It's The End Of The World As We Know It.......

[hedgefunded]

Let's be honest. Brown's going to get back in again isn't he?

I just know it.

Sad times.

[Lander]

But I feel fine........

Recent article from the same newspaper arguing the complete opposite to the above.

link

Edited June 11, 2009 by Lander

[Cinzano Bianco]

Wouldn't it be ironic if this month we acually saw the end of the spring bounce/ bull trap/ whatever you want to call it, and the FTSE started falling...

[babesagainstmachines]

When the oil runs out Hamish will still be harping on about how great Aberdeen is... when it looks like Detroit.

[domo]

from Wikipedia

A brief recession occurred in 1980. Several key industries—including housing, steel manufacturing and automobile production—experienced a downturn from which they did not recover through the end of the next recession. Many of the economic sectors that supplied these basic industries were also hard-hit

.................

The early 1980s recession was a severe recession in the United States which began in July 1981 and ended in November 1982.[1][2]

This is just the warm up...

[MississippiJohnHurt]

But I feel fine........

I'll believe it when I see any evidence that the actual causes have been dealt with. So far all we've seen are desperate attempts to stave off the effects of these causes.

The root cause of all this is too much debt in the world economy....I'd like to see the evidence that requisite deleveraging has occurred. I suspect there isn't any.

[ccc]

Until the people in the UK who have lost, or are losing their jobs - get new ones - this recession ain't over.

Simple as that.

Anyone who thinks otherwise needs their head examined. IMO.

[Traktion]

IMO, they're trying to engineer an 'official' end to the recession to improve confidence. If we return to growth, no matter how small, then they can claim they have fixed the problem.

Will this lead to real recovery and a return to 'normal' growth? I doubt it. IMO, they are trying to sell the population a lemon, but I don't think the confidence will continue. Everyone I speak to seems suspicious that the problems have been solved and wonder how printing some money can fix the world's woes.

Those who do buy into this recovery, will likely end up regretting it. Maybe not this year or even next, but sooner or later, people will realise that there will be no fast recovery. Long, grinding decades of high taxes, reduced consumer demand, leading to fewer jobs (leading to higher taxes still etc...) seems like the best case scenario.

People just have to learn to live within their means and the country needs to offer the rest of the world something more useful than we do now. Papering over the cracks with printed money just hides the bigger problems in our economy.

edit - punctuation/typos.

Edited June 11, 2009 by Traktion

[spivT]

IMO, they're trying to engineer an 'official' end to the recession to improve confidence. If we return to growth, no matter how small, then they can claim they have fixed the problem.

Will this lead to real recovery and a return to 'normal' growth? I doubt it. IMO, they are trying to sell the population a lemon, but I don't think the confidence will continue. Everyone I speak to seems suspicious that the problems have been solved and wonder how printing some money can fix the world's woes.

Those who do buy into this recovery, will likely end up regretting it. Maybe not this year or even next, but sooner or later, people will realise that there will be no fast recovery. Long, grinding decades of high taxes, reduced consumer demand, leading to fewer jobs (leading to higher taxes still etc...) seems like the best case scenario.

People just have to learn to live within their means and the country needs to offer the rest of the world something more useful than we do now. Papering over the cracks with printed money just hides the bigger problems in our economy.

edit - punctuation/typos.

on the contrary, every single policy response which is labelled a 'success' or been deemed to have made an improvement, will encourage them that they have the tools to deal with problems in the economy going forward.

Predominantly this appears to have been a problem that origniated in the financial sector, how did we go from consumption fuelling growth and good times to now a supposed period of austerity and lower demand in the near future if all these factors aren't a function of how confident the financial sector is.....i believe the financial sector [and recently the great govt. intervention] fuels the confidence in industry and on maine street.

in the global credit money system i don't think there will be any shortage of demand for borrowing to buy the goods and services and assets, it's how confident lenders are to lend and the incentives for them to lend.

People are already looking at where the next killing can be made.....distressed assets ? real estate ? commodities ?

And you'll have a mixture of people who'll want to respectively spend, save and invest their 'wealth'. That a lot of this wealth is credit doesn't point to austerity, it means merely that govts. and central banks create the conditions for us to forget [quickly] about what went before....in this case the GFC that nearly ended the world

In 2001 they didn't blink through a recession. This one is more tricky but it's not any kind of paradigm shift, it's merely a little accident some financial institutions had with irrational exuberance that central banks were too afraid to control. Now they know what to do if the big institutions burn themselves again, so need for regulation or naval gazing.

get credit flowing. unfreeze the credit pipes. turn on credit to consumers and business. get banks lending. or any other rhetoric you like.

