sdoey

Maths couple millionaires quit buy-to-let market A couple who quit teaching maths to make a fortune in the buy-to-let business have decided to cash in their 700 home property portfolio. By Stephen Adams Published: 7:01AM BST 03 Sep 2009 Maths couple millionaires quit buy-to-let market Fergus Wilson said he wanted to spend his retirement mentoring other landlords - and enjoying hobbies such as their racehorses and breeding Belgian Blue Cattle Photo: ANDY PARADISE Fergus and Judith Wilson are thought to have made up to £90 million since 1986, when they started with just two houses. Now they have decided to capitalise on the house price rises of recent months to get out of the business. Most of their houses are in the Ashford and Maidstone areas of Kent. Mr Wilson, 61, said he wanted to spend his retirement mentoring other landlords - and enjoying hobbies such as their racehorses and breeding Belgian Blue Cattle. He said: "The time is right for us to go. It will break my heart to say goodbye to all the houses we have but you cannot take them to the grave with you." The couple got into the buy-to-let business in 1986 when they realised that it made financial sense to rent their existing three-bedroom semi in Maidstone, when they were looking to move to a bigger house in a nearby village. But the Wilsons, who at the time were teaching in schools in Sidcup and New Romney, Kent, only really got into the game in the early 1990s, timing their entry perfectly as prices plummeted due to rocketing interest rates. They rode the boom for 15 years, buying 180 houses in 2003 alone. They have mainly stuck to buying new-build two and three bedroom houses "with a bit of grass and parking", avoiding the glut of town centre flats that have suffered the heaviest price falls. Mr Wilson once said that it was no good buying flats as an investment because "you cannot get people to buy jam tarts if they want cream doughnuts". Last October they started offloading their property empire, which at its peak topped 900 houses, worth roughly £250 million. At the time they said they would not sell all at once, to avoid crashing the market in Ashford and Maidstone. However, they appeared to have revised their strategy, with recent property price rises convincing them that the time to sell is now. Average asking prices in Ashford, Kent, rose from £209,000 to £221,000 between June and July. Mr Wilson said: "At that rate we made more than £1 million this July whereas we did not make a penny in July 2008." Only three of the remaining houses are outside Kent. One of their golden rules has been only to buy in areas they know and can easily monitor. Mr Wilson stressed he would try to ensure they sold to responsible landlords to protect their existing tenants, but could "guarantee nothing". http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/612...let-market.html

On the programme last night when Declan Curry stated that the average salary in Northern Ireland was 27, 000 odd (Can’t remember the exact figure). I have been looking now for a number years (Just out of interest hoping that i will land that 100k job some day) on many job sites like NIJobs, NIJobFinder etc and the local newspapers in the area where I live in. The question I have is that after looking on these various job advertising places and looking at many of the salaries for these jobs I just don't see how the average salary in NI can be 27,000+! What are your opinions regarding NI's average salary? I just don't believe that the average salary would be as high as that!!

Another great performance FP, but you need to make a trip to Specs Savers methinks!

Think this deserves its own thread. On the Brink BBC 1 tv series this week presented by Stephen 'fat boy' Nolan. Synopsis: As the recession continues to bite hard in Northern Ireland, Stephen Nolan presents a series of programmes that go behind the scenes in the offices of the Citizens' Advice Bureau, which finds itself at the coal face in helping those affected cope with its impact. From personal debt to property repossessions and redundancies, this insightful and emotional series looks at how the new hardship of the 21st century is afflicting people of all backgrounds.

Yeah agree, America is bankrupt for sure. The US national debt is owned predominantly by Asian economies with China being the major holder of the debt. America's total debt approaching $60 Trillion and rising!

For the biggest (fattest) presenter in the country!

LOL

This, I believe will be the case again, high interest rates will return as they print and flood billions of notes into the money markets! Hyper Stagflation methinks!!

