government bailing out house losers - good or bad?

PasturesNew

I just want "them" to understand "it was all YOUR fault" and why. So they don't act outraged on TV/radio as if they've been ripped off when they were instrumental in the downfall.

In France people use debit cards and cash to buy things. In France it is hard to get a mortgage and just 1-2 times of going overdrawn can stop you in your tracks. In France there is shame in debt. In France it is not commonplace for people to have credit cards.

In France houses are considerably cheaper (well, they were before the Brits started buying them up wholesale on MEW). In France I bet they won't have the debt-driven problems to be experienced here.

pickles110564

carolt wrote: »

I'd disagree that anyone who bought in recent years - certainly in the south - bought 'sensibly', ie they all paid far more than they would have been paying to rent the same property.

How would we police others' spending? As a parent, I could understand a parent buying their kid a toy, say, whereas to a non-parent, that might seem a pointless luxury.

But as a non-driver with no interest in cars, I'd think anyone who bought a new car full stop let alone a flash one, was wasting their money deliberately.

Better not to hand the money out at all, than try to ration it.

I love your attitude, just cause you can not pass your driving test you want to punish everyone else.

MORPH3US

carolt wrote: »

As a parent, I could understand a parent buying their kid a toy, say, whereas to a non-parent, that might seem a pointless luxury.

But as a non-driver with no interest in cars, I'd think anyone who bought a new car full stop let alone a flash one, was wasting their money deliberately.

But a toy could NEVER be anything but a luxury (although lots of people see toys at Christmas as a necessesity at the expense of their debts = mornons)

However lots of people NEED cars to get to and from work to earn a wage to pay the bills...

Ok maybe they don't need a brand new car, but there are other factors that come in there like safety, fuel economy, no mot for 3 years, (hopefully) no repairs needed for 3 / 5 / longer years....

PasturesNew

pickles110564 wrote: »

I love your attitude, just cause you can not pass your driving test you want to punish everyone else.

Where do you get this !!!!!! from?
You must provide links else you just started an untrue rumour!

PasturesNew

I bought a brand new car once.

I was contracting at the time 200 miles away and my previous old car had ground to a terminal halt somewhere along the M5. I wanted a car I could feel safe in, in that I'd be less likely to grind to a sudden halt on a motorway up to 200 miles from home all alone on a Friday night.

I looked in my bank account and it had enough cash to buy a new one, else I'd have bought 2nd hand. At the time I expected to continue working. My contract did finish the week after, but the market seemed buoyant and I was confident I'd get another contracting job within a week or so.

I was very restricted - because of where I was living and the available time when any car place would even be open - I pretty much had to find and buy one on Saturday morning. So I did. And I negotiated a £1000 discount off the new price (not brilliant, but I was desperate).

I picked a small car for fuel economy. I paid cash. Engine is 1.2 and I expected to use it for 50% motorway driving, 50% A-road driving.

Anyway, market took an overnight bomb and my contract finished and that was the end of contracting. I still have the car, 7 years on. Done under 50,000 miles now and it's not broken down once so far.

Without that car I'd have not been able to take a few jobs I did in the next 6 years, including one 50 miles from home, one 22 miles from home. I'd have not been able to go to interviews 25-30 miles from home. And even last year when I was temping only 8 miles away I could only take the job because I had a car.

If you don't live IN a city, public transport is very often useless for getting to/from work.

mr.broderick

PasturesNew wrote: »

Where do you get this !!!!!! from?
You must provide links else you just started an untrue rumour!

Pn ik know you are upset about todays rate cuts but no need to swear ..:o

mr.broderick

pickles110564 wrote: »

I love your attitude, just cause you can not pass your driving test you want to punish everyone else.

Just ignore her she's crackers..now all you nice people get down to a showroom near you preferably Nissan.

carolt

pickles110564 wrote: »

I love your attitude, just cause you can not pass your driving test you want to punish everyone else.

Sorry to disappoint - never taken a driving test.

How do I want to 'punish everyone else'?

