If mums keep buying stuff they dont need then the crisis is over. (How serious is the global financial crisis?)

Member Name: thedevilinme

Product:	How serious is the global financial crisis?
Date:	15/10/09 (71 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good signs in the economy

Disadvantages: More bank closures to come

Privatise the profits and nationalise the losses.

So a year on from the crash and things are beginning to turn, the bankers not prepared to be skint for very much longer so taking risks again as the stock market rockets back to a 12 month high, 23% up on October 2008. The FTSE breezed through 5000 last month and the DOW moved through 10,000 yesterday for the first time in 18 months. The market could only ever go up after the panic selling and so cheap blue chip stocks a plenty accounting for that return. A significant chunk of government cash that HAD to be spent on banks to bail them out will go on those big bonuses though. This upturn, of course, doesn't mean businesses are improving quick enough to take people on to stem catastrophic unemployment. Recession is the time to fire staff, not take them on, whether you need to or not, dumping those huge pension responsibilities and troublesome employees. Everyone works hard in recession in fear of losing their jobs and pensions, and the added the fear of globalisation has also kept us on our toes, employees striking less and accepting new pay and conditions just to stay in work. If they don't then the companies can just jump ship and go set up in Eastern Europe, all very ironic if you think where our current hard working workforce is coming from. Many of those Poles etc have gone back home when they lost their jobs and so haven't signed on here and so this week's better than hoped unemployment figures have been helped by the fact. The corresponding unemployment numbers for the last recession in the same period was three times that 82,000. Sadly some one-in-three school leavers have yet to find work and one-in four of those have turned down higher education because their parents couldn't fund it, the so-called lost generation. Any lad or lass that wants to work at 16 are the type of people we should be bending over backwards to help.

Sterling is getting hit because our interest rates remain low and so no profit in lending anymore. Oil has settled down to around $65-70 dollars per barrel over the last 6 months so that's at least some good news. Next years economy upturn will quickly hit demand though and although OPEC cut supply to keep it over $50 a barrel they will have to meet demand next year at some point so prices will edge back to $100 per barrel one year soon. Because of that gold has exceeded one thousand dollars an ounce as speculators play safe and steer clear of oil until the upturn.

What you are witnessing in this new millennium is the 'Great' being kicked out of 'Britain' as the new world order takes over. We make nothing, we invent little and stuck with call-centres and retail parks and you do wonder what this country will be like if we come out of the other end in tact. The absurdity of allowing the wind turbine factory to close on the Isle of Wight when Brown had said our new economy would incorporate 'green technologies' and we would need at least another 5000 turbines says it all about Great Britain. With Brown planning a fire sale of the countries remaining assets too, blocks like the Post Office, the Tote and the Channel Tunnel link, some Healthcare sure to be added to that, up for grabs, there won't be much left that we own by 2015!

But while we stand back and watch the rust set in as this brilliant and beautiful autumn crisps into winter as the crunch of the tapestry of red and burnt umber leaves under feet is soon to be replaced by the crack of ice and frost we are being distracted away from a Coup d'état, the Tory's orchestrating the expenses claims scandal through the right wing media to bring down Brown. As much as you may not like the guy, presumably because he's not Blair and all charismatic and stuff (the Blair you all wanted to get rid of), he is our boss and he did save the worlds banking system. You have to respect our PM while he has the job. He is a brilliant economist and we are still standing so at least give him that one. Yes he's dull and dour but what right has Andrew Marr got to ask the guy is he's on anti-depressants or is he going blind? That was totally disrespectful. The media should not be trying to get PMs to resign. The only reason he allowed those complex derivatives to be sold and so the economy went to pot was to delay a natural recession the economy expected around 2003, but you lot certainly not accepting that if he told you pain in 2003 or terrible pain in 2008, your choice guys? I know what you would have said. Easy street for four more years please! We all played a part in the 'credit crunch' and we should all take the blame. Pensioners moaning that they saved all their money and didn't take credit from banks must realise that their healthy interest rates came from that growing economy that was driven purely by credit.

This week envelopes have been posted in certain MPs pigeon holes relating to what they have to pay back as far as the expenses row goes. It seems to have targeted Labour MPs by hitting things like cleaning and gardening expenses. All the Tory's fiddling their mortgages and rents seem to have got away with it or quietly resigned back to their private fortunes. Some big Labour people have been made to fall too, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith the biggest fish to drown. What she did was outrageous and I'm not sticking up for her but the rules on expenses where ambiguous purely to stop us lot moaning about them having fair pay raises every year. This money was as good as understood to be part of their salary by the rules laid down to them. Morally some poor choices were made and you should judge your local MP at the next election on that but we can't get dictated to by foreigners like Rupert Murdoch because they fancy a new Prime Minster because it will make their businesses more money. Who does he think he is? The only reason he backed the Iraq War is because it makes News Corp big advertising bucks through the concerned viewing public watching on. If you didn't let MPs take the expenses they would be on the fiddle with the many private companies and lobbyist that swarm around parliament to try and buy policy. People like Murdoch. You may say well why not get a new lot then but they would do it just as we would do it if given the chance. Blame yourself for not letting them have a fair wage. They do run a £700 billion pound economy guys on less than 70k a year for a regular MP. In the American system politicians have to pretty much raise every penny of their salary from private interest, meaning they are open to all manner of corruptions. The biggest contributors there over the last thirty years have been big oil, big tobacco and military companies, arguably America's three biggest killers right now.