I would not knock Gold ! Gold has more value than currency that is just printed out of thin air and at the minute with billions being printed methinks the value of Sterling and the US Dollar will be worthless eventually. You only have to listen to Jim Rogers, a legendary investor, and what he is saying about Sterling and the US Dollar. You can listen to him on Youtube. Why Invest in Gold I don't agree, but respect your opinion on Gold but historically, gold has been a proven method of preserving value when a national currency was losing value. If your investments are valued in a depreciating currency, allocating a portion to gold assets is similar to a financial insurance policy. In the past year, the climb in the price of gold above $1000 per ounce is due to many factors, one being that the dollar is losing value. Yes, Gold does have disadvantages and reasons to say NO to Gold would be : Gold doesn't pay income or interest. Except for the last five years, gold has been in a bear market after a peak in 1980. Central banks have tons of bullion which they occasionally threaten to sell. If you don't count the last five years, gold stocks have not done well. Since gold funds have made big moves over the past five years, it's time for them to drop back. Your broker probably won't recommend gold funds. Reasons to say YES to Gold The dollar is weak and getting weaker due to national economic policies which don't appear to have an end. Gold price appreciation makes up for lost interest, especially in a bull market. The last four years are the beginning of a major bull move similar to the 70's when gold moved from $38 to over $800. Central banks in several countries have stated their intent to increase their gold holdings instead of selling. All gold funds are in a long term uptrend with bullion, most recently setting new all-time highs. The trend of commodity prices to increase is relative to gold price increases. Worldwide gold production is not matching consumption. The price will go up with demand. Most gold consumption is done in India and China and their demand is increasing with their increase in national wealth. Several gold funds reached all-time highs in 2007 and are still trending upward. The short position held by hedged gold funds is being methodically reduced. U.S. government economic policies over the past decade have systematically projected the U.S. economy down a road with uncontrollable federal spending and an uncontrollably increasing trade deficits. Both will cause the dollar to lose in international value and will increase the price of alternative investments, such as gold. With the recent devaluation of many international currencies, the U.S. dollar was the international safe haven of last resort. We are seeing signs of this ending due to many financial factors, the most important one being a falling dollar. There are over One Trillion dollars ($1,500,000,000,000) of U.S. debt owned by foreigners which could be repatriated under certain conditions. This could cause a major decline in the value of the dollar and a soaring gold price. If you believe in 'buy low, sell high', gold is still low, but climbing.

Usual VI spinners!! I would only go by what Mr FP and others on the internet are saying about house prices and not these particular muppets! We have not seen the last of this global economic collapse, bank bailouts, job losses, etc, etc, etc! Not by a long shot, hence why I have invested in Gold and all you folk on the forum should be likewise.

Bryans ;¬)

Idiot!!

Or interviewing Mr Financial Planner

Bottomed out? Me thinks not! We are not even two years into the down cycle yet and the last cycle there was not banks going bust and big banks been consumed by mega banks. NEVER trust the mainstream media ! Internet media all the way REMEMBER : If its on the internet it has to be true!!

450

Yeah think he did but i didnt hear him give it out!!

yeah , watching it now!!