[spivT]

At some point the life support machine has to be turned off.

waiting for that day to come, will be like waiting for house prices to fall in 2002.

[enrieb]

Gordon Brown must be kicking himself, if only he could has postponed the recent elections by a couple of weeks Labour would surely have increased the number of seats they held thanks to his outstanding economic competence.

[Traktion]

In 2001 they didn't blink through a recession. This one is more tricky but it's not any kind of paradigm shift, it's merely a little accident some financial institutions had with irrational exuberance that central banks were too afraid to control. Now they know what to do if the big institutions burn themselves again, so need for regulation or naval gazing.

get credit flowing. unfreeze the credit pipes. turn on credit to consumers and business. get banks lending. or any other rhetoric you like.

So, you think everyone has paid back their previous loans and they are now eager to get some new ones? The last time I checked, we still have a heavily indebted population here (and now the government has joined in on the act too). So who is going to be borrowing all this money to fuel consumption lead growth?

Even if we get people confident about the future of the economy, can they afford to borrow more money?

With market interest rates already showing signs of increasing, why would you want to borrow now? For those who do, will they be struggling in a few years, putting more pressure on the banks?

You make the problem sound like it is all caused by the banks just not lending. In reality, those who want to borrow more are probably too risky already. For the rest, they probably don't want any more credit as they either have enough or don't like borrowing. Even if supply is forced artificially high, what use is it if the low/moderate risk demand is low?

[Guest Skinty]

Same here. And that is why house prices will not crash as far as many on here think. They may well still dip again over next winter, in fact, most probably they will. But only by much smaller, and relatively seasonally normal amounts.

One thing the bulls never remember is that house prices have risen too much for first time buyers regardless of whether there is a recession or not. Unless house prices drop by 50% and I have some job security, I am never going to buy. I am on an average wage.

The housing market needs first time buyers.

[GrillsBears]

One thing the bulls never remember is that house prices have risen too much for first time buyers regardless of whether there is a recession or not. Unless house prices drop by 50% and I have some job security, I am never going to buy. I am on an average wage.

The housing market needs first time buyers.

Hmm does it? The bubble was characterised by ever lower numbers of ftbs. What makes them so important now?

[Markie6]

Yes and I can't for the life of me see any banks handing out " eric pebble loans " any time soon to FTB

[Guest pioneer31]

But I feel fine........

but most nutters are totally unaware of their condition.

[spivT]

So, you think everyone has paid back their previous loans and they are now eager to get some new ones? The last time I checked, we still have a heavily indebted population here (and now the government has joined in on the act too). So who is going to be borrowing all this money to fuel consumption lead growth?

Even if we get people confident about the future of the economy, can they afford to borrow more money?

With market interest rates already showing signs of increasing, why would you want to borrow now? For those who do, will they be struggling in a few years, putting more pressure on the banks?

You make the problem sound like it is all caused by the banks just not lending. In reality, those who want to borrow more are probably too risky already. For the rest, they probably don't want any more credit as they either have enough or don't like borrowing. Even if supply is forced artificially high, what use is it if the low/moderate risk demand is low?

why does anyone want to borrow ? cars, holidays, starting up a small business, buying a house or a holiday home.

you know that type of thing....where a good propotion of the population are reasonably confident enough in their cash flow position to feel confident in borrowing money where dipping into savings or liquidating assets isn't feasible or desirable for them.

as for the management of debt, i don't know whether we've become more competent at that, or more complacent about it.

Or whether the requisite support and flexibility exists for people not to feel as burdened about larger amounts of personal debt. There is also the fact that we treat different types of debt differently now, and that there's a great deal of home equity and cash....and much of this will whether even a severe downturn.

all these factors will mean that there perhaps isn't going to be a great deal of delevering of debt. Maybe we're just comfortable enough in living with this debt in a period of realitve interest rate calmness.

that's not to say that house prices can continue to be divorced from fundamentals for long.

[spivT]

Hmm does it? The bubble was characterised by ever lower numbers of ftbs. What makes them so important now?

because they support the low end of the market in absence of BTL investors. And they get a great big leg up from [normally boomer] parents with big fat deposits.

Ofcourse they may have saved enough on their own and be earning a decent enough wedge to want to start a family in a first home, but it's the assisted ftb with access to the big pool of boomer wealth who will ultimately be driving sentiment once all the STR scum are done with ploughing back in while warning others of the perils of catching a falling knife.

