bottletop

As I understand it, only about half the US debt is held by foreigners. If that is the case and the US does go inflation crazy, 50% of the pain wil be felt by 260 million americans, and the other 50% will be shared out amongst a couple of billion foreigners.

looks like those lovely roly-poly scousers have got another crumbling wreck to lose money on next week.

Ebay is definitely a good place to sell...judging by recent prices of completed sales krugerrands go for up to £350. I don't know what the fees would be - probably 4% of the total perhaps. Put them on buy-it-now at 5% over spot with £5 special delivery and they'd go like hot cakes IMHO I've worked out that the cost of my stash has averaged out at £250 per ounce, so that's nice

You could trry getting krugerrands from www.goldine.co.uk aka Baird and Co. That should cover all of your questions :-) Baird & Co. 137 High St., London E15 2RB. Tel: 0208 555 5217 Fax: 0208 534 3583 -------------------- Baird & Co. 24 St. Cross St., Hatton Garden, London EC1N 8UH. Tel: 020 7 831 2838.

yeah, do lots of cash withdrawls and buy gold for cash. Rack up massive debts then declare bankruptcy, then sell your gold back for cash and enjoy.

I noticed today that www.goldmoney.com now sell silver. I have an account there but never got round to depositing and buying. Might be of interest to some.

how about this? £199 The Lumix DMC-FZ20 features a Leica DC Vario-Elmarit Lens, 12x Optical Zoom, 5.36 Megapixels and a 16MB SD Memory Card is included. The DMC-FZ20's advanced zoom lens takes you all the way from 36mm wide angle to 432mm telephoto. Shoot open landscapes, zoom in on a room interior, or pull a distant object right up close. With most compact zoom lenses, the brightness tends to be lower in the telephoto range. Not the FZ20. Its 12x optical zoom lens delivers f/2.8 brightness all the way to full telephoto. Use the 4x digital zoom together with the 12x optical zoom and you've got ultra-powerful 48x zooming. That approximates a huge 1728mm lens on a 35mm camera. Benefits: Leica DC Vario-Elmarit Lens 5.36 Megapixel CCD 12x Optical Zoom Optical Image Stabilizer Mega Burst Shoot (3fps) 2.0" Monitor With 130k Pixel Resolution 16MB SD Memory Card Histogram Display

Biggest ever recorded. Have a prosperous 2006 everybody LONDON (AFX) - LONDON (AFX) - The UK recorded its biggest ever current account deficit of 10.2 bln stg in the third quarter, driven by a wider trade in goods and services gap, official figures showed. The deficit is the highest since records began in 1955, the office for National Statistics said. Analysts were expecting a 7.8 bln stg shortfall, though the gap for the second quarter was revised down substantially to a 1.4 bln stg deficit from the previous estimate of 3.1 bln stg. The statistics office said the third quarter deficit is equivalent to 3.4 pct of GDP, up from 0.5 pct of GDP in the second quarter. This is the highest rate since the fourth quarter of 2000. The UK has now recorded a current account deficit for every quarter since the third quarter of 1998. On a geographical basis, the ONS said the UK recorded a 7.5 bln stg deficit with the 25-nation EU, compared with a 5.8 bln stg shortfall in the previous quarter. Meanwhile, the current account deficit with non-EU countries was 2.7 bln compared with a surplus of 4.4 bln stg the previous quarter. The total deficit on trade in goods in the third quarter came in at 17.0 bln stg, equivalent to 5.6 pct, the highest since the fourth quarter of 1974. The trade in services surplus fell to 2.9 bln stg in the quarter from 5.0 bln in the previous quarter, largely as a result of the of the 1.9 bln stg insurance claims related to Hurricane Katrina.

according to today's telegraph there may be a couple of months pension money not paid in to the pension fund as well.

Isn't what is important the rate at which the money supply is increasing, not the rate at which a basket of consumer goods varies in price? M3 in the UK increased by about 10% last year, so presumably you'd need a return of >10% to maintain your spending power. Inflation is after all a monetary phenomenon, the increase in CPI just reflects that (badly)

I'll second the halifax sharebuiler as a cheap and easy method - though you don't have to make monthly deposits. There are some shares you can't buy (GBS) for example, but on the whole it's good.

an interesting sunday morning read. http://www.howestreet.com/story.php?ArticleId=1700

15k overpaid on mortgage (no point saving and being in debt) 5k cash isa 3k gold/silver bullion £500 gold mining shares mrs has about 8k in cash isa. mortgage of 25k, no other debts.