Please keep your fantasies to yourself.

carolt

MORPH3US wrote: »

But a toy could NEVER be anything but a luxury (although lots of people see toys at Christmas as a necessesity at the expense of their debts = mornons)

However lots of people NEED cars to get to and from work to earn a wage to pay the bills...

Ok maybe they don't need a brand new car, but there are other factors that come in there like safety, fuel economy, no mot for 3 years, (hopefully) no repairs needed for 3 / 5 / longer years....

As a parent - and a teacher - most toys (the ones I buy, anyway), are not 'luxuries' - they are education - for a preschooler, or an older child for that matter, they learn through play. My 2 year old learns about the world through his toys; if they are a 'luxury' so is your child's education.

After all, both are strictly non-essential in the basic food and shelter-kind-of-way, but I'd argue both are essentials in any kind of society we would want to live in.

Think of those Romanian children in orphanages under communism - toys ARE essential for small children.

(Not in unlimited quantities, obviously, or at ridiculous cost.)

But my point was rather that there is no universally acceptable definition of luxury versus essential - I can quite see PN's point that to her, or others, a car was essential.

Though, out of interest, I live in a rural area with lousy transport without one; it just means I have to be self-employed to fit my work round my life rather than the other way around.

Alan_M_2

There is no right or wrong answer to the title of this thread.

I'm firmly in the camp of you, make your own bed lie in it....etc etc....

However what we have now is something altogether different, something threatening the global economy to an unprecedented extent....it is a symptom of capitalism which requires boom and bust to operate (not great but the lesser of two evils when compared to communism IMO of course).

One thing often overlooked is the mentality and intelligence of the population at large, and I don't mean this in an unpleasant way, who really don't have a handle on whats going on.

I'll even include myself in that, I'm not thick, I run a business but I don't begin to claim to understand what's going on now or in fact how a hedge fund works or why it even exists etc.....but I have a modicum of common sense and like to think I have a reasonable grasp on what's good and whats bad (financially). I.e. when something looks to good be true, it usually is.

The problem is that a large part of the population actually are uneducated and don't possess common sense (through lack of education up to and including greed and many reasons in between). These people look to the government and institutions tto tell them (and organise for them) what is right and what they can do.

The govt has a responsibility in governing the capitalist activities of it's country, it allows or disallows certain events.....it allowed (through choosing not to regulate) almost unlimited lending. The operations allowed to lend these amounts were unlikely to stop (unless told to) due to the vast sums of money generated by this bandwagon....

So who is at fault? Is it the less than 10% of the population that chose to invest as BTL borrows?

Is it the salesmen who woke up one morning to find their Car dealership has gone bust, there are no more jobs and they now can't support their families?

Is it someone who upsized maxing out on a self certification mortgage that now can't cover it and finds themselves in negative equity?

Or is it the governing body (our government) that allowed all this situations to occur?

Life, and business is not black and white, it is varying shades of grey......how far towards black it goes governs how we, as taxpayers are required to foot the bill or pick up the pieces.

Sometimes events occur on such a large scale that there isn't a single event which can be blamed for the downfall, it is simply a systemic failure of the entire and complete system altogether.

We need someone to blame, surely we as taxpayers shouldn't have to foot the bill for this? - But if we don't what do you think will happen? Do you think Lehman Bros was allowed to go bust as a shot across the bows as to how much crap we're in? I do...I think that made a statement that no one is too big to be taken down.

The trouble is, if we say the taxpayer shouldn't pick up the bill who does? Letting them go bust effectively means the govt/taxpayer picks up the bill with added receiver and accountancy fees...we may as well keep these things moving, slap them on the wrists and vote this govt out for the next lot.

The next govt will then start the cycle again and in another 15 years time we'll all be having the same conversation when a generation of 20 something stockbrokers are telling us it's different this time and the big crash in the late 2000's can't happen again.

Sometimes there is just no-one at fault...it happens, we have to swallow it, pick ourselves up, dust yourself down and get on with it.