in 17 of the 25 industries tracked by Challenger.
Employers in the transportation industry announced the largest number job cuts on the horizon, at 17,051 for the month.
Planned job cuts in the transportation sector were dominated by airlines, which have struggled with soaring fuel costs and declining ticket sales due to softening consumer confidence, according to Challenger.
Transportation was followed by the financial services sector, where employers announced 15,517 job cuts on the block.
Financial firms remained led the year, having already announced 100,775 planned layoffs through July, the report showed.

Employers in the retail and automotive industries also ranked high on the list.
The Challenger report follows a Labor Department report Friday that showed the nation's unemployment rate climbing to a four-year high of 5.7%. It was the worst reading since March 2004, and slightly worse than economists' forecast of 5.6%.

But there was a bright spot in the government's report. The economy lost 51,000 jobs lost in July, which was much lower than the 75,000 loss that economists had expected.
First Published: August 4, 2008: 7:30 AM EDT

Unemployment at 4-year high How bad is the economy? You weigh in

Gordon Porridge

2008-08-04T17:23:00.003+01:00

What a bunch of celebrated colleagues the Labour party is these days ~ full of comrades & brothers & sisters of course.

So, when Gordon Porridge is on holiday his friends strike. First Miliband with an undisguised but cowardly attack and then a venemous leaked letter from Tony.

Ah ~ not much love and respect from that lot.

I would suggest you duck Gordon ~ it may not be the Ides of March but it may well be a Summer monsoon!

Knife crime ~ stabbed in the back by one of your own.

George Bush and the Judge.

2008-08-04T17:19:00.001+01:00

Judge: White House aides can be subpoenaed
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
August 1, 2008
WASHINGTON - A federal judge rejected President George W. Bush's contention that senior White House advisers are immune to subpoenas, siding with Congress' power to investigate the executive branch and handing a victory to Democrats probing the dismissal of nine federal prosecutors.The unprecedented ruling yesterday undercut three presidential confidants who have defied congressional subpoenas for information that Bush says is protected by executive privilege. Democrats swiftly announced they would schedule hearings next month, at the height of election season.House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the House could soon vote on a contempt citation against one of the three, Karl Rove, formerly Bush's top adviser."It certainly strengthens our hand," she said of the ruling.

The administration must cooperate fully with Congress and that former administration officials Harriet Miers and Karl Rove must testify before Congress."That wasn't clear at all to the White House or Rove's attorney.Bush administration lawyers were reviewing the ruling and were widely expected to appeal. They also could seek a stay that would suspend any further congressional proceedings."We disagree with the district court's decision," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said.With only a few months left in Bush's presidency, there appeared to be no sense of urgency to make the next move."I have not yet talked with anyone at the White House ... and don't expect that this matter will be finally resolved in the very near future," Rove attorney Robert Luskin said in an e-mail.The case marked the first time Congress has gone to court to demand the testimony of White House aides.In his ruling, U.S. District Judge John Bates said there's no legal basis for Bush's argument and that his former legal counsel, Miers, must appear before Congress. If she wants to refuse to testify, he said, she must do so in person. The committee also has sought to force White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten to release documents on any role the White House may have played in the prosecutor firings.Bates, who was appointed to the bench by Bush, issued a 93-page opinion that strongly rejected the administration's legal arguments. He said the executive branch could not point to a single case in which courts held that White House aides were immune from congressional subpoenas.The ruling is a blow to the Bush administration's efforts to bolster the power of the executive branch at the expense of the legislative branch. Disputes over congressional subpoenas are normally resolved through political compromise, not through the court system. Had Bush prevailed, it would have dramatically weakened congressional authority in oversight investigations.Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, signaled that hearings would commence in September on the controversy that scandalized the Justice Department and led to the resignation of a longtime presidential confidant, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

Can Caesar survive a Brutus?

2008-08-04T17:11:00.002+01:00

Can Brown survive his very British Brutus?
From Monday's Globe and Mail

E-mail Doug Saunders Read Bio Latest Columns
August 4, 2008 at 3:56 AM EDT

LONDON — It is a very British coup that has broken out on the beaches of Europe as Prime Minister Gordon Brown's cabinet members begin their summer vacations with talk of insurrection.

