Addicted to the Apocalypse

TruckerT

Loughton_Monkey wrote: »

'fraid not. Don't often listen to it. Unless in the car, because that's tuned into Radio 4 and have forbidden Mrs LM ever to change it [she wouldn't know how] to the much more down-market Radio 2 tripe that she tunes her own car radio to. On the odd occasion I drive her car, I set it to Radio 4 in the hope of bringing her more out of the gutter but she always turns it back. It took me about 15 years to wean her off Radio 1 for god's sake!

It must be the World at Loggerheads then...

What does 'loggerheads' actually mean, I wonder...

TruckerT

I just checked - a Loggerhead is a large-headed turtle occurring in most seas

Loughton_Monkey

TruckerT wrote: »

It must be the World at Loggerheads then...

TruckerT

One learns not to be at loggerheads (whatever it means) with Mrs LM since life becomes rather easier that way. The alternative might be an apocalypse too close to home.

Plenty of Champagne, plus the use of a couple of credit cards for her 'lunches' is a small price to pay for marital harmony. Despite the current austere times, I am not yet "teetering on the precipice of fiscal doom" [as in the OP] but I was pleased to note that she was happy with a single glass [albeit very large] of Rioja at the restaurant today and this evening made do with a rather nice bottle of St Emilion rather than bubbles.

Turning back to the main subject of conspiracies, I am convinced there is one going on under our very noses. Imagine that in a so-called democratic country, two unelected parties conspired to run the country. Without referring back to the electorate.... surely this couldn't happen could it? Such fantasy would surely lead to apocalypse? I think we should be told.

Fella

purch wrote: »

The other is that as far as I can tell nobody, and I mean nobody, in the looming-apocalypse camp has tried to explain exactly how the predicted disaster would actually work.

That's a very weak argument IMO. Lots of people were saying for years that the housing bubble & insanely lax lending practices would all end in tears, and they were correct. Predicting the exact nature of how that would happen was apparently beyond everyone so there's no reason why the people who were viewing the housing bubble in horror should be expected to have foreseen the exact detail of issues with LIBOR etc etc (how many people here had even heard of LIBOR before 2008?)

As a simple analogy, if you add enough straws to a camel's back eventually it'll break. The argument in the article in the OP is basically saying that to have any credibility you must also be able to predict exactly which straw will break it.

chewmylegoff

I'm not sure what links the LIBOR scandal and the wider issues in the economy? I expect if there hadn't been a financial crisis then the LIBOR stuff would either never have come to light or it would not have been particularly big news. Indeed most of the initial reports about LIBOR manipulation revolved around banks making artificially low submissions to make themselves look less likely to go bust in the initial phase of the financial crisis.

If you predict that there will be a crash in house prices every five minutes then eventually you will be right. Similarly if e.g. Conrad continues to say that we are entering a new era of prosperity every time he posts on this forum, eventually he will be right.

A stopped clock tells the right time twice a day. It also tells the wrong time 86,398 times a day.

chucky

Fella wrote: »

That's a very weak argument IMO. Lots of people were saying for years that the housing bubble & insanely lax lending practices would all end in tears, and they were correct. Predicting the exact nature of how that would happen was apparently beyond everyone so there's no reason why the people who were viewing the housing bubble in horror should be expected to have foreseen the exact detail of issues with LIBOR etc etc (how many people here had even heard of LIBOR before 2008?)

As a simple analogy, if you add enough straws to a camel's back eventually it'll break. The argument in the article in the OP is basically saying that to have any credibility you must also be able to predict exactly which straw will break it.

This housing bubble and lax lending you speak of and the LIBOR issues did not cause the issues in the UK economy. There was a little matter of a financial crisis that affected virtually every economy in the world.

It may be an idea for you to understand cause and causation.

Fella

chewmylegoff wrote: »

I'm not sure what links the LIBOR scandal and the wider issues in the economy? I expect if there hadn't been a financial crisis then the LIBOR stuff would either never have come to light or it would not have been particularly big news. Indeed most of the initial reports about LIBOR manipulation revolved around banks making artificially low submissions to make themselves look less likely to go bust in the initial phase of the financial crisis.

If you predict that there will be a crash in house prices every five minutes then eventually you will be right. Similarly if e.g. Conrad continues to say that we are entering a new era of prosperity every time he posts on this forum, eventually he will be right.

A stopped clock tells the right time twice a day. It also tells the wrong time 86,398 times a day.

False analogy. If someone predicts in January that the housing bubble will end in tears, the fact it's still bubbling away in Febuary doesn't make them incorrect, it just makes them not correct yet - assuming that at some point the housing bubble does end in tears.

The "non-doomsayers" for want of a better word, typically claim that bubble prices will never end in tears.

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

Fella wrote: »

The "non-doomsayers" for want of a better word, typically claim that bubble prices will never end in tears.

The "non-doomsayers" note that prices which are high primarily because of a genuine shortage of supply when compared to the housing needs of the country would indicate it's not a bubble at all.

That doesn't mean prices will never fall.

Prices can certainly fall due to external events.

The sudden withdrawal of 70% of funding from a market thanks to a global credit crunch will cause any market to crash.

And market conditions could change in the future, for example if we build a few million houses quickly enough, such that prices would fall as the supply shortage ends.

But not all price rises are bubbles, and the size of the rise in price isn't what defines whether it's a bubble or not.

And that's the bit "the doomsayers" don't understand.

Fella

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

The sudden withdrawal of 70% of funding from a market thanks to a global credit crunch will cause any market to crash.

Yes but the bit that the "non-doomsayers" rarely if ever acknowledge is that it was a 70% drop from a falsely high level due to massively lax lending criteria.

So I would call it a correction rather than a crash - & a correction that successive govts are doing everything possible to prevent. It's unsure how long they'll succeed for, could be another year or another 20 years.

chewmylegoff

Fella wrote: »

False analogy. If someone predicts in January that the housing bubble will end in tears, the fact it's still bubbling away in Febuary doesn't make them incorrect, it just makes them not correct yet - assuming that at some point the housing bubble does end in tears.

The "non-doomsayers" for want of a better word, typically claim that bubble prices will never end in tears.

The housing market is cyclical as any fule kno. There will always be another crash and then another boom afterwards unless something happens to derail the cycle, like someone building 1 million houses a year. If someone predicts that the housing market will crash in 2000 and it doesn't crash until 2008 then they haven't been proved right in exactly the same way as someone predicting a house price boom in 2007 wouldn't be proved right just because one developed in 2014.

Fella

We disagree. Lots of people were saying from 2000 onwards that there was no problem whatsoever with the "new paradigm" of easy credit & the housing bubble it was creating. With the worst recession since the 1930s a direct result, they were proved spectacularly wrong.