ingermany

So he's saying that what he's been doing for the past 12 years should be made illegal? Hope they can make the law retrospective. Of course this has no more credibility than the BoE being given the task of controlling inflation. By the time you fiddle the figures and add all the caveats and get-out clauses it's totally meaningless.

QUOTE (Sibley @ Sep 21 2009, 04:51 AM) * It won't be long before lending goes back to how it was. We like it and the country makes money. QUOTE: (MPC 23 September 2009) “There was a possibility that the recovery in asset prices and confidence could mark the start of a virtuous upward spiral for the economy,” the MPC said. The MPC are now just repeating exactly what Sibley has been saying for over 12 months. What is going on?

"UK mortgage brokers say they are shocked to see Halifax massively doing things like this, " Was the article written by Vicky Pollard? No, but, yeah, but, no, but, yeah, but, no, but Oh, my God! That is so unfair!

Strange, but I wasn't scared until yesterday. It's like seeing the ship's 1st mate running for the lifeboats. No wonder they left til after the TUC conference. Does this mean the bailiffs are now at the door? Seems like the 3 main parties are going to adopt a "national unity" approach on spending cuts. Perhaps the crisis is so serious that the election campaign will be effectively suspended. It's bizarre that Ed Balls would start the cuts auction by throwing everything on the table in the opening bid. I can almost hear millions of wallets belonging to public sector workers being zipped shut.

Perhaps? It was terrifying to hear Ed Balls on Sunday calling for a 2 billion education cut. How bad must the situation be for him to do that? Is he saying this in an attempt influence the money markets? To forestall an expected collapse in Sterling? Certainly not trying to win votes or protect his department. It makes me think he knows something really bad is coming.

I know this goes against coventional wisdom but, I do not think that rising prices "make the country money". The cost of the 2012 Olympics has shot up from 2.4 to 8 billion pounds. Has that made the country 3 times as wealthy? I suspect it just means we have to borrow more. I can't see how it can make us richer.

Yes, they did move the goalposts. Unfortunately, they forgot to get an estimate first, and the people hired to do the moving had never seen a football pitch before.

Looking at the T and Cs for HOMEBUY, I think: a. The amount of equity loan payable on sale depends on valuation. b. The amount of money available to pay the equity loan depends on sale price. Any proceeds from the sale are split between agent and "owner" after the conventional mortgage is paid off. The calculations are going to be complex, but if the valuation is low, and you manage to sell it for significantly more than the valuation, you should reduce your loss. But, if the valuation is over-optimistic and the property is sold for less than valuation, you lose out even more. Also if you have arrears, the mortgage provider seems to get first call, and is allowed to clear the mortgage (their 50%) before the Homebuy agent (who gets it's 50%), then the "owner" sorts out the remainder. That's how I would interpret what I've read, though I'm a non professional, with no experience of the scheme. You need a solicitor and an accountant.

just angry really

Yes, the indices are moving up. The banks have been handed bags of taxpayers' money and told to lend it indiscriminately in larger income multiples and increased LTVs. The government will pay off the defaults. "Mortgage rationing" has been declared illegal along with repossession. With so much money being thrown at the market there won't be a crash. At least not until the nation has been brought to it's knees. I have no idea how long it will take to wipe us out, but until then I expect to see more smug posts about booming house prices. There's no point in denying the current trend.

On house prices I have to agree. The government and BoE have "fixed" the market to ensure rising house prices. God only knows the scale of the cost. I see Bloomberg are predicting a Sterling collapse, passing euro parity before Christmas. The nation has been bankrupted. We will have mass unemployment and high inflation. They can't tighten policy so they will need to print more and more. You will be able to sell your house for a nice profit but don't deposit the proceeds in a UK bank. I think most on here did not predict the resolution and sheer bloody-mindedness of NuLab and its cronies when they said they would do "everything" to get house prices moving again. They've won.

This is the Brown that gave Sir Fred Goodwin a gift of a few hundred million then told the low paid to foxtrot oscar over the abolition of the 10p tax rate in order to save a poxy couple of million. The unions won't be expecting favours from the Tories, but they might decide they are more likely to get some honesty and respect.

