One day these politicians will realize there's nothing they can do to stop the country-by-country housing crash.
It hath been foretold.
In the UK's case, what went up - really, really up, must come down - really, really down. And the fall in housing-ponzi-scheme Great Britain after the dust clears may be the worst the world will see.
Anyone want to predict peak-to-trough crash percent in the UK?
Put me down for 52%. And they won't hit bottom until 2015.
Don't panic, says Brown – as experts fear housing crash
GORDON BROWN yesterday insisted Britain's housing market crisis was "containable" despite a string of reports showing prices plummeting at their fastest rate since the 1990s' crash.
The Prime Minister sought to allay fears of a full-blown property slump after the country's biggest lender revealed an average price drop of 2.5 per cent during March – the biggest monthly fall since 1992.
April 09, 2008
Gordon Brown to UK homedebtors and speculators: "Don't panic - all is well, all is well". Meanwhile, the panic starts
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the US blew up first, now its the UK and spain that are starting to go down.
Cant wait for things to unwind here in Belgium. we cant be that far behind.
we're still in the "house prices will remain flat for a while" stage.
Oh please oh please let the UK pound stay strong until the end of June. It can go to hell after that.
Need to get my money out of sterling asap.
Building one's house on sand: the Bible says it all.
One thing to think about is now that people are living longer than ever, the relationship and balance between the generations is totally skewed.
The Boomers are sucking up all the nutrients and oxygen that should be going to the next generation so they can start their families. The decision making should be passed to people who weren't raised on simple-minded "duck and cover".
This is probably the source of neo-con and permabull optimism. Nuclear war? Screw diplomacy, just hide under your desk! Iraq a failure? Surge! Inflation pushing prices to historical highs? Slash interest rates!
See a pattern?
These people are too old and too insulated from the bleeding edge of societal change that we cannot expect anything but missteps and debacles from here on out.
Keith is there any way you can create a new thread listing all the comments from realtors, mortgage brokers, politicians, etc. who have declared that we have reached "the bottom" in the housing price decline? I am sure it would be a lot of people!
As to the UK situation, well in this case, because of the way Britain is put together, the suburban communities will suffer the most. They are starting to envision an empty countryside with waves of refugees coming into the major cities as business, food resources, etc. dry up out there and people abandon their houses from all the price problems.
Her majesty's Government expects the worst
Who wants to live in Europe anyway?
How to make money on this?
Is there a SRS for England/Europe?
I don't get the "It hath been foretold" link.
I sends me to a 2003 article from The Economist regarding economists who write well.
Fear not. Rumor has it that the next King of England will be a bavarian Duke. Englanders will be required to wear lederhosen and eventually will evolve into an efficient nation of homeless gypsies working their sorry asses of for the fatherland or what will by then be known as Sacri Germani Imperii Nationae. We'd better start supporting Germany our benevolent protector real soon or else.
Just wondering who was doing most of the lending over there? The housing crash is just starting-and yet northern rock has already failed? Sounds like the UK is on some very shaky ground.Does the uk have any industry over there- or is everybody just a finacier.
Sell immediately Belgium. Carry the paper if you can, that way you will get it back to sell again.
JUst trying to help...
Hey Gordon
Psssssssst! Just like in the U.S. "containable" ..............AINT!
I must wonder about the timign of Tony Blair's departure from Downing Street. Sure, he had lost popularity, and the pressure had grown to let Brown get his chance, but maybe Blair saw a little bit further and didn't like what he saw. (I want to add that I like Blair for his speaking skills and for most his politics, except Iraq.)
Is it a good thing that the US will hopefully be at least half way through our housing panic before the rest of the world even begins theirs?
Anyways, too bad the dopes in the UK will probably believe their leaders that things will be "contained" even though those are the exact words our leader used to describe our sub-prime mess.
Russian and Mideast oil money may keep the very top end functioning in the UK, although have to wonder how great it is to have all your nicest real estate owned by Russkies and OPECkerheads. But that's a post for another thread.
Are they consciously trying to copy US? Contained…how cute!
Brown is the bozo who sold the UK gold reserves at the bottom of the gold cycle. Labour governments have always been a disaster for the economy, and it's no different this time.
With a falling Pound and rapidly rising food and energy costs, UK consumers are facing a tsunami of inflation.
My wild guess...
Take the last 50 years (before the boom started) and extend the line to 2008 to see where the prices should be.
Now give it a 15-25% haircut.
This is what the price will get to before it starts to rebound towards the norm.
What you'll probably find is that this would be a 75 to 80% drop rather than your 52%. Which means you're way too optimistic.
Mind you - if they devalue the currency - then all bets are off.
If it's going to cost you 50 pounds for a pint of beer... then why should house prices fall at all?
