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Bearly Audible

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Everything posted by Bearly Audible

  1. Alternative view: when we finally get the GFC we should have had in 2008, the only tool left for TPTB will be "true" helicopter money, and some kind of debt jubilee for consumer debt might be how they do it. So you might want to maintain some level of consumer debt purely as a hedge against bailouts for the profligate (even if you don't need it). Gotta be in it to win it, right?
  2. Are you now in cash? Aviva platform (my employer's pension provider) seems to offer only bad choices right now. I don't want stocks. I don't want corp bonds because they'll turn into a bloodbath in a debt deflation. Deposit funds are sterling denominated -> Brexit liability. Would really like to be in treasuries right now.
  3. More like a counter-example I admit (OT Klaxon), but wow some of the quotes in this ... https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/oct/31/brutalist-market-flats-at-londons-centre-point-taken-off-market “we see no point in chasing a market that is increasingly detached from reality” ????????
  4. "The bald truth is that just 6% of renters like the flexibility of being a tenant. Most people are renting for one reason – high house prices leave them with no alternative." That there is the real dynamite. Imagine how this dynamic plays out as prices drift down from their peaks and home ownership starts coming into range for more and more of the 94%. Quite the vicious circle for leveraged BTL
  5. Usual tweet from these is picket-of-the-week outside some letting agent or other, but looks like they actually won a case now ...
  6. Not in US financial reporting - that's why the market wets its pants over EPS Ok, try this one - https://variety.com/2018/digital/news/amazon-q1-2018-earnings-shares-record-highs-1202789046/ "Amazon reported $51.0 billion in sales for the first quarter and a net profit of $1.63 billion for the first quarter of 2018" Or: https://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/amzn/financials?query=income-statement
  7. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/26/amazon-earnings-q1-2018.html
  8. Link didn't work for me. In any case, going by the accounts of one of their regional entities is a mug's game - you'll just see what the taxman is meant to see. I'm sure the costs are real enough, but they're booked to Europe precisely to keep the tax bill down in a higher tax region. Harder to obfuscate that stuff at global level. AMZN booked global earnings (i.e. profits) of $2.37bn in 2016. Let's say 25% can be attributed to EU activities, convert to GBP ... I make it £400m.
  9. If it's conspiracy theories you want ... is it pure coincidence that half the western world experiences "visa problems" only a few days after Roman Ambramovic gives up on his?
  10. More evidence (as if it were needed) of the slow-motion carnage engulfing B&M retail ... https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/business/next-boss-lord-wolfson-turns-screw-on-high-street-landlords-ckcf32dzv "Next has started demanding a 'CVA clause' when it renegotiates leases. The clause says Next's rent should fall by a similar degree if one of its neighbours in a shopping centre or retail parade achieves a rent reduction through a CVA"
  11. Chanced upon the DB "Long Term Asset Return" study yesterday (2017 edition), and thought of this thread: http://www.tramuntalegria.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Long-Term-Asset-Return-Study-The-Next-Financial-Crisis-db.pdf Comparison with 2016 edition makes for interesting reading: https://wikileaks.org/berats-box//fileid/40233/17208 2016 edition is long on the "global labour market trends" theory of everything, but that barely comes up in 2017 edition
  12. Coren wins it for me - she just had Starkey wailing "my mother scrubbed floors", priceless
  13. Ah, but it looks like LNG is tracked separately? LNG is up to 636 mcm following recent deliveries from Qatar - http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/04/02/uk-britain-gas-price-idUKBRE93107U20130402 Guess we'll just have to save the popcorn until next time
  14. You could see how this also might be a *cause* of low productivity in the long run (and we have had a long run in the UK). If the employee's share of productivity gains dwindles to zero, the *incentive* to be more productive will surely follow.
  15. Sure, the former would seem to be their rationale, but the latter is the reason why they have had the luxury to act on it this time round.
  16. It means: preventing the reallocation of misallocated capital by bailing out leveraged asset holders with low interest rates. Business failure and subsequent reallocation of assets to more productive uses is an essential mechanism of capitalism, and yet we see MSE's trumpeting the low number of business failures and repossessions during the current crisis whilst simultaneously bemoaning the non-recovery in productivity. Doesn't take a genius to spot the connection.
  17. In today's Times, but free to air on his site in abridged form: http://www.economicsuk.com/blog/001832.html Think he must be using these OECD productivity stats: http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DatasetCode=LEVEL Mmm, so nothing to do with zombification by welfare for rentiers then? The print version shows one G7 economy even worse off than the UK. And the winner is... Japan
  18. Friend of ours who is renting is now moving because her current landlord refuses to keep the house in any kind of half-decent nick. Which got me to thinking... What kind of state is the nation's BTL housing stock going to be in relative to owner-occupied in another 5 or 10 years? There must be thousands of arriviste amateur landlords out their who jumped on the BTL bandwagon between 2000 and 2007, borrowed a bit more than they needed so they could gut and renovate, and have since either just about covered the interest on the debt or else trousered the difference and spent it on holidays or flat-screen TVs. But how many of these amateurs are putting a bit to one side for the next major overhaul? In other words, how many are depreciating the value of the initial renovation in some conservative (small 'c') way? And how many are so leveraged/greedy they can't/won't afford what - to an owner-occupier - looks like essential maintenance? This is of course the familiar model of bubble-era private equity - leveraged buy-out, then sweat value out of the asset until only ashes are left. Same future for UK BTL stock?
  19. An enjoyable read. I particularly enjoyed learning about the concept of EROEI and trends therein. So Peak Oil not cancelled, just postponed?
  20. Oh that's disappointing, I thought this was going to be about how the UK economy rewards the idle (speculators and benefits scroungers alike) and taxes the productive. So here's an aspect of economic morality I've been trying to figure out lately: it seems obvious to me that productive hard work = morally good, speculative profit-taking and other unearned income (rent?) = morally bad. So far, so oversimplified. But where does that leave 'investment'. Investment seems both good and bad, good because it is an enabler for productive hard work, bad because the benefits can accrue to the investor without the need for hard work (which is not to say that investors are never hard workers). Why do I think this is important? Because if we can't tell the difference between productive hard work and speculation/rent-seeking (because 'investment' muddies the waters) there isn't really any hope of incentivising our economy in the right way to get us back on track.
  21. I've experienced the Groupon pitch from the supply side. In a nutshell: offer your product or service at below-cost and we will give you all the custom you can handle, and then some. It's baffling to me that any business ever fell for this, however desperate, particularly as the way the offers have to be structured makes it very hard to change your mind if you get swamped by takers.
  22. (NB: US data...) So a 4-fold increase since 1990 - would love to see the same data for the UK This is from the Mike Norman blog: http://mikenormaneconomics.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/landlords-are-doing-extremely-well.html And some commentary: http://www.nextnewdeal.net/rortybomb/rental-income-percentage-gdp-too-damn-high-and-households-severely-burdened-housing-costs
  23. 'Bubble-seeking' - like it, neatly sums up what has gone wrong with the system, namely that the Big Asset Bubble has diverted investment from productive to unproductive uses, resulting in an immoral economy that seeks to reward the already-wealthy better for sitting on their arses than it rewards those who would otherwise be the engines of progress. We * need* a Big Reset
  24. http://buzz.money.cnn.com/2012/06/14/cyprus-we-need-a-bailout/ Securitisation of gas revenues in return for Russian/Chinese bailout now being floated as alternative to Euro bailout. That should set the cat among the 'crats - what's the betting Cyprus now gets a Euro bailout on *very* favourable terms? Way to negotiate, Cyprus!
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