I, and quite a few people I work with, haven't bought a CD,DVD, or PC game for years....you pay for your broadband and everything you could ever want or need is on edonkey for free.

Mrs bottletop put an advert on her work's noticeboard advertising a spare 14" telly we had...for £15 Guy comes round the next day willing to pay the full amount. He only had a tenner, a bit of change, and a twenty, so he got it for £11.83 in the end and we were happy with that. So we ordered a pizza...for £13.99 Second hand electronics have virtually no value - I wouldn't pay more than 10-12 for a dvd player, or £150 for a 1 year old £1000 computer.

You say "I pay into my public pension every month"... where does that money you get come from to pay into your pension? The govt. Where does the govt get that money from? The private sector. All the taxes you pay are simply shuffling money from the govt to you in salary, then back to the govt in taxes, then on to the next public employee in salary, then back to the govt as NI contributions, and into your pension pot. But where did it come from?

Privatise the pensions liability. Then get the newly formed private pension organisation to assume all the country's £1.2 trillion debt as a pensions asset at no cost to the banks so they can start lending again from nothing. We can then all delcare bankruptcy and walk away, leaving the public sector emplyees holding worthless pension guarantees. The entire country's personal debt written off, banks with no debts on the books, council tax slashed, and only a few upset council employees. Gotta be worth a shot.

We live in leicester, and our mortgage is only £283 per month...we bought for 55k 5 years ago and have 10 years left to go as we overpay. We could drop the payments down to £180 and revert back to our original term but as we don't overspend anyway there's not much point. Now of course similar homes are £120k+, which we could just about do if we fancied being poor for the rest of our lives. Our 4 biggest joint expenses are mortgage 283 council tax 80ish gas/electric 50 broadband/tv/phone 70 the remaining £267 covers food, house insurance, etc. Including our personal spending of 600 between us, along with the £700 bills means we spend 1300 or so, so I didn't think we were being that tight!! lol. I'm 36 and mrs B is 33 so we've gone through the "p*** it against the wall" stage :-)

mrs bottletop and I put £350 each in a joint account per month and that covers all our bills/mortgage/food. Occasionally we have to put in an extra £50 each to cover TV licence and non-DD bills We both spend 300 per month on "incidentals", leaving around £750 each savings. Both of us earn around 22k, so we live well below our means....spending around 50% of our earnings I guess.

managed to pick up the last 3 sovereigns from weightoncoin.com still priced at £64. Now they start from £66 Going from my excel sheet: Average cost towards the end of 2004 £57 Average cost now £64, about 12% higher. Also, a 1oz ingot from bairds was £239.25 on 14/02/05, now it's £282.75, which I make to be 18% up in 9 months.

Went round my neightbours house for fireworks last weekend and his daugter turned up. She works for HSBC and has to achieve 50 credit card signups a month I think it was. She must have been a bit short as she'd already persuaded her mum and dad to apply for CCs and me and mrs bottletop were next on the list. Just goes to show how pressured bank employees are to encourage indebtedness.

sounds like a bit of a greedy b@stard who thought he'd fleece the next person along few a few grand, believed the cr@p the EA's were feeding him and now wants to whine about it. My heart doth bleed.

He said " I could have declared myslef bankrupt 10 years ago, but I could not stand the shame" Expensive business that pride thing. Look what it's cost him. Lesson number 1 has to be if you're in debt and can't pay, swallow your pride and screw the bank over or they'll have you by the balls forever.

Expect a few more impoverished pensioners to take a stand and end up in prison next year then.

yes lol, a lucky find. I have a few favourite pages set to things like "gold, BIN,newly listed" and I spotted it there. Also (for everyone's info) there's always a lot of chinese ingots on ebay - unless you're one of the rare collectors of silver plated lead ingots...don't bother: got silver?... not silver