bottletop
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Posts posted by bottletop
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Just recovering after getting lost in Swansea - jasus, if there's anywhere that cannot support the housing boom, Swansea is the place - there was me thinking the town centre had undergone a face-lift, but there was little sign of that - derelict properties on the high street, etc. Deserted dockland area and transport museum, etc. At one point, it felt like being in some of the more unpleasant parts of E Europe I've been unfortunate enought to visit.
Noticed a Labour MPs offices amongst the shabbiness and dereliction - how fitting!
Anyway, here's an article on global debt saturation by NigelMaund>
I wish he wouldn't put all those letters after his name to make himself look smart. Just makes you looks like a twit.
Bottletop
BSc (Hons) MSc
partner of Mrs Bottletop
BSc (Hons) PhD
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f*** 'em, basically.
I don't earn as much as these self-centered w*****s and I don't have any cc debts at all. The reason being I don't spend what money I have trying to live a lifestyle I can't afford.
Perhaps I could donate a few pounds to help them out of the collective debt problems...ooops selfishly went and spunked it on a £30 lunch in Nottinghill. Sorry Kaye Fox.
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I can just imagine TB's cronies speaking anonymously with the newspapers...."dreadful news etc etc perhaps it's time for Gordon to spend more time with his family....personal reasons blah blah blah"
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Haven't noticed any comments on this article yet, so I thought I'd post the link
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtm...27/ccview27.xml
Points:
1. Paris concludes the a simple majority vote is all that is needed to instigate capital controls for 6 months at a time.
2. They will not allow the US to get away with their profligacy and "beggar they neighbour" policies
3. This would seriously shaft the City if implemented, and could precipitate a membership crisis.
Opinions?
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I read in a rag somewhere that the oil fields would fall in the territories of the Orkneys. How would the Jocks feel if they performed their little oil grab only to discover the Orkney Islanders voted for independence from Scotland and ended up with all that money. Would be enough to make the little ginger devils spit with rage I reckon lol.
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Ok i've been thinking about this a lot
what happens when IT happens.basically you have a classic emerging market currency run where a borrowing nation with a fixed currency peg is suddenly forcibly ejected from the peg mechanism by speculative market forces. only the perverse twist in this case is that the fed did not choose the peg the chinese did.
this is all very Asian currency crisis, and for the UK very black wednesday.
I wonder if the Goldbugs have considered weather the IMF and FED want to support the dollar and soak up some of the liqudity they could step into the open market and flood the system by selling GOLD in the same way Lamont did with the ERM.
*higher rates to stabilise currency (think about the 13% we had in 1992 )
*selling of reserves (as per black wednessday )
*contageon to other ecomomies - ( primarily the UK ) basically this could rip the heart out of the world economy. because americans could no longer afford those new BMWs and Mercs. or even the stuff the chinese sell them in walmart. without final user demand the world will be stuck with oversupply of so many goods the velocity of money will slow and with it prices will come down.
* the biggest IMF bailout in history.
* import inflation in the US (because of the currency devalueation but at the same time a highly deflationary rate stance could cause the economy to go into carrdiac arrest.)
basically deflation devalueation and debt. thats the way the crisis seems likely to end.
I am sure the chinese will be standing in the wings with their trillion dollars ready to buy every last ounce that becomes available.
I disagree with the first point. Barring a domesday secnario, treasuries will hedge currency risk by buying other currencies - Euro, Yen etc whatever looks a good bet to hold its value as well as edging up their gold reserves. Only a small percentage will ever be held in gold. I seriously doubt there's enough known gold in the world to support the currency that's floating around. Other currencies will fly, and so will gold. A return to the gold standard will never happen.
I would have thought there's enough gold in the world to support 10x the currency floating around, so long as you price it high enough
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I've been doing the casino sign up and monthly promotions for just about 3 years now, and have made 14k tax free from £100 starting money. Most months it's easy to pick up 4-500 quid. I've meant to get into matched betting but could never get my head round odds.
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Saving accounts!?!
What would anyone want one of those for
too true. got to persuade mrs bottletop to use our savings to clear our mortgage now.
It's 24.5k, we have 25k cash and 6k gold and silver.
Would be so much nicer just to clear our debt and avoid the monthly DD.
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The beginning of a peasant's revolt could be happening:
http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/retirement/ar...mp;in_page_id=6
Sad, but hardly deserving of having their pockets filled with tax payers cash. There are lots of retirees who never had pensions in the first place, so why should they not receive a similar top up.