310 for me!! Please

540

500

Here is a bit of info about the corrupt banking system giving to us from the Rothchild controlled Bank of England and US Federal Reserve. A Privatised Money Supply Modern Banking and the Fractional Reserve System Do you know where the bank gets the $160,000 for your mortgage? It's very simple. Someone walks over to a computer and types 160,000 beside your name. With only $27.93 of cash reserves for every $10,000 of assets (as of June 1999) the bank has just created the remaining $159,553 of that interest-earning money out of thin air. When, after 25 years of hard work, you pay off your mortgage, the $159,553 vanishes back into thin air. Not so the interest however. It vanishes into the banker's pocket. Chartered (i.e. privately owned) banks, such as The Bank of Montreal, The Royal Bank, The CIBC, etc. have created about 95 percent of our total money supply ($589.1 billion as of Sept 1999) in exactly this way. But the cash reserves in their vaults amount to only a paltry $3.893 billion. (About $32 billion of cash circulates in public hands.) This is called fractional reserve banking, and it's the greatest scam of all time because it creates debt for no reason other than to enrich the banking class. Its long term effect – as becomes clearer every day – is to steadily suck wealth out of the community and into the hands of a few people, a fact that bankers and most politicians stubbornly refuse to admit. Charging interest on money created out of nothing is, in the main, unjust and immoral, and Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, the Bible (Deuteronomy 23:19), the Koran (2:275-278), the Catholic Church, many codes of law and most writers on morals have condemned it for more than two thousand years. The historical name for this evil is usury. Nevertheless bankers enjoy peace of mind because they know that the public thinks they merely lend out the savings of their depositors. In fact, banks create more than 95 percent of all deposits, for when a bank creates a loan it simultaneously creates a deposit. What banks do to justify the accusation of being economic parasites is to lend out interest-bearing money of their own creation using a very thin sliver of legal tender (cash) to back it up. How did the banks gain this oppressive power of charging interest on mere computer entries? Very simply they lobbied and hoodwinked our politicians into giving it to them. Before World War II cash reserves of 1:10 had been the norm in practice. This meant that if you deposited $100 of cash in a bank, the banking system (though not that one bank) would eventually use that $100 to create up to $900 of credit. That credit shows up in their books as $900 of interest-bearing loans (assets), and $900 of deposits (liabilities). Note that credit is not cash – only the Bank of Canada (BoC) can print and coin money – but it's money nonetheless because you can buy things with it as long as the bank honours your cheques. In 1991 legislation was quietly passed that eliminated required cash reserves by mid 1994. The result? Figures from the Bank of Canada Review show that by September 1998 the ratio of the banks' cash reserves ($3.893 billion) to their total assets ($1393 billion) had soared to 1:358, a ratio that was never more than 1:15 in the first half of this century. That means for every dollar of cash in their vaults or deposited with the central bank (i.e. the BoC) the banks have conjured up $357 from the void which they've invested or lent out with interest. Hence the record profits. Meanwhile not one person in a hundred grasps the fact that our government permits private banks to create about 95 percent of our money supply bringing huge profits to them and endless debt to us. Nowadays the big profits lie in government bonds, currency speculation, the stock market, and derivatives; and banks, with their power of money creation, are up to their eyeballs in all four. But there's always a day of reckoning. History teaches us that banks are forever finding new ways to commit financial suicide, and when they do they bring the public down with them. (With the collapse of their debt-pyramids the once mighty Japanese banks have been living off the public purse for years.) But what we witnessed in 1998 was unprecedented in human history. In South East Asia, Russia and Latin America, national economies were plundered and millions impoverished, almost overnight, through the deliberate manipulation of "free" market forces. Now that our money supply has been essentially privatized, how can we free ourselves from this sly form of economic tyranny? In the three quotes below a famous American president, a famous Canadian prime minister, and a governor of the Bank of England in the 1920s tell us exactly what needs to be done. Unfortunately, there's never been a reform of the banking system while the banks were in the driver's seat. They must first be rendered helpless by an economic collapse. When that blow comes two facts should be etched in our minds: 1) a government can lend interest-free money into existence by borrowing from its own bank, The BoC, — unfortunately The BoC has become a puppet of the financial elite, despite its mandate to serve the interests of all Canadians — or, it can borrow interest-bearing money into existence by borrowing