"And so it begins"
Gandalf the White

Are economists seriously expecting a rise in US house prices?

10% of US mortgage holders are in arrears and more than 30% of pre-owned sales (as they call them) are foreclosures.

"And so it begins" - if anyone plans on using that I would suggest cut and paste or recording it to playback to save some energy.

You could say that on any of a myriad of days in the last 2 years, likely the next 5 and it never does 'begin'.

They will all be happy by 4pm, the fear dissipated/forgotten and the market will be back to what it was on Friday, if not higher.

And just 4 fun - I thought I saw a light at the end of the tunnel and it turned out to be a train coming the other way. Oh, I'm so witty.

Up, down. Most market commentary is noise, like static on a radio.

Are economists seriously expecting a rise in US house prices?

10% of US mortgage holders are in arrears and more than 30% of pre-owned sales (as they call them) are foreclosures.

If Geithner manages to manifest his dream in the rest of the lot to further guarantee from government funds all these faltering mortgages, then yeah. Rampant inflation, but who cares as long as the figures turn out to be higher?

Shareholders are selling because they don't have confidence in their investments and are not believing governments actions will translate to any improvement in the economies. The yen is rising because of the fear of devaluation in other currencies and so its a flight to safety.

Here the BOE has published July lending figures. Net lending, which takes out redemption's and repayments, totaled only just £86m, a steep decline from Junes £518m. Apart from being the lowest net lending since records began.

The only positive thing that can be said of record numbers of home owners repaying and redeeming their mortgage is that they are de-leveraging . If the Chancellor could reduce public spending as well as the home owner the recovery would be guaranteed.

In reality this record low net lending is bad news for builders, especially those who still have massive interest debts to repay their bond holders. The wider economy cannot look to the homeowner to be the driver of any recovery given these figures.

It would be interesting to see where the money taken out of the stock market is going, certainly some is to repay mortgages and some to live off. The speculation is some is being put to buying gold, a sure sign of lack of confidence that governments will be able to control future inflation.

@Halo572
How about :
"That wound will never fully heal" - Gandalf
or
"The doom is near at hand" - Boromir
?

Do they meet your great approaval of leading opinionater?
Maybe I should retreat in shame for daring to address your noble assembly o my lord

@Halo572
How about :
"That wound will never fully heal" - Gandalf
or
"The doom is near at hand" - Boromir
?

Do they meet your great approaval of leading opinionater?
Maybe I should retreat in shame for daring to address your noble assembly o my lord

As an old college lecturer used to say when I was at the London College of Printing back in the sixties...

Rags make paper
Paper makes money
Money makes Banks
Banks make loans
Loans make beggars
Beggars make rags...

Watching this financial collapse still unfolding always takes me back to his words...

still rearranging village life to suit the village idiots...

OMG IT IS THE END TIMES! BANKPOCALYPSE SELL SELL SELL BANKNAROC IS UPON US!!!!!!1111oneoneeleventy

*cough*

@wwwgmvanet

If the Chancellor could reduce public spending as well as the home owner the recovery would be guaranteed.

Could you explain how this works? Government taking money out of the economy + homeowners spending less + investors panicking and coverting their money into gold = economic growth = recovery.

@wwwgmvanet

If the Chancellor could reduce public spending as well as the home owner the recovery would be guaranteed.

Could you explain how this works? Government taking money out of the economy + homeowners spending less + investors panicking and coverting their money into gold = economic growth = recovery.

... in Japan, where a £6.9bn stimulus package announced yesterday by the Japanese government failed to impress investors.

Lest we forget that nothing short of measures designed to ensure City Financial Investers are able to hoard wealth and resources for themselves will ever impress them...

... in Japan, where a £6.9bn stimulus package announced yesterday by the Japanese government failed to impress investors.

Lest we forget that nothing short of measures designed to ensure City Financial Investers are able to hoard wealth and resources for themselves will ever impress them...

Today's losses came in the face of research showing that UK consumers are feeling more confident about their personal economic conditions and the wider economy.

Which select consumers might these individuals be? Perhaps the few people left with a job and those daft enough to believe the hype about a sustained recovery based on a revived debt-fuelled consumer spending.

Today's losses came in the face of research showing that UK consumers are feeling more confident about their personal economic conditions and the wider economy.

Which select consumers might these individuals be? Perhaps the few people left with a job and those daft enough to believe the hype about a sustained recovery based on a revived debt-fuelled consumer spending.

One does not simply walk into Bankdor. It’s black gates are guarded by more than just wankers. There is evil there that does not sleep. The great eye is ever watchful. It is a barren wasteland, riddled with fire, ash and dust. The very air you breathe is a poisonous fume. Not with ten thousand men and a warrant, could you do this. It is folly.

I've given up being impressed by the antics of the LSE going up and down like a YoYo. This particular panic seems particularly curious. Worries about data coming out on Friday which may or may not show US weakness and possible double dippiness. All seems a little faux. Halo is probably right. The stock market is currently dominated by spivs and con men who think nothing to panicking the gullible when they've been shorting for the last few weeks ready for this moment. Any sensible person should have gotten out of this rigged market long ago.

