RBS brace for a “cataclysmic year”

purch

wotsthat wrote: »

The savings in the public sector must be staggering too. All those council trucks, bin wagons, police, ambulances and the like.

Probably not. I expect they will have bought a very expensive hedge fixing themselves at a much higher price.

wotsthat

Graham_Devon wrote: »

I honestly cannot see the savings over the past year (and the savings yet to be had going forward) are going to change the economy one bit though (and certainly not enough to outweigh the issues going on in the NE). And I believe that's the overarching suggestion in this thread.

I find it difficult to believe but fair enough.

I'd assert that a lot of people would say the same because they're looking at it from the earnings side i.e. I earned £20k last year and this year I earned £21k so I'm £1k better off.

It's more difficult to work it out on the outgoings side because it requires some sort of monitoring (which seems to be a fringe sport) and many people expand their spending to spend what they've got. They might have purchased more stuff but they're no better off.

Thrugelmir

Generali wrote: »

6,000 job losses,

What do you think is more important to the economy as a whole?

Jobs.

Particularly high skilled technical ones.

The UK is highly dependent on consumer spend at the current time. Rebalancing of the economy has gained no traction.

anchovypizza

Generali wrote: »

May I ask why you think falling oil prices are a bad thing? (I use a working assumption that you are not CEO of Shell or the Saudi Finance Minister).

You ignorance and blinkered house ramping is just off the scale..

Can you not see apart from Mr Average Joe Crow filling up at his local Tescos with a big smile the damage from falling oil prices.
$15 a barrel seems great to you and it would me if that's where it ended, but you cannot see the world wide damage that is about to happen. Yet the same pair of eyes frown upon a 30% fall in house prices, you really are laughable.

Generali

Thrugelmir wrote: »

Jobs.

Particularly high skilled technical ones.

The UK is highly dependent on consumer spend at the current time. Rebalancing of the economy has gained no traction.

Well you're wrong.

The benefits to be gained from a lower oil price are massive and widely spread.

The trouble is '6,000 Jobs to go' makes a big splash on the TV. However those are highly mobile people who will probably beggur off to Bakken or something to pump oil for a bit.

In their place 10s or hundreds of thousands of jobs will be created doing a cross section of the things that the economy does, everything from IT people to checkout chicks to waiters to investment bankers to producers of artisan moustache wax will gain a bit from people simply having a bit more disposable income.

CLAPTON

anchovypizza wrote: »

You ignorance and blinkered house ramping is just off the scale..

Can you not see apart from Mr Average Joe Crow filling up at his local Tescos with a big smile the damage from falling oil prices.
$15 a barrel seems great to you and it would me if that's where it ended, but you cannot see the world wide damage that is about to happen. Yet the same pair of eyes frown upon a 30% fall in house prices, you really are laughable.

so basically you are in favour of high oil prices :
what's your favoured amount 150 a barrel? more?

Innys1

anchovypizza wrote: »

You ignorance and blinkered house ramping is just off the scale..

Can you not see apart from Mr Average Joe Crow filling up at his local Tescos with a big smile the damage from falling oil prices.
$15 a barrel seems great to you and it would me if that's where it ended, but you cannot see the world wide damage that is about to happen. Yet the same pair of eyes frown upon a 30% fall in house prices, you really are laughable.

There's more benefits to the global economy than this.

Graham_Devon

Generali wrote: »

Well you're wrong.

The benefits to be gained from a lower oil price are massive and widely spread.

The trouble is '6,000 Jobs to go' makes a big splash on the TV. However those are highly mobile people who will probably beggur off to Bakken or something to pump oil for a bit.

In their place 10s or hundreds of thousands of jobs will be created doing a cross section of the things that the economy does, everything from IT people to checkout chicks to waiters to investment bankers to producers of artisan moustache wax will gain a bit from people simply having a bit more disposable income.

Think you are making far too much of this to be honest.

Reason? The savings are not THAT large. It's around 25p on a litre of fuel since last year.

Or in other words, around £10 per 40 litre tank.

I feel I must explain before you purposly twist my words (again) that I'm all in favour of this saving personally.

However, I don't see why you are going all out ramper on us over these savings at the pumps. By your theory, the UK would have taken off and gone stratospheric when people saved sometimes £100's of pounds per month on their mortgage payments when interest rates fell.

It didn't. So I don't know why you these much smaller savings are going to light the touchpaper to something.

anchovypizza

CLAPTON wrote: »

so basically you are in favour of high oil prices :
what's your favoured amount 150 a barrel? more?

My favoured price would be 50 cents a barrel, but the price is not the issue, it's what it reached and fell back to that is the problem.
Trouble with people like you is that if oil had reached $250 barrel it would mean high house prices, and I know the argument you lot would have used. But prices have fallen off a cliff and you still cannot see it. But of course you can see the damage that would be done with a 30% fall in house prices.

It has just going to be hillarious when it all kicks off, I have paid for my home and my ego is strong enough to withstand a reduction in it's so called value, I doubt very much many of the posters will feel the same way.

Generali

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Think you are making far too much of this to be honest.

Reason? The savings are not THAT large. It's around 25p on a litre of fuel since last year.

Or in other words, around £10 per 40 litre tank.

I feel I must explain before you purposly twist my words (again) that I'm all in favour of this saving personally.

However, I don't see why you are going all out ramper on us over these savings at the pumps. By your theory, the UK would have taken off and gone stratospheric when people saved sometimes £100's of pounds per month on their mortgage payments when interest rates fell.

It didn't. So I don't know why you these much smaller savings are going to light the touchpaper to something.

It's because the savings made from interest rates falling were more than outweighed by the general mess the economy was in during the period interest rates were falling. Things don't happen in isolation.

The fact is that the economy is already doing quite well by most criteria: GDP is growing steadily if unspectacularly, unemployment is falling fast, employment is at record highs. Whereas interest rates had to be slashed to bail out an economy that was in a complete mess, a lot of that mess is now sorted (albeit with costs that have yet to be realised in many cases such as the build-up in Government debt). As a result, falling oil prices are highly likely to be just the additional fillip that the economy needs.

Funnily enough this might not be entirely positive for house prices. It will depend on the pull upwards from an improving economy versus the pull downwards from interest rates returning to something more normal. Those that expect sub-2% base rates in perpetuity are likely to be disappointed I fear.