pslewis

.... or just the market getting too fearful while the bosses are away on holiday??

Conflicting mesages from the Politicians saying all is well and they will secure our future - yet other messages coming in from 'experts' saying that we are staring down the slippery slope of Financial ruin and Banks will go bust (the Governments no longer able to save them).

Where are you lot putting your money? Gold? Silver? Blue-Chip Shares? Under the mattress in cash? Property?

dpb

Rice krispies

tony de wonderful

The problem now is sovereign debt Pete. Our banks are ok I thought?

But the high sovereign debt means there is no fiscal weapon to deploy to stop a recession.

Speaking of gold, the latest record high makes your beloved Gordon Browns decision to sell our gold at give-away prices look even worse that ever.

pslewis

Hindsight is such a wonderful thing, isn't it?

If I had bought the Jaguar Roadster V12 I was offered in 1976 for £1800 and kept it mint I could have sold it in 1999 for £250,000 ............... but, I didn't

The Banks are healthy with our money. And, actually, the UK is in reasonable shape (and can borrow very cheap money) .... it's Southern Europe which could drag the lot down.

tony de wonderful

They sold it at a 20 year low Pete, almost 400 tons of the stuff. It's the sort of gross incompetence only a Government....especially a Labour one which seemed to thrive on financial mismanagement....can pull off.

From what I can gather they put it in T-bills....an asset now downgraded!

pslewis

It could easily have dropped further ... only hindsight tells that it was a wrong choice.

It's very, very, easy to be really smart with the gift of hindsight ........

SJ_Skyline

Welcome back Pete, good holiday?

pslewis

"There is no mystery about Gordon Brown’s sale of British gold reserves.

Vigilance – A Defence of British Liberty, published in 2001.

The Maastricht Treaty lays title claim to all the UK’s gold and dollar reserves. At the time of the sale the recently-launched euro was struggling to establish itself on the currency markets. Receipts from the gold sale were used to buy euros, which propped it up for a while but failed to stop the slide.

However the transaction simultaneously met a large part of the demand that all the UK’s gold and dollar reserves be passed to Frankfurt while neatly avoiding physical transfers in fleets of bullion trucks driving to the Channel ports"

GlesgaKiss

Where is safe to put your money!?

Gold & silver - don't pay interest, impossible to value currently with unreal volatility in the markets. Currencies are all over the place and it's difficult to estimate the impact of inflation coming to roost. It now still an ok time to buy? Will there be a correction? If gold is even a slight measure of inflation then the world is in for a hell of a lot, but surely not as much as gold's recent rise in real terms would suggest.

Shares - again, very difficult to value at current levels if the debt financing our bubble economies bursts, but at least there are some viable companies to invest in and they provide some sort of defence against currency fluctuations.

Cash under the mattress - are you havin' a laugh? Why would you want to keep pieces of paper under your mattress?

Property - probably the safest bet and therefore doesn't have the most exciting prospects in the event of the miracle of actual economic growth. Can't be f*cked up by incompetence from the top, whereas companies and virtually everything else can.

Recession is a certainty. If more stimulus and the supporting of malinvestment continues, an even bigger disaster awaits when it all catches up with us.

The temporary outcome in that case would be another consumption bubble leading to years of false prosperity, but with unbelievably large obligations at the end of it. Even this is extremely unlikely.

And how long until the problems inherent in communism in dealing with China's capitalist business cycle rear their ugly heads? There has to be a serious banking crisis at the very least on the way there. They've basically built up an economy to provide goods to the world. It's shown the potential of the Chinese people, but would they be able to adapt quickly enough when demand from the west collapses?

There has been one disaster after another since the US abandoned the Bretton Woods system. If you think about it, this global crisis is basically a US crisis.

GB sold gold to buy toilet paper, he's a blithering idiot, probably advised by some arrogant 'new economist'. Remember this is the guy who thought he could eliminate the business cycle.

hodgy0_2

my parents in law had lunch with the Camerons today (they are staying with mutual friends in Rock)

they said "light touch" Dave was very jovial and relaxed, without a care in the world was how they summed him up

so maybe he knows something we don't - then again maybe not

pslewis

He probably looked like the kind of man with £5 Million in the Bank!!