Article in Today's Guardian Confident buyers raise hopes of averting double-dip

But London will continue to grow, the consultancy said. The capital will account for 19.8% of UK economic activity by 2015, up from 16.3% in 1995, the report said.

Yes, let's pretend the recession didn't happen and go back to the old tried and failed method of spending our way to increased riches, encouraged by a London-centric and strucurally myopic economic policy. The regions are part of another planet of course.

I don't believe in this double-dip crap.

This is one big recession, with an interlude in which bankers, politicians and their acolytes talked up the market, inducing a phantom recovery that's now running out of steam.

By inventing this fiction of a double-dip recession they distance themselves from the fact that the whole thing was caused by them: bankers, politicians, and their acolytes. The ordinary man in the street is footing the bill, in the form of unemployment, which in the US has reached 9.5%, a property slump, and a collapse of manufacturing industries (most of which have, in any case, been outsourced to China).

So please, stop insulting my intelligence by talking about a double-dip. This is one big dip, and the end is nowhere in sight.

research showing that UK consumers are feeling more confident about their personal economic conditions

Ignoring what we're in for starting on 4 January 2011.

Happy New Year, oiks!
Love,
Osborne

Compare this generic "lifecycle of a bubble" graph (made by compounding data for all bubbles since the tulip bulb bubble in Holland - so it applies equally well to modern day bubbles like house prices)

with this historic graph following the progress of the Dow Jones (and thereby, western capitalism from 1900 to today) and see why markets are 'nervous'.

Markets appear to be at or around the 'return to normal' peak on the first graph. Can markets defy what appears to be gravity? Who knows.

Japan's currency is at a 15 year high because it still has a manufacturing sector. Take a look at the currencies of other countries that still have a substantial manufacturing sector.

Any country that bases it's economy on the service sector is dealing with an Emperor's New Clothes situation.

As the Bonehead said so eloquently: "This sucker's going down!"

It is not just that the US is cooling more than predicted, it is also due to the weakness of a number of European economies, particularly Greece and Ireland in terms of their public and private debt, Italy in terms of its public dent and a host of former Warsaw Pact countries that have also seen their economies evaporate in burst development bubbles. Norther EU countries, and Britain will have to work hard on deficit reduction to join them, are likely to retrench their spending plans further exacerbating liquidity tightness. The ECB has continued to foul the markets by strongly suggesting it will prop up the PIIGS for example, but also sending out sidebars about spending reductions and debt restructuring under ECB/IMF surveillance. And the banking news continues to worsen in the afflicted economies, The screens are active this morning about the latest banking nightmare from Ireland. Greece will come in with revised growth figures at the end of September which must contain bad news for credit in that country as well. Sovereign debt is still a more worry and likely to remain so until the PIIGS can prove they have deleveraging strategies in place to unwind their deficits and private debt and carry their economies safely through the next three to five years. Tricky.

@epinoa!

What is the UK government doing to improve confidence in the manufacturing sector? Not alot ....about the same as the previous lot!

I love the markets.

Its "weeeeee, tesco 2 for 1 offer, then not weeeeeee, Mrs Boggins cat has wandered off again, oh weeeeeee again, Free whiskey glass at the petrol station, then big not weeeeee, I've misplaced the car keys"

Maybe we should behave like the markets. Phone the boss up and ask whats happening and say you don't have confidence in it and invest your time elsewhere. Then go to work only when they say some thing nice.

Unless they actually expect you to be productive and maybe make stuff. No, that's silly, money can only make money. Ridiculous, money making saucepans, cars, ships preposterous.

What is this crap about a double-dip - as if the economy is a funfair ride - it is not - like the environment it has been much abused by idiots. It is denial. Call it a depression - then start to reform every blasted way we do business - so that can then in turn address the environment. These people who overanalyse an analysis - it is like the weather channel repeating the same bright forecast when a hurricane is right in their midst. Let us all for one week live on the smallest sum possible. Then see how rich being poor is.

Reminds me of the boy who cried wolf.

Still british banks are about to repay a couple of brass farthings to the government.

The Government is set to reap almost £30 billion from its holdings in British banks which it bailed out at the time of the financial crisis, according to an analysis.

Still british banks are about to repay a couple of brass farthings to the government.

The Government is set to reap almost £30 billion from its holdings in British banks which it bailed out at the time of the financial crisis, according to an analysis.

Until there is a general appreciation by leaders and economists of the true nature of our debt-driven economy there is no chance of getting it right.

On the one hand most people believe we need to reduce the national deficit (debt), on the other hand the government is desperate for businesses and consumers to borrow more (ie go into more debt).

No-one asks why.

Why do we need businesses to borrow. Why shouldn't consumers and businesses be able to concentrate on simply running their accounts more efficiently as we hope our governments will.

The answer, is that if the banks don't lend, then the money supply shrinks. Because pretty much all the money in circulation is in fact debt that must be repaid.

An even scarier fact is that there is more debt world-wide than there is money to pay for it.