Most have had to cut back on ' luxuries' most of us take for granted, such as holidays and treats for children and grandchildrenMy heart bleeds. So their employers skanked them and now they want young taxpayers to pay for their holidays in
Spain and put presents under their grandchildrens xmas tree.
Instead, he is still working hard to earn a living because you will not pay him what is hiserr, actually he lost what was his, now he wants what was never his.
The moral is to make the effort to look after your own money, don't rely on someone else to do it for you cos the chances are they're going to f*** it up or f*** off to the sun with it.
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the simplest solution to large engine vehicles is simply to tax them at 10p per cubic cc.
5 litre car?? that'll be 500 quid
1000cc car...100 quid
It'll encourgage the purchase of smaller, more efficient cars, and most cars in the 1.6 to 2.0 litre range won't be charged much difference to what they are road taxed at now.
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still buying from the odd ebayer who insists on selling below spot, and though my total cost per ounce has crept up to £270 I'm still 10%+ in profit.
Same with silver - was buying 5oz bars for £28 and 10oz bars for £50 in 2004, now they go for 50 and 100 on the bay of e's.
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Ummm right. So I get to be a domestic servant and live-in carer. Except I dont get paid. Wonderful. Where do I sign up.
yeah but you get to strip the house of it's contents and empty the building society account of the befuddled old crone. Could be a nice little earner.
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Most bets are on Italy being the first one to have to leave. I can't remember what the actual cause would be.
they've been becoming more and more uncompetitive as they refuse to trim their public expenditures and everyones been getting nice big pay rises, assuming the ECB will bail them out if necessary. Unfortunately....
http://www.nasdaq.com/aspxcontent/NewsStor...NLINE000641.htm
The European Central Bank won't act as a lender of last resort if faced with a sovereign financial crisis within the euro zone, ECB governing council member Christian Noyer said Tuesday.
"The market seems to believe that there will be a bailing out" of euro-zone countries that get into financial difficulties after living above their means, Noyer said.
"That simply cannot happen, and will not happen," he added in an interview with Dow Jones Newswires. "The ECB won't accept as collateral the public debt of any country that is downgraded to non-investment grade, even to BBB."
Banks regularly borrow money from the ECB by bidding at weekly refinancing auctions run by the central bank. Those loans are backed by the securities - including sovereign bonds - which banks deposit with the ECB.
So a government whose bonds were no longer accepted as collateral by the ECB would find that demand for its debt would shrink, increasing the interest rate it would have to pay in order to borrow.
Italy appears to be the major euro-zone borrower that is most at risk of having its credit rating downgraded to the point where its bonds would no longer be accepted by the ECB as collateral.
Credit rating agencies Standard & Poor's and Fitch Ratings are mulling a downgrade in Italy's credit rating. Standard & Poor's is expected to publish its conclusions on Italy's budget situation by the end of this month, and will be paying particular attention to efforts by the government to eliminate structural factors contributing to the country's chronic deficit.
But even then Italy's rating would remain two notches above the A- minimum set by the ECB, and only a continued inability to bring the public sector debt down to sustainable levels would likely lead to the further downgrades that would be required to place Italy's rating in the BBB category.
Noyer wasn't referring to any specific euro zone country, and his message to existing and prospective euro zone member countries is that that the ECB won't come to their rescue if lax fiscal policies push up their debt burdens to intolerable levels.
Fixed income analysts say that despite the likelihood that the Italian deficit will be cut by about EUR15 billion in 2007, the lack of structural spending measures is likely to result in a one notch sovereign credit downgrade from AA- to A+ this year.
"The threat of a downgrade has been well flagged for a couple of months and has been priced in," said Orlando Green, fixed income strategist at Calyon. "An effective downgrade won't have much of an impact on Italian government bonds. Whether or not the spending cut measures materialize next year is the real issue for bonds."
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I totally agree with what you say
But what alternative do they have?
There will have to be an awful lot of backscratching on all sides to control how this all pans out.
Either way, nobody is going to come out of this mess smelling of roses. The Eastern economies will take a hit too I reckon. I wouldn't like to be a Japanese pensioner approching retirement any more than I'd like to be an Englishman or American approaching retirement
one alternative could be to revalue the 8000 or so tonnes of gold they have at (say) $100,000 per ounce and pay their creditors off with that. After all, they have exchanged $ debt instruments for real chinese goods in the first instance , so it is only fair that china gets real assets when they choose to call in the debt. Don't suppose it will ever happen though.