from privately owned banks; 2) a government that borrows with interest from private banks, when it can create its own interest-free money, is a government of idiots or thieves. Unfortunately, the human mind finds it easier to believe a lie it's heard a hundred times before than to believe a truth it's hearing for the first time. We hope that the words of Jefferson, MacKenzie King and Stamp will help break down any natural scepticism you may feel when we claim that the chartered banks, in collusion with The Bank of Canada and with the complicity of our government, are riding on the backs of the citizens of this country. The right to create money belongs to the people (see notes on "It's Your Money" by William Hixson), and it is the sacred duty of the state to exercise this right for their benefit. Instead, the bonanza of money creation has been handed over to private bankers by ignorant, irresponsible politicians. I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a monied aristocracy that has set the Government at defiance. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs. Thomas Jefferson Until the control of the issue of currency and credit is restored to government and recognized as its most conspicuous and sacred responsibility, all talk of sovereignty of Parliament and of democracy is idle and futile... Once a nation parts with control of its credit, it matters not who makes the nation's laws... Usury once in control will wreck any nation. William Lyon Mackenzie King Banking was conceived in iniquity and born in sin... Bankers own the earth. Take it away from them but leave them the power to create money, and, with a flick of the pen, they will create enough money to buy it back again... Take this great power away from them and all the great fortunes like mine will disappear and they ought to disappear, for then this would be a better and happier world to live in... But, if you want to be the slaves of the bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, then let bankers continue to create money and control credit. Sir Josiah Stamp (Governor of the Bank of England in the 1920s) How Banks Create Interest-Bearing Money Out of Thin Air (and cost the average taxpayer, home owner & small business-person thousands of dollars annually) Assuming a reserve ratio of 1:10 the table below shows how $100 of interest-free government created money (GCM), i.e. cash, is used by the banking system to create $900 of interest-bearing bank-created money (BCM) in the form of loans. The reserve ratio is the ratio of cash reserves (GCM) to deposits (mostly BCM). In our example the banking system consists of 50 banks, but the money creation process would be essentially the same for any number of banks from one to infinity. (Note that if the system contained only one bank that bank could create $900 in loans immediately.) Modern accounting uses double entry book keeping where liabilities and assets are kept exactly equal. A bank's liabilities are its deposits. Its assets are its loans (including bonds which are loans to government) and its cash reserves. Here is how the banking system creates money. In column 1 $100 of cash is deposited in Bank 1. Bank 1 creates a $90 loan in the form of a deposit as shown in column 2. This deposit is pure BCM and, because it must be paid back with interest, is an asset. With a reserve ratio of 1:10 the bank puts aside $10 in cash (column 3) to meet cash demands from the person who deposited the $100. The remaining $90 in cash covers the $90 loan. The borrower proceeds to write cheques on his $90 deposit and these cheques get deposited in Bank 2. For these cheques Bank 2 demands and gets cash from Bank 1 until eventually all $90 ends up in Bank 2. (Naturally in real life more than two banks are involved. Thus the transactions are not so simple and orderly as they must be here for explanatory purposes, but everything comes out in the wash to give exactly the same result.) However the original $100 deposit still stands to the credit of the depositor (a liability for Bank 1) even though $90 of it has moved on to Bank 2. And the $90 loan Bank 1 created when it first received the original $100 deposit also stands (an asset for Bank 1). Banks 2, 3, 4, etc. then repeat this process eventually creating $900 of BCM in the form of loans (as shown in column 2) and dispersing the original $100 as cash reserves throughout the banking system (as shown in column 3). Note that $900 of the $1000 of deposits in column 1 is BCM, i.e. credit created by the banks in the form of loans. (Banks make loans by "depositing money" in your account which you must pay back with interest. Thus they are loan/deposits.) Only the original $100 cash deposit is GCM. One other point. As a loan/deposit gets spent, a deposit in some other bank grows in inverse proportion. Thus the banks have increased the money supply by $900 and not by $1800. That would be double counting. The important points, however, are as follows: this ingenious system is called fractional reserve banking; it creates debt for the sole purpose of enriching the banking class; it is a subtle form of theft; historically it was condemned as a form of usury. Column 1 Column 2 Column 3 L I A B I L I T I E S A S S E T S DepositsLoan/Deposits (90% BCM)= (100% BCM) + Cash Reserves (100% GCM) Bank 1 Bank 2 Bank 3 . . . Bank 49 Bank 50 Totals $100.00 90.00 81.00 . . . 