CharlieChuck

Then we find out the true market value of these. The remaining owners there could be in negative equity for decades.

Thanks for explaining this, I'm just keeping up.. How exactly can the hedgies use this? Just by being a middle-man borrowing and re-lending?

I'm not really understanding the bit in bold. Are you saying the rate they are receiving from mortgagors will not cover the repayments on the treasuries, or that there is sufficent spread at the current interest rates charged to make this profitable, plus they get to re-use (lend) 70% (or so) of the capital value. I take the point that no bank will be rushing into giving cut price mortgages, especially with falling prices, they can effectively pick a price that will have to be paid by us to help them rebuild their capital. In the old days of building societies, the mortgage rate would be above the rate paid for savings, if you look at the best-buy tables we still don't seem to be there yet. I think that's where the whole thing will revert to, over 2 or 3 years, savings rates at 7% and I would expect to see mortgage rates about 9%. One thing is clear, anyone who remortgaged with a 10 year fixed interest rate deal a year or so ago made a very good move.

How do you come to this sort of level? that would be a huge risk premium, assuming libor stays roughly at its current level. Do you expect interest paid on savings to get to a similar level?

Tell her that the people who bought at the last peak 1991 (or whenever) were in negative equity until 2002 (taking into account inflation). If that doesn't shut her up, nothing will.

As I remember (although can't find a link), a lot of mortgages were due to reset in the first half of this year. Although we have to wait a few more weeks for the breakdown of these figures, I'd expect a large amount of it to be remortgages.

This confuses me as well. The banking secrecy laws were for funding issues. This must be a profit issue not a borrowing one. I heard on the radio they are expected to announce large writedowns next week, wether it relates to uk losses or US subprime, don't know. If there are writedowns it explains why they need more capital rather than just borrowing, as the basle limits may be close to being breached, and it will also affect it's commercial banking side. Either way it must be very serious for it to be announced in the current climate, they must have considered the possibility this would lead to a run on RBS.

While this doesn't tell us who owns what, the ons published a list of who owns UK shares in total for the year ending 2006. http://www.statistics.gov.uk/pdfdir/share0707.pdf Of the £ 1.9tr of UK shares (at 31 dec 06), 0.7tr are owned by foreign investors, .027tr Insurance companies, 0.23 Pension companies and 0.23tr by Individuals. The vaguely termed 'other financial institutions' owns £ 0.17tr. Also, Information on the bank of england nominees ltd (now listed as dormant) can be bought for a pound from companies house. (click order information). Anyone fancy spending a pound to see what it says? http://wck2.companieshouse.gov.uk/96036e04...e90/compdetails

I thought the way SIV's work, is they are already financed until paid off? i.e. they just generate a small profit/loss each year for the life of the loan. I thought these didn't appear on the balance sheet? After looking at the balance sheet I'm more confused than ever though. I think the debt securities 22.3bn (note 22 to balance sheet page 46) could be the key. Although I don't completely understand who has bought these and how long before they renew. The amount of BTL loans on their books is scary. Their claim of LTV 55% worries me (page 59), firstly this seems too low to me, I wonder if this includes second charges on some of the btler's main residence? Does this include the gifted deposits? These were valued in December using some sort of indexation, probably to the initial valuation. Prices have fallen a lot already since then. As we can see in the auction threads a lot of flats are selling at 50% of the purchase price. The ltv of overdue (2.1bn) and impaired loans (0.1Bn) is 64% and 79.8%. It wont take very big falls before B&B makes heavy losses on these, and with equity of only 1.2bn, some sort of recapitalisation would seem inevitable.

I worked in a private nursing home in the mid-nineties. As I was the accountant, I saw it from both sides. Desperate relatives asking how they could avoid selling the house or using their future inheritance to pay for the care, down to the obnoxious man who went every week to the nursing home to pick up the £14 a week spending money off his mum so he could spend it down the pub. (DSS claimants were allowed £14 a week to cover basic things not given by the home i.e. soap, newspapers, toothpaste etc). Although the prices charged seem ridiculously high (back then £ 350 a week, god knows what it would be now), the business itself wasn't the cash cow it would seem to be. Over half the income went on staff wages. It needed over 70% occupancy to be in profit, and due to the short stay of some of the residents, and trying to replace them, it was hard to make profit. Every attempt is made to cut costs in these places, and I imagine it has got worse. There's a huge differance between off loading your old mother into a nursing home because you can't be bothered to care for her and having to put her into a home because you physically can't care for her. This is, in my view, the distinction of where the £16,000 savings/assets should come in. The welfare system was set up to look after us, and people not capable of looking after themselves, in return for a National Insurance contribution. Whilst that system is in place, it will always be abused by the career doley's. But the double taxation of losing your inheritance to give to your children just because you were unfortunate not to die early, is in my opinion very wrong. Nursing homes in the main, aren't a bad idea, the main plus should be a higher quality of care than caring for someone at home. They do need to be better regulated and inspected more often.

