What a difference a year makes

wotsthat

Just been having a look at some of the old threads that were last posted in during Nov/ Dec 2012.

It just seems amazing how much things have changed in 12 months. Just a few examples..

1) THEN: Dow Jones sheds 2.3% as Obama re-elected NOW: Dow Jones hits record high

2) THEN: Inflation will rise faster than expected NOW: UK Inflation falls to four year low

3) THEN: Evening Standard - house prices could fall 50% NOW: UK house prices continue to rise rapidly says Halifax

4) THEN: Green shoots wiped out by frosty weather NOW: Britain on course to be fasted growing G7 economy

The taxpayer stake in Lloyds has increase in value by 59% in 12 months, help to buy has been introduced (but hardly gets a mention:)), employment on the up etc. etc.

michaels

Must be wonder boy Carney and forward guidance wot won it....

On the the hand 12 months ago we had a cricket team who could play cricket and there has been no improvement in the football team either.....

ruggedtoast

It interests me that the UK's extremely long history as a generally very successful country is never anything less than saturated by endless warnings of imminent doom.

Somebody should tell the forum HPC.co.uk.

wotsthat

ruggedtoast wrote: »

It interests me that the UK's extremely long history as a generally very successful country is never anything less than saturated by endless warnings of imminent doom.

IMO the British have a trait of being rather downbeat and cynical but it tends not to get in the way of 'getting on with it'. This trait can lead some people to believe that 'blips' are the start of armageddon.

My late Grandfather-in-law was a railwayman during WWII and said that he and his colleagues worked every day of the war without a day off. He said it was only the moaning and complaining that kept them going.

dryhat

You forgot to mention the meteoric rise of Bitcoin.

michaels

dryhat wrote: »

You forgot to mention the meteoric rise of Bitcoin.

I love the indefatigable sense of humour on this board

Loughton_Monkey

wotsthat wrote: »

IMO the British have a trait of being rather downbeat and cynical but it tends not to get in the way of 'getting on with it'. This trait can lead some people to believe that 'blips' are the start of armageddon.

My late Grandfather-in-law was a railwayman during WWII and said that he and his colleagues worked every day of the war without a day off. He said it was only the moaning and complaining that kept them going.

Indeed. People my age started work in the 70's with not only high >20% inflation, but shortages, strikes, winters of discontent, oil crises, and double dip recession. We lived through the early 80's recession with 12% unemployment, and the early 90's recession with 11% and a 10 year wait for house prices to recover back to where they were in £ terms.

Then there was the dot.com crash.... and now the current worldwide financial crash, recession, and apparently very slow recovery.

Of course we didn't have forums like this for most of the time. All we could do is moan with our workmates, but I don't recall too much moaning over and above the normal political banter.

As you say, we tended just to "get on with it".

I note from my own meticulous records that despite all that, my overall "net wealth" never failed to increase year on year whilst I was working. Even since retiring, I show only one year (2008 obviously) where I recorded a decrease, which bounced back in 2009 to exceed 2007. Inevitable since by that time, my house value and equity wealth had built up to a substantial proportion of the whole. This despite the fact that I am now drawing down wealth to live on.

I strongly believe this is 90% due to personal financial discipline in 'controlling' wealth along the way, and only 10% due to the external financial climate. In other words, you tap into a 'good' climate (fill yer boots) and hunker down (protect wealth) in 'bad' times. Of interest to note is that at the end of the 80's, after 7½ years work, I could only show one third of my income in "cash in the bank", but I could show a total wealth of around 7 times my income. In other words it was all invested in house equity, repayment investments, and pension pots.

John_Pierpoint

Every time there is an election on the horizon the current government tries to engineer a boom.
There is a massive experiment going on with the economy (Quantitative Easing), the world's resources per head and the atmosphere (climate change) but I have yet to see a fundamental change in the economic structure of deficit Britain, (Lets get Fracking ?).

CLAPTON

John_Pierpoint wrote: »

Every time there is an election on the horizon the current government tries to engineer a boom.
There is a massive experiment going on with the economy (Quantitative Easing), the world's resources per head and the atmosphere (climate change) but I have yet to see a fundamental change in the economic structure of deficit Britain, (Lets get Fracking ?).

whatever would be a 'fundamental change in the economic structure of deficit Britain'?

Loughton_Monkey

CLAPTON wrote: »

whatever would be a 'fundamental change in the economic structure of deficit Britain'?

If anyone could predict exactly what it was, we would have had the change by now!

It is unlikely to involve further expansion in the fragile Financial Services arena, and it certainly won't be a return to 'traditional' manufacturing.....

It could be fracking, but it could also be something like major scientific breakthroughs - perhaps in drugs, medicine, particle mechanics, nanotechnology etc.....

It is surprising how little of the Intellectual Property [e.g. chip software] or use of modern technology [e.g. Google, Twitter, Facebook, iThis/that or the other...] is of British origin. Maybe British Nationals involved, but they tend to be doing it for American or Far Eastern countries.

Generali

Gold price down by a quarter and apparently in free fall. I could quite easily see it ship another 25% next year too.

No triple dip but instead growth of a little under 1.5% for the year seems likely with an acceleration probable into 2014.

Employment at record highs with unemployment falling fast despite big cuts to public sector employment (I think at least - happy to be corrected).

It'll be interesting to see what happens to interest rates as the recovery gathers pace.