I feel sorry for the people on fixed incomes though.
Gordon is right.
The problem is containable.
It's containable to Britain.
well, GB is honest, the housing market crisis WAS "containable"....he did not say IS containable.
Man, I tried and tried to convince a friend of mine not to buy a house in the UK in 06. He had to borrow money from his sister just to get his thousand year mortgage or whatever he eventually got. We don't talk about this now...
I am starting to believe that it's not too fringe to store seeds, medicine, guns, water, canned goods and maybe gold in your basement.
Gordon Brown is a wanker, just like Dumbya.
It can't happen over here!!! It's 'different' here!!
A friend of mine who lives in London has told me just how bad the housing situation is there.
Having a good education is no assurance you can afford a decent place to live there - it's just outrageously expensive.
The same is now happening here, which is jusat another sign of things going very wrong.
Housing is used (and will continue to be used) to divide classes of people, but when people start getting "classed-out" of the neighborhood they feel entitled to be living in, we'll start seeing even more nasty outcomes.
The UK is much like the US. London and other large cities have developed a horrific bubble. Out in the rest of the country only a slight rise. London is like San Diego and Miami on steroids. Expect a 40%+ decline. Out in the country is more like Alabama and Nebraska, only a slight pop, say 10%.
The UK are nowhere near as bad
as we are here in Ireland, the
rest of the world with look like
a day at the park with the storm
brewing here.
The Britishcano economy is tanked, roasted like a hedgehog skewered on a green bamboo spit over a fire.
Why? Because the Britishcano just as irresponsible, greedy, materialistic, immoral, ignorant, pompous, hoity-toity, self-righteous, and animalistic as the Americano.
So is the Britishcano economy toasted or what?
Will Joe-haggis and Jane-stout cash out their lorry equity now ? (Haaaaa, haaaaa, haaaaa, LORRY EQUITY...)
What will happen to all those big-ass double-decker buses that drive on the wrong side of the road?
Will the Britishcano be toasted as a hedgehog turtle skewered on a stick from head to ass sizzling nicely on a bed of red hot charcoal?
(With apologies to all the HP’ers in England)
-Mammoth
Gordon Brown sold the UK's gold at pretty much the exact bottom. You'd be better off asking your dog or studying goat entrails for economic advice.
-Skid
Now, I think the UK has one advantage over the US. Can Gordon Brown realistically be as dumb as Bush? I mean, what are the odds of two complete morons in charge of two large powerful economies?
God help them if Gordon asks for Bushes help....then they are in real trouble. I am sure that once Europe starts having problems, they will devalue the euro as well, and then those idiots in the Bush administration will cry out "We believe in a strong dollar. See the Euro is now coming down against the dollar" So now both economies are in the shi**r and we can all be jobless and homeless together.
"With a falling Pound and rapidly rising food and energy costs, UK consumers are facing a tsunami of inflation."
Yep- we've seen (witht eh dollar) that the time to bet on a currency depreciation is at the start of teh bubble collapse. Now would be a good time for the pound sterling. Anybody agree?
With teh Euro- some member nations have bubbles (Spain) and some (Germany, Holland?) seems to have more regulated real estate markets with strict lending standards.
Do repo men wear 'bowlers' in England? I hope so.
With a falling Pound and rapidly rising food and energy costs, UK consumers are facing a tsunami of inflation.
Dear Brits, keep spinning that hamster wheel faster over there because you need to support all the millions of muslims and Africans coming to live off your socialist welfare heaven.
You keep working your arses off while those welfare parasites kick back all day, smoking hash and bitching about everyone and everything. Hey, but you have a Queen and the lie David Beckham; that's what's important.
But Keith he is member of the Liberal party. How can he possibly be wrong?
Anyone who makes a speech and uses the phrase "new world order" repeatedly deserves to be humiliated on the world stage for life.
Man, Europe is soo screwed.
Ireland is gonna crash just ahead of the UK, and may appear as going down the same time.
Spain, France, Belgium next..
But the big one, in huge denial is Germany; it will crash about the same time as the rest of Europe, but what is interesting is that they think the housing bubble and the housing crash are both a Hoax.
Idiot sour krout beer belching morons, are out there saying Germany never really went up that much its all just a Hoax, and it wont come crashing down thats a hoax too.
It was not to long ago when you all were screaming Europe is different cause blah blah blah, now its only the UK and not the rest of the EU.
Fact is the German uber-engineered housing market will crash harder and deeper then any other country.
Got schnitzel?
The housing meltdown in merry old England and the rest of Britain will be more fun than ours. They have a great sense of irony and a way with words which we simply can not match. We're going to learn some new phrases/smackdowns which will keep us laughing for years!
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