Very British in its thrust, which has been both nasty and secretive: Mr. Brown is guilty of "hubris and vacuity," his leadership "a lamentable confusion of tactics and strategy," said a letter, apparently from former prime minister Tony Blair, that was leaked to the London tabloids this weekend in an apparent bid by Mr. Brown's cabinet challengers to undermine him.

And very British in its subtlety: It began with a newspaper article, written by one of Mr. Brown's closest colleagues, that seemed innocuous and even laudatory in its language, but whose coded messages were quicky interpreted by the entire country to be regicidal.

At its centre is a most unlikely Brutus, a 43-year-old child of Eastern European Jewish refugees whose freshman demeanour and intellectual, wonkish bearing seem out of place both in the aristocratic circles of Westminster and in the calloused world of Labour politics.

David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, is both the youngest member of Mr. Brown's cabinet and, until a few days ago, considered among its most loyal. While this widely admired politician had frequently been listed as a potential successor by many, notably by Mr. Blair's allies, he had turned down bids to run against Mr. Brown.

That all changed on Wednesday, when Mr. Miliband published an article in the Labour-linked Guardian newspaper that, to outsiders, looked like a benign call for Labour Party unity and renewal following a terrible by-election loss to Scottish separatists in the formerly safe Labour riding of Glasgow East.

But the article, written without the permission of 10 Downing St., immediately sent shock waves across British politics and media. This, everyone agreed, was the launch of a mutiny.

To insiders, its message stood out in bright red. First, while arguing that Labour could beat the Tories, it did not in any way defend the Prime Minister's leadership, or even mention his name.

Second, it was written in the language of a political campaign speech: "The times demand a radical new phase ... New Labour won three elections by offering real change, not just in policy but in the way we do politics. We must do so again."

The Times of London, on its front page, called it "the launch of his leadership bid." Most other media outlets followed, and the Ladbrokes betting agency immediately raised its odds on Mr. Miliband becoming Labour leader to 5 to 2.

Mr. Brown sent his loyal MPs - a dwindling group - to counterattack. "I would have sacked him. I think he's been grossly disloyal," MP Geraldine Smith said in an interview apparently authorized by Downing Street, calling Mr. Miliband a "non-entity." Her Labour colleague, Bob Marshall-Andrews, described the article as "pretty contemptible politics" and "duplicitous."

Those words might have worked better against an older and more battle-scarred challenger. But Mr. Miliband, formerly considered a brilliant policy mind but hardly a celebrity, has managed to capture the eye of the nation in a stunningly short period of time, and will be harder to dismiss.

He entered Labour politics 20 years ago as an office assistant, bringing with him a name that opened doors on the left. Mr. Miliband is the son of Ralph Miliband, the Marxist scholar who founded the New Left Review in the 1960s and whose works are known to almost everyone in the Labour Party. David's brother, Ed Miliband, is another member of Mr. Brown's cabinet.

At a moment when British politics, even in the Labour Party, is turning hostile to refugees, Mr. Miliband's experience provides a counterbalance. His parents, both Polish Jews, had fled Hitler's Holocaust across Europe, finally finding themselves in Belgium.

As the tanks approached, they tried to enter Britain legally, but were rebuffed by the Home Secretary, who happened to be the Tory MP for the riding Mr. Miliband now represents.

Fearing for their lives, the Milibands crossed into England as illegal immigrants, using forged papers. Despite this experience, the Milibands quickly rose in British academic life.

Their political dynasty has been pegged as a source of future leaders since David Miliband played a key role in drafting the New Labour manifestos that brought Tony Blair to office in 1997.

On Thursday, in a move widely seen as an effort to quell the unrest, Mr. Brown ordered Mr. Miliband to cancel a planned trip to India in early September, calling him and the rest of his cabinet to his official country residence to announce a large-scale cabinet shuffle.

Mr. Brown's aides said he hopes to rebuild public support for the party before the Labour and Tory conferences at the end of September, possibly by timing the shuffle to coincide with a special windfall tax on energy companies, a populist move likely to please beleaguered British voters.

The stakes are extremely high. Mr. Brown's popularity has fallen in the year since he succeeded Mr. Blair to the point that even Labour's safest seats are now up for grabs. Observers are seriously discussing the possibility that Mr. Brown, should he ever face a general election, worried he might lead his party to the sort of decimating defeat that completely eliminated Britain's Liberal Party a century ago or Canada's Progressive Conservatives 16 years ago.

While polls show that if an election were called today, Mr. Miliband would not beat Conservative Leader David Cameron - another youthful and unorthodox figure in British politics - he would stand a better chance of holding the party together and keeping its core of seats.

On the other hand, there is a strong desire to prevent the Labour conference in September from turning into a full-blown campaign against Mr. Brown, in which groups of MPs raise motions to unseat him in front of national TV cameras.

That would be almost unprecedented in modern British political history.

It would also likely be ineffective: The Labour constitution makes it almost impossible to unseat a sitting prime minister.

Mr. Brown, who succeeded Mr. Blair last year and does not have to call an election until 2010, shows no signs of wanting to step down voluntarily.

But Mr. Miliband's gambit, if that's what it was, seems to have had the desired effect: It has put him at the centre of national attention, ahead of more senior colleagues such as Justice Minister Jack Straw and cabinet member Ed Balls.

As Britain's most volatile government in a generation tries to relax on Europe's beaches, people are talking about the "prosecco plot" or the "cava coup," as the Prime Minister's downfall is planned over glasses of the fizzy wines. And the first name mentioned, thanks to a clever act of newspaper understatement, will be David Miliband.

Gordon Porridge Speaks

2008-08-04T17:07:00.001+01:00

Recession just keeps rolling along.

2008-08-04T16:14:00.003+01:00

Rolling Recessions Bring Paralysis to Bernanke, King, Trichet

By Rich Miller and Simon Kennedy

Aug. 4 (Bloomberg) -- Recessions are threatening to crash over the world economy in waves, as one country after another turns down a year after the onset of the global credit crisis.

Such rolling recessions pose a quandary for central bankers Ben S. Bernanke, Jean-Claude Trichet and Mervyn King:

If the whole world were clearly slumping, they'd be united in cutting interest rates. Instead, with some countries still booming, they can't ignore the inflation threat. Paralyzed between slowing growth and accelerating prices, U.S. and European policy makers this week are set to fall back on keeping rates unchanged.

``We're in a peculiar situation where, a year from now, we're likely to look back and say that monetary policy makers have made a very, very serious error,'' says David Lipton, head of global country-risk management for New York-based Citigroup Inc. ``The problem is, we don't know whether we're going to say they were too loose or too tight.''
A lot's at stake. If central bankers leave rates too low, they risk stoking global inflation that's already projected by the International Monetary Fund to be the fastest in nine years. Keep rates too high and the world could fall into its first recession since 2001-2002.
In the past, when the U.S. economy weakened, the rest of the world usually followed quickly, and inflation eased as demand for oil and other commodities fell. U.S. recessions in 1990-1991 and 2001 brought global growth down by half, sending fuel prices tumbling.

Slowdown Delayed
That didn't happen this time. The world expansion barely slowed last year and oil prices surged, even as the U.S. economy shrank in the fourth quarter. Only now -- two years after the U.S. housing boom went bust -- is the slowdown spreading worldwide and the price of oil showing signs of receding.

The world may avoid a recession, deemed by economists to be global growth of 3 percent or less, and still end up with what Allen Sinai, chief economist at Decision Economics in New York, calls a ``witches' brew'' of ailments: declines in the housing and stock markets, a credit crunch and commodity-driven inflation.
The energy and credit crises may have permanently weakened the global economy by making production and investment costlier. Deutsche Bank AG economists say long-term growth may fall to 4 percent from 5 percent.

