Sterling Crisis Looms as U.K. Unraveling Points to Budget Cuts

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purch wrote: »

.....plus the hilarity of Norman 'Shuffler' Lamont (the worst Chancellor in the history of worst Chancellors ) standing in front of the Treasury at 7pm and telling the world that we surrender from the fight we shouldn't have joined in the first place, and the 15% base rate :eek: he had announced at 4pm would not now be happening !!!!!

Probably the most embarrassing moment in the history of the Treasury.

I agree it was embarrassing, and I'm no fan of Lamont, however the worst chancellor in history is without question our current PM, the damage he has and is doing to the country will be felt for generations, not so Lamont.

purch

We lost more money letting Brown sell off the gold:

You must admit, that is a moving target !!!

'Black' Wednesday

I dunno where this name came from.

It was called 'White' Wednesday at the time.

halight

purch wrote: »

You must admit, that is a moving target !!!



I dunno where this name came from.

It was called 'White' Wednesday at the time.

Was it really called white wednesday?
Or you jsut pulling our leg?
Im only 29 so i was only a kid really when it happend so i dont rember much about it or what the papers were syaing about it at the time.

breadlinebetty

Generali wrote: »

I've got 2 jobs right now - I'm helping looking after the finances of a small Sydney private hospital and doing some economics tutoring for a local offshoot of a university. I'm also about to start advertising my services as an HSC (like A' level) economics private tutor. Tutoring is pretty lucrative as it turns out!

I'm looking at starting a CPA (like CIMA in the UK) and going into running hospitals. It looks like fun and relatively low stress. The tutoring will keep the Generali finances in order in the meantime.

The mortgage people want me to go back part time but I think I'll stick with the tutoring TBH. We'll see.

Oh and I got a job offer today to be a train driver which I don't think I'll take up.

In other news, I'm looking at the feasibilty of cycling from Sydney to Darwin in Decmeber 2010(!). I suspect it'll be a no go but I'm looking into it. I think the next big cycling trip will be Sydney to Robertson (a cheese making centre - yum!) Oh and I signed up to do dry July:

https://www.dryjuly.com/profiles/generali

Feel free to sponsor me or even better to buy me a Golden Ticket! I've not had a drink in almost 20 hours and the pressure is starting to show.

Good luck to you Generali, I admire your spirit and determination. As the old saying goes, you never fail until you give up - and you are a real tryer. Good on you. I 've read many of your threads over the last year or so and your enthusiasm for new ventures really shines through.

Maybe some of your jobs didn't turn out how you wanted but you'll get there in the end. Just stick to it. From memory you've done Mortgage Brokering, Tutoring in a college, training to be an accountant, private teaching at economics, repairing people's pc's in their homes as a one man band, running the accounts dept. of a private hospita, starting up an entrepreneur business that originated from the airline industry which could make you billions, and you've even been offered job as a train driver! I wish this country had more triers like you and maybe we wouldn't be in the mess we're in.

Out of interest, what happened to your whizz of an idea that was going to make you a billionaire or is it still in the pipeline? I'd love to know what it is. If you decided to jack in the idea and take up train driving or accountine instead let me know please!:D

inspector_monkfish

interesting thread about the best way to sell a property...


http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?p=22947711#post22947711

purch

Was it really called white wednesday?

Yes.

I think it was a headline on one of the broadsheet newspapers too, on Thursday 17th.

We'd already had a Black Monday and Black Friday in recent memory, but the main thing about those days was that the 'market' lost.

On White Wednesday the 'market' won, and it was the Government who waved the white flag.

halight

purch wrote: »

Yes.

I think it was a headline on one of the broadsheet newspapers too, on Thursday 17th.

We'd already had a Black Monday and Black Friday in recent memory, but the main thing about those days was that the 'market' lost.

On White Wednesday the 'market' won, and it was the Government who waved the white flag.

Cheers for that, You learn somthing new every day on here:T

tomterm8

Generali wrote: »

Traditionally it's been when the Government has tried to maintain a fixed exchange rate and markets have decided that the pound is worth less than the Government would like it to be. In the end (as Mrs Thatcher famously said) you can't buck the market and Governments have been forced to devalue the currency.

Outside a fixed exchange rate system, I guess a Sterling crisis would be a fall in value of the pound by enough to make a material difference to British peoples' standard of living.

Um, surely then we've already had one? After all, in the heady days of january I seem to remember that we had a plummet in Sterling as bad as the ERM debacle. People just didn't notice it very much, because we are on a floating exchange rate.

The irony of this, is that it was UK government policy to devalue sharply, they succeeded, and it really did help the economy.

Rochdale_Pioneers

tomterm8 wrote: »

The irony of this, is that it was UK government policy to devalue sharply, they succeeded, and it really did help the economy.

How the Brown frothers screamed at the time - "destroying the pound" was the refrain. Yeah, because an overvalued currency is just what you want in a recession, isn't that right Ireland?

Sorry, but its policies of economic madness like this that really worry me about the Tories. For all that they bleat on about how Brown has personally brought recession to the UK, they seem to have no explanation for what brought that same recession to everywhere else as hard or harder than here when they pursued different policies. What matters is how deeply we go in and how quickly recover, and the evidence so far - the actual evidence, not the rhetoric - is that we're getting off relatively lightly.

Brown might have sounded like a pillock at PMQs yesterday saying that unemployment is the Tory policy, but isn't it? It has been several times before ("Yes it hurt, Yes it worked", "High unemployment is a price worth paying" etc), and doesn't a prolonged recession with high unemployment suit their cause?

bluey890

Rochdale_Pioneers wrote: »

How the Brown frothers screamed at the time - "destroying the pound" was the refrain. Yeah, because an overvalued currency is just what you want in a recession, isn't that right Ireland?

Sorry, but its policies of economic madness like this that really worry me about the Tories. For all that they bleat on about how Brown has personally brought recession to the UK, they seem to have no explanation for what brought that same recession to everywhere else as hard or harder than here when they pursued different policies. What matters is how deeply we go in and how quickly recover, and the evidence so far - the actual evidence, not the rhetoric - is that we're getting off relatively lightly.

Brown might have sounded like a pillock at PMQs yesterday saying that unemployment is the Tory policy, but isn't it? It has been several times before ("Yes it hurt, Yes it worked", "High unemployment is a price worth paying" etc), and doesn't a prolonged recession with high unemployment suit their cause?

You're right. We need Vince Cable as Chancellor. He's the only one who stands a chance of getting us out of this mess.