Life's tough for the Tory Elite

tony de wonderful

There can't be another fiscal stimulus though Glesgakiss. The governments debt is too high.

The only thing left is Money Printing (QE) and I don't think anyone with a brain sees that as anything more than a stall tactic....and a risky one at that.

f1_fan

iTrader: (9)

I would have given him something to care about the smug self serving lying little c**t

f1_fan

iTrader: (9)

Exactly, they are out of ammo. Eurobonds is all that the Eurozone has left, but as alloy said the other day that is extremely unlikely.

The euro may well have to go in all this, it was basically a political whim anyway rather than a sound financial decision, but that may also be the reason they cling on to it.

tony de wonderful

It is a bit worrying going into a recession without the Gov being able to borrow and spend to moderate its severity.

We're left naked.

David Lock

Works of art

dl

hodgy0_2

not a bad punt Dave

and quite a bit of greek and Italian money comming into the London property market

Chip

Invest in fine wine

Chip

Show some respect to your leader will you

Chip

Will everyone stop worrying whether we will or will not go into recession again, IT WILL all come good in time as it always does.

Chip

bigsinky

but pete the old codger will be in the ground a long time when the turn round happens

f1_fan

iTrader: (9)

That is as much respect as he deserves!

ScoobyDoo555

See? Chip IS right - things are looking up already

Leslie

Its a question of who you are more likely to believe surely Pete.

When the choice is the politicians or the financial experts, who would you go along with?

Les

Chip

Neither, none of them seem to truly know what they are doing.

GlesgaKiss

I guess I had QE in mind under the general umbrella of 'stimulus'. But don't count on there being no further fiscal stimulus with money borrowed from the market. The size of the government debt isn't a restriction on borrowing per se - that's up to the market, and as long as this dynamic of govt bonds being seen as a safe haven continues, we will be able to borrow more. The US 10 yr is yielding around 2% and the UK's, around 2.4%. Crazy! It seems the worse the economic situation becomes, the more credit is made available to make it worse still.

There without a doubt has to be more stimulus of some form in both the US and UK to keep things going, and certainly in the US it has already been alluded to. Without it, the global economy will correct with market forces and the result will be a severe drop in living standards both here and in developing countries. Whether that is worth going through is a matter of personal opinion, but there is another way. If the govt had used/uses the time it has to try and restructure the economy towards something more sustainable, there is a chance to correct the imbalances we have. Frankly, though, this seems quite unlikely.

pslewis

I genuinely believe that, as the UK Government has very cheap money to borrow (so that, ironically, the debt is reduced due to a lower repayment requirement) .... that they will, in 2012, stimulate the economy by pumping money into the pockets of the voters.

Reduce the tax take, lower VAT (temporarily), abandon Stamp Duty (for a while), feed money in to get growth ..... it's all they can really do now, isn't it?

boomer

...well it worked for Liebour?

Er, wait a minute!!!

mb

David Lock

No we should not borrow any more money and thank our lucky stars that our are repayment interest rates are manageable.

My personal view is that we waste huge amounts on defence that is not necessary and pour money into unwinnable wars and, incidentally, killing and maiming our brave soldiers. I know this is a minority view. So use that money, get to grips with NHS waste and we are half way there.

Carry on reducing the public service which Labour increased massively as most people in it do not really contribute to the economic good.

dl

And to keep you happy Lewis stop banks rewarding themselves for apparent "success" and totally avoid responsibility for failure.

pslewis

We waste a huge amount of money (more than the National Debt) in every Government Department.

From Hospitals, to schools, to defence, to wasted medication and weaponary .... but, someones waste is someone elses profit!!

Tax Banks more - they can afford it .... make the Tax take 1,000,000 times the amount of their highest bonus paid.