Obama, of course, is the biggest player on the world economy, purely because his country are carrying a lot of the so called sub-prime debt, the collapse in the housing market through deliberately selling property to poor people, hurting everyone now. China is the second biggest players as they are owed most of America's money and the only ones who have enough cash in the bank to survive that hit.

Obama's bizarre Nobel Peace Prize (the nominations closing just nine days after his inauguration?) was presumably given to him because he became the miracle of being the first black American president, and not for raging two wars in two energy rich continents, was a nice distraction. Maybe he could save the world but the fact is that trillion dollar debt is still out there and the US taxpayer has picked up the bill, just as we have picked up the debt here. Privatise the profits and nationalise loses is what has really happened around the world and we cant escape that fact. Leverage oils up industries wheels and we will need to run some more credit up to get them turning properly again, yet more debt for us. He's picked the wrong moment to push through a new healthcare system too, that costing $110 billion dollars, already opening race lines as Republicans (white) are down on him over his 'healthcare for all' (blacks and Hispanics) policy, the people not being covered under Bush and so to be paid for by some of those Republicans taxes. Every time Fox news attacks Obama over his polices their ratings spikes. That spike is certain people enjoying the chance to have ago at a man they secretly hope fails. Obama's popularity ratings are crashing.

But racism aside I'm on optimist on things and think the British and world economy will improve quicker than they say, something Prime Minister Cameron will benefit from for a good ten years of power. The big conglomerates who run the world have huge and growing markets out there and the economy has reached the point where there's not enough stock being made to meet demand, and demand means growth and growth means consumer confidence. It all rests on China at the moment, one fifth of the world's population, and 40% of the planets current economic growth in real terms. When the US economy turns growth will explode and the banks will be in a serious hurry to pay back the money they owe governments to regain control of that mega profit. But if the governments start to pull that huge taxpayer funding from the banks early we will soon be back in a mess and so that wont happen soon. Lloyds are still not out of the woods with that HBOS burden and asking for another £5 billion from Brown to cover their new losses. But if banks return to health in two or so years time those shares the government own will be worth quite a chunk of cash and start to help being down our national debt. Goldman Sachs, who some say wanted Bear Stearns and Lehman's to collapse so they could asset strip them, have already paid the US government back the money they borrowed and so set free in the markets to make serious money and take huge risk once again, a big advantage over state controlled bank, set to pay a mind boggling $14 billion in bonuses this season.. Britain's Barclays bank also helped the collapse of the banking system by not buying Lehman's and eventually waiting their chance to asset strip that particular bank. The big players can't help but devour everything when the opportunity arrives. Not for the good of the people but the bank.

Confidence is still fragile out there and only this week a Dutch bank went down when someone made a comment on a TV show about its shrinking assets which caused a run on the bank. The DNB (their bank of Holland) had to step in and save it and, rather interestingly, their first move was to stop the run by banning customers taking anymore money out there and then, limiting it to 250 Euros per day once the situation was stabilised. One would presume this will be normal practice across the EU for the next wave of bank collapses just starting so it may well be worth having a second or even a third bank account up and running so you can have some back up. Make no mistake though if the governments of Europe didn't step in to save banks, now or when the system crashed, the cash machines will and would have shut down and the banks would have closed and troops would have been on the street last year. It was that serious and we came within two hours of that Armageddon. Two hours. Take a moment to exhale on that thought guys as the worst seems to be over.

The problem we have right now is most growth in the tertiary sector is coming from the security of government backed banks. Invest in these guys as they can't be allowed to fail and make easy money for the same banks, and print more money to complete that paradox. But that should be the key to reprivatising them. We can't have too many nationalised banks as they will all end up like the bloody Post Office. The question must be is how much control the government should retain in banks to stop them doing it all again?

Some good news is this world recession is making our planet get cold all of a sudden, wiping out a whole centuries rising temperature in just one year, back to 1910 levels, the dip the single fastest temperature change-up or down-on record for our beautiful planet. Maybe there is a link between immediate C02 emissions and world temperatures?

www.dailytech.comTemperatureMonitorsReportWorldwi deGlobalCoolingarticle10866

Wars are still costing UK tax payers a minimum one billion pounds a month here. No one knows why we are still in Afghanistan other that to have a presence in gas rich central Asia to control new and critical flows twenty years from now. We also know 20 British soldiers a month are dying in a conflict that has raged longer than World War 2, President Mohammed Karsie, the man the west hand picked to run the country, unable to even fix his own election this summer. Where's a good dictator when you need one! The UN chap who tried to point out that Karsie was a bloody cheat was immediately relieved of his duties by the Americans. Obama intends to send 50,000 troops over to Kabul for the final blitzkrieg before the expected attacks on Pakistan and Iran. Shine that Nobel Prize Barak!

And finally...

At the end of the day its people like my mom who is keeping the economy going right now. Dad died three years back and when I go around she is always buying stuff for the house from her nest egg that really doesn't need doing. There are three new carpet rolls laid up on the stairs like dead bodies, even though the laid ones are perfectly fine, and she just had a kitchen window double-glazed that really could have waited. She's now having the storm proofs done for the winter. She doesn't do it because these jobs particularly need doing but just to have a proper bloke come around and so talk nonsense to him during the job as a replacement husband for the day like women do. I suspect the tradesman on dooyoo know all about women like my mom.lol. She then moans about how much it all cost and you just shake your head and throw your hands in the air. Women of the world make 70% of all purchases with 85% of the money spent on Earth.

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Summary: We are not out of the woods yet