I agree totally: if you're on less than 60K you still get some means tested state benefits like family tax credits. Wages have exploded in the last decade. I started my job in 2001 on 50k per annum. I looked at this month's wage check and it was an annual 120k, for doing the same job .....no promotion, no overtime, no added responsibility. A 120% increase in public sector basic pay is probably about standard, and I would guess every job and sector has seen similar inflation. A friend of mine wanted a plumber and was quoted £1000 per day in labour costs. The statistics maybe don't reflect this, but if you ask around you'll see it's true. The whole thing is a scam. The govt. need rising house prices so people can borrow to spend in the economy. Rising house prices need rising wages for people to afford the houses, so the govt. increases public sector pay. This creates more money in the system so private sector costs rise. The question is...............can it continue?

One small point. Oh.....same as the point above. Property does not vaporize when the landlord hands back the keys to the lender.

Capitalism is great. In theory. In practice, as soon as the "capitalists" start losing money they go whining to the governemnt asking them to tax the poor in order to pay off their losses. I would have a bit more respect for these people if they could handle losing as well as winning.

Yep. 6 million of the UK population watch Top Gear, but far fewer actually buy an Aston Martin Lagonda.

British Airways is asking thousands of staff to work for nothing, for up to one month, to help the airline survive. The appeal, sent by e-mail to more than 30,000 workers in the UK, asks them to volunteer for between one week and one month's unpaid leave, or unpaid work. err.................have they devised a new stupidity test?

and your property doubles in value.................which allows you to buy 3 extra tins of vegetables at Aldi.

Yet Blanchflower gets the gong from the Queen for saying that we need to spend and borrow more.

Predicting the Crash..............in much the same way that the average arsonist has the uncanny knack of predicting the location of the next fire.

So at 2.4%, inflation is 20% above the BoE target and they are still loosening monetary policy. Alistair Darling is fretting that oil prices are rising and this might spoil the green shoots. Surely, if we have a policy of QE, then the price of everything rises: houses, oil, food, wages (eventually because otherwise people freeze and starve). House prices have risen 2.4% this spring. Oil prices have risen around 75%. Does this not just mean that we are in for generalised inflation, which will drag wages and house prices behind it?

House prices are still seen as a surrogate or substitute for real growth. It's not growth, it's just inflation. This time next year: unemployment over 10% inflation over 10% more strikes cuts to essential services like NHS and police civil unrest BofE and PM saying "no one could have predicted this".

BoE seems to be using double-speak. Recession is over so everyone should borrow and spend, but in the same breath, recession not really over so IRs need to stay low and allow more inflation. Problem as I see it is that all the players have a short term interest. After the expenses scandal we know MPs will act against the country's best interests if there is a financial gain in it personally. As for economic leading lights, we only need to consider Fred Goodwin, whose short term interests were well served by destroying his company and gaining a massive pay-out from the taxpayer. I guess the govt can make a short term boom by borrowing and printing money. I am really worried about what happens next year.

I think profesionals and authorities have learned one lesson at least from the baby P case. That if parents do the unimaginable to their own children, it is the police, dotors, teachers, social workers and professionals who will be get the real punishment. Understandably the reaction will be a feeling of insecurity and the perceived need to know everything that goes on in every home. Society has developed a habit of granting the criminal forgiveness and rehabilitation, whislt re-attributing blame to professionals and carers. The unfortunate truth is carers and professionals cannot prevent the determindly evil from carrying out unimaginable (for most of us thankfully) acts. In this case the educators are obviously pondering who will get the blame if a set of deviant parents use their own children in child porn/abuse ring under the cover of home education. I can well imagine the Sun headlines if this were to happen and the witch-hunt against the education establishment "responsible". It is a sad indictment on society that these things happen. It is even sadder that the blame and punishment is so mis-directed that it so distorts the risk perceptions of professional bodies.

Clarkson as Transport Sec. Susan Boyle at Culture Really, he's so desperate he's just scanning the TV guide for names linked to subjects vaguely similar to public offices and offering these people jobs.