We had a thread about these the other week, see here: http://www.housepricecrash.co.uk/forum/ind...showtopic=72579 keep up the good work M21er.

I think this is a good point(s). Unfortunately, with an election looming, he has to be seen to be helping. However useless he might be he's going to throw everything at this in a hope of re-election. The banks have suffered because of the crunch, both in reputation and earnings. Wether the banks have learnt their lesson or not only time will tell. However I very much doubt the liquidity generated will be ploughed straight back into 100% 5 x salary mortgages. I hope I'm not wrong on that. Let's not forget in the last crash, the biggest drop in house prices came from flat prices and high inflation, nominal falls also played their part, but the high inflation bought prices back within affordable levels. With inflation now low (however contrived the inflation figure is), and no wage inflation looking likely, the falls to make houses affordable and less risky for banks to lend against have got to come from a fall in nominal prices. A slowly engineered crash would increase his election chances. Which unfortunately is all politics seems to be about.

Mrs CharlieChuck's going to be depressed by this, she loves shopping there. It is (was) quite cheap there though.

I really wanted that, the tv advert for it looked great, but I think I ended up with a evel knievel wind up bike instead.

I've been through phases of not eating meat, due to lack of money. Vegetarianism, because of ideals, never really appealed, where do you draw the line? It's vegan or nothing in my book, and I like cheeseburgers and fry-ups too much. The cost of a meal made from pulses, beans (dried, not out of cans) is incredibly cheap, I used to make a weeks worth of chick pea, lentil & black eyed bean curry for a couple of quid. People are going to have to relearn proper cooking, instead of supermarket ready meals.

Thanks for explaining. You've put a lot of effort into thisand the other auctions, much appreciated.

Am I the only one who thougth of Monty Python here. the rent seems a bit low? is this right, or am I missing something?

It's a long time ago now, but I think the major (no pun intended) split was to do with our friend Europe. That split would have existed with a larger majority, but I think you're right that a small majority magnified all the little issues, and created problems that weren't really there. Agreed. It destroyed the tories for the best part of 10 years, it will probably destroy labour for at least 10. The problem is it would mean putting up with Brown for another 6 years.

As I remember it, he had a tiny majority (20 odd seems to ring a bell). Towards the end of his term, due to losing MP's thorugh by-elections, he could only form a majority with the help of the ulster unionists. With such a small majority and a party split down the middle, it was always going to be a hit and miss government. However he did remarkably well to bring some sort of order to the economy. Labour inherited a very good, growing economy in 97 and ruined it. Sleaze was a big problem, but with the back to basics and victorian values they bought it on themselves a bit. Another thing he did was start talks with Sinn Fein, which helped start the road to peace in Northern Ireland. Thatcher refused to even starts talks with them. On the other hand, Brown has inherited a mess of an economy that is of his own making. He has very little charisma and his talking/debating skills are very poor. Brown will always just be Tony's side-kick.

Does anyone know what amount of borrowing (businesses, private etc) is linked to the base rates? I'm wondering what real effect this will have, It's pretty much guaranteed banks won't pass on the savings to mortgage payers as the banks need to rebuild their profits. For businesses though, will banks pass on the rate cuts to overdraft holders. Where I work our business overdraft is Bank base rate +2.5%, if the bank don't reduce their base rate, we'll still be paying the same. I know some borrowing is linked to libor, will libor reduce by .25% because of this? Does anyone know?

I just did a job search on Monster for clerical jobs in Nottingham, there are 48 jobs available. A lot of them seem to be from agencies as well. http://jobsearch.monster.co.uk/Search.aspx...;vw=d&re=93 I imagine Egg in derby will be cutting jobs soon.

Safe as Houses - Stiff Little Fingers

I was Uni of Kent during some of the last crash, it's based in canterbury but I lived in whitstable for the most of it. At the time whitstable was a very run down area, there were no jobs in the area, had a very high level of unemployment and there was EEC funding for new businesses or businesses that relocated there. I can remember waiting in the queue for a bank, the bank manager was talking to some women in the queue and he seemed to say to everyone of them "has your husband found a job yet". These houses sold for about £24,000 in 1992, but no one had a job or the money to buy them. The average wage for anyone working in what few jobs there were would have been about 6-7,000 a year. We used to rent a similar one for about £450pm, which spread over 5 people in 4 bedrooms was about the normal rent per room then. I know the area has become a trendy second home port for londoners, which in turn has created jobs in the area, but the increase in 15 years is a massive 9 times. http://www.rightmove.co.uk/viewdetails-205...16&tr_t=buy

Evan's certainly better on radio than he was on the Tele, it's clear how much they reign back anyone reporting on the national televison news. He also mentioned the word bubble again. Darling pointed out house prices had risen 180% in the last 10 years and Evan said something along the lines of "Do you mean a bubble".

Simply Red - Money's too tight to mention. The Smiths - Heaven knows I'm miserable now.