Almost £4b more in cuts coming in the budget.

[ricgem2002]

But sadly it wasn't. I wasn't around at the time thankfully, but it seems that in 1975 most bank accounts didn't actually pay interest at all and building societies were paying under 10%.

bit like now then under the tories

[hyper]

FWIW, I've frequently likened my perception and anticipation at the time to animalistic risk awareness: I could never put a finger directly and resolutely on one or several events, acts or other manifestations that made "crisis coming" glow neon-like in the night, it was more a gradual awareness of ever more compounding behaviours and circumstances all around, chiefly based on income vs indebtment differentials. To coin an analogy, it was a case of, say, that fabled frog slowly boiling in the pan, eventually noticing the temperature rising and realising it is in a pan, and jumping out.

 

So many colleagues, friends and relations on lower or equivalent incomes getting significantly indebted, with increasing frequency. Taking on 120% interest-only mortgages on multiples (in double digits!) of combined salary. All the while maxing (several-) plastic limits on overseas weekend trips and New York Xmas shopping, and changing cars (new ones) every year or two. <etc.>

 

Where was the money coming from? How were they ever going to pay it back, realistically? And these were mostly smart people, with MSCs and PhDs and whatnot.

 

It was all just fuelled from paper gains on real estate, real and not (people were buying property on plans and flipping them within days or weeks at a profit!), releasing equity with gusto before the first €1 of interest -never mind capital- had even been paid back.

 

Of course it could only ever end in tears. Big large salty ones. Wherever that game was being played...and it was pretty much everywhere I looked.

 

Then I got wind of Clinton's repealing of the Glass–Steagall Act in '99 and the penny dropped When the rumblings began in late 2007, I just knew then that the time for calling in the chips on the table wasn't far.

yep, that's about the sum of it.

 

I blame 3 parties

- the govt at the time for not stepping in, but it would have had to be an extremely boroad shouldered chancellor to call an end to good times

- the financial services watchdog or whoever they are for not being on watch and curbing things

- the public who wanted shiney new cars and ever-bigger houses instead of feathering their nests for the future

[foxy lady]

bit like now then under the tories

 

I'm getting 3% from Santander and 4.5% from AIB. With inflation running at zero or thereabouts that's rather a good return.

[L00b]

You might find this speech by a leading banker interesting.

Great link CaptainSwing, thank you very much for this

[I1L2T3]

They can't win in your eyes, if they cut spending to save money you moan, if they don't save money you moan. What exactly do you want them to do, spend less and save or spend more and increase the deficit.

 

I don't know where this idea of saving money has come from. British governments have rarely done it or planned for it. Just seems like a convenient stick to beat Brown with.

[ricgem2002]

I'm getting 3% from Santander and 4.5% from AIB. With inflation running at zero or thereabouts that's rather a good return.

yes I see that im allright jack mentality oozing out of you lady

[foxy lady]

yes I see that im allright jack mentality oozing out of you lady

 

I'm doing OK thanks. It is even better knowing it clearly chokes you off.:hihi:

[I1L2T3]

We have a reduced (and reducing) deficit, therefore spare capacity to borrow for emergency coping.

He's planned for it by getting a lid on the deficit bootstrapped by the previous administration to cope with the 2008 crisis.

 

He's not put money aside because (i) there isn't any to be saved whilst the country still has a deficit and (ii) he has done the lid thing whilst cushioning the country socio-economic base (such as e.g. spending that £27bn): we haven't had "austerity", by any objective measure.

 

If you have difficulty comprehending what "austerity" really is, ask the Greeks: in the GDP/debt ratio stakes, the UK and Greece started more or less peg level in 2008. Compare and contrast in 2016. Now they are a complete mess, I'll grant you that.

By all accounts, much more of a clue than Brown and Darling.

 

For a start, he seems to understand that, on the one hand, magic money trees don't actually exist and, on the other hand, public spending cannot be cut severely overnight if the country is achieve and husband any measure of economic growth (precisely why he hasn't cut public spending severely overnight, such that the deficit is taking an age longer to bring down).

 

Thanks for the effort in posting but you failed in the first sentence.

 

We have a reduced deficit compared to the one caused by emergency spending in 2009-10.

 

But our deficit immediately prior to the 2008 crash was 40bn. It is almost double that now, 88bn in 2014-15.

 

That, categorically, is not a better position to be in. Then you have to add on the unburst property bubble, the record levels of consumer debt, the facts that we have limited leverage with QE and with interest rates, the issues in other economies, and that Osborne has let the banks off the hook and we have a pretty toxic brew.

 

We are in a worse state to weather what is coming. Most of it was manageable but it is probably too late.

[foxy lady]

Thanks for the effort in posting but you failed in the first sentence.

 

We have a reduced deficit compared to the one caused by emergency spending in 2009-10.

 

But our deficit immediately prior to the 2008 crash was 40bn. It is almost double that now, 88bn in 2014-15.

 

That, categorically, is not a better position to be in. Then you have to add on the unburst property bubble, the record levels of consumer debt, the facts that we have limited leverage with QE and with interest rates, the issues in other economies, and that Osborne has let the banks off the hook and we have a pretty toxic brew.

 

We are in a worse state to weather what is coming. Most of it was manageable but it is probably too late.

 

Have you noticed when the emergency crews turn out to a car crash? It takes them rather longer to clear up the mess than it took some idiot to cause it.

 

The first £30 billion we collect in taxes now is used to pay the interest on the debts. So that is 3 times what it was before Gordon Brown crashed the country.

Edited March 18, 2016 by foxy lady

[Bargepole23]

I'm getting 3% from Santander and 4.5% from AIB. With inflation running at zero or thereabouts that's rather a good return.

 

Which AIB account is it, if you don't mind me asking? I can only have two Santander 123's, and would be nice to put something into a 4.5% account.