Loving The Crash

+1 The railways are far better now than they've ever been - and I'm on Southern Rail - All the service problems we had a few years back were down to good old fashioned union action. Remember that Winkie Corbyn? What also gets to me about the NHS is the millions we spend every year subsidising f***wits to s*** out endless kids by providing free maternity services (not to mention SMP). After that it's free education, tax credits, and housing benefit. The more kids you have, the more you can take...housing crisis anyone?

Whoah - hold on there Comrade - all the more reason then to make sure that the shareholders are members of the public whether that be via their pension funds or investing directly. The NHS is a s**thouse operation run by incompetents and it's time we all faced up to this truth and got rid.

+1 I'd have a portable aircon unit pointed at that f***er all day long.

Conclusion: The government should not be running a healthcare business on the side.

Chilcot: "We have concluded that the UK chose to join the invasion of Iraq before the peaceful options for disarmament had been exhausted. Military action at that time was not a last resort." - released after several years on the day of the Brexit result, lest we forget. Death Toll: “Credible estimates of Iraq War casualties range from 151,000 violent deaths as of June 2006 to 461,000 total deaths as of June 2011” - mass murder - a crime against humanity He needs to stand trial at The Hague

This book has UK data: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1907994017/ref=ox_sc_sfl_title_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE There's a brief review here: http://www.economist.com/node/21553459 (The long run ie over hundreds of years, trend in real house prices for the UK is a horizontal line, but it can slope slightly up or down depending on starting/end points.) Whilst 95% of the UK is owned by around 1,000 people/institutions, there is plenty of land. Plenty. You only need to fly over the UK to see this. Most of the land is highly unproductive and virtually free ie £1k to £2k per acre, but perfectly good for housing. Even farmland is very cheap per acre. Coupling that with cheaper building materials, better construction techniques, and more recently flat real wages, it is hard to find an argument as to why real house prices should rise over the long run. The distortions we're experiencing at present are a combination of nimbyism, land hoarding, legislation, and yes, easy credit - ie transitory factors. Prices for services tend to rise in line with real wages over time - the more labour dependent the service, the greater the correlation. Food prices are cheaper because of more efficient production techniques combined with a surfeit of land ie for reasons similar to those for house production.

Try Googling Herengracht Index. eg https://hotelivory.wordpress.com/2010/08/29/a-very-long-view-on-house-prices/ "over a 380 year period the real (ie inflation adjusted) house prices have only doubled, which corresponds to an annual average price increase of something like 0.1%. And that’s with a starting point just at the start of the Dutch golden age. With a different starting point one could just as well get a 0% or even negative annual price change." Within this period, house prices went through various bubbles, sometimes lasting decades, but they always reverted to the long run trend of zero real growth. It is the same with the UK. In the long run, the real return is zero. Compare this with the bogus 2.6% Nationwide real growth trend: http://www.housepricecrash.co.uk/indices-nationwide-national-inflation.php It is easy to see that we have been in a mega bubble for over 20 years and require a real price correction of 50-75% in house prices. With the coming deflation, nominal falls will even exceed this. What cannot be seen from the graph is that even when the data started, house prices were above their long term trend. The UK has been in bubble territory for the entire lifetime of the average UK citizen (and baby boomer). This is why the bubble is so epic. Nobody knows any different - but prices will revert to mean eventually....

Not gonna happen. The government did not go anywhere near far enough with its policies in this current reflationary period. Despite money printing and zero rates, all they managed to summon up was 3% or so inflation. As the house price crash deepens, and the UK goes into recession, deflation coupled with rising unemployment will put downward pressure on wages. The government will not have the appetite or the conviction to print the amount of money necessary to offset the shrinkage in credit during this period. As with Japan, they will p*ss in the wind for a while and then give up. The nominal prices of housing, wages, goods and services will all fall for an extended period, and the government will be hard pushed to print enough money to prop up the banks, let alone wages/prices. The Conservatives did not repair the roof whilst the sun was shining, but to be fair they never stood a chance - the outcome was just as baked in when they took power as it is now...

+1 Maybe he'll also be needing a government bailout after going bust - just like the geniuses at Goldman Sachs did? We need to bring back partnerships with unlimited liability for these shysters...

Hi, Born and bred. It happened in Tokyo, it will happen in London - negative real interest rates, rising and unpayable government borrowing, a housing asset mania backed by debt, recapitilising banks behind the curve, massive government efforts to stoke inflation to no avail. All that's missing is outright deflation - and we will be getting that shortly as the economy goes into a recession, house prices start to fall, and the money supply starts shrinking as mortgages are paid down and defaulted on. The absence of a stress test recreating the Japanese experience, the likeliest scenario for the UK economy, is just further proof of herding mentality. The designers of these stress tests are looking at historical data like the minor house price correction in the 80s/90s to see what could happen if it repeats. What we are facing now is an event much rarer, and despite future protestations that no-one could have seen it coming, data mining of the internet for this period will show that all the evidence was there with bells on and red lights flashing....

For London to revert to mean, we're looking at 80-90% falls. No doubt these jokers will write memoirs one day congratulating themselves for nationalising banking capital shortfalls that no-one could have possibly seen arising...

"RBS, 70%-owned by the taxpayer, and Barclays only passed the hurdle rate set by the Bank because the regulator took account of efforts they had already made to increase their financial strength since the end of last year, when the tests were applied. " Does this mean they failed at the point when the test was done? A 33% house price crash? Surely that's one of the criteria for a best case scenario?

+1 I consider myself more tech savvy than average, and have been an early adopter of some tech. However, I was talking to family at the weekend and we all agreed that driverless cars would have to be a lot cheaper than non-driverless for us to consider giving up control. To see in this thread that in fact driverless cars will cost more makes me think they won't catch on for economic reasons. Maybe my sample is useless, but would you pay more? Also, when you get in a car with your wife, who drives? Surely she's safer and drives in a way more beneficial to the greater good than you? I quite like the idea of having a driver/driverless mix on the road though - Will we be letting driverless cars out at intersections? Not me. I can though see myself swerving towards them to see what they'll do...maybe there's lots of fun to be had? Also, do you want to share a car with strangers? Surely this would have caught on by now with cabs driven by people? Driverless cars = betamax ie maybe they'll be big in Tokyo for a bit, but ultimately the world markets will say "no"...

+1 This is not medical care we're talking about - that is free on the NHS. Why should the taxpayer be funding the cost of paying someone to help another's parent get dressed? The arguments are all pretty similar to those around childcare EXCEPT that the person getting the benefit of having someone else help their parents also receives a massive lump sum at the end of it.

But when you're able to buy the same house 50-70% cheaper, won't you be able to pay the mortgage down much quicker?