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This is the BIG question! A very big $9 Trillion deficit question!
Do they hike IR's and crash the credit bubble or drop rates and kill the dollar!
I reckon they will devalue the dollar eventually. The Yanks don't care if they monetize their debt and pay off their liabilities with trillions of worthless paper notes do they? Ultimately they will default on their debts by paying it off with worthless paper. No matter how bad things get, the USA can still hold the world to ransom! The Chinese and the Japanese will have to tow the line to some extent else the USA will drag them down too..........and every other country on the planet. It's gonna be a very rough ride either way
maybe, but if they screw their creditors over and make their debts worthless they can forget about ever buying oil with dollars again. Half of US treasury debt is held in the US yes? So all those pensions and investments will be worth nothing.
Maybe the americans will have to tow the line or the chinese will go out an buy every scrap of gold/copper/etc available on the markets before the $ lose their value and just be satisfied with getting something real for their dollars rather than let the US totally shaft them
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Here's someone on uk.finance newsgroup going under - £50k debts, £30k mortgage, £400pm payments on his cards....if only he can hold out for a year or two until his mother does the decent thing and drops dead he can get his hands on the money she scrimped and saved all her life to clear his credit card bills. How nice of him.
http://groups.google.com/group/uk.finance/...eabf34c54f5518a
I am about £50,000 in debt to banks and have £30,000 owing on my
mortgage. I had a downturn in my health back in January, which caused
my energy levels to plummet. As I'm self-employed, that meant I
couldn't do enough work to keep my cash flow healthy. What with rising
interest rates too, I am now having increasing trouble keeping up the
£400 approx per month in interest I pay on my credit cards.
My house is worth about £175,000. Can I (or should I) declare
bacruptcy? If so, what will happen to my house, which is my only
significant asset?
Alternatively, I could try to survive till next Spring, then sell my
house then and pay off my debts. Trouble is, I have sitting tenants in
the house, which might make it harder to sell
<snip>
I'm just worried because if my health deteriorates, or I
can't work for other reasons, I'll be in a dire predicament. It's been
a struggle keeping up the payments over the years and I've slowly been
getting deeper and deeper in debt, although it hovered around 50k for
a while while interest rates were low.
One big setback or unforseen expense could make things much worse. On
the other hand, perhaps interet rates will go back down and the extra
tenant will save my skin or ease my situation.
In a few years, my mother will die (She's 91, but in reasonable health
for her age). Then I should be receiving around 30k to 50k from my
late father's trust. If I can hang in there till then, I may be able
to pay off my credit cards, at least. Then I'll be left with a £185
monthly mortgage payment, which I can easily handle.
Alternatively, I may get so tired of this deepening-debt situation and
just sell the house next Spring, as a going concern, with the tenants
already installed. Then I can pay off all debts and have something
left over and start anew. It's tempting. But it's also a big hassle,
and it means I'd have to live in a smaller, cheaper property or leave
my friends behind and move to a distant county where property is
cheap. sort of swapping one bad situation for another... I'm not sure
what is the wisest path.
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total mortgage debt: 24.5k (CMV 120-125k) , no cc or other debts.
Readily available assets of about 27k in gold, shares, cash.
4 years ago we had a 44k mortgage after putting in 11k cash for the deposit on our 55k house.
so we're pretty much debt free if we choose to pay off the mortgage. no pensions or kids though
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Once upon a time in the USA, it was illegal for private investors to hoard gold. I think this was the case even in the early 1970's. You could be heavily fined and even imprisoned for possessing it.
If things go really tits up and there is an attempt to reintroduce a gold standard, surely any government could do the same thing, effectively nationalizing all gold currency and bullion reserves. Is this a possibility? What would happen if you had bought gold before the collapse of the financial system?
back then people used the gold coins as money, so they were in effect withdrawing coin from circulation.
Now they'd have to go through peoples jewellery boxes taking their trinkets. I can't see that happening. If the financial system does collapse then those in power may be more concerned about saving their own scrawny necks than stealing peoples gold. If they really want it they can print as many £10 notes as necessary to buy it back at a rate acceptable to both buyer and seller. If no agreement is reached, they can hang on to their paper and I'll hang on to my gold.
Still, if Gordon wants to come and get it he's welcome to bring his own shovel and dig my garden over for a day or two. I'll even make the tea.
Here's an interesting plan though....unleash a credit boom and get every one in debt up to their eyeballs. Then ratchet up interest rates till they squeal, then re-value gold at (say) £30,000 per ounce and offer the opportunity to wipe of the debt in exchange for peoples meagre gold holdings. £10k cc debt? that'll be 30g of 9k gold or their abouts and the debts cleared. That way the bank gets the gold in exchange for writing off non-performing debts that cost nothing to produce in the first place. Who wouldn't offer up their chav sovereign ring to clear the debts once and for all.
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At 3.3 trillion tonnes, the oil shale deposits in the United States are easily the largest in the world. There are two major deposits: the Eastern US deposits, located in Devonian-Mississippian shales, cover 250,000 square miles (650,000 square kilometers). The Western US deposits, the Green River formation in Colorado, Wyoming and Utah, are among the richest oil shale deposits in the world
i wonder what stripping the land in a square 500 miles in both directions would look like.
have a look at the red bit on this map to see how big it is
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I am in the LGPS as are most people in the public sector I would imagine, and we are told that collectively the LGPS is the largest pension fund in the UK worth billions of pounds. It is funded, that is as I understand although I do not claim to be an expert that the money is in there, not to be paid by future generations.
Articles like this in the Times, in my view are propaganda to try and justify the robbing of the pension funds
the suits would like to get away with. Just like the report by the CBI suggesting most people would like to see
the NHS privatised. Yeah of course, like the the school meals provision that now feed kids with 30p worth of crap a day and the cleaning of school hospitals that is so bad now, you are more likely to die of a superbug that you caught while in hospital than whatever you actually went in for.
Here's a few personal hospital anecdotes:
1. Mrs bottletop works in a hospital research lab. The toilets there are the most disgusting places ever and she's not surprised people get ill in hospital considering the state of the facilities and how infrequently they're cleaned. Complaints are made, f*** all's done.
2. Her sister lives in a street in another town with a woman who discharged herself from hospital early after being threatened and shoved by the cleaners for complaining because the toilets were so unclean. She complained to local rag and (surprise,surprise) more cleaners were taken on.
3. Another of mrs b's friends works in radiology at a newly opened midlands hospital. The design of the building is so poor that corpses go down in the lift to the morgue then food is ferried back up to the wards. I dunno whether this is accepted practice but it certainly sounds nasty. Also, the toilets in radiology often "blow back" discharging radioactive wee into the room.
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Got a phone call today that my landlord thinks of selling the house....they lived in it before and moved away, but wanted to keep a foot in the door in case they come back.
They always told me that they will never sell the house..they will keep it as an investment..since prices will always go up
.Some estate agent seems to have told them that their 3 bed detached would be worth 450k...yeah right..there is a house down the road..4 bed detached for 400k and they cant sell it...
They were wondering if we would be interested to buy the house..I told them about the other house and that I think it is never worth that much and anyway..I would never buy it for that price...
Looks like we have to get a new rental...I just hope I don't have to hop from house to house, because all the btl selling their house now...
Is this the beginning of the end...
pfft. set fire to it and leave. By the time it's rebuilt it'll only be worth 300k and you can buy it for that
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Similarly invested to you but I went for goldmoney - felt a bit uneasy about physical. How do you buy it if you don't mind me asking bottletop? Is it straightforward? No fears about security etc?
If you haven't already checked it out look at the 'gold price forecast' pinned thread. There are some pretty bright sparks here who have as keen a sense of what is happening as you'll find (exclude me!!). Excitement here reached a fever pitch not long ago (you'll see that in the thread) - that seems to have cooled off for the moment but I'm sure some are buying.
Watch this space and others like it....
I bought mine gradually over the past 2 years from goldline.com, weightoncoin.com and ebay (making sure feedback is good before buying, naturally). Always had it sent recorded or special delivery and never had any go missing in the post yet (touch wood)
No fears about security - it's very well hidden and I'm tooled up
Also have some silver at goldmoney.
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I'm still buying physical. Passed the 12oz mark today.
Not a lot compared to some people I'd imagine, but probably more than most people in the country
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It was a bit uncomfortable during the job interview because I had some stitches and had to pretend that all was normal.
Soon as those stitches are out I'm sure she'll be able to earn a bit of extra cash
Shock-- New Car Sales Down 14.7% Over The Year
in House prices and the economy
Posted
too true. I've only ever had 3 cars: 1st a pile of crap unreliable mini metro, secondly a dreadfully built unreliable peugot 205, and now a 12 year old toyota mr2 that I've had for 10 years. A bulb blew on it once, about 5 years ago.
No prizes for guessing which manufacturer I'll stick with next time.