Maximus Skepticus

Stephen King's? ? Nooo...engineering/ technical....too specialist....major outsourcing meant in-house restructured and contract side won...at diminishing margins...

2008 redundant.......6 years 'self employed'....it truly is amazing what is constituted as self-employed by HMRC. The dead wood wasnt cleared out at all when it should have been....this time it will, and those companies that used free bond issuance to buy its own shares will be the first to go to teh wall. Not wishing pain on others, but everyone has had plenty of time to see it coming...more fool them otherwise, credit is no excuse to do nothing imo

Bring it on...I'm already unemployed....renter scum, saving for a humble abode, 10 years in teh making. 5% interest rates should be a friggin PROMISE... but all people give a sheisse about is freedom of movement....hope it brings down Global finance too.....make my Bitcoin/shinys worth something......dont worry peeps its just the reverse transfer of wealth while we've seen complete greedy ***** speculate mummy and daddys money on the bicks and mortar innit... Not bitter much lol...Jan 2019 is going to be VERY VERY interresting...

I like to think I can work out logic quite well....whoever wrote this however may need lessons....lol “It’s a buyers’ market, so you should be able to get the kind of discount that shields you from the risk of further drops in the market.”

Yeah...it must be all those middle management positions getting 10% + a year lol......BS What percentage are they of employed ranks? Some listed the links to how its all fudged....cant believe this keeps cropping up. 10.Unemployment Things you need to know about unemployment Unemployment measures people without a job who have been actively seeking work within the last four weeks and are available to start work within the next two weeks. http://www.oecd.org/migration/mig/keepdoorsopentomigrantworkerstomeetlong-termlabourneedssaysoecd.htm Looking on teh OECD page....some fascinating charts on average of every 3 people in the UK...1 is FT employed, 1 PT and 1 not working..... So 3.1% of £10/hr....is.....not 70k/year LOL

...was kidding...but then again rrich people wouldn't live in a 'slum' like that either (not kidding). Pseudo-rich who stumble across a mightly large mountain of cash thrust upon them by the bank...may well do ?

Hahhaaa....welcome to the south-west London double bubble....;-)...All those exclusive KT code areas are highly sort after didn't you know...it's the schools innit. The higher they climb, the harder they faaaaaaal.......

This time its different ;-), can kicked down the road, unlimited QE, we had a nice blip at the start of the year.... Trump Mid-terms fall-guy...Brexit symptomology, and just when the crooks at the IMF wanted more free money. Don't mind me....just waffling... 10 years.......if we dont get the mean reversion this time, we must be really close.....thats a long time to get prepared....word on the street is it could be the biggie, with bond chaos etc. Just need to see if the PPT will step in...

They seem to report real issues from other countries....just another indicator of GFC Part deux really taking off.... https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45442596

