betterToDo

Something to do with money, wasn't it?

have you really thought that through? What are you expecting, fiat collapse and governments the world over declaring a return to the gold standard? I agree thats what "should" happen, but just can't see it. What do you do when golds at $20000, sell it? If gold is where the wealth is, those in power will screw them for it.

No, I think my sister put me forward as some expert when he was talking about buying it on the basis that I "have a bit".

Undefined, the property developing fell through and all I know is he seems to have a lot of spare time to spend chasing after my sister. He was either oblivious as to the reasons the property thing didn't work out or had deluded himself that he was just unlucky, but I didn't push the point (just sat there thinking it with an irritatingly smug look on my face). As for spotting bubbles, back in 2005 when I bought my first gold I'd say it was considered fairly "obscure" amongst at least the people I know. Now its gradually becoming anything but, not just canary boy, even my mother said one of her friends (dotty old ladies) had been raving about gold. Whens that crucial tipping point though, is impossible to tell. Doubts constantly plague my mind, the whole "is it a new paradigm?" thinking... but somehow I don't buy that. But neither do I buy that fiat is going to do anything other than slowly sink into oblivion. I hate being invested in gold. The higher it goes, the more it validates my fears about the currency risk and the reasons I bought it in the first place, but if it were anything else like shares I'd be considering cashing in and dumping it. Its bizarre, its the one investment I have I'd feel much happier losing money on. As soon as the cat comes home wearing a gold chain that's it, I'm out.

Funny you should say that. Yesterday my sister rang me about this guy she knows who wants to know about buying gold with the proceeds from the sale of a house he inherited. I've held some for quite a few years. The fact its this guy in particular makes me nervous. He gave up his job to become a property developer in 2007. Talk about a canary..

I have a spot in the audience tomorrow and am in the process of picking my question. If any of you have a particularly excellently formulated question you would like asked (needs to be real short, and related to some major topic in the news to get any chance), please voice it. In general I intend to go for one around bank bailouts, lisbon treaty, or professor nutt. Ideally I would relate it to housing but I dont know if theres been a big enough headline this week on that to get it referenced. If you have any suggestions need them asap!

I'm sorry are you all mentally ill? Perhaps you just need a break. The dollar is not a person. They might go up, they might go down. So thats how markets work is it? They move to fill a... what? a "gap" that was there in the past? So the Dow has a consciousness and behaves a bit like polyfilla. Ok. Doesn't want to? I'm sorry, WTF? They may not be ready? WTF? Are they emotionally unprepared?!? Staring at patterns in historical prices expecting the future to jump out at you is akin to staring at ****ing tea leaves. Ask yourselves, do you really have a ****ing clue whether its helping? NO. You don't. You just want to believe you do. And, as for personifying indexes or financial instruments, thats just plain moronic. What do I thinks going to happen? I'm expecting gold to throw a birthday party, the FTSE to get jealous, the Dow to have a midlife crisis and oh look at this bump in prices that happened on June 26th, that indicates to me an emotional fallout with the S&P (shes such a slag). As for their values, I expect them to go up at some point in the future. Unless they go down of course. They may do both. At some point.

Usual nonsense. Theres a grain of truth in there nothing more. My issue is less with the currency, more with the tax system which I needn't describe I'm sure. An inflating currency would matter less if we could move our store of wealth between assets without taking a shearing in the process, and if we weren't therefore also taxed on the amount it inflates. As for being forced to do anything being a type of theft, what a load of bull. Start from the beginning and work up: your parents force you to do things. Now I can't speak for everyone's parents, but a lot of those things are in your interests, although you don't necessarily perceive them to be. Does the obvious fact that your own personal desires aren't always in "your" best interests (consider what that really means) suddenly stop when you reach 21, by when you're somehow all knowing and all seeing? Is it only your parents, or perhaps others too? Do you get no benefit whatsoever from any of it? I would suggest it depends who is doing the forcing, and how that matches with your own aims, but what are your own interests really? If you see them as completely independent of everything and everyone around you, then you'll come up with that kind of statement you've made there. However the worlds not as simple as that. A lot of what the "state" does is nothing other than theft, but not everything. Some of its actually in your interests. Whether you perceive it to be or not is frankly irrelevant, and anyone who starts rattling on about being born with some imaginary right to be left alone needs to have a long hard rethink.

lifes too short.

