Levy process

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/080213-titan-oil.html

This has all been priced in. Nothing to see here.

The most telling thing to me is that in the space of 4 months, the "dark" red bit of the fan has a lower bound roughly equal to the upper bound in the older prediction. So in 4 months, the zone of liklihood has moved so far that it almost has no overlap. I conclude that their model is BALLOCKS.

More funding constraints is lower demand. Demand is a compound of desire and ability to pay. More funding constraints=less ability to pay=lower demand. It's the same thing. End of.

This is probably an anectdotal, but anyway, I've been monitoring central London shop sales on my walk to work over the last couple of months. The sort of shops I'm talking about are posh clothes shops, and high class goods. Back in January, they all had the expected huge sale signs in their windows, albeit offering a surprising 70% off in some cases. What seems unusual this year is that the signs continued on and on for weeks, saying "final reductions", and being replaced with new signs in following weeks saying "final clearance", "great final reductions" etc. I laughed out loud this morning as I walked past one of the shops; at first I thought "ah, the sale signs have finally gone". But no, in the corner of one window was a medium sized sign proclaiming "sale continues instore". Hasn't this been going on rather long this year, or is it just me?

Yep. It has the same levels of public sector non-job employment as Eastern European countries had under communism. And it's funded by the English tax payer. PS. Don't bother to start the Scottish oil ballocks as a reply.

Calm down.

The seasonally adjusted figures are low. This isn't just what happens in the winter. But you know that. You know it is crashing.

I agree to an extent, but once they've had the stress of a collapse in household finances, and either experienced joblessness directly or by proxy through friends and relatives, they'll get with the programme.

That's absolutely correct. And the Tories teed the economy up perfectly, and then Labour was elected. They then enjoyed the fruits of the economy they inherited, and made it look like all their own work by stepping on the gas of government borrowing and a public sector spending pump priming spree. So what we need is for the collapse to be well underway and evident by 2010. Fortunately, it is already! So there won't be any mistakes made as to who wrecked everything.

Yep, that oughta do it! BWA HA HAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

They're getting with the program!

The Tories will replace them, in approximately 2010, and will be in power for at approximately 15 years after that at least, I would predict. The Tories are doing an excellent job. They are playing a very careful game, because they want to be absolutely sure of not getting into power before 2010, because they want the true magnitude of the economic disaster caused by Labour to be fully evident before taking power. We'll have an era from about 2010 to 2017 where the Tories in power will be able to dismiss any criticism by pointing out that it was Labour that wrecked the economy. By then they will have been able to rectify the worst of the damage. Then we'll have a couple of terms of prosperity under the Tories. After that, it's all a matter of whether people become hypnotised by the socialists again or not. People have short memories....

Sure! Look how much attention it's got on here! That's gonna sell papers, get viewers etc. Journalists only don't get paid if nobody cares what they write.

Dogbox, the 0.25% cut won't make any difference. The crash is on. You know it. Everyone knows it. Give over.

No, average Joe Public doesn't understand anything numerical. Average British Joe Public is innumerate. Next question?

So what? How rich is the average Japanese in relation? I "understand" that the Japanese have a lot of money saved up on average, unlike your average cash strapped Brit. Maybe Tokyo is more desirable than London in relation to the rest of the country. You simply can't select statistics like this. Bull arguments at the moment are as thin as some Bear arguments were 9 months ago. Accept it, it's game over for the bull run! You'll be happier when you accept the truth!

So you followed his advice in the past and presumably found it to be good. But now that his advice is contrary to your glass is half full approach to everything, you're wheeling out the laughable platitudes such as "you can't live in a share certificate" as a justification for why you think his advice is wrong. Not only that one, but "what else is there to invest in". Can I ask, are you about to say "Property will fall, but not in my street because it's lovely and loads of people will always want to live there"? I'm begging you now: Do you REALLY believe this, or are you just having a laugh? Do you REALLY lack any grasp whatsoever of the concept of relative effects and why just listing "reasons" doesn't give any clue as to what the net outcome is going to be?

Ah, the old "while there's money on the move, there's money to be made" maxim. Trouble is, like most of those one-liners, they prove and mean nothing really. People will still buy stuff. People will still even borrow money to buy houses. The problem for some, like you perhaps, is that they won't buy such fancy toothpaste, as many matches, or borrow as much to buy houses. Let's see now, what's happened to mortgage approvals recently..... O yes, I remember, they've collapsed. As a more general point, I find it fascinating that when HPI was in full swing, the bulls and neithers were always dismissing bear anectdotals, quite rightly in many cases. But now that the HPC is in getting into gear, and the daily news is a bear fest, folks like you cling on to anectdotals and skewed selective statistics: "I know of a lender who's offering a fab rate", "I know loads of folks still going ahead with house purchases", "People are still buying bread" etc. It really is laughable. Accept it. It's game over for the bull run.

Gosh, is that you telling us how optimistic you are about the future again? Sadly, that isn't going to make any difference to reality, because all the stats are showing that not enough people feel the same. Too bad, eh?

You on the other hand don't sound in the slightest bit touchy, and blurting out that you've been a member longer than somebody else doesn't sound silly at all.

He's pretty clear about what he thinks. No mucking about.

But some people will think it is because of that, and they'll want to buy that newspaper all the more, because it has authority and power, and can not only forsee the future, but actually MAKE IT HAPPEN! So it MIGHT actually be a ploy to sell more newspapers.

What, has the cut been passed on this time?

What evidence do you have for saying that what we face is immensely smaller? There's LOADS of potential bad stuff in the pipe. And the effects of the last few months haven't fed into the figures yet. I know you are a natural optimist, you've said as much many times. But dismissing the very likely trouble that we are only just beginning to experience out of hand is really unjustifiable. Predictions of 10% falls in house prices are going mainstream. Even 35% is entering the mainstream. Let me ask you, do you REALLY HONESTLY believe that general sentiment will be anything like good enough to recreate the recent feverish years of house buying enthusiasm at the end of a 10% fall? I very much doubt it. Maybe people like you would feel that prices "should" go back up at that point. But sadly for you, that doesn't matter. What matters is bulk sentiment. And I'd be amazed if general sentiment was enthusiastically proclaiming that property was a great investment at dinner parties after a year of 10% falls. Or even 5% falls. A year without any growth would put a totally different complexion on the whole thing. People only stretch themselves as far as they have when they think that they are risking being "left behind" by quickly rising prices. If things are flat, there will be far less reason for people to be paniced into stretching their finances. And if the market is falling, the natural pessimists of the population, which again, sadly for you, make up a sizeable portion of potential "demand" will be sitting put, and feeling that they shouldn't dive in to something that could easily turn into a financial nightmare.