daedalus

It depends on what you mean by "inflation". Inflation can mean several things, although they are often inter-related: * Inflation in consumer prices (or retail prices) for goods and services (often known as CPI or RPI) * Inflation in labour costs or wages * Inflation in corporate earnings/profits * Inflation in the money supply In the past, when the majority of the economy was domestic, and domestic labour was a substantial part of the variation in the cost of goods and services, then there was a strong link between all of these. Today, when we import a lot of things, especially food, clothing, oil/petrol/gas, the connection is much weaker and the different types of inflation can move to a degree independently. Consumer price inflation does not have any affect of the ease of repaying debt (although it make repaying index-linked debt harder, since index-linked debt is usually linked to RPI) Wage inflation DOES make it easier to repay personal debts, as the increase in income makes it the debt relatively smaller. Corporate earnings inflation DOES make it easier to repay corporate debts, as the increase in income makes it the debt relatively smaller. Inflation in wages and corporate earnings increase the tax receipts and so make it easier for a government to repay its debts by making them relatively smaller. Over much of the past 10y or so we have had deflation in imported goods and inflation in domestic wages and earnings, making all debt easy to repay. So we borrowed and borrowed and borrowed. However now we have a situation where import commodity prices are increasing (inflationary) but wages and earnings are static/falling (deflationary) which has exactly the opposite affect. It looks like inflation from RPI, but the net affect is to make it harder to repay debts.

I generally agree with this sentiment, but the problem is... ... that this leaves you no room to describe the sheer monumental incompetence of supra-national organisations. If government spending is malinvestment, what word is there to describe UN or EU spending? Incompovestment? Supramalinvestment? Kleptovestment? Pessiminvestment? Horrendovestment? Teratovestment?

Oh no! Not the shoe-event-horizon! The ultimate decline of civilisation into a footwear obsessed econopocalypse as foretold by Douglas Adams in the Hitchhiker's Guide...

The sad truth is that in the current environment, even if Jonah Brown doesn't get the job, there is no guarantee that who does get it won't be worse. There is no shortage of crypto-communist socialist bureaucrats or politicians with the credentials and qualifications to get the job, and most of them are even MORE incompetent than Gordon.

Given that I believe Gordon Brown personally called up the chairmen of several banks and INSTRUCTED them to manipulate Libor (to keep it low) I'll be most entertained to see what comes of this. I expect it to go very quiet very soon when the authorities realise how embarrassing a transparent investigation could be...

Actually, I think it is just the ownership holding companies which are in trouble. I think the business is fine. What a relief for all the leaseholders, eh?

The carry trade is long gone - it died a couple of years ago. Indeed there has even been some reverse-carry trade at times recently.

+2

How about we run a national survey on how many people enjoy and support the Red Arrows, and how many enjoy and support S4C (welsh language TV) ... ... and then abolish S4C anyway?

Serve you right for taking the Grauniad seriously! I read it from time to time, and the Observer at the weekend, but only so that I know what the enemy is thinking!

36, working in finance in London, earning £200k+ pa, live with gf in rented flat Owned once, turned out to be a nightmare money-pit (joint-freehold flat in victorian conversion with maintenance problems and shite co-freeholders), lost about £20k Cash in the bank to buy as/when prices become sensible

Repossession in Spain (and most of Southern Europe) is a nightmare. 3-4y of bureaucratic awfulness, with 4+ court appearances; and the judicial system is probably now saturated so it is almost impossible to get time in court; and if you can't get hold of the borrower then the administration and enforcement of the judicial foreclosure process becomes almost impossible. So the utter uselessness of trying to repossess is probably why. A more interesting question is why the hell would anyone make mortgage loans in a country when repossession is almost impossible.

Because they also want all the food, and all the fuel, and really don't care if we starve or freeze to death. That's why.

Actually, I think the Rating Agencies are probably rather good at credit ratings for corporations (apart from estimating fraud risk). They are not even THAT bad at rating sovereigns. But for rating banks and structured finance products their rating methodologies seem to be flawed. The problems they have had with bank ratings, CDO ratings etc. do not necessarily 'infect' the methodologies for corporations or of sovereigns. The approaches are different, the teams are different, and the history of their methodologies are different.

I agree. Default is the only solution. But I believe that the government will only realise that after the testing of the currency to destruction.