This Ponzi-Monster of a money system has no clothes and its time everyone opened their eyes and took a look.

The supposed antics of the Pakistan bowlers seems to be a pretty clear lesson in how simple it is to rig a game, even with millions watching...I've absolutely no doubt that characters in or around the city are playing similar tricks with the markets. It's all very subtle and very difficult to prove...especially with toothless regulators.
Dr No really is taking over the world...where is James Bond when you need him?

An even scarier fact is that there is more debt world-wide than there is money to pay for it.

I came across an interest point awhile ago made by a German banker, I think.
He provided the scenario of opening a savings account with 1 dollar/yen/ euro whatever, in the year 1 AD, passing the account on generation by generation.

Today you walk into the bank to withdraw the money and close the account. Unfortunately, there is not enough money in the world to pay you out. As your interest payments have swallowed it all up and no one could invest in anything else.

An even scarier fact is that there is more debt world-wide than there is money to pay for it.

I came across an interest point awhile ago made by a German banker, I think.
He provided the scenario of opening a savings account with 1 dollar/yen/ euro whatever, in the year 1 AD, passing the account on generation by generation.

Today you walk into the bank to withdraw the money and close the account. Unfortunately, there is not enough money in the world to pay you out. As your interest payments have swallowed it all up and no one could invest in anything else.

Lets go back to using shells and leave this madness behind us

epinoa:

Japan's currency is at a 15 year high because it still has a manufacturing sector. Take a look at the currencies of other countries that still have a substantial manufacturing sector.

The UK has a larger manufacturing sector (as a percentage of GDP) than Japan.

Japan:

Agriculture: 1.6%, industry: 23.1%, services: 75.4% (2009 est.)

UK

Agriculture (1.2%), industry (23.8%), services (75%) (2009 est.)

Lets go back to using shells and leave this madness behind us

Two winkles equal one cockle shell. Limpets are in an inflationary trough and are expected to devalue.

Why is it that when markets fall it’s front page news, but it’s not when they regain those loses? Would a 70 point rise in early trading have made the headlines? When shares dropped below 4000 points there were headlines everywhere screaming about billions being wiped off the values of pensions etc, but when they went over 5000 there was nothing about billions being added to the value.

The UK has a larger manufacturing sector (as a percentage of GDP) than Japan.

Japan:

Agriculture: 1.6%, industry: 23.1%, services: 75.4% (2009 est.)

UK

Agriculture (1.2%), industry (23.8%), services (75%) (2009 est.)

Just imagine what that 0.7% extra manufacturing could do, the world is ours for the taking.

SeanThorp

Lets go back to using shells and leave this madness behind us

No! follow the Gourd!

Actually market based economics is a great way to satisfy supply and demand of the planet, the problem is these fuckers interfere with it on a daily basis to make money out of nothing and then when we try and create laws that stop them they cry "interference in the market!" when in actual fact regulation is the opposite, its actually the means a democracy has to stop these bastards interfering with the market. Irony.

It'd all work fine if the market and banks were strongly regulated and the process of money creation as debt was stopped and the true value of things (such as stuff that has a carbon costs associated) was factored into it all correctly. Also if labour laws were standardised and fair to combat capital flight people were paid a fair wage and if currency attacks were illeg...... Fuck it ... Lets go back to using shells and leave this madness behind us!

The USA is not the world economy, it's time to move on folks.
Japan is fine, we just need to lose the negativity.

CNN lists six - count'em, six - products still made in the USA:
http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2010/smallbusiness/1008/gallery.made_in_usa/index.html

Whether the US GDP goes up, down, or sideways: if this is all the US can produce, we're in trouble. They even need a Brit (Jonathan Ive) to design their iPhones, and a Frenchman (Bertrand Serlet) for their software.

Sackyouremployer

Those people would be the ones, who were sensible enough not to borrow money they couldn’t pay back to buy things they didn’t need in the mistaken belief that nothing would ever change.

If as your name suggests you are unhappy with your employer why not start you own business and show everyone how it should be done. You don’t need qualifications, I haven’t got any. You don’t need money, I started my first business from my spare bedroom and within ten years it was employing 18 people and turning over 1.8m. You don’t need any special qualities- all you need is balls.

RPerrin

We are all to blame for this. Our economy is built on a mountain of debt.

This scenario was reported a couple of weeks ago. The masters of the Universe are back from their holidays and let the tinkering begin. How much is reaction to reality, how much is pure financial speculation......they decide.

Fasten your seat belts folks; there's a rough ride ahead as the bankers and their government lackeys fire up the printing presses to get a last payout out of the collapsing bubble.

Then the fun will really start.

Correction for shinsei, UK manufacturing sector is 14%; down from 20% in the past 10 years. Your figure includes energy, BP oil production etc. As far as manufacturing is concerned i.e. making goods, the UK is on the decline and much of the sector uses off-shore factories.

Factory jobs are being exported by the service sector! If a business consultant says it is cheaper to use a factory off-shore then let it happen.

@selfemployed

thanks for the advice. I'm working towards it.