We really need to sort out the housing market before it destroys our economy

[Blod]

5 hours ago, disenfranchised said:

I'd have just preferred to serve in a Mosquito!

It would certainly have been an incentive to study hard at flight school as I would imagine only the best got to fly the Mosquito.

[Hectors House]

On 10/24/2017 at 2:34 AM, disenfranchised said:

British people seem to hold paradoxical beliefs on the subject. We celebrate the "Blitz spirit" and proudly boast how German bombs only made us more determined, yet somehow expected British bombs to work on the Germans.

The post-war strategic bombing review and subsequent efforts to unearth Nazi records show the damage to German manufacturing capacity and supply chain wasn't that heavy. The biggest contribution to the bombing war really made was to tie up a lot of manpower and manufacturing capacity fighting against the RAF & USAF over the skies of Western Europe, rather than on the Eastern Front, of burying and moving and disguising factories rather than building new ones. 

Had bomber command managed to replicate the "success" of the 1943 bombing of Hamburg where over 40,000 people were killed in a giant firestorm, it may have been a different matter. The "mistake" was actually to continue picking important industrial, military & strategic targets like Berlin & Munich that could not be similarly torched in the mistaken belief that the massive visual damage inflicted meant the raids were effective. Had the RAF focussed specifically on other targets because they were of tightly packed wooden construction, so good candidates to create a raging inferno, that may have actually ended the war earlier from the sheer horror of what had happened. The extent of what happened to Hamburg left the Nazis and German people reeling as the news crept out. It could be argued that the mistake in torching Dresden & Pforzheim, neither of which were bombed with any real intent 1939-1944 as they were strategically unimportant, was that it happened in 1945, not 1943. The bomber command strategy of area bombing with no prior warning was one of mass murder and a breach of the 1907 Haugue convention - it's just not written as such because both sides did it and we won.

Perhaps the most sensible thing bomber command could have done but failed to do was react to the fact the defensive armament of its 4 engined heavies was pointless. More men died as a result of being taken on raids as gunners than were saved by those planes having guns by a huge factor. The .303 rifle calibre machine guns fitted to RAF bombers were like peashooters compared with the 20mm cannons carried by fighters by 1942. The best advice to a tail gunner who saw a night fighter was to wait for it to fire first in case it had not seen you, as it was far far more likely to shoot you down than the other way round.

Stripped of its turrets the Lancaster was about 40mph faster, could fly higher, and could have had 3 fewer men on board and carried more bombs per mission without the need to man guns.

The Nazis imposed a news blackout on the Hamburg bombing, there was no blitz spirit in Germany!

[iamnumerate]

On 10/16/2017 at 9:42 PM, TheCountOfNowhere said:

More and more are getting it...people profited since 1998 now have 30 year old children at home unable to move out because the accept EA bankers valuations of assets they bought for a fraction the banks will now lend the BOEs magicked up cash

I don't think HPI benefits sane home owners on the whole.  If I have an asset that is worth £x and it falls in value then I would be really annoyed that I could have £0.1 x.

However it rises in price to £3x I cannot really benefit unless I sell it but most people like where they live and don't want to downsize to a tent or something.

Of course if you are single and you get married to another home owner then you are laughing but that is i) A minority of people ii) you might have children and then they have to pay £3x for a house - which is not really good unless (like some insane people) you want your children to be poorer than you.

(Obviously if you are a BTL landlord and want to retire then it is good but that is a small minority).

 

[iamnumerate]

I should have added that people think that HPI benefits them - but they are wrong.  It is something easier to prove with a spreadsheet than words of course.

I calculated that my gain due to HPI when I moved up was minus £32k (ignoring interest costs so in reality).  I showed my workings to colleagues and they had a lot of problems believing it, like I had proved that Global warming was not happening but in reality we are moving into a new ice age.

[Simhadri]

23 minutes ago, iamnumerate said:

I showed my workings to colleagues and they had a lot of problems believing it

Because its dependent on location, timing, bidding wars or not, explored/unexplored by BTL parasites.

So many factors decide the final offer.

South-East & North are 2 different markets.

Even if prices drop, they drop by 5%-10% and then you'll have another tory chancellor printing fresh money to distribute for HTB3.

I could see even negative interest rates won't surprise me given the madness of Carney/Hammond.

Its all currency war and every country want to ensure their currency is cheaper and useful for exports.

China had shown the way and rest all are following.

[iamnumerate]

I showed them that because prices had gone up when I moved up the ladder I had lost money - and people found it hard to comprehend.

[Errol]

On 16/10/2017 at 6:19 PM, Houdini said:

everything should be done to keep credit levels low 

It's not a question of doing something, but rather of doing nothing. They need to stop doing things that create credit distortions - i.e. HTB, money printing, QE etc.

Just stop doing all the artificial stuff. Let interest rates find their natural level and then sit and carry on doing nothing.