Also, the ftb's and STR's will in a lot of cases have a great deal of incentive in wanting to buy at low IR's and better affordability. They are confident enough in job prospects or have dual income safetynet and are tired of renting property, when with a big enough deposit they could pay less in mortgage than rental repayments over the next 3 - 5 years anyway.

And actually have something that's there's that can be passed down to generations. Having ten's of thousands in the bank isn't all it's cracked up to be, when all that money is effectively on hold to live an existence at some indeterminate point in the future that others are living now.

ofcourse a ftb may have a lifetime of mortgage slavery to contend with. But that won't stop them.

[The McGlashan]

Were the OP to have actually read the National Institute of Economic and Social Research press release reported in the Indie, he might just pick out the facts of what they are projecting.

http://www.niesr.ac.uk/press/gdp0609.pdf

Firstly, they say:

"Our track record in producing early estimates of GDP suggests that our projection for the

most recent three-month period has a standard error of 0.1-0.2% point when compared to

the first estimate produced by the Office for National Statistics."

The projected figures published by NISER show an estimated GDP increase of 0.2% for April and 0.1% for May. The projected month-on-month uptick is made up almost entirely from growth in Public Services during these 2 months (and a very small growth in Agriculture in April).

The report also points out that the quarterly annualised figures remain negative at -6% for April and -3.6% for May.

Here is a picture of what the NIESR figures look like:

Edited June 11, 2009 by The McGlashan

[starsky]

IMO, they're trying to engineer an 'official' end to the recession to improve confidence. If we return to growth, no matter how small, then they can claim they have fixed the problem.

Will this lead to real recovery and a return to 'normal' growth? I doubt it. IMO, they are trying to sell the population a lemon, but I don't think the confidence will continue. Everyone I speak to seems suspicious that the problems have been solved and wonder how printing some money can fix the world's woes.

Those who do buy into this recovery, will likely end up regretting it. Maybe not this year or even next, but sooner or later, people will realise that there will be no fast recovery. Long, grinding decades of high taxes, reduced consumer demand, leading to fewer jobs (leading to higher taxes still etc...) seems like the best case scenario.

People just have to learn to live within their means and the country needs to offer the rest of the world something more useful than we do now. Papering over the cracks with printed money just hides the bigger problems in our economy.

Precisely what I thought. There have inevitably been positive signs - end of the sheer drop, spring bounce, end of de-stocking & start of restocking - but to say it is over is nonsense. For months there have been efforts to talk the economy up, I understand this as a counterbalance to stem fear which leads things too far the other way. However, real people are going to make real decisions based on how they feel the economy is doing, and not on deep, thoughtful analysis. The debt has not gone away and we face rising inflation, interest rates and unemployment. Therefore, to announce normality is grossly irresponsible. Shame on any media that does this. Learn your damn lessons.

[dances with sheeple]

I'm sure it's been discussed already this week, but on Jeremy Vine's Radio 2 show the other day they were talking about the recession, and it was VERY noticeable that Jezza was referring to the recession in the PAST TENSE. He didn't do this just once, but several times in the 10min slot I listened to - it was almost TOO forced, as if it was rehersed...Hmmmm

There seems to be a real push on at the moment to convince people its over and to get out there spending...

The Machine is battling for it`s life, every media outlet is a pore of the machine. If you want never ending growth and consumption cheer it on, otherwise ignore all media and follow your own truth. As I said yesterday, everytime Brown steps up to speak, that is a good bellwether for the state of the country - too much debt, too much denial, too few workable ideas.

Edited June 11, 2009 by dances with sheeple

[RajD]

Don't know why you guys bother. In fact, I don't know why I'm bothering to respond. The OP has consistently demonstrated an acute lack of awareness of broader economic issues. His posts are not worthy of debate. End of.

Edited June 11, 2009 by RajD

[InternationalRockSuperstar]

It is now clear, that had there not been intervention on a massive scale with ZIRP and QE, then this could well have been the worlds worts recession. But there was, and so now it isn't.

but now we're going to get a hyper-inflationary depression instead.

[bingobob777]

FOR SALE

Years supply of beans

Guns

Water filter

Survival book

Gold

Never used, no longer required.

[MinceBalls]

Hmm does it? The bubble was characterised by ever lower numbers of ftbs. What makes them so important now?

Isn't that a short term view based on the conditions over the last 10 years and is exactly why we are in the cr@p we are in now? There are a plethora of reasons (all of which are on this site).

• Because eventually - over a generation - the housing market loses its balance and collapses

• Because property becomes an asset rather than a place to live due to BTL

• Because people would like to buy a place of their own and can't

• Because society becomes defragmented between the have's and the have not's?

• Because because because?