since the beginning

They didn't lose money on there own trades. They were acting as a Broker and obviously couldn't handle the NASDAQ problems meaning clients were doubling up or worse on trades. They then couldn't reverse the positions when they needed to. Most of the investment banks would be doing the same but probably handled the problems better. Most of these trades will be from Hedge funds etc.

Did I see that London asking prices were down 4.1%!!

It was a very good article. I think the best points were that high house prices are aspirationally terrible for the young and also work against social justice. Labour for all their talk of Social Justice (Brown and Prescott continually droned on about this), probably did the the most damage of anyone to the ideal of an equal society by allowing rampant house inflation.

The thing is Labour knew it would be inevitable as well, so they kept banging on about locking in the recovery and to carry on spending. Obviously with or without cuts the economy would have probably gone back in recession, however when / if it does Labour will say this is the Coalitions fault. Couple that with the wrong interruption of Keynesian economics i.e. calling for spending on any old shit while in recession, as well as not having set aside during a boom, a large part of the population will blame the Coalition. I still think that most of the Lib voters were actually Labour voters having a protest vote. I saw posts before the election of "don't be scared of a coalition" etc Of course when this Coalition involved a Tory government they all started bleating about it being a stitch-up. I was amazed to see members of Question Time audience the other day, criticising the cuts of 'front-line' services of for example hospitals, when it reality it was future spending that Labour had promised immediately before an election. It is amazing how many people in this country are oblivious to the mess Labour made.

A 1/5, yeah right! More like a 50%+ Everyone I know with a I/O mortgage has got it because it is the only way they could afford it. This means they can't afford to repay. I wonder what some of the "Repayment Vehicles" are, probably asked a question like "Do you have a savings account?"!

Wasn't really a day though was it. The majority of the crash (I think about 6% out of the 9%) was in about 15 mins.

Sunday Times Good investment with his son!! In reality way more than a £1m loss stated in the byline. Hope this hasn't already been posted, couldn't find it.

We certainly seem to be sending our Chav Dross out there.

Similar to John Prescott in my opinion. Talks about Socialism but then thinks he is worth more than the average wage. Billy Bragg has at least 2 houses, now this is OK but don't call yourself a socialist. Hearing him talk to the overpaid BBC Journalists about someone else that is getting Overpaid is a bit annoying!

Why did you suddenly reply to a 2006 post.

There were 189,161 road accidents involving personal injury in 2006. If somebody crashes into me or my family, I would want the other person to have insurance.

Remember that recruitment agents are basically salesmen. I too work in I.T and find that the number of recruitment agents contacting me has risen during the recession as the agents struggle with fewer placements.

Limitations: 1/ Just for StampDuty. 2/ 50,000 over 3 years is 1388 extra a month on top of your mortgage.

Bump! Essentially this is about 20% of the Workforce, this clearly is unemployed / population which is crazy. It makes predictions so hard when everything from Salaries to Working population is spun and confused by crap journalists.

What does this mean?? The debt is the same whether the house is worth £50 or £1 million! Were these 4 million all going to cash out and leave the country......

Ryanair normally cut flights in Winter and this is clearly them downsizing during a recession rather than taxes causing this.

Have recorded by wasn't sure I wanted to see the poor old couple tricked into a mortgage they couldn't afford. It is much the buyer fault as any banker - no sympathy!

Your just noticing a few posts and extrapolating to the whole board.

Does make you laugh. They keep making targets that get missed so the solution is really tough targets but years in the Future. All we know is that by 2050 the UK will be an economic basket case due to Brown. UK talks one of the toughest but in reality is years behind countries like Germany that produce far more as well.

With the added benefit of having 2 sets of public sector staff the first to the taking and the second to return some of the money taken by the first.

Ah good to see that someone posted this. Good article from someone working working as a Fund Manager I believe. Like this bit. I probably like many on here have been getting slightly worried about the fact that houses have been shown by some surveys to be rising again. But put into context i.e. 150bn pumped into the economy and stupidly low IR then the rises and transactions are actually pathetically low. Shame they are trashing the economy in a vain effort to try and keep houses inflated.

Good post. A lot of people missing the point with this article. The problem is using private landlords for social housing. Kind of PPI for on a micro scale. Councils consistently show their incompetence in the real world and with the real value of money. No doubt they are vastly overpaying for some of these houses.

Must admit 100k is ****** all in the scheme of things.

When you say "We" are you buying as a couple and what is the other Salary? How the ****** did you save £45K? on 19K.

I would pay them about the same, or may be a bit less say £80,000 which is not as much as most GP's. I think an MP is a very important job. I think however the pensions should be based on what they pay in each year, rather than final salary etc. They also shouldn't be able to work for external companies, except maybe ones they own or run themselves. Expenses should only be relevant and all posted online.