0.64 0.57 $994.85 $90.00 81.00 72.90 . . . 0.57 0.52 $895.36 $10.00 9.00 8.10 . . . 0.06 0.06 $99.43 Max Amount $1000.00 = $900.00 + $100.00 How Much Does Bank Created Money (BCM) Cost the Average Taxpayer, Home Owner, Small Businessman? The following figures for 1996 are from the Bank of Canada Review, Spring 1997, and Statistics Canada. In 1996 the GDP (gross domestic product) was $797.8 billion. The federal debt was $469.4 billion or 58.1 percent of the GDP. Interest payments on the federal debt – mostly financed with interest-bearing bank created money (BCM) rather than interest-free government created money (GCM) – amounted to $45.3 billion. The interest on the 6.7 percent of the federal debt held by The Bank of Canada and other government agencies flows back to government on our behalf. The approximately $42.2 billion in interest on the remaining 93.2 percent of the federal debt held by private banks and other members of the financial elite, domestic and foreign, is basically a subsidy to the wealthy. For reasons that have nothing to do with economic sense and everything to do with the fact that money buys political influence our government taxes ordinary citizens to pay for that subsidy. Assuming 15 million taxpayers (children and poor people don't pay taxes) we divide $42.2 billion of interest by 15 million and get an average of $2813 per taxpayer. But when you add provincial and other public debt to the federal debt you get a total of approximately $650 billion. So let's say about $3500 per taxpayer. Now what about private debt? If you have a $160,000 mortgage or small business loan at 7 percent, and it is amortized over 25 years, then your average annual interest will be $7242. (Over the 25 year period you'll pay $181,050 in interest, which is more than the principal.) Yet there's no economic reason why a government agency couldn't create and lend you that $160,000 at just enough to cover the cost of administering the loan, say 0.25 percent. Now your annual interest would be $206. Here's another way of looking at the folly of BCM. In 1999 bank credit amounted to $557 billion, almost 95 percent of our money supply. Real interest (i.e. nominal interest minus inflation) on this bank credit was at least 5 percent, or $28 billion. But where is this interest to come from since banks create credit, but not the interest they charge on that credit? It can't come from the approximately $32 billion in cash (GCM) that circulates in public hands. It can only come from more bank credit with more interest attached. But for all existing bank credit to be paid without anyone defaulting on their loans, the economy must expand by 2.9 percent ($28 billion of interest divided by the GDP, $953 billion). Since the average annual real GDP growth from 1960 to 1995 was only 2.3 percent, the economy is going to repeatedly stumble in its effort to keep up with the interest payments on all that bank credit. This is the root cause of what is known as the business cycle, and there's nothing inevitable about it. A lot of economic weather is man made. It is tolerated because it is the consequence of a system designed to provide investment income to those with financial assets. The cost to the community is increasing public and private debt with all the economic failure and misery that goes with it when the economy slows. What we have in a debt money system is cruelty motivated by self-interest and rationalized under the guise of economic law. BCM should be abolished just as slavery was abolished. But it won't happen until the public understands the magnitude of this hidden injustice and screams blue murder. But better scream soon. With weapons like NAFTA and the MAI international banking fraternities, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), will soon have the middle class in their gun sights. They may use a crashing stock market as a smoke screen to contract the money supply as did the Fed in 1929. (In a radio interview in 1996 free-market champion and economic advisor to Nixon and Reagan, Milton Friedman said, "The Federal Reserve [the privately owned U.S. central bank] definitely caused The Great Depression by contracting the amount of currency in circulation by one third from 1929 to 1933".) Then the screams will be deafening. But it's better to cry out before you are hurt than after you are hurt, especially after you are critically hurt. Do you want to take some action? First discuss this with others. Then send a few faxes and make a few photocopies. Tape one up in your back seat car window. Leave another in the nearest bank to show them that people are beginning to understand how they siphon off wealth from the community through their outrageous privilege of creating interest-bearing money. (Government created money is interest-free.) Finally – for the really committed – ask your local bank manager just how much truth there is in all of this. You can be fairly sure he or she will resort to their much feared weapon – impenetrable economic jargon. Some bankers will actually deny that banks create any money! This is an example of what Marshall McLuhan called motivated ignorance. For more info visit websites: www.themoneymasters.com www.moneymaker.com/frb/ www.monetary-reform.on.ca