+ a few trillion

SWINDLE! :angry: Look at the language, and moreover, look whos saying it so you know who not to trust in future (not that we did before). They start by saying it is about protecting and "empowering" the consumer. BULL! There are token words of protest from the industry. BULL! What are they actually going to do? Give power to the borrowers? NO. More power to the LENDERS. This is about eroding the right to privacy of the borrower. They are handing, as a "punishment", more obligation for assessing the borrower's ability to pay to who? The LENDER. This simply detracts further from the responsibility of the lender. These rules will simply mean the borrower has to basically be strip searched and have their life scrutinised by who, anyone with a vested interest? Oh yes, the lender. The lender who's profit will come from stuffing as much debt down the borrower's throat as they can actually handle. This helps them find that limit more accurately. It is akin to a life insurance company wanting to know every detail of your medical history. Who's interest is that in? Let the lender reduce their risk, and their profits will increase. Oh what a great response. I feel ****ing empowered now. SCAM! BLEAH! AGH!

Seen and read enough on this topic to know yes, the banks are screwing society in general, a bit like a parasite on its host. Looking at the report in this thread, the banks could literally openly be saying "yes, we're screwing you, so what?", and thats the bottom line. Doesn't matter one bit what we say, we have no power here. Who DOES have the power to stop them, and why won't they wield it? Is it that nobody does actually have the power, or the will, anymore? For me the question over all these bonuses isn't what they do with these giant pots of money, its where they got that money and what they did to deserve it.

Forecasts of sterling doom generally appear *after* drops. The time you want to be selling your sterling is when its running at highs not lows, even if this is counter to instinct. Who knows, maybe this time it is different and it will sink continuously into oblivion, but.. well.. heard that a few times before (always after drops, funnily enough).

I really hooked into the problem with big government bit, they were my thoughts exactly, just wish I wasn't now too cynical to believe a word. Still, it was a lot better than having him stand there spouting the opposite. Even if he reduced it by 1% that would be worth voting for by comparison, so for once I wasn't actually shouting at the screen and thats a real plus in my book. If it was ... the other guy... speaking I would just turn it off I get too irritated. None of them are really going to make a fat lot of difference in reality, but christ, just give us anything other than... holy crap, can't even bring myself to say his name these days.

But you're mistaken. Bets are actually pretty honest, because both outcomes are clear. My parents did not punt their house away in the hope of making a fortune. They were not aware what was at risk. In fact they were deliberately diverted away from seeing it. Ironic that you mention a bookmaker. If you want to talk about favourites, what the bank has done is place a bet on it. If it loses, they win. If it wins, they win. Those proceeds come out of the mortgage holder's pockets. Sorry thats just patronising and mildly insulting but feel free. I'm not sure how they woudl have "won" the gamble mind. Its not just about the way the equity changed hands. There are a great many other details you're completely unaware of before having your nice self righteous rant. No, they weren't greedy, and they have always paid every debt they've had, as I've been brought up to do also. You completely miss the point in a particularly arrogant sounding manner.

No, I'm afraid thats not true. The deception was based on the concept that the banks would make money, and hey, the homeowners would have a more valuable asset anyway. What was hidden (very deliberately, read the documentation I'll dig it out if you wish), was the manner in which equity would swap hands. And yes, this was against a background in recent history when prices had done little. If you think the banks had no idea what was coming even back then I would suggest you're naive in that belief. They certainly knew a damn sight better than my parents. No they wouldn't. If house prices had halved, the bank would have eaten most of the equity of the house that way too as the loan value wouldn't reduce. The banks had a zero risk, two way bet, win either way. They sold them off as securities, which have made them and others "profit". That "profit" was the only asset my mother owned, and I resent the suggestion she "gambled" it. She was duped out of it by some greedy and deceitful people. I am hoping the justice system will act to protect her, if only in principle. I discovered the nature of the contract as my father lay in hospital dying of cancer and I took over his finances. He died still believing he had left my mother secure in her old age, I never told him the truth, that he had been robbed and her future was now in jeopardy. I've put the money up myself to sue those swindling *******, and to try to protect my mother's security in his absence. No they didn't. It was sold as an "alternative type of mortgage" compared in every way to a standard one, that "would" turn out to be slightly cheaper over the course of the loan than the many other perfectly satisfactory products available at the time. Many examples were given quoting perfectly standard rates. It was not a gamble. In the case of my parents, they went into the bank they trusted and in which my dad knew all the staff by name, and who had dealt with their original mortgage. They just asked them the best way to borrow a small amount against the house, and got this product royally rammed down their throat. Ironically, they needed the money to maintain the house (thatched), so it got spent actually protecting the very asset thats been stolen. There was no real upside, and no gambling buddy. They did however make the mistake of trusting the bank. Why not go to an independent advisor? Having banked with them for so long, that bank and its staff were the people they trusted when it came to their money, not strangers. I can forgive them for that, they knew not what they did. Well there you're talking about a fine line. What if this contract meant all the equity (rather than most of it) belonged to the bank, would that be okay? Many of these people are elderly (the 15000 or so sold were targetted deliberately at the grey population), many aren't particularly well educated financially. Is that ok? The banks managed to get them to sign so fair cop? I disagree. Theres a difference between expensive and extortion. The court will decide where that difference lies. I would certainly prefer they do that than the banks or their so called "regulators".

