Sceptical

My advice would be not to even considering buying in any city you haven't lived in for at least a year. You may not like it!

Why would giving these people gainful employment at the 'expense' of Chinese slave labour be sad for humanity?

To get the full picture you should follow them home and spend 6 months examining the contents of their bins.

Because the 10 pounds is for coffee and a newspaper, and all their money is somewhere where it doesn't earn 0.01% per annum.

and so is the private sector.... that's life I'm afraid.

Good opportunity for a cheeky offer...

Rediculous scaremongering by Tiger who seems to have googled "safety box theft" or some such and posted the links. If you bought your metal legitamatly, much better in one of these places than in your garden. edit: Apologies for diabolical spelling

West Berlin =ageing population in expensive houses East Berlin = young hipsters in expensive flats Berlin to live = safe, cheap(ish), fairly dull

I live in central Moscow and rent a nice 70 sq metre 1 bedroom apartment, leafy area, 30 minutes walk from Kremlin. 55k roubles (about GBP 1200) a month, which is better than in London. Prices for purchase are very high though, but I wouldn't recommend buying anyway as an expat - the right of enforcing your property rights could vanish at any time for any reason. When you come to visit, estate agents (who are shysters just like anywhere else) will show you the most overpriced places. Check out www.cian.ru (need to be able tounderstand Russian) or www.budgetmoscow.com for more realistic places / prices. This is a great city, and I would advise anyone to try it!

This is the best link ever posted on HPC. I would pay to see a debrief with Laura Tyson.

If you think the market moves based on what 'men on the street' do after reading the papers, you are doomed as an 'investor'.

We are all going to die, sooner or later.

If they fire up the printing presses, which to me seems the only way of 'saving' the banks and all who sail in them, then spend most of your cash on something you'll enjoy, and use the rest for a minimal deposit on debt backed property (!). If you don't think that will happen, I'd keep your cash as cash.

The more I read, the more gobsmacked I am that they are getting away with this. Banksters, fine. They use all sorts of fancy jargon to confuse everyone, and at the end of the day they always have lots of (your) 'money'. This is transparent theft, by people with nothing but over-valued property and good connections. Thank Allah we live in a democracy, so that these things never happen. Edit: updated rant.

This seems to be a textbook case of the well heeled / well connected ******ing over the common man. I can understand why this isn't mainstream news, but this is the stuff of real revolution isn'it??!!

Better to swap your cash and some debt for a really big house, if this is how it plays out. My fear is that the graph on the front page could show we are in a (nominal terms) bear trap with prices of everything to skyrocket on global QE madness...

I've lived in Russia for the past few years, and talked with a fair few people about how it went in the 90's debt crisis here - something like this: 1. Devalue currency by defaulting / printing your way out 2. Bedlam - every man for himself in a barter system 3. Knock a few zeros off the currency 4. Wait for the 'markets' to forget about point 1 5. Resume 'normal' operations Winners - owners of property and other hard assets, and distributors of life's essentials (food, clothes) Losers - everyone else, especially savers Obvious big advantage they have here are the huge natural resources to fall back on, but the endemic corruption means that, in my opinion, that has only helped so far. The moral of the story to me is that people will find a way through whatever shit is thrown at them by their politicians/banksters, but the key is realising that taking some pain is unavoidable, and taking it early.

How much taper relief do they get for 1000 years?

I wish Rightmove had a comments feature.

But, but, but you TOLD us that CGT would be 40% with no taper...

How do you know - taper relief details have not yet been announced.

I think it's morally obscene to argue that you shouldn't put taxes such as CGT up as people will find a way to dodge them. What this means is that the tax burden has to be shifted onto people who cannot afford to avoid. People paying 40% income tax may feel like they are subject to a shake down, but the vast majority pay. If you've made capital gains, pay your taxes at the rate the government decrees, or go elsewhere. And we all know the gov't will keep taper relief for genuine, value adding, long term investment. Short term speculators will pay the 40% tax, and why not?

No, but I expect income tax evasion is very relevant to most of them, but that's another story.

Well, the report suggests a strong correlation in the US... but for arguments sake, lets assume this is true in UK also. Could the reason for this be that when the rate goes up, affected taxpayers make more effort to avoid / evade the tax? If so, where does this leave us?