`Weaker for Longer'
While the world rebounded from its last slump to record the strongest expansion since the 1970s, Richard Berner, co- head of global economics for Morgan Stanley in New York, says that ``growth will have to stay weaker for longer'' this time if central banks are to curb inflationary pressures. ``Investors should consider these developments as a regime change,'' Berner says.
The U.S. risks a relapse after bouncing up in the second quarter as consumers spent some of their $91 billion in tax rebates. ``I don't see recovery'' on the horizon, says Harvard University's Martin Feldstein, who serves on the National Bureau of Economic Research committee that determines when recessions start and end.
The big concern is that consumers -- whose spending accounts for more than 70 percent of the economy -- will cut back after their splurge. The omens aren't good: Overdue payments at the six largest credit-card lenders rose in June after falling the two previous months.

Division at Fed
Chairman Bernanke and his Fed colleagues are divided over what to do next after cutting rates to 2 percent from 5.25 percent a year ago. Some, including Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher, favor tighter credit now to contain inflation. A majority prefer to wait and see how the economy develops.
Kenneth Rogoff, a Harvard economics professor and former IMF chief economist, says Fed policy makers are ``stuck.'' While they may want to raise rates to 3 percent to head off inflationary pressures, they can't for fear of upsetting still- fragile financial markets. Consequently, they'll hold borrowing costs unchanged for ``an extended period,'' he says.
European Central Bank President Trichet's dilemma is similar. After dodging the U.S. slowdown last year, the 15- nation euro-area economy may have shrunk in the second quarter for the first time since the common currency's introduction in 1999. As in the U.S., housing booms in Spain, Portugal and Ireland are collapsing, while the euro's appreciation is hurting companies that export.

Recession Risk
``The risk of a recession is no longer negligible,'' says Holger Schmieding, chief European economist at Bank of America Corp. in London.

When a worldwide slump last began in 2001, the ECB cut interest rates. Not this time.

With inflation the fastest in more than 16 years, the bank raised rates to a seven-year high of 4.25 percent last month. Officials warn they'll do more if workers win big wage deals. Employees at Deutsche Lufthansa AG, Europe's second-biggest airline, last week ended a strike after winning a 5.1 percent pay increase retroactive to July 1, and an additional 2.3 percent increase next year.
``The ECB is clearly walking a tightrope,'' says Martin van Vliet, an economist at ING Bank in Amsterdam, who predicts the bank will keep its key rate unchanged until 2009. ``It has to balance the lingering risk of a wage-price spiral with prospective disinflationary pressures emanating from the downturn,'' he says.

Sharp Debate
The debate is sharper at Governor King's Bank of England. The U.K. is slipping toward its first recession since 1990 as house prices slide after tripling in the past decade. With inflation almost twice the bank's 2 percent target, King's policy panel split three ways last month; the majority voted to keep rates at 5 percent.

Japan, too, is at risk of a recession. Exports fell in June for the first time since 2003 and unemployment reached 4.1 percent, almost a two-year high. The Bank of Japan has little room to act, with its benchmark interest rate of just 0.5 percent and consumer prices rising at the fastest pace in a decade.

``The fog hanging over Japan's economy will stick around for the time being,'' bank board member Atsushi Mizuno said July 24.
Even Asia's rapidly growing emerging economies are showing signs of slowing. The region's policy makers are at odds over how to react as inflation remains high.
Chinese officials suggest they may seek to bolster their economy after growth slowed in the second quarter by the most since 2005. Others remain intent on curbing inflation. India has raised rates three times since May while suffering the weakest growth in five years. Surging food and energy costs prompted Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines to tighten credit in July.

``There's a kind of stagflation marching over the world economy,'' Sinai says. ``I hope policy makers are able to figure it out and make the right decisions to fight it.''
To contact the reporters on this story: Rich Miller in Washington at rmiller28@bloomberg.net Simon Kennedy in Paris at skennedy4@bloomberg.net Last Updated: August 3, 2008 18:00 EDT

Are you about to become NEGATIVE?

2008-08-04T16:11:00.000+01:00

Negative Equity To Hit 1.7m UK Homeowners?

Wednesday 30th July 2008

One in seven UK homeowners may face the threat of negative equity throughout the next year as the UK housing market takes a stranglehold, according to a report conducted by Standard & Poor..
The world’s largest credit rating agency’s findings suggest that around 70,000 of the UK’s 12m borrowers currently find themselves in negative equity mainly due to house prices falling in value at an alarming 26%, leading to a further 14% of homeowners slipping into negative equity due to their outstanding mortgages.

Such depressing figures could replicate the dark days of the 1990’s housing crash, where huge numbers of home owners were left financially crippled due to house price declines. Never has establishing the best financial mortgage package been so imperative.
The 70,000 predicted to suffer is already a far larger sum than first envisaged and this figure is expected to rise further with the news that the house price slump has upped its speed, falling 9% on last year, judged on S&P’s Nationwide and Halifax figures.
The ratings agency calculated that for with every percentage point drop in house price from now on, around 60,000 to 80,000 borrowers could realistically enter the dreaded realms of negative equity, with the high loan-to-value mortgages most at threat.
While Standard & Poor’s report agreed that prices are currently heading in a downward direction, with a further 17% fall forecasted, many experts predict a more optimistic outlook with many home owners taking up a mortgage worth more than 90% of the value of their home, allowing the chances of going into negative equity slim, even if house prices fell a realistic 10%.
The report declared, “The current run of house price declines raises the prospect of negative equity for a large number of homeowners, a situation not seen since the 1990’s house price recession.”

House Price Crash ~ GOOD GOOD VERY GOOD

2008-08-04T16:08:00.001+01:00

Everybody talks as if falling house prices are a bad thing, nay, a national disaster.

Rising house prices, the logic runs, are therefore a good thing.

But the reverse is true.

Right now, falling house prices are exactly what we need. You know it, I know it.

House prices dropped a record 8.1% over the past 12 months, according to Nationwide, the biggest drop since it started collecting figures in 1991. Other reports suggest that the value of your home could drop by as much as 30% by 2010.

Everybody pretends this is terrible news, but quite frankly, it isn't.

I would argue that most of us are delighted at the thought, and rightly so.
The press, of course, is revelling in all the doom and gloom, but headline-hungry journalists aren't the only ones getting excited by the housing market collapse.
Hoping for the worst
Many of us, not just first-time buyers and rivals for Gordon Brown's job, actively want prices to fall. We would be disappointed if they stabilised, and the housing market became tediously becalmed.
The forthcoming collapse has been so widely predicted that if it doesn't happen, we would all be crushed by the anti-climax.
There is also a collective – and very sensible – horror at the way house prices have spiralled beyond all logic in recent years. We're all financial puritans at heart.
Even people who have cashed in to the tune of hundreds of thousands of pounds have been appalled by this scarcely credible surge in values. If house prices can behave so irrationally, how rational is the rest of our financial system?
The party's over
Add to that widespread distaste at the orgy of debt the UK has indulged in lately, and you can see why many people have been howling for the party to come to an end. It may leave many of us nursing sore heads and negative equity, but we knew all along it would end in tears.
So who gets hurt by a crash? Some will find it painful, but not as many as you think. Existing homeowners may see up to 30% lopped off the value of their home, but their next property has also fallen by 30%, so where's the problem?
Even the 1.7 million that Standard & Poor's estimate face negative equity will only suffer if they absolutely need to move home in the next few years. If you are among their number, you have my sympathy.
Other homeowners will have a shrinking amount of equity to dip into, too. But given that the nation collectively owes £1.4 trillion, the last thing we need is more borrowing.
In my opinion, those who missed out on the house price bonanza should be popping champagne corks. Or better still, saving the money towards a deposit, to allow them to enter the property market at more affordable levels in a year or two.
Any fall must be set in the context of the astronomical gains in recent years. As Nationwide quickly points out, the average house is still worth £11,000 more than three years ago – although admittedly, maybe not for much longer.
So let's not get too carried away, it's not the end of the world as we know it, just an abrupt halt to its wilder excesses.
Short, sharp shock
A short, sharp property crash might do us all some good – and I do believe it is likely to be short and sharp.
Although unemployment is set to rise, it still remains at modest levels. Personal insolvencies and repossessions will increase, but many people will hang on by the skin of their teeth until the recovery comes.
There are also one or two pieces of good news floating around, overlooked in the current carnage.
Swap rates are falling and lenders are cutting their fixed-rate mortgages, which might ease some of the pain for those facing payment shock. Plus there is still a good chance that interest rates could start falling by the end of the year.
Reality bites
Add the fact that we live on a small, squeezed island with a pent-up demand for houses, and you can see the ground is clear for a relatively speedy recovery. But let's hope it isn't too speedy, because we don't want to find ourselves repeating the blunders of the past decade (and the decade before that).
Arguably, the crash is a much-needed jolt of economic reality, and is the first step towards restoring common sense to the property market, and the rest of the economy.
I'll say it again. Falling house prices are a good thing. Enjoy it while it lasts.

Tech Digest: Home cinema

2008-07-28T15:04:00.000+01:00

Tech Digest: Home cinema

England vs New Zealand 2008 3rd Test Day 2 - How Wicket

2008-06-08T16:01:00.001+01:00

Roland Garros 2008, pt. 1

2008-06-08T15:56:00.001+01:00

Federer is losing to Nadal ~ Badly, but badly!

What a win for Safina

2008-06-02T18:11:00.000+01:00

Dinara Safina proved her title credentials with a 6-7 (6-8) 7-6 (7-5) 6-2 win over top seed Maria Sharapova in the fourth round of the French Open.

Sharapova had struggled for form in her opening three matches and many tipped her fellow Russian to cause an upset.

And after letting two set points slip by in the opener, Safina saved a match point in the second set before taking control of a tense decider.

She will play compatriot Elena Dementieva in the quarter-finals.

Safina fought back from 5-1 down in the final set to beat Sharapova at Roland Garros two years ago, but had not really built on that result until Berlin last month when she beat Justine Henin and Serena Williams in consecutive matches.
I was trying to stay more positive, more aggressive
Elena DementievaSharapova, in contrast, came into the tournament as the new world number one but has never enjoyed clay and struggled desperately on serve in her early matches last week.
In a tight first set Safina looked to have the edge but when Sharapova roared back from 6-4 down to take the tie-break, it seemed her champion's mentality would prove the difference.
Safina broke at the start of the second before the rain came, but on the resumption Sharapova stepped up another gear.
She swept through five straight games and got to match point on serve at 5-3, only to see Safina cling on with a blistering backhand.
That was to prove the turning point as the 13th seed forced another tie-break in which she recovered from 5-2 down to level.
The momentum was with her in the decider and she did not waste it, breaking a tiring Sharapova in game six and clinching victory two games later on her second match point.

Can't believe Safina won, Maria played great when they came back after rain

StuartSeventh seed Dementieva moved into the last eight for only the second time with a 6-4 1-6 6-2 victory over another Russian, Vera Zvonarena.
Dementieva, the 2004 runner-up, held her nerve the better in an error-strewn match, her famously shaky serve just about holding up.
"I feel like I've done some work, and it's really improved a little bit," she said.
"It's not perfect yet, but I feel more comfortable. It doesn't make me bad or down when I'm serving now."
Zvonareva made a total of 41 unforced errors, repeatedly smacking her racquet into the ground in frustration as the final set slipped away.
Dementieva sealed victory in one hour 48 minutes, gaining revenge for a defeat by Zvonareva earlier in the year.
"What I think that really helped me was the match we played in Charleston in the semi-finals," said Dementieva.
"I think it was a tough match but I learned my lesson.
"Today on the court when I lost the second set I was trying to stay more positive, more aggressive with her, because I know she's a great clay-court player."
Monday's other fourth-round matches see Svetlana Kuznetsova take on Victoria Azarenka, and Czech Petra Kvitova face Kaia Kanepi of Estonia.

Crash in France........

2008-06-02T18:09:00.000+01:00

French train crash kills children

A train has struck a school bus in the French Alps close to the Swiss border, killing at least six children, French police say.
The accident occurred at a level crossing near the town of Allinges in France's Haute-Savoie region.
At least 30 people were also injured in the crash at around 1400 (1200 GMT), France's rail operator SNCF said.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy has sent condolences to the victims. An investigation is under way.
"All of us are thinking of the children, the adults, the victims," Mr Sarkozy said. "We can only hope there will be as few victims as possible."

Tax Freedom Day today......

2008-06-02T18:06:00.000+01:00

Tax freedom day

If you had to pay all of your tax at once, how long would it take you?

