Wednesday, Jan 14, 2009
A recession is when your neighbour loses his job; a depression is when you lose yours
Times: Hard times are not yet personal
The recession is still a worrying headline for most voters, not an imminent personal threat. Most people have not yet been directly affected by redundancies. Indeed, many are doing pretty well, thanks to the slowdown in inflation. That applies especially to those with multi-year pay deals in the public sector. Moreover, the state pension will rise in April by 5 per cent, and other benefits by even more. Half of housebuyers with flexible rate mortgages will be enjoying big savings in their outgoings. The position could get much worse for if/when more people lose their jobs. So while Mr Brown is still just holding his own against David Cameron on handling the economy and the recession, the public could easily turn against him.
Posted by drewster @ 03:31 AM (364 views) Add Comment
3 Comments
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1. tyrellcorporation said...
Anecdotal: My mate wandered into my office last week looking as white as a sheet. He works for a successful architecture firm and is about 40. He was just told he had to re-apply for his job and TBH it doesn't look good as I'm sure this is a ruse to get rid of everyone. So, by definition (apparently) I'm in a recession and he's about to head into a depression.
And to think this is all because some bright spark took house prices out of the inflation measure. Totally avoidable IMO.
2. japanese uncle said...
It is beyond any doubt that somebody who instructed CrashG to take out HP from inflation stats engineered this bubble and its eventual collapse, manipulating central banks and media (Kirsty Allsopp was just another effective clownette). Look how many trillions of wealth was shifted in the name of 'bail-out' around the glove. Anyone with 90 IQ must see this.
3. Soupdragon said...
I was made redundant from one of the leading London architecture firms just before xmas, along with approx 15% of staff. Out of my circle of friends at least a third are now out of work, some companies have offered staff a large pay cut (about 40%) or redundancy and many have just slashed their workforce.
As soon as Lehmanns went under in September the banks panicked and lending to developers ceased, this immediately forced them to pull the plug on lots of construction projects, even some that were already on site. The knock on effect was instant job losses across the sector.
Anyone in the construction industry is currently under sever risk of redundancy, last year there were nearly 80,000 job losses in the sector (and yet we apparently have to bail out the car manufacturers as they complain more).
Not many jobs on the market now, but just have to be patient.