GeordieAndy

A blast from the past with this thread but you have linked to a Gmail account inbox

Thanks for the thanks guys:) It's been really quiet on here with a few like me having given up on any epic HPC and have bought (for varying reasons) but I think over the next decade getting the sheeple to wake up via things like this and pooling our collective doomongering on here will help us all get through it

The sellers would be left holding the dirty nappy

I did last month finally - got a nice family home at 2003 prices which is not as low as I expected when I sold to rent but we are all happy.

Brilliant - Max Keiser live on The Daily Politics on BBC2! Thankfully he comes across really well compared to the last time he was on mainstream TV in the UK which was 10 O'clock live from my memory

Yes totally agree. Working lunch used to be a great way to spend lunchtimes when working from home :angry:

Something to cheer the HPC crowd on a Friday night More over at Zerohedge here and some more below: Via Fitch: -London-28 September 2012: Fitch Ratings has affirmed the United Kingdom's (UK) sovereign ratings as follows: --Long-term foreign currency Issuer Default Rating (IDR) affirmed at 'AAA' --Long-term local currency IDR affirmed at 'AAA' --Country Ceiling affirmed at 'AAA' --Short-term foreign currency rating affirmed at 'F1+' The Outlooks on the Long-term IDRs have been maintained at Negative.

When this happens to a house in your street then that really puts the cat amongst the pigeons as the builders will put the house on at a realistic valuation (at least 10% off local agents prices) in my experience to get shot ASAP then that is the new normal. If we had sold our last place 3 months before this happened in our street we would have made an extra 10k I reckon

Try Triodos

I'm also in IT but have been self employed for over 5 years now and feel so much more secure in my abilities to adapt and find new income than those in the 'more secure proper jobs' however you need to be very disciplined and put enough away from the good months for the bad months so it's not for all. Good luck to those changing jobs / careers either by choice or being forced to.

Well said.

Any chance of a brief summary? Will add it to my to do list if it sounds good...

Really interesting article and having spent a little time in China I can really back up a lot of his views especially the 'me culture' of the whole country having millions of "little emperors" due to the one child (boy) policy.

Another pump and dump like Facebook with some good analysis of the initial trading via Zerohedge here

Corrected Agree it's great and eye opening read.

I work across several of my own online businesses / sites that target different areas of the UK economy and it's getting tougher in every one however being self employed for over 6 years now and in 'computing' I'm used to retraining / refocusing every time Google / technology changes things up which is on average every 12 months max Really interesting to hear others take on things though and useful for us all to get a little competitive advantage over the 'normals' out there.

I was 2:1 Gold to Silver but am now 100% silver in terms of my 'other' investments due to needing some cash for a house deposit (I know!) . My reasoning was that I think it's a lot easier to imagine silver increasing by 50%+ again (to $40+ Oz) than seeing Gold go past all time highs through to $2500+ Oz (about 50% gain) in the same time period but obviously you would need to make sure you didn't go above your CGT limits etc when selling again

Sovereigns and other British legal currency coins are CGT free which is something to bear in mind when comparing them to Krugerrands etc I would also check out these for buying: Gold: http://www.hattongardenmetals.com/gold-coins.aspx and http://elminvestments.co.uk/ Silver: http://www.coininvestdirect.com/ Some day you will want to sell some of your stash before the end of days lol and I can highly recommend Coininvestdirect.com as despite mailing high value coins (Special Delivery with upto £2500 per packet) being nerve racking for me they were very professional and offered the best prices by miles.

This is the best Excel one out there imho with versions for both Windows machines and Apple: http://www.locostfireblade.co.uk/spreadsheet/Index.html

That when I sold mine last week to fund a house desposit I did indeed mistime things a little

Great. Thanks for the support You can only do what you feel is right for you and yours at the end of the day.

Understood. I last bought right in the eye of the last financial storm (a repo in 08 /09) and fixed for security at 6.3% for 5 years only to watch Merv go crazy with the printer :angry: This time being a little older and thinking I am a little more financially astute I just can't see them increasing interest rates more than 2-3% from where they are without riots etc so will take my chance and overpay as I go whilst maintaining a savings back up external to 'the system'.

Interested to hear why you would fix for 10 years at above the rates (inc SVRs) are currently? More specifically I am curious to know when can you see interest rates going up by more than 1% from where they are now? I currently have the option of going for a longer term fix but a Natwest SVR at 4% and some savings etc working with the offset means I am going to be paying about 2% for the forseable future...

Don't these terrble construction numbers include all the last minute olympic construction too?