How much of the year would you spend working for the government before you get to keep any money yourself?

Well, in 2008, you would have to work until June 2 before you had enough money to pay your tax bill off entirely.

That is according to the Adam Smith Institute – which has declared Monday, June 2, tax freedom day.

The calculation includes all the income the government gets from taxes - both direct (such as income tax) and indirect (such as VAT). At the moment, the government takes about 40% of the total income of the country in taxes. What does it mean?Tax freedom day is purely a concept – in itself it does not really mean much. But it is a good indicator of our overall tax burden - as a rough guide, the later in the year the date freedom day falls the more tax we pay.As a rough guide, every day later that freedom day falls means an extra quarter of a percent tax we pay. Put another way, four days difference in the freedom day means a 1p in the pound change in our tax burden. (eg. June 2 indicates we pay a penny extra tax per pound than May 30.)HistoryTax freedom day has been calculated for many years. Its recent history shows up some interesting statistics. These seem to show that our tax burden does not necessarily increase under a Labour government.

Are you paying too much tax?

For instance, the latest date it has fallen on in the last 30 years was in 1982, when it came as late as June 20. This means our tax burden then was a whole 4.5% higher than it is now. In fact, in the period 1980 to 1997, tax freedom day fell later than June 2 on no less than twelve occasions. It was dramatically earlier in 1993, falling on May 23. Perhaps it was no coincidence that this was the year after a general election.Since New Labour came to power has been something of an upward trend recently, getting gradually later from 1997. In that year it fell on May 26. It is now seven days later, which equates to a 1.75% increase in our tax burden.Is it a bad thing for tax freedom day to be later?Whether having a later tax freedom day is a bad thing or a good thing depends on your ideological stance. If you believe, as the Adam Smith Institute does, that lower taxes are economically desirable, meaning the wealth of the nation is spread more fairly, then an earlier date is better.However, if you believe that the government should be entrusted to handle the economy to a certain extent to ensure a fair society, then a couple of extra pence in the pound is a worthwhile price to pay.by Julian Shaw, TWD Accountants. May 30, 2008.

Jazz Piano - She's Leaving Home

2008-06-02T17:53:00.001+01:00

Jazz Piano - She's Leaving Home

2008-06-02T17:52:00.001+01:00

Carol's Birthday Flowers

2008-05-30T14:01:00.000Z

Hi There!!

2008-04-03T12:29:00.000Z

New Spikey Prince

2008-04-03T12:26:00.000Z

Grandma's Happy

2008-04-03T12:24:00.000Z

Dramatic house price falls in UK

2008-04-03T11:10:00.000Z

House prices likely to fall by a quarter in two years
Richard Wachman, City editor
The Observer,
Sunday March 30 2008
Article history
About this articleClose

This article appeared in the Observer on Sunday March 30 2008 on p1 of the Business news & features section. It was last updated at 09:16 on March 31 2008.

House prices in Britain could crash by 25 per cent before mid-2010, forecasters at Capital Economics have warned. That would wipe £45,000 off the value of an average house, currently worth £180,000.
Ed Stanford, property economist at Capital, said it was 'entirely plausible' that house prices would fall by between 20 per cent and 25 per cent in the next two years, particularly if the economy continued to be buffeted by the credit squeeze, financial markets' turbulence and sliding consumer confidence.
Capital has already published forecasts that flag a 5 per cent fall in house prices in 2008 and 8 per cent in 2009. It also expects unemployment to rise from 5.3 per cent of the working population to 7.5 per cent.
Last week, Nationwide building society revised its forecast of no change in prices this year to a modest fall. It changed its prediction after publishing figures that showed UK house price annual inflation at its lowest rate for 12 years. Prices fell for the fifth month running; March was down 0.6 per cent on February. If the trend continues Britain's housing market will soon record annual falls for the first time since 1996.
Other UK housing bears include David Miles, chief UK economist at Morgan Stanley. He reckons the market is due a 20 per cent correction. If he and Capital are broadly correct, a significant number of people who bought two years ago will find themselves in negative equity by 2010.
Not everyone is as pessimistic: JP Morgan's Malcolm Barr envisages a 6 per cent fall in 2008, but then a slow recovery.
The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors reports that new buyer inquiries at estate agencies are sharply down.
The market is being depressed by the credit crunch, with banks hoarding cash and demanding that borrowers put down huge deposits.

