Perceptions of the recession

chewmylegoff

lostinrates wrote: »

Surely this presumes no requirement to be 'honest' :rolleyes: from the bank and large scale stupidity or lack of curiosity on an astounding scale of those banking withthem? The letters, as they stood with media coverage went some thing along the lines of

Dear LiR,

Kaupthing went over the edge, but don't worry, you now bank with ING direct...soon you should be able to access your funds.

So, sure, they knew we knew , but I would have been very concerned that my banking arrangments had changed without knowing why, and I'd want to know why, and I'd do my best to find out.

it does presume that - but that's how i imagine a world without the media would be. the 'independent' media, for all their faults, are the main regulator of what happens - the principal way in which the people responsible for running the country are brought to account is via the media. i believe there would be a certain amount of people running amok without it.

lostinrates

chewmylegoff wrote: »

it does presume that - but that's how i imagine a world without the media would be. the 'independent' media, for all their faults, are the main regulator of what happens - the principal way in which the people responsible for running the country are brought to account is via the media. i believe there would be a certain amount of people running amok without it.

Well, here I agree with you unreservedly, hence my almost instinctive fear of anyone trying to blame the media or gag them. Whilst I am not blind to the fact that the media loves superlatives and exclusives I think I'd rather know how bad things could be at bold headlined extremes than risk ignorance through lack of reportage.

ETA: it starts with 'we can't expect people to deal with the stresses of these financial details'- goes through-...'you only need to know if you vote for us' and ultimately we get to- 'you love us, you always vote for us, lets ditch the money we're wasting on elections'.

b0rker

BuddyBonthenet wrote: »

My brother works in the UK for a large French owned company that has gone into consultation and staff have to reapply for a smaller number of jobs and 45 were made redundant last week in Birmingham - just the first of their offices to be affected.

Capgemini?

SGE1

nickmason wrote: »

I know where you're going with this poll, but I'm not sure it works - I don't think you can just remove "the media."
FTSE crash - but do I only know about that because of the media?
Bank shares - to be honest that'd tell me enough - bank losses = defaults = recession.
Interest rates indicating something funny going on at the bank.
Exchange rates showing something very funny going on - but then I haven't been abroad recently, so do I have to imagine not being aware of this?
Redundancies - without the media I couldn't tell whether it was just local to my world.
Shops closing - as above.

Most of that I imagine is pretty common to most people.

Hearsay? - my friends in high finance have made it pretty clear we're in a mess, but I obviously can't determine how much their mood is driven by the media. Capital has definitely frozen, and I could probably deduce that that equals recession.

I've got some pretty good links to this government, and they (my contacts, not the government!) have certainly been saying it was going to happen for at least a year, more like two.

It's an interesting thought that - although this has been quite quick, and the credit crunch kicked hard last year, the knowledge within the powers that be that there was a problem predated that.

Frankly - within the slightly artificial rules of this game - I reckon I'd have called it before our technical recession; and with the benefit of hindsight, remember that we had two quarters of zero growth, so arguably the recession had indeed started (but for a couple of quid of GDP) a year before we were in technical recession.

No, evidently this isn't a scientific analysis, I think a few people are talking semantics a bit too much.

When I said 'recession', I meant, would anyone have suspected the recession. I think it would be hard for someone to be able to forecast the precise moment when recession becomes official, i.e. the last day of the second quarter of negative growth.

And when I said 'media', I meant more generally, having the idea of a recession throw at you - being told by external information sources what's going on, rather than working it out for yourself. I wasn't referring to each and every press releases ever published.

If you take either side too far, evidently it doesn't work. What I was driving it is the fact that most people aren't in fact feeling the effects of a recession, as proved by the fact that about half of the people that responded admitted (myself included) that they wouldn't have spotted it had someone not told them. Taken individually, shares, interest rates etc are all symptoms of the recession - and some people who have shares and examine their mortgage quite closely will have spotted the obvious flux - but my point is, would you necessarily jump from the idea that evidence of troubles in one institution, or one circumstance, equates to nationwide or global troubles. I don't think so.

nickmason

SGE1 wrote: »

No, evidently this isn't a scientific analysis, I think a few people are talking semantics a bit too much.

When I said 'recession', I meant, would anyone have suspected the recession. I think it would be hard for someone to be able to forecast the precise moment when recession becomes official, i.e. the last day of the second quarter of negative growth.

And when I said 'media', I meant more generally, having the idea of a recession throw at you - being told by external information sources what's going on, rather than working it out for yourself. I wasn't referring to each and every press releases ever published.

If you take either side too far, evidently it doesn't work. What I was driving it is the fact that most people aren't in fact feeling the effects of a recession, as proved by the fact that about half of the people that responded admitted (myself included) that they wouldn't have spotted it had someone not told them. Taken individually, shares, interest rates etc are all symptoms of the recession - and some people who have shares and examine their mortgage quite closely will have spotted the obvious flux - but my point is, would you necessarily jump from the idea that evidence of troubles in one institution, or one circumstance, equates to nationwide or global troubles. I don't think so.

Sorry - didn't mean to come across as a pedant. Or indeed be one. Certainly you're right about the knowledge of entering a technical recession would be dependent on some pooled analysis being communicated outwards, rather than being tangibly felt by the man on the street.

But I think you've "situated the appreciation". There is something of the iceberg about a recession - you don't see much of it, but it certainly has a huge effect. For example, a change from 2.5% growth to 2.5% shrinkage in the economy would be huge in terms of national impact, but would initially only affect 1 in 20. (some enormous simplifications in there). So arguably there are 19 people sitting there saying "I wouldn't be aware of it". The effects of it will certainly impact people later on, however much smoothing the government tries.

Without some pooling of information, an individual would indeed be rash to assume that what he/she was aware of was replicated nationally. On the other hand he/she'd be rash to exclude the possibility. In other words there'd be more uncertainty in their position. So if you were turn the question around, and ask "would you not have any worry that there was a recession going on", you'd have got a very different response.

PS - there are probably all sorts of reasons why I'm taking a different view, but certainly the fact that the charity sector is feeling the pinch on donations to such an extent that redundancies are taking place across the board has been a pretty good indicator for me. I guess the point is that the effects are not evenly spread across individuals, so you need a big sample view to see what's going on.

shirlgirl2004

I'd probably be blissfully unaware of a recession without the media. I don't know anyone who had lost their job. I wouldn't know what my mortgage rate is because the Woolwich don't tell us when it changes and our monthly pament doesn't change. On our local high street the only shop to close has been Woolies. The shops were quiet at Christmas but I'd put that down to internet shopping. The cost of the foreign holiday rising I would probably put down to have to taking our holiday in school holidays for the first time this year. A lot of our costs have fallen in the last year.

Probably the only sign from my perspective is that the OH bonus is halved this year, but most companies can have a bad year so that alone wouldn't be conclusive.

tyllwyd

SGE1 wrote: »

... If you take either side too far, evidently it doesn't work. What I was driving it is the fact that most people aren't in fact feeling the effects of a recession, as proved by the fact that about half of the people that responded admitted (myself included) that they wouldn't have spotted it had someone not told them. ...

You've probably got a point, but don't you think you could say that of any recession, or even of a boom in the economy? If you are employed, and you get your regular salary in the bank at the end of the month, what is going on more widely in the country isn't going to impact on you to such a great extent. What are you going to take as a noticable sign of recession?