A price where only one person alone is able to pay the mortgage debt! Do you really want you and your other half having to both work to pay every month for an overpriced shoe box. I think many folk in NI have taking on a debt that they will NEVER be able to pay off!! I know one person who paid I think about 175K last year for a house over a 40 year period and is now in negative equity!

Spot on Vicmac64! This article appeared to my surprise in the Finanical Times of London And now for a world government By Osborne Rachman Published: December 8 2008 19:13 | Last updated: December 8 2008 19:13 I have never believed that there is a secret United Nations plot to take over the US. I have never seen black helicopters hovering in the sky above Montana. But, for the first time in my life, I think the formation of some sort of world government is plausible. A “world government” would involve much more than co-operation between nations. It would be an entity with state-like characteristics, backed by a body of laws. The European Union has already set up a continental government for 27 countries, which could be a model. The EU has a supreme court, a currency, thousands of pages of law, a large civil service and the ability to deploy military force. So could the European model go global? There are three reasons for thinking that it might. First, it is increasingly clear that the most difficult issues facing national governments are international in nature: there is global warming, a global financial crisis and a “global war on terror”. Second, it could be done. The transport and communications revolutions have shrunk the world so that, as Geoffrey Blainey, an eminent Australian historian, has written: “For the first time in human history, world government of some sort is now possible.” Mr Blainey foresees an attempt to form a world government at some point in the next two centuries, which is an unusually long time horizon for the average newspaper column. But – the third point – a change in the political atmosphere suggests that “global governance” could come much sooner than that. The financial crisis and climate change are pushing national governments towards global solutions, even in countries such as China and the US that are traditionally fierce guardians of national sovereignty. Barack Obama, America’s president-in-waiting, does not share the Bush administration’s disdain for international agreements and treaties. In his book, The Audacity of Hope, he argued that: “When the world’s sole superpower willingly restrains its power and abides by internationally agreed-upon standards of conduct, it sends a message that these are rules worth following.” The importance that Mr Obama attaches to the UN is shown by the fact that he has appointed Susan Rice, one of his closest aides, as America’s ambassador to the UN, and given her a seat in the cabinet. A taste of the ideas doing the rounds in Obama circles is offered by a recent report from the Managing Global Insecurity project, whose small US advisory group includes John Podesta, the man heading Mr Obama’s transition team and Strobe Talbott, the president of the Brookings Institution, from which Ms Rice has just emerged. The MGI report argues for the creation of a UN high commissioner for counter-terrorist activity, a legally binding climate-change agreement negotiated under the auspices of the UN and the creation of a 50,000-strong UN peacekeeping force. Once countries had pledged troops to this reserve army, the UN would have first call upon them. These are the kind of ideas that get people reaching for their rifles in America’s talk-radio heartland. Aware of the political sensitivity of its ideas, the MGI report opts for soothing language. It emphasises the need for American leadership and uses the term, “responsible sovereignty” – when calling for international co-operation – rather than the more radical-sounding phrase favoured in Europe, “shared sovereignty”. It also talks about “global governance” rather than world government. But some European thinkers think that they recognise what is going on. Jacques Attali, an adviser to President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, argues that: “Global governance is just a euphemism for global government.” As far as he is concerned, some form of global government cannot come too soon. Mr Attali believes that the “core of the international financial crisis is that we have global financial markets and no global rule of law”. So, it seems, everything is in place. For the first time since homo sapiens began to doodle on cave walls, there is an argument, an opportunity and a means to make serious steps towards a world government. But let us not get carried away. While it seems feasible that some sort of world government might emerge over the next century, any push for “global governance” in the here and now will be a painful, slow process. There are good and bad reasons for this. The bad reason is a lack of will and determination on the part of national, political leaders who – while they might like to talk about “a planet in peril” – are ultimately still much more focused on their next election, at home. But this “problem” also hints at a more welcome reason why making progress on global governance will be slow sledding. Even in the EU – the heartland of law-based international government – the idea remains unpopular. The EU has suffered a series of humiliating defeats in referendums, when plans for “ever closer union” have been referred to the voters. In general, the Union has progressed fastest when far-reaching deals have been agreed by technocrats and politicians – and then pushed through without direct reference to the voters. International governance tends to be effective, only when it is anti-democratic. The world’s most pressing political problems may indeed be international in nature, but the average citizen’s political identity remains stubbornly local. Until somebody cracks this problem, that plan for world government may have to stay locked away in a safe at the UN.

Doccyboy, you just sole my thunder! I was going to post this last night but didn’t get around to it! Should be an interesting programme on Tuesday night regarding this particular crook, so will have to press the record button

Have to disagree with ya there! There is an elite in this world which these families are part of and is overwhelmingly pulling the strings behind the scenes in the direction the world is heading.