Sceptical

I've been thinking about this a lot, especially given the QE extravaganza, Only theory I have come accross which makes much sense is that GBP are required to buy FSTE listed shares - including those of the large, non UK companies which are listed there. So, as 'investors' look to 'seize the buying opportunity of a lifetime' / 'follow the herd and plough in so as not to miss the party', they have to buy GBP, which props up the x-rate. I read somewhere that the Chinese gov't had GBP 12bn ready to make a move on Rio Tinto a while back... So, the logical conclusion is that UK government can print money and give it to its citizens to buy foreign goods with no repercussions, which is nice. Unless companies move off the FTSE, to say, Dubai...

Hasn't most of the printed money just ended up sat in the banks to shore up their capital - it's not in free circulation, so not sure you can make this jump/ Are you serious? Growth maybe, but utterly bankrupt definately, with interest repayments eating up all our 'wealth'. Alternatively, if we just keep printing to pay the interest, a devalued currency leading to higher costs of our imports (i.e. everything). Either way, lower standard of living. There's no way to escape it - time to repay.

That's not really del Boy, is it?!

Put in a low offer - what's the worst they can do? Remember, if you're not embarrassed by your offer, it's too high.

Drip feeding the funds means you smooth out the daily / weekly / monthly movements

I like the idea of a 'basic income' that everyone gets from the State, regardless of income - no means testing, no tax credits blah blah blah - on which it is possible to survive. Any income people earn on top of this is theirs to keep, and does not reduce the basic income. Obviously for those earning a good wage, the income tax they pay will effectively offset the basic income they receive from the state. Seems so simple (and equitable) really, and would cut out an army of beaurocrats who could then get on with something else.

Yeah, but it had stuff that people actually needed and could afford, and had a 'charm' of it's own.

Me too - I was there 1992 - 97. Give me Ronnie Scotts over (yet another) strip club and the old World charm of the Bull Ring over another identikit mall any day.

How so, if QE is happening?

Probably bought with borrowed money, so they'll go bankrupt, the bank will write off the debt and then the taxpayer will fill the hole in the bank's balance sheet with money borrowed by the government to be repaid from the taxes of our children. Super. Then... somewhere down the line.... the land will be sold by the bank to a wealthy spiv at a knock down price, he'll throw up a second rate home and our children will buy it with a nice big mortgage from the bank, to be paid off with what's left of their wages after being taxed to pay back the money the government borrowed in the first place. Have a nice weekend.

Bad choice of word on my part. On reflection I should have perhaps have said he has a sound understanding of macro economics. He got caught up in the whole leverage up and never pay it back 'new paradigm' stuff (as did 95% of the population - present company excluded, of course ) and got far too close to the bankers, believed his own hype when the crisis started and then sold the country down the river in a desperate attempt to cling to power. :angry: But I stand by the fact that he has not screwed it up because he doesn't understand economics, but because above all he is a politician, and a fairly second rate one at that!

We can't / won't do anything without the Yanks say so, and they've got all they need anyway, so why waste such a huge amount of our ever diminishing wealth. Norway / Sweden / Spain etc etc don't have 'independent' nuclear deterrents, and they haven't been assailed in a while... "Punching above our weight" is just another post Empire hangover. Get over it.

I don't think any of them are complete morons. I think Brown is a very competent economist. Unfortunately for all of us, these pale into insignificance next to the fact that, first and foremost, they are all POLITICIANS, and crave power over (and to the detriment) of everything else. "Power is too important to be given to the people who want it" and all that...

My (now) wife bought a place like this in a nice part of South London a few years back (1 bed loft conversion, sloping rooves everywhere, squat shower etc) - it was fine to live in as we were young people and spent most of our indoor time horizontal anyway. Bought Oct 2002 for 155k She sold up in Dec 05 for 167k when we went to see a bit of the World - thank ****. What a millstone it would be now - I would pay no more than 100k for it today.

You may judge the counterparty risks to be the same (failing government vs failing bank), but the price risk is definately on the side of bonds, whereas a pound will be a pound forever...

Looks like they all swapped suits for the photo.

So, if 'we' (the British taxpayer) wanted to do the right thing and pay off our debts in say 5-10 years, what does it take? How many public sector jobs have to go, and how much does basic rate income tax / VAT have to rise? I appreciate that cutting spending and raising taxes has a knock on effect to reduce tax revenues and overall 'output', but since that is impossible to model, lets assume all things remain equal for the sake of argument and simplicity. I'd be very interested to find out these figures, and if I was in opposition politics I would be making people aware of this NOW, since the current bunch obviously refuse to do so.

As someone who is not in HR, but gets involved in recruitment for one of the big accounting firms, I can say that in my experience the 'best' CVs don't always come with the best people. Candidates fall into rough categories: Girls (not to be sexist, but this is my experience) who have great grades through (excessive) study, but no social skills or life experience Guys (not to be sexist, but this is my experience) who have average at best grades, good record of employment / work experience *(via Dad) and rather inflated opinion of themselves People who have written (or have had written for them) a bunch of corporate 'buzz words' on their CV but have no idea what they mean Genuine bright hard working interesting graduates of both sexes Unfortunately our HR people filter all applications first, and so I can't help feeling that a lot of the best candidates (may not be the best school / Uni / experience, but bright and keen) don't get past the first hurdle as they don't have A*s and internships at their fathers workplace - our loss, and ultimately theirs too I suppose. But that's the problem if 50% of 21 year olds have degrees - you have to filter, and the easiest way is by academic grades, which ultimately may have no bearing on performance in a job.

What about cumulative equity? I like the idea of 'rules of thumb', but this one seems to miss a vital piece of the jigsaw - by the time someone is buying the 'average' house, they have accumulated (or been gifted through inheritance etc) a decent chunk of equity. On these figures, equity would be 40k which seems reasonable, perhaps even a bit low...

How?

Don't you think you owe it to the society you live in to put something back... I know the current government have pisssed it all up the wall for the past few years, but we've all got to chip in somehow, however distasteful. If everyone does this = no tax revenue = spiralling debt and no public services = country fcuked beyond belief... I also expect it's not as simple as you may hope - I thought that UK corporation tax was levied depending on where the underlying business takes place. I appreciate you are mobile as you have an online business, but I expect HMCE would look at where you live / work and if that's in the UK, you'd be taxed.

It's a misconception that computers 'solve' problems, no matter how fast they are. Computers do what they are told, very quickly, they do not 'think' or 'solve'. You could ask a computer to predict how long the World's oil will last, say. But you have tell it how to work it out (we have this much in the ground and we use this much a day and there is this probability that this much more will be found), and then it works it out, quickly. But if you don't tell it what to do, then it is less than useless. And I don't quite understand what "previously untought of problems will find easy solutions" means, no matter how hard I think.

USA without guns...

It's used to make margarine isn't it?

"You don't get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate". C'est la vie.