+1 although not 'having' my own place makes me feel uncomfortable sometimes

Nothing exciting but Saw this posted on Quora...and thought the effort was worth posting here...and may be appreciated, evaluated and criticised for content or assumption....I anticipate. Same for the UK? Why are most people broke? North American perspective: The root problem that causes most people to be broke isn’t necessarily “overspending”. That topic has been discussed a billon times over. We eat out too much. We buy too many clothes. We upgrade our phones too often. We go on too many vacations. We get it. The root problem is WHY we’re able to consume to excess in the first place… and the answer to that is credit. It’s very easy to become broke when the money you spend isn’t yours to begin with… because any money you do come into, you’ll automatically owe to someone. Credit is toxic because it enables money to magically appear out of nowhere, in a way that is accessible to you for monthly payments that seem more affordable than the actual amount you’re borrowing. Don’t have $20,000 in the bank for a brand new car? It’s okay! Just finance it for $300 per month over 72 months. Much easier to stomach spending $300 right away than $20,000 once you finally save it up, right? Similarly, you may not have $500 in the bank to join your friends on a weekend getaway. But if you put it on your credit card, you can pay it down at $100 or so per month… meaning it doesn’t matter that you don’t actually have the money. Because with credit, you can make decisions as if you do. This is how North Americans think. Money is a largely abstract concept to them, in that the amount of money in their bank account is generally irrelevant to most decisions that involve money. If you’re buying a car, you’ll just make the monthly payments. If you’re doing a renovation, you’ll take a line of credit out on your house. If you’re buying a new outfit, you’ll put it on a credit card and sort it out later. It’s not so much about what you have… as it is about what you have access to. Growing up, I was naive to the way credit was used. I always thought that if a $20,000 car costs $20,000… or if a $1,000 computer costs $1,000, or a $5,000 vacation costs $5,000, then you have to have that money ready to go. Like, if it costs $5,000, you have to have $5,000 in your bank account, don’t you? How else could you possibly pay for it? My brain calculated it as “If I earn $10 per hour, and that computer costs $1,000, then I need to work about 100 hours, or about two and a half weeks full time to buy that computer”. Likewise, I figured that for an adult who earns $30 per hour, they would need to work about 30-something hours to buy it, and that’s just how people bought things. It seemed pretty straightforward… You need time to earn money You need money to buy things Therefore, your ability to buy things is predicated by working the requisite amount of time to save up that money by earning it Then as I saw the spending patterns of adults who I worked with, I knew this was impossible. There had to be something beyond the surface with the way these people spent money. People owned condos, bought lunch every day, came to work in new clothes on a regular basis, went on vacations to exotic places, bragged about the places they went to for dinner, the lot. I could only think one thing… Where the HELL could all of this money possibly be coming from?! Then I began to pay a little more attention, and it all made sense… The condos are bought with mortgages (with the down payment borrowed from their parents, of course) The cars are bought on financing The clothes are bought on credit cards The dinners are also bought on credit cards So are the lunches that they buy every day at work And the vacations are paid for with points that are earned ON the credit cards (so it’s “free”, right?) Notice how the only “actual” funds that they have to support these things, are the payments they are making towards these debts. As in, you use debt to pay for things, and then cash to pay parts of that debt… as opposed to just using cash to pay for the things in the first place. It’s nearly unheard of to simply pay for something with actual money. You’re probably thinking… “Okay, but they have a job... So it’s impossible for them to be broke, isn’t it?” Not really, actually. Let’s go with a $1,500 semi-monthly paycheck. At the end of each month, you’ll have $3,000. Not really “broke”, right? Well, let’s just say you get a lot closer to “broke” when that money gets distributed to your various debt obligations, which are the glue that hold the average person’s life together. Just illustratively… $1,300 to your mortgage/condo fees (which are factored into your mortgage) $300 to your car loan $1,200 (3 x $400) spread across three credit cards that have been run up to the sky buying clothes, gas, parking, meals, and various incidentals. The $400 payment might cover some of this month’s new expenses… but these cards will usually have four or five figure balances from “unexpected” purchases you “had to” make, but “it’s okay”because you “have plenty of room on this card”, and “you’ll start saving money soon and pay it off” just like you said you’d do last year. Remaining account balance after mortgage/car loan/credit cards: $200 Then you’ve got your utility bills, internet, phone, cable, and other such things… and before you know it, you’re at $0.00! Observing this behaviour went a very long way in explaining both how everyone I worked with seemed to be living well, but yet they’re still broke despite working full-time jobs. My conclusion was this… the North American economy is basically a complex weave of credit instruments in which illusionary dollar figures move from one balance sheet to another, and virtually no one has an actual “cash” balance to their name, beyond short-term holdings for servicing various debts. This mentality isn’t even completely consumer-driven. It goes far deeper than the consumers themselves… Shopping online? It almost always requires a credit card. Debit on the internet is a very new thing. Travelling? You almost always need a credit card to get a hotel or rent a car. Buying a car? Most car dealerships won’t accept a cash payment for advertised prices… because they advertise those prices based on the commission they get from selling you financing, which they assume everyone will need. That is how deeply-rooted our credit dependence is… you are often REQUIRED to use credit for many types of purchases, even if you have the cash. Think about how absolutely sick that is… even if you HAVE real money, there are many cases in which you cannot USE it! So, if I had to simplify my answer to “Why are most people broke?” by keeping it to one sentence, it would be “Because everybody owes somebody.” If you don’t owe it to your mortgage, you owe it to your car loan. If you don’t owe it to your car loan, you owe it to your credit card. If you don’t owe it to your credit card, you owe it to your line of credit that you took out against the equity on your home that you treat as an “asset”, when it’s really just a conduit to getting even more credit. It never ends. As long as you owe something to somebody, it’s difficult to save up any money to have actual cash on hand. Especially because any money you can save, is better off being put towards your debts. No point earning less than 1% in a savings account when your credit cards are charging you 19.99%, right? As long as you owe money to somebody, it’s difficult to “have” any money, because at any time that you possess money, it “belongs” somewhere else. In the simplest sense, this is how being “broke” works. It has absolutely nothing to do with your income or earning power. It has to do with how much of your earnings are payable to your creditors. Which, for a lot of people, is 100%. Of course, you can “plan” your monthly debt payments and “put aside” money in a savings account. But even if you have $5,000 in savings and still owe $20,000 between your car loan and credit cards… how is that supposed to help anything? Your net worth is still -$15,000! In fact, because you’re keeping that $5,000 in the bank doing nothing and paying interest on the full $20,000, you are becoming even MORE broke, just so you can “feel less broke”. These problems don’t exist as much in places like Europe, where credit isn’t common, or at all in Islamic countries where most forms of credit are illegal. If you need something in those places, you pay for it with YOUR money. If you do not have enough money for it, you cannot afford it. It’s simple. By comparison, more than 60% of North Americans can’t come up with $1,000 on short notice, even for a “necessary” expense like a car repair [1]… Because every single dollar that they earn is spoken for before it even reaches their bank account. THAT is why most North Americans are broke. It’s not because they’re not making money. It’s because… Most people will choose a $300 monthly payment instead of having to save up $20,000 cash for a car. Just a matter of discipline. Consumer credit is extremely common, and with such easy access to borrowed funds, there isn’t really an excuse to not buy something if you want or need it. Why would you wait four months to save up $100 per month for a $400 purchase, when you can just charge it and pay $100-something per month to pay it off, and repeat the same thought process every time you need to buy something? Since so many people do this, there’s a stigma to not being able to afford something like a birthday gift or a weekend trip… since with credit, anyone can “afford” anything. People think there’s something wrong with you if you can’t spend $100 on something you “should” be buying like tickets to a show all your friends are going to. Between regular living expenses and debt payments, it’s easy for a $3,000 monthly income paid on the 31st to become $0 by the 1st. But since banks and lenders will make more money as long as you make tiny payments, they’ll be nice and accommodating with car loans that last 96 months, or 3% minimum credit card payments. In even simpler terms… People earn and get paid money (not broke) But they want to live as if they have more money than that (seeming less broke) So they’ll commit their money to making debt payments indefinitely to cover what they buy to live this way (probably broke) Meaning that if they suddenly need $500 cash for something like a new fridge, they have to use credit to buy it (actually broke) If you’re North American, this probably sounds like you or someone you know. The economy here is almost completely dependent on credit. Which is an easy way to get into debt… and an even easier way to be broke, no matter how much money you earn.

