FTBagain

Those wheelbarrows are defective. No wheel locks

I have worked in the defence industry for years. Models used to get developed and produce very effective results. These models were well understood and it was possible to maintain an understanding of how it all worked, especially the built in assumptions. But of course someone always wanted more. So the model would get developed further until one day it produced a result that some wag would question. Then everyone would suddenly realise that no one really understood how the model worked anymore. It had grown too big. Suddenly convidence would evaperate and the model would fall into disrepute. Computer modelling is danagerous if you do not understand the internal workings of the model.

You're kidding. Please tell me you are kidding. Risk management, or rather the complete lack of it, leads us to mania. This is going to be the mother of all hangovers...

9,000 out of an estimated 75,000 quote by the CML, and those idiots nearly always under estimate. HPC back. Breath easy guys. Nice find Confounded. Highlights the spin this government will employ to con a nation.

From the supporting notes. Debt slaves for the rest of their natural... Reminds me of those US ARM thingies. This is the killer IMO Firstly, what does the word loss mean. The mortgagee goes bust. Secondly, the government is only guaranteeing the deferred bit. What about the rest of the interest payments and the principal. Looks like the banks will get left with a lot of outstanding debt, and this at a time when savers are pulling £billion out of the banks (see my previous post). None of this is helping the banks balance sheets. The devil really is in the detail, and they haven't even worked it all out yet...

I got to about page ten of this thread so sorry if this has been posted since. This artical was posted on the news blog earlier today. http://www.citywire.co.uk/adviser/-/news/m...8560&Page=1 Basically it states that UK savers are pulling their money out of banks is record amounts (as of October). They are currently buying Treasury Bonds and Nation Savings products. This indicates to me that the UK savers are loosing faith in their banks big time! This means less money for the banks to lend out. Therefore, no end to HPC... Now at the moment the money is flowing in the direction of the UK government who then effectively give it, and whatever else they can borrow, to the banks. Sooner or later UK savers are going to realise they are being duped by the government and in fact there is a real chance of the UK government defaulting because of the huge and rapidly increasing national debt! When they realise that they will pull their money out. (God only Knows where they will put it because by then nowhere will be safe given that the US, Eurozone and even China are all heading into trouble.) The point is when savers start to pull their money out you will know that the UK state is broke. Debt must be paid back. The markets will catch up with the debtors eventually. Even governments.

As we import 40% of our food, guess what? More inflation.

I've been saying this for months now. Inflation will rise once competion is reduced. We have seen it with mortgages already. Although i am surprised to see it with consumer electronics as I am not aware of any major players going down in the UK as yet. May be there are so few customers that competion is just a waste of time... i wonder what this months inflation data is like?

We should not get worried by one or two months fgures. Markets rarely (never) move in smooth curves or straight lines for very long. I read somewhere that all those fabbled suicides of the 1929 crash were actually those who jumbed back into the market early thinking they had been clever. We will see if these new buys are being clever or suckered in, in due course...

It is worse than that. Because the freeholder, usually a property company these days, wants to give themselves a long term income they frequently put lock-in clauses in the rental agreement. So if a company expands and wants to move to a bigger office or factory they have to find another one to take over their current site. However, they cannot just hand over the lease to the new company. They have to enter into a new lease, ineffect becoming landlords themselves. The company I work for was in a leasing chain of about four of five companies... That is a lot of administerative overhead that most companies could do without right now.

Chasing market share. Too much credit in effect encouraged lots of competion by allowing those companies that should have failed to unnaturally survive. Profits are, of course, what it is all about, but profits are made by a combination of margin and volume. Margins are (and have been) squeezed by competion. Falling convidence will see volumes fall. Those more efficient and probably less indebted compancies will survive because they will have slightly better margins. Once the week have gone under (either because they were ineffecient or their interest payments were too high, squeezing their margins) the survivors will be able to start to rebuild their margins on lower volumes. Inflation.

Ouch, that would have been massively deflationary if it had been allowed to run its course - mass unemployment. Assuming that the Fed and others are successful there is still the question of how inflation can exist in the prescence of falling confidence. The only thing I can see is exemplified by what is happening in banking at the moment. The banks are all busily rebuilding their profit margins, but they can only do that if competion is removed. In the case of banks, it seems fear has effectively snuffed out competion. In the real economy it will be bankrupties that will reduce competion, allowing the survivors to put up their prices. So the CB will in effect helping the big companies that can issue bonds, to the disadvantage of the small medium enterprise and stoking inflation in the medium to long term IMHO.

One would have thought so, but I think many companies take out short term loans against long term contracts. For example, if a company has a two year contract (for whatever) but will not see any payments from the customer until some interim delivery is made after six months, the company will need to find cash to tide it over until the customer pays up. Assuming the customer pays on time as well.

Like many I am trying to determine whether we are in for deflation or inflation or stagflation. Seems to me that the Fed directly buying commecial paper is a great way to get money directly into the real economy because companies pay our wages with the money raised by issueing company bonds (commercial paper). http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/trea...&dist=msr_7 Giving money to the banks just sees that money get tied up on the said banks balance sheets. Giving it to companies directly means that companies will not suffer from crash flow problem quite as soon as it would otherwise, allowing them to keep paying their workers for longer, hence ensuring money continues to flow into the economy. Hence inflation. Seems to me that the CB around the world now have a model for reinflating the real economy, not just banks balance sheets. Wonder how long it will be before other CB follow suit?

They'll have time expired by tomorrow

Is it just me or are the markets really in such a state that any news is an excuse to panic? If they have achieved this higher state of panicked existence, the CB and politicians might as well pour themselves a large G&T, sit back and join the rest of us in watching the fun. The best policy would in fact be to stop moving and stay very quiet (David Attenburgh like). May be, just may be the lesser spotted investor will stop running around in ever decreasing circles just long enough for us to get a glimpse of this rapidly becoming endangered species.

Could be a long wait then!

A thought struck me late last week whilst watching the US pass the Wall Street Bail Out. I appreciated and agreed with the protesters who had the signs saying "Jail not Bail". However, there glorious leader did eventually pass the bailout plan claiming that if they did not the system would collapse take Main Street with it. Now it occurred to me that both camps have a valid point, but they were not quite clear about it. The fact is we need the banks, if they fail we are all potentially in trouble. However we do not need to current bankers (and as Rothschild said on New 24) we do not need as many banks as we currently have, either. So it seems to me that what we need is a way of bailing out the few important banks (whichever they are), letting the rest go down (by take overs or whatever) and then identifying those irresponsible bankers who helped get us to this point in the first place (not forgetting that there are many others who contributed as well). But how? That is the question.

Runs on insurance companies... never saw that one coming. This is getting to be a bad start to the 21st century.

Yeh! The smart one who had just bought a milllion bucks worth of stock on a short term loan. If he was quick he'd have made enough to tell is boss where to stick the loo bush.

The British army is barely 100k strong. If the government looses control they'll be hard pressed to get it back. Oh yeh, nearly forgot, its fighting stength is based in Germany, when its not on deployed ops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Remaining strength in the UK is probably less than 50k and most of them will be in training / support roles.

Looks like a bit more of that - Lot went for 166 ish guide price was 130k.

That's to come IMHO, but if I understand this right the banks provided their own assurances as to the value of the product. Hence they are being sued.

Middle England ! 10 bedrooms or 6 bedrooms! That's not middle anything. B***dy muppet. They were well off before this house HPI took off. They over stretched themselves. Got Greedy! Middle England! 3 bed semi or detached that's middle England. Muppet. Not often I rant, but that artical deserved it. Middle England AAAAAHHHHHH! :angry: