Hard to explain how bad economic crisis is, says Cable

Thrugelmir

[quote=[Deleted User];43854888]Regrettably, as the greater proportion of my London properties are in the Canary Wharf/IOD area I have several of these people as tenants. I am well aware that they are not all multi-millionaires. That is not the issue.

[/QUOTE]

If you have such strong moral convictions. Why not sell your BTL properties and use the released money to invest in a real business, which would create economic activity to the benefit of the wider community.

[Deleted User]

Thrugelmir wrote: »

If you have such strong moral convictions. Why not sell your BTL properties and use the released money to invest in a real business, which would create economic activity to the benefit of the wider community.

I don't see anything immoral about BTL, but nice change of direction anyway.

FYI, I also have 'real' businesses.

ILW

[quote=[Deleted User];43856494]I don't see anything immoral about BTL, but nice change of direction anyway.

FYI, I also have 'real' businesses.[/QUOTE]

I suppose it's no more immoral than investment banking.

[Deleted User]

ILW wrote: »

I suppose it's no more immoral than investment banking.

Hardly. I'm unlikely to fail so spectacularly that I would need bailing out by the government and create a recession, mass unemployment, etc.

Thrugelmir

[quote=[Deleted User];43856494]I don't see anything immoral about BTL, but nice change of direction anyway.

[/QUOTE]

The same banks you rant about. Enabled you to get your business going. With the availability of cheap credit.

ILW

The banks are pretty good at taking the heat away from the people that should have taken some responsibility though. eg governments who have the power to legislate.

blackshirtuk

blackshirtuk wrote: »

I thought Mr Cable's article was about how little the public understood about how bad the economic situation is.

However it seems several on here want to debate why we are in this mess, without addressing the point of the original Post.

Who here knows the true extent of our debt? (without googling it!)

Total National debt not annual deficit. I am truly interested if Mr cable is right or if the members of MSE are more informed than the average joe public.

Please post what you think the national debt is and we can begin to understand if mr cable is right or wrong.

guess not then argument it is!

[Deleted User]

Thrugelmir wrote: »

The same banks you rant about. Enabled you to get your business going. With the availability of cheap credit.

Oh so its only fair we should turn a blind eye to them ruining the economy and causing wholesale job losses then?

EDIT: BTW, they only lend money to accumulate more. I have no issue with this however you can't portray it as an act of generosity.

[Deleted User]

ILW wrote: »

The banks are pretty good at taking the heat away from the people that should have taken some responsibility though. eg governments who have the power to legislate.

What blame have the banks actually accepted? They and their apologists, like you, spend all their time trying to divert blame.

Rochdale_Pioneers

Cable is part of the problem he rightly addresses. Its all very well saying "people don't understand it" but when his government is happy to rewrite history and give misleading statements for political reasons is it any wonder?

I've skipped most of this thread, but was interested to see the "its all Labour's fault for not regulating properly" argument deployed early on. And part of this is true - Labour didn't regulate properly, thats a fact. Then you step back and put it in context. Most governments didn't regulate properly - and "properly" is something that can only be defined now, not then. And the Tory response to Labour not regulating properly was to accuse them of over-regulating and to call for even less regulation, the polar oppositite of what we now know is "proper" regulation. So politically whilst the attempts to blame it all on Brown have been hard-fought, the facts scupper the Tories efforts.

And its a similar story on "debt" and "deficit". Can't escape the fact that we entered the crash with less debt than most of our competitors and that this remains the case today - which is why the accepted % of GDP measure used universally gets binned and various spurious measures deployed to prove the point. And whilst the deficit is now high it wasn't pre-crash and besides which the Tories shackled themselves to spend every past penny of what they now brand "Labour recklessness" had they won a 2007 election. And if debt interest now is such a disaster, why when as a % of our economy it was higher under John Major wasn't that an apocalypse?

So its little wonder the public don't get it. Facts are hard to come by and there is little authority behind any of them. When might they get it? Well the big crisis looks likely to be still ahead of us. It seems to be only a matter of time before Greece say "enough", and once the default machine gets in motion revealing how much money we all owe each other, the whole Euro house of ponzi collapses. And thats ignoring the oceans of Euros loaned by western European banks in eastern european property development which those nations cannot afford to repay in a foreign currency on property thats devalued massively since the top of the bubble.

I know there are some loons who say "stick your money under the bed" or "have a few months-worth of food", but in a way I do sypathise with the sentiment.....