Couldve gone to Wonga....or sold his soul to the CoE!! 8.3 Billion fund....incredible....8.3 Billion....biggest franchise ever.... https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-45611563

More BS numbers from the continent, just another chance to spout BS with a capital BS...from this condescending snooty politico Frenchy (bit racist mate).....those out of work and unable to claim (long term) given up are not included...do they really think people are that stupid....5% lol......25%! https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-45541697 So some cafe in Montparnasse is gone give a waiting job to an overweight gardener instead of some chic young fille for half the price already working two jobs.... At last, UK job creation figures now shrinking...all those companies that received handouts are NOW not productive... The whole thing is going into reverse....on cue, now MSM aint gonna be able to avoid it en mass. Hahaha highest record of people volutarily quitting their job = people hacked off so much with menial existence of zero hours and part time that they think they can jump ship because of such low unemployment figures published.....good luck with that...jobs are now shrinking , as expected after 'record unemployment' https://www.recruiter.co.uk/news/2018/09/unemployment-low-job-creation-‘ponderous’

Alas we have forgotten... https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-45478670

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/7241493/couple-sell-devon-house-facebook-south-molton/ Could've had a villa in the south of France with a 100k to spare...should've just raffled it, innit... more SHTF than ever now.....news couldn't be any more decoupled from reality, except for this one of course ?

Reason for a celebration.....keep paying these rotters interest...thats the ticket.... https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/lehman-brothers-reunion-10-years-london-bank-collapse-2008-financial-crisis-a8499221.html Rotten-****ing-System

I can keep reading this as .....tents ?

no need for payday loans when you can just stop eating and sleep the entire time innit....? Really is a spiral to zero.... https://www.halifax.co.uk/savings/help-guidance/saving-explained/weird-and-wonderful-ways-to-cut-expenses/?WT.mc_id=_Email_Halifax_PBAccount_AUGCRM_|GEN_tellme_47

You mean like this one....? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-45098550

Its what they dont report that is the problem.....how do you 'watch' that? Comforting lies or the inconvenient truth.....there are no conspiracy theories, just early age indoctrination lol.....work that one out

Its not looking good.....lots of dumping, almost manipulation...

And those numbers aren't smoothed?? What happens to the Coefficient of Variation when you get closer to 0?.....supposedly we are much less than 0.5% 'growth' (puke word)....off target inflation, and only 3% salary growth.....according to Carnivals Inflation Comittee policy whatever... 4.2% unemployment is ********...with previously unemployed people who gave up looking for work, now double counted with two part-time jobs...(the real figure has been reportedly most likely between 14-21% in the UK)....weighting to 21%. 'Self-employed' in greater numbers, and bunch of 16/17 year olds with paper rounds. FFS Its all big BS....we never came out of the mess, they just polarised it between rich and poor by throwing money at the corporations for free who just stuffed it in their own pockets....NO INVESTMENT. For everyone you see doing 'well' there are probably 10 people suffering because of that.....people need to wake up fast. These clowns have sunk the ship and are shouting instructions from dry land.....

Supposedy only 2% of us have 'careers'....the rest have 'jobs'. The inflection point being around 40 once most people find out how dispensible they are.....good luck with that mortgage then. Source unknown.

This was the first line of an email, from a fairly respectable career coach.... 'Just because unemployment job search is 2.3 times tougher than during the recession ... you don't have to suffer.' So, we are no longer in a recession, but jobs are harder to find for those without....hmmm. So, the corollary of that is that fewer jobs are being created...so in essence we have a static economy, no 'growth' ( you love that word)...or greater competition (more immigration), which fits the 'record unemployment' figures lol...or indeed we are in worse than a recession, with a bit of both... any of those ways.....god help us what ever happens next....it won't be pretty

Camping?