Saturday, Jun 14, 2008
I wish to register a complaint.
guardian.co.uk: The economy has gone to meet its maker.It is no more
As far as the voters are concerned, the plumage don't enter into it. They seem utterly unmoved by the idea that Britain is, by all accounts, envied as a bastion of creativity when their homes are dropping in value and their real incomes are being squeezed. Rather like the angry customer in the pet shop, they have taken a closer look at the parrot and decided that the only reason it stood on the perch for so long was that the government nailed it there with both public and private debt.
Posted by handle_it @ 08:57 AM (625 views) Add Comment
5 Comments
- If you do not have an admin password leave the password field blank.
- If you would like to request a password allowing you to add comments and blog news articles without needing each one approved manually, send an e-mail to the webmaster.
- Your email address is required so we can verify that the comment is genuine. It will not be posted anywhere on the site, will be stored confidentially by us and never given out to any third party.
- Please note that any viewpoints published here as comments are user's views and not the views of HousePriceCrash.co.uk.
- Please adhere to the Guidelines
1. alan said...
Interesting that Larry Elliott introduced a bit of nostalgia into the house price article, by mentioning Monty Python.
I can supply another piece of relevant nostalgia in a song...... (apologies to the Beatles).
"Yesterday,
All my troubles seemed so far away,
Now I need a place to hide away,
......"
2. Sneaker said...
Sort of slightly annoying reporting. It reveals the consequence of a perceived "endless boom" ending. People forget that boom-times a rarity and not an automatic entitlement. The world does not owe the UK a living. Also, only knowing good times leaves you MORE EXPOSED against the bad times, because you can't prepare for what you don't know. Those of us who remember the 70's, early 80's and early 90's are well-prepared for this down-turn, and hey, who cares if house prices do go down 50%. If prices drop that much, people won't need to spend so much of their income on housing. THIS IS A GOOD THING because people will then be able to spend the cash on other things instead. That will help the recovery. But nobody in the public sphere seriously discusses this abundantly egregious obviousness.
People forget that endlessly rising house prices act as a CHOKE on the economy, because it reduces cash available for non-housing purposes, UNLESS people then get into more debt, which in the end can only make things worse -- and now demonstrably has.
The old values of living within your means and saving against a rainy day became values because THEY WORK. Not out of some misguided desire to repress people's indulgences. For all this talk of "prudence" and "sustainability", it turns out that collectively we have forget what either means, because of some cloud cuckoo-land belief that house prices, just like dotcom stocks in 1999, only went up in a straight line forever. House prices became the crack of the people, and now they're in rehab.
Anyway, slightly rambling digression. What annoys me most about this article is the idea that the economy might have "stopped".
Well, seriously, is it? Am I going to stop going to the shops to buy my dinner or clothes? Am I going to stop buying birthday gifts for my family and friends? No, not at all. Even if someone else isn't as well-prepared for this downturn as me (I sold my Notting Hill pad and now rent, and I and my company have no debt), they have to eat, travel to work and buy the basics of life.
All this downturn means is that the froth is going to be taken out of the economy. The excess is no longer supportable and in time having 50 pairs of shoes will be seen as a grotesque totem of the era that has just ended. Hopefully people will come out of their zombified trance where they can think of little better to worry about than reality TV, celeb gossip and new computer games, and actually start to think about real substantive issues, like skilling up and helping reinstall this nation's great manufacturing base. Learning to add up might be a start, as you can now get a C grade at GCSE maths without actually knowing any maths. Try explaining that to the kids of India who at the age of 15 learn logic and hyperbolic trigonometry, and expect to work as hard as they can to get 90% in their public exams. It's no wonder that India is an IT power-house.
Britain got ahead by being ingenious, not by relinquishing our mental energy to such frivolous past-times as we've got used to in the last 10 years. I pray and believe that we will have a resurgence of good old fashioned skills for it not, our nation will become a backward also-ran, as we will not have the skills to base our future on.
Ah, I guess I'm just old-fashioned and a little bit out-dated in my views, but I have a SNEAKING feeling my ideas might no longer be seen as ridiculous. Come on everyone, Britain is a great nation. We can make it great again regardless of who is in charge, so let's all just "get on with the job" now.
3. letthemfall said...
"The housing market has come off the boil far more quickly than the industry experts predicted"
A case where an "expert" has no expertise worth talking about. A humpty-dumpty use of a word to mean vested interest if there ever was.
New Labour, New Britain, New Experts. How dated that 4-word phrase seems now. And how interesting the parallels with the Lawson/Thatcher boom.
4. icarus said...
I wondered why the parrot that repeated "sound fundamentals" and "strong underlying demand for housing" had gone quiet.
5. voiceofreason said...
"six months ago only the hard core gloomsters were pencilling in a 20% fall in 2008 and 2009, but that is now the consensus."
Not gloomsters - sensible people.