for Qe2.

Anyone else looking forwards to an increase in inflation, and the continuing trashing of our currency>

Remember, everything we buy from abroad will become more expensive after this. Bend over for the £1.50 litre everyone.

Edited: £1.50 a litre, not a gallon. I wish.

And then we'll all blame the 'profiteering' corporations, leading to further idiotic policy mistakes. Yawn.

1.50 a gallon ? You wouldnt have to bend me over

Let's inflate our way out of debt.......

Got to do something to make all this debt go away.

Remember "Stagflation" in the 1970's, for those too young to remember just have a google

Shaun

There's a positive though.....

we can FINALLY set up our own UK-version of the Nigerian scam

"i wanna be a billionaire so freakin' bad".......

won't be long now then

If you think about it, the UK was/is about as badly damaged as any of the struggling eurozone countries - Greece, Italy etc. Imagine if we'd been in the euro we'd have imploded months ago.

We haven't even got the excuses that Greece and Italy have. Just plain old miss management.

I think we are probably the best country in the "We are proper screwed" countries out there. The nicer smelling pile of **** if you will.

Look at Greece and Italy for instance they are purely wrecked financially and haven't even got a plan as such. Seeing what is happening there at least our lot have a plan.

Inflation really isn't an issue. You need westminster to force local councils to pay more attention to town/city centre areas to improve opportunities for small business. Stop looking at the big names to save us, start from the ground up.

This is just robbery from savers. It's a shameful act by the state.

I thought it was actually QE3......

Yep. But do you hear any of our politicians talking about savers? No. They couldn't give a ****.

Eddscott........ not sure what you mean that "inflation really isn't an issue", for me it certainly is as it errodes my spending power and contributes to a stagnant economy

I have no savings but I'm sure people with money in the bank are a bit peed off...

Just curious as to why you feel it's not a probelm ?

Shaun

Why the hell can one do about it? I'm bloody pissed off, but then there is a long history of fiat currencies being blasted to pieces by printing presses...I blame myself in a way.

At the very least the Government should be pressed the BofE about their inflation targets though.

One does wonder what power the state represents though....surely not the power of savers...then who?

Bankers.

That's too simple, just scapegoating.

Sure there is a disproportion of 'business interests' leveraging power at the level of the state, but also many households in the UK were reckless (in the debt the accrued) during the 'boom' and they now will be advantaged by more inflation.

As for Bankers, the City etc sure they love it because it all goes into mini-asset booms.

as Deep Throat said, "follow the money"

what group or groups have been the major beneficiaries of this crises

My gold should do well

In this case it's anyone who's irresponsible. Basically you can always count on these saps now to take money from the people who'll complain the least and give it to those who make the most noise. In this case those people being the 'tards at the bottom of the spectrum and the people at the top who would quite graciously fail and go bankrupt if it wasn't such an inconvenience for the poor. Yeah right.

and the interest rates can go up to 14% again.....

Physical or ETF?

ETF's could be the next derivative to implode.

QE money goes to the Banks at a discount. Why not just give x amount to taxpayers?

How does quantitative easing actually work? If printing just devalues the money whats the point of actually doing it?

Thinking about it, it's probably best just to accept what's going on now and try to work round it. The way things are being run now in the developed world is a whole new paradigm. There is no prudence, and in fact prudence is quite undesirable as it 'doesn't accurately reflect society's needs', or some garbage like that. We're living in a world that's increasingly socialistic in ways that defy belief and all logic: sharing the wealth is one thing, but to actually make a situation considerably worse for the people you're helping because it would be 'unfair not to' is a state of affairs that boggles the mind.

If you read books from the early twentieth century up to now, you can see how this trend has developed. People have grown increasingly detached from reality and much more reliant on the state for their financial security. This, of course, breeds stupidity in itself.

Think about the fact that the last time debt levels were this high was when these countries were throwing everything they had into fighting a war on a massive scale. Now consider the fact that credit is being required at a similar rate just for many people to scrape by. The country is deindustrialised and totally unable to pay its way in the world. We're reliant on people lending us the money to buy the stuff they make. And that's it, basically: without this supply of credit, living standards will fall. This is a situation like all those in history where you look back (like the German hyperinflation) and think "how could they have been so stupid?". It's people with the belief that we're above this now, able to tweek an economy to run in a way that spares anyone any unfavourable feelings, ever, that are messing things up for all of us.

Once the inevitable civil unrest comes along when this crisis worsens, you can forget about a return to that prudence that we need. Extremism and f*cking chaos will be the order of the day, hence even worse mistakes will follow (probably socialistic), and before you know it the golden age of the western world is over, never to return.

Still, Christmas is only a few months away now... that'll be good.

Basically, a central bank buys the government's bonds. It prints the money to do this, rather than in the case of bond purchases by the private sector etc, where the money is already in existence. It has a few effects that are politically favourable. It helps to keep interest rates low, gives the banks money to lend to the private sector (supposedly) and therefore 'stimulates' economic activity. All other things being equal, it will create inflation. If you've got a massive debt denominated in whatever you're inflating, that isn't always a bad thing...

I was listening to the financial programs this morning at “early o’clock”, and I heard the incessant ramblings of, “policy advisors to this” and “consultants” to other various economic think tanks

And it did occur to me to ask myself what positive contribution they are making to our current predicament

It seems to me that the only way to really create “wealth” within an economy is either to take a raw material and with the application of labour (or intellectual property) – add some value and then sell to some other mug abroad. Or get tourist income, -- everything else seems like just pushing money around the system

That's it in a nutshell. The system is there to enable these wealth creating activities to occur, of course; or that's what banking systems and capital markets come about to do. But right now our system is controlled by economic planners, and their policy consists of creating paper money debt out of thin air (that'll never be paid back) and buying other people's things with it.

I reckon they should shove intrest rates up a degree , thatll stimulate the buggers into doing something - nothing else is working

but if you expand your horizon and just view the world as one economic entity, what you are doing is just a wealth transfer between countries, - the global economy is a closed system, ( a wiiner = a looser) a bit like weather patterns, wealth flows from high to low pressure, to me the the whole global economy is a massive ponzi scheme

in the weather analogy the driving force is he sun, in the world economic analogy the driving force is to desire to acquire power and wealth

Well having to lend people money so they can pay you back what they already owe is pretty much the definition of a ponzi scheme.