George (Soros not Gorgeous) UK warning

merlinthehappypig

clobber wrote: »

My OH keeps telling me we need a new car. I have absolutely no idea why. It goes, it doesn't let the rain in, and it passes it's MOT. So why do we need a new one?

I think it's a boy thing.

No it's not - I keep telling my wife we need to change ours for something more economical and smaller.

It's a MSE thing!

ianmr65

!!!!!!? wrote: »

Now you're getting it!

I don't think we'll see the same scale of devestation as the USA but I do think it will overall be worse - just that it will last longer and take place at a less frenzied pace. What seems to be happening in the US is that the market is just rapidly correcting. They don't stand on trying to keep up a pretence when things go wrong, they just bail immediately and cut their losses.

In the UK on the other hand, things are being dragged out as slowly and painfully as possible. By many measures, the level of debt in the UK is even worse than the USA.

One way or another, prices are going to have to reach some sort of reasonable level. If we don't see rapid, sharp falls in the market we will see slow, gradual, protracted decline with the accompanying economic under-performance. Possibly like the last decade for Japan but without the comforts of high levels of personal savings and a solid manufacturing, exporting base to lessen the pain.

Yes all of that :T + crazily the US presidential election has a major bearing: these traditionally offset many problems they would otherwise face.. as the country tends to ignore everything else that is going on. The blanket advertising and constant news updates, probably see to that. It's the equivalent of a small war over here. LOL.

posh*spice

Can someone pleeeeeeeease explain to me why the stock market isn't really falling. We have oil at $135+ pb, falling house prices, and the fed just reduced the growth forecast for the USA to virtually zero - and still no signs of impending doom in the stock market. I don't get it? What do they know that we don't. Please enlighten me.:p:o

jamescredmond

Annpan wrote: »

How lovely. That's cheered me up no end. I'm one of those baby boomers who saved Coop stamps and went to the shop and bought 2 ounces of minced beef! I can do it again. We had old cars and kept them on the road with a bit of fibre glass to fill in rusty holes. You see, today, the young want new cars etc. Silly thing is, all that lost money on new cars from the day you take it home and nobody cries about that. But houses now, that's different and people are crying before it happens.
Chill man and get the old vinyl records out. Buy some minced beef and have a party!

here's a piece of wisdom that hasn't been thanked enough.

I've eaten in some great restaurants over the past 10 yrs- as much for the sense of event as for the food. whether I've rec'd vfm is a different matter.

but if push came to shove I'd still be happy to eat 2oz - sorry, 40g of mince with loads of veg.

as for motors: only someone grossly wedged/ foolish would ever consider buying a brand new car, given the state of the 2nd car market these past few yrs. (unless of course you were going to hang onto it until it fell to bits).

sentimental mid-aged fool that I am, I see nothing wrong in running around in an older car and opening a tin of beans.

nothing wrong in aspiring to better things, either. so long as you can pay for them independently.

off now to listen to gary numan's 'down in the park' , in boring black vynyl.

clobber_2

Oh no we're back on the subject of baked beans again.

I LOVE BAKED BEANS AND WE'VE RUN OUT.

On the subject of retro eating/living within one's means, we would all probably be a lot healthier if we went back to wartime rationing and supplemented it with allotment veg.

Bring it on!

merlinthehappypig

posh*spice wrote: »

Can someone pleeeeeeeease explain to me why the stock market isn't really falling. We have oil at $135+ pb, falling house prices, and the fed just reduced the growth forecast for the USA to virtually zero - and still no signs of impending doom in the stock market. I don't get it? What do they know that we don't. Please enlighten me.:p:o

It's because such a large proportion of the value of the FTSE 100 is oil and mining companies. The strength of these stocks, high oil price etc, is giving a very false picture. Take these out and it would be a very different picture indeed. You only have to look at the banking & housing sectors for the last few months to see what I mean.

posh*spice

merlinthehappypig wrote: »

It's because such a large proportion of the value of the FTSE 100 is oil and mining companies. The strength of these stocks, high oil price etc, is giving a very false picture. Take these out and it would be a very different picture indeed. You only have to look at the banking & housing sectors for the last few months to see what I mean.

Thanks - merlinthehappy - You don't know what the figure looks like with these taken out ?- or where I might find those figures.

Generali

If you look at the FT then they show the figures sector by sector. You can then see how Banks or Tobacco are doing as individual sectors.

This shows the weightings of each stock in the index:

http://www.ftse.co.uk/Research_and_Publications/Downloads/ASWB_1105.pdf

It would be pretty straightforward to produce your own indices from that. It would only really be useful to track changes over time.

Mary_Hartnell

"OK Children, listen up, I will say this once, slowly and clearly, because your mother tongue may not be English"

George Soros talks to the BBC World Service's in a scripted simple question & answer session:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/podcasts/bizdaily/ (21st May is the episode)

The Soros interview is the first 11 minutes (But it looks like the longer "interview" has not happened)

The message I got was:

- The USA has been living beyond its means to the tune of a 6% chronic deficit.

- USA has been eating its seed corn by running a savings ratio of MINUS 6 - 10%, by MEWing.

- Market fundamentalism is just another religion. In this example the market has failed.

- We are now in a "superbubble" crisis.

- Here we are the 1930's conditions, let us hope we get better not more regulation (FSA take note).

- A period of wealth destruction during the bust, so invest for safety or be very nimble.

- "I'm short, betting on the downside",

Have a listen - you may get a different message.

Mary_Hartnell

Robert Peston, the original interviewer got this message last Tuesday:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/robertpeston/


1) The US is in for a longer and deeper recession than most professional forecasters expect - and that will ultimately lead to a further weakening in the dollar.
2) Prospects for the UK are poor, because of the fragility of our housing market, our personal indebtedness and our dependence on a financial services sector that is heading for bad times. He fears we could be in a worse mess than the US.
3) The longer-term outlook for China is very uncertain. And he would not be surprised if the developing bubble in Chinese markets ended in a financial crisis, though he thinks such a crisis won't happen for a few years yet (if at all).
So the years of onwards and upwards may be behind us. Which may be a shame for those of us yet to make our first billion (unless we're planning to short more-or-less everything outside of Asia and the Middle East).

(The item on Countrywide Estate Agency is food for thought too).