babesagainstmachines

Business complains constantly about absolutely everything. It's called lobbying when they do it. Plus they can afford to offer the politicians personal incentives. Do you think Tony Blair would have picked up his 500k part time "adviser" role if he had enacted policies to regulate banking? Whenever you here talk about "business" in the media, substitute "the rich", whatever crap they are coming out with suddenly makes alot of sense.

You are one person, not society as a whole. Where do you think you might be if you were brought up a Surrey suburb, went to Harrow then Oxford, with your abilities, assuming you still had the same drive? I dare say pocketing big city bonuses way in excess of your current salary.

Food retailers have had a good christmas. No surprise that their profits rise when food inflation is so high. I really wish they would stop quoting retail sales as though I should give a stuff. What about exports? What about factory gate production? What about the balance of trade? What about the current account deficit? These are things which are signals for a countries economic health. Retails sales used to be an indicator for the health of the economy and consumer confidence. Now it seems that it IS the economy.

It's all bokkox. We know what they should do. They're making it up as they go along. So will I. For the next 12 months..... hold cut .25 hold hold cut 0.25 hold hold hold hold raise 0.5 raise 0.5 hold I wonder what odds I'd get on that....

Old credit still has to be paid off. If you issue less new credit than the old credit which is being paid back, what happens? Money supply is virtually flat at the moment. It's not deflating yet. But it's rampant growth has stopped, and our own property crash has hardly started. We aren't in recession yet. Once the defaults start start picking up ...

I'll continue to watch M4 figures to base my decisions upon, rather than www.buygoldorsellyourchildrenintoslavery.com When do goldbugs sell and who will be buying? You're whole strategy relies on there being greater fools... A pyramid scheme to be sure, which maybe explains why there are so many websites ramping it.

Ahh, recruitment agents, the "other" Estate agents I'm in IT, and my problem with IT recruitment agencies is that they are useless in general. They do hardly any filtering of CVs and the candidates they provide are frequently complete chumps. Then expect to pick up several thousand (often doudble digits) on placement, or in a contractors case, 250+ per week for the contract duration. I'd hazard a guess at about 20 man hours max spent on a typical vacancy, including placing adverts, arranging interviews etc. Yet sometimes we have to spend 10 days filtering out the crap applicants at interview. Double cost whammy. It's also extremely common practice to agencies to fish for candidates with non-existent roles or EXTREMELY overhyped salaries. Lies, if you please. Then we have to tell the candidates what is actually on offer... The company I currently work for does it themselves. And it works much better and costs less, provided you have someone with a little bit of knowledge of the skillset needed and some spare time to follow through the recruitment process. It's one area where the internet is working to connect people and cut out the middleman. I hope it works for housing too.

I write risk management software which sells to financial companies, govermnents and evil globalist corporations. I am an erotica photographer as a paying hobby (only for small change, or at least that's what I tell the ladies I'm fiddling with ) I am a commercial photographer when I can be bothered, I need some extra cash or I get wind of a particularly interesting project I also think that people with "agent" in their job titles are leeches, on the whole. I know they provide a service, but frequently their remuneration is too far out of line with the value they add.

Contrasting opinions from me .... Opinion 1 We have 20 million people working 40 hour weeks and 4 million jobless. Cut the working week to 32 hours and balance is restored. Simple changes to taxation and public sector working could enable/encourage this. If you could achieve a good standard of living working less hours, would you? I have a personal suspicion that the average working week could be cut to 24 hours and would result in a healthier society and no loss in prodictivity. Of course, there are problem areas with skills shortages (medical profession particularly) which may need special attention. Opinion 2 The welfare state has prevented evolution. If we let jobless starve, then humankind would evolve again, resulting in more positive character traits that society craves (intelligence, ambition, work ethic etc). The end result would be less people who work less and have more. Genocide has always proved unpopular, however

This is the modern way Of faking it everyday And taking it as we come And we're not the only ones Is that what we used to say This is the modern way I know where I'm going And that we are in the knowing And I will stop at nothing Just to get what I want It's the only way of getting out of here It's the only way of getting out of here Kaiser Chiefs - Modern Way

Sounds like he has a £100k+ self-employed consultancy business in his lap to reward his studies and research. Why does he want a crappy permie job at all?

Panic on the streets of London Panic on the streets of Birmingham I wonder to myself Could life ever be sane again ? The Leeds side-streets that you slip down I wonder to myself Hopes may rise on the Grasmere But Honey Pie, you're not safe here So you run down To the safety of the town But there's Panic on the streets of Carlisle Dublin, Dundee, Humberside I wonder to myself

So the top 10% of earners can afford an average family home on 4x multiple. No bubble here, move along....

