House prices: disaster ahead - today's Times

Entertainer

mbga9pgf wrote: »

The guy is an unashamed socialist tw*t. The fact they have someone writing their headline economic pieces for the Times is a disgrace. Fit for the guardian maybe, not the times.

Similar ilk to that twonk Blanchflower. I am betting now their support socialisation of bank debt idea is proving an abject failure around the globe, we hear far less from them both.

Is Anatole Kaletsky a socialist? Can't say I've noticed, although I don't read his pieces as often as I used to. Blanchflower is though, he wrote a Ross Kemp style anti Tory rant in the Mirror recently.

mbga9pgf

Anatole supports anything Keynseyan. Tax the hardworking, support the lame.

Tell me that isnt socialist!

nicko33

Degenerate wrote: »

The only way you can have it as "higher" now is if you are using nominal figures, which is a blatantly dishonest way to compare the numbers. Mind you, you're in good company - I recall George Osborne trying the same trick.

as did Gordon Brown, in Parliament, and to an enquiry

PhylPho

Degenerate wrote: »

When WWII demobilization was complete, the UK national debt stood at over 250% of GDP. At the end of 2009 it stood at 68.1%.

The only way you can have it as "higher" now is if you are using nominal figures, which is a blatantly dishonest way to compare the numbers. Mind you, you're in good company - I recall George Osborne trying the same trick.

The only "trick" I can detect is in the resort by so many to statistics known to be seriously unrepresentative of the true state of the UK's public finances.
It's almost as if a pretence is being sustained along the lines of: if no-one mentions it, then, um, it isn't there.

A quick way of comprehending the scale of the-debt-that-isn't-there is to start off small (!) and work up, remembering throughout that every public debt is a bill awaiting payment largely by the private purse.

The "small" debt worth using as a starting point is Birmingham's Queen Elizabeth Hospital. It's brand spanking new, on the verge of opening, and if it was for sale in an estate agent's window at its actual capital cost, the asking price would be around £625 million.

That £625 million hospital is what the taxpayer has collectively "bought" with his / her "ghost debt" mortgage.

But that mortgage, by the time it has been paid off, will have cost around £2.58 billion.

The hospital is one of several PFI projects in the West Midlands, of which the Birmingham Post reports:

Taxpayers face a bill of more than £8 billion for new West Midlands hospitals worth less than a quarter as much.

But that £8 billion debt relates to but one part of one area of the UK.

Nationally, the picture is this. If we were all of us here on this thread to pop along to an estate agent's window which happened to have for sale -- at their capital value -- every PFI project in the UK, then we would be looking at an overall purchase price of £64 billion.

If we collectively signed up to buy that lot on a collective mortgage, we would finish up paying back. . . £246 billion.

Or, to be entirely accurate: £245,798,700,000.

Actually, there is no "if" about it. The UK Government has purchased £64 billionsworth of public assets and UK taxpayers are required to pay back £246 billion as a result.

Just as they are likewise required to meet this "hidden" bill for unfunded pension commitments to Government and public sector employees:

£800 billion.

Add £800 billion to £248billion together, and the total is. . .

Well. Everyone on here can do the math.

Can figure out for themselves the *true* size of the UK's National Debt. As distinct from the official version. (Oh, and maybe add into the equation the scale of private debt as well: approaching £1 trillion.)

So. Is the UK really in better financial shape now than it was after fighting World War II?

PS: No point in mentioning George Osborne to me. I've no interest in him, his politics, or his family's wallpaper designs.

pickledpink

carolt wrote: »

Go and read my reply to your idiotic post yesterday.

There were 20% falls immediately after I posted this post.

So - I admit it - 20% not 30%.

Though in real terms, I suspect that probably is more like 30%...

Anyway, I digress.

I quoted an article predicting 30% falls.

YOU predicted rises. :rotfl:


Can you work out which one of us came closer to the truth?

Or is your maths not up to that?

Oh go and get a life! You were wrong - you're still wrong - accept it! SOME properties may have had a drop of up to 20% - but only a minority.:p MOST properties didn't drop at all!

Properties never drop like you wish they would.

You just keep paying your landlord's mortgage for him.......:D

YOU predicted rises. :rotfl:

Doctor_Gloom

pickledpink wrote: »

Oh go and get a life!

Behave yourself Betty

breadlinebetty

Doctor_Gloom wrote: »

Behave yourself Betty

OK, CarolT.