Thankyou for your replies. So its basically impossible in this country to have a fixed rate for the full term of your mortgage without getting done over?

I can think of the opinions of more than a few crackpot dictators that have had really quite a major affect on reality for a great many people. I think often they were unable to "work around" them too. Start there, work backwards, then admit you're talking nonsense. In Roman Britain, they cut the coins into smaller pieces when supply was limited. The Romans also spent a lot of well documented effort degrading the metal content in their coins like everyone else, especially towards the end.

I am the son of one of those people, and whilst I clearly carry heavy bias, as objectively as I am able to state it: Having full visibility of the documentation, context, and beliefs that were left with my parents before, during, and after they were sold this disgrace, these mortgages are far, far worse than they sound even there.

During my more fun-filled evenings, I sometimes try to consider what best to do with my money (I know, I'm out there). I research many options, including buying a house (no I won't but all options are considered!). I'm curious about amortization rates. Very basic question, I'm sure one of you most knowledgeable folk can answer it. In other countries, its not uncommon to find fixed rate mortgages with a term of 15, 25, or even 30 years. However, in this country, it seems the most common is 2 years, with a handful of maybe 5 year ones (at very high rates). What I want to understand is, what happens when you refinance after 2 years? I understand that if you get a mortgage, initially you're paying off mostly interest before touching the principle, the so-called amortization rate. At the end of the 2 years, if you take out another fixed mortgage, does that process start again? To put it another way, if you had one mortgage that lasted 25 years, would you pay less interest than refininancing 12 or so times at the same rate, ignoring factors such as early repayment charges? And as an added question, why is it different here? Why are there such short fixed rate mortgages?

I think nominal prices are almost an irrelevance, its whats on the other side of the equation that concerns me. In real terms, further falls. The extent that manifests in nominal prices depends on the size of the devil's c**k.

Well I for one was interested to hear more behind each of those points.. I feel like scepticus invited everyone in for a debate. We're all perched on chairs nursing a coffee and a crumbly biscuit. Suddenly Injin ran in and did a s*** on the carpet as people with his condition tend to, and the host is now nowhere to be seen.. :angry:

Starkey was quality but can't stand the way the questions always almost literally recount the headlines in the mainstream media from the previous week. Don't people have anything better to ask? Everyone asking questions in the audience just has this gormless look as they parrot their mindless point of debate on a topic picked by someone else. Why can't they ask something more interesting, more awkward, or of their own volition? I gathered vaguely that the BBC pick the most asked questions, and gee, guess which ones they always are? Clear evidence of the extent to which the mainstream media dictates the thought processes and impressions of the general public, and ironically its Question Time, supposedly "of and for the public" that showcases this.

Is this some kind of wind-up?

To complain its difficult to debase the metal without anyone noticing implies you want to transfer the properties of fiat to gold which makes the whole discussion pointless. The point[i/] is that it isn't inflated. It doesn't need to be. If a government tries to take more to spend itself, the value of money remaining with the public or those not lucky enough to benefit from the spending relatively increases in the short term - the exact opposite of what we have now. The idea you need to inflate supply of money is false to start with. If the supply reduces relative to everything else as the economy grows, it simply becomes worth more, part of a natural balancing process that would occur without a fiat system. The "worst" case is that the standardised useful denominations for transactions would become smaller. Prices would fall in booms, and rise in recessions, which is actually what you want.