Happy Hippopotamus!

That's the whole point though... do you think the Japanese sat on their hands and watched as they entered a deflationary slump? No. They tried to stop it. Government debt is 4 times that of the UK as a result. People who think the government will just print money are basically saying the government are happy to trash everything and start all over again. Since we are still (over)rated as one of the G7, I don't see this as likely. We would become a banana republic very quickly. We have to take the pain to maintain our status in the world. It would be a bit ironic if GB was the prime minister to trash the GB though , it might be worth it just for the irony...

The reason they gave was very half arsed. Something like it's "expensive to collect the data and and not a very good indicator of anything anyway, m2 is better" Do a google search, there's a lot on the net about it. It's all conspirational I'm pretty sure M4 includes everything - I'll try and fish it out on the BoE website.

Yes the US have stopped publishing M3 data, which is taken as a sign by many that the Fed is happily churning money out. You must also remember that the one thing that governments fear above all others is deflation, so it's just as likely that they stopped collecting M3 with foresight of what is to come. Maybe they hope of avoiding panic in the markets and early selling of stocks. A very high proportion of links posted by goldbugs point to sites sponsored by gold traders which makes me question their motives. Remember that if you are invested in a asset class, it is always favourable for others to desire that asset to push up the price. Of course I am not saying that all goldbugs are rampers, most of them are probably fully personally committed to their views just as I am. You are absolutely right to keep an open mind GoM. That's why I'm watching M4 rather than the "liquidity injection" headlines. I believe its a better indicator of what's in store.

Lots of people would disagree. And in your free market, these people would be hired to kick the living shite out of you if you did something that someone wealthier than you didn't like. Or maybe they'd just take your free market wealth from you themselves by force. Then of course, you would be asking for regulations and men with guns to look after you...

There are lots and lots of advantages to being cashless, but the key thing is we have a choice. I will absolutely refuse to shop anywhere that doesn't take cash. If they remove the "legal tender", I will start minting and distributing my own currency and stop paying tax wherever possible. The black market would use it's own form of currency, be it precious metals, fags, bottles of whisky etc.

I'm going to invest in you... then I can come on the web and ramp ramp rampers

Banks has 100k. Is it the banks money or depositors money? Ignoring this 100k for now... Bank has 0 assets 0 liabilities John "borrows" 10k Bank has 10k assets (Johns promise to pay) 10k liabilities (Johns 10k in his account) John withdraws his 10k Bank has 10k assets 0 liabilities - this is not allowed Bank is forced to borrow 10k from the money markets to balance it's books end of day Bank has 10k assets 10k liabilities Bank is paying interest to bank2 at 5% and charging John 7% and makes a profit.

I think the link you are missing GoM is the delay between monetary/credit expansion and it's affect on prices. Current price inflation is a result of past increases in money supply. We will get an inflation overhang, possibly for several years, where essentials will be rising in price whilst the money supply stagnates/deflates. After that all prices will head downwards or stabilise. I believe that global "shortages" in food and commodities is largely spin, simply putting blame for price inflation on something other than the cheap and easy availability of money in the preceeding years. Short term, the very best we can hope for is stagflation, with actual deflation a strong possibility. Either way asset prices will be hit.

The fundamental driver of the recent credit expansion is the housing bubble. All that has happened so far is the squeeze on credit availability. The real M4 drops come with reposessions and and subsequent write downs, which are on the increase but I don't think are anywhere near what they will be this time next year, even if the "real" economy some how manages to power on. Rate resets, higher cost of essentials and static wages will all push default rates up, as will rising negative equity. I do have a VI - I have sold my house and am holding cash. The reason I am doing so is I believe M4 will shrink to a greater or lesser degree, and there's very little the government can do to stop it, short of massive increases public spending. Look out for big grants for environmental energy projects, super prisons, the ever rising olympic games spending etc. Possibly significant tax cuts. The only mechanisms for monetary hyperinflation now would simply be outright fraud ie the COVERT printing of money. I like conspiracy theories, but I don't buy that one.

M4 "seasonally adjusted" grew at 0.1% http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/statistics/...rrent/index.htm I'd expect M4 deflation by February. Cash is king, just be careful where you keep it.

Lending in November was £4090m, down from £4654m in October. I've never looked at these figures before, but I find it very ineteresting that there is so much monthly variation in the amount of principal repaid. How can this fluctuate so much?