Perhaps someone could arrange a second hit ~ except bigger this time!

2008-03-26T19:21:00.001Z

'Biggest UK meteorite' hit Scotland

'Biggest UK meteorite' hit Scotland

Evidence of the biggest meteorite ever to hit the British Isles has been uncovered in Scotland.
Scientists believe the meteorite struck about 1.2 billion years ago near the town of Ullapool in the north west Highlands.
They found what they believe to be ejected material from a meteorite crater beneath a layer of rock.
They said the material had scattered over a distance of about 30 miles.
It had previously been thought that the unusual rock formations in the area had been formed by volcanic activity.
But the volcanic origins of the rock have always been questioned because there are no volcanic vents or other volcanic sediments nearby.
The findings were made by scientists from Oxford and Aberdeen universities, and feature in the journal Geology.
Ken Amor of Oxford University's department of earth sciences, and co-author of the Geology paper, said chemical tests had shown signs of meteoritic material.
He said: "This is the most spectacular evidence for a meteorite impact within the British Isles found to date, and what we have discovered about this meteorite strike could help us to understand the ancient impacts that shaped the surface of other planets, such as Mars."
He added: "If there had been human observers in Scotland 1.2 billion years ago they would have seen quite a show."

Post code Burglaries

2008-03-26T11:54:00.001Z

The top 10 most-burgled cites are:
1 - Nottingham (63.3% above average)
2 - London (50.8% above average)
3 - Bristol (50.7% above average)
4 - Stockport (49.8% above average)
5 - Leeds (46.3% above average)
6 - Manchester (46.0% above average)
7 - Hull (39.4% above average)
8 - Cambridge (35.6% above average)
9 - Sheffield (27.6% above average)
10 - Reading (25.9% above average)

And the biggest surprise for me is Cambridge!!

Wales Millennium Centre opening - Diversions

2008-03-16T19:29:00.002Z

Duffy - Mercy - Official Music Video

2008-03-16T19:14:00.001Z

Architects of Welsh Success

2008-03-16T11:42:00.001Z

A bloody New Zealander and a guy from England. Thank God for Multiculturalism.

"Come on ye reds" says Leighton James

2008-03-14T16:51:00.001Z

Leighton James in Cardiff FA Cup storm

Mar 14 2008 by Steve Tucker, Western Mail

WELSH soccer legend Leighton James has kicked up a potential storm by stating he wants Barnsley to beat Cardiff City in the FA Cup.
The TV pundit made his remarks in his column for a local newspaper.
Although James was writing for an audience of Swans’ fans, such comments from a high-profile football character are hardly likely to endear him to other soccer followers.
If the Bluebirds reach the FA Cup final, it would do wonders in terms of putting Welsh football on the world map.
James’ remarks also came just 24 hours after Uefa boss Michel Platini announced he wanted the European exile of our Big Three of Cardiff, Swansea and Wrexham to end.
In his column for the South Wales Evening Post, James wrote that 99.9 per cent of Swans fans would be willing Barnsley to win the big semi-final next month.
James, left, argued that if Roberto Martinez’s side were in the last four, Cardiff supporters would want the Swans to lose.
“It’s a difficult one to choose,” wrote James. “On one hand, as a proud Welshman, you want the clubs from your country to go as far as they can.
“Imagine the uproar if a Welsh team won the FA Cup and took it out of England.
“On the other hand, as a Swansea person, you want Tykes boss Simon Davey – who is a Swansea person – to do well too.
“We always want to see our hometown products doing well, and I’m sure the people of Swansea will want him to reach the final.
“To see Cardiff in the final would be hard to take for Swansea fans.
“So, to be brutally honest, I think I’m behind Barnsley on this one.”

The Kennions

2008-03-14T16:10:00.000Z

Barnsley or Cardiff for the cup?????

2008-03-13T14:28:00.001Z

That's the current question in our house.

Eathquake in Market Rasen

2008-02-28T14:50:00.000Z