END OF THE HOUSING AFFAIR Thursday, Dec 6 2007

It seems to be coming. UK house prices, inflated for so long, are beginning to stabilize, and in some areas go down in price. A credit squeeze, both national and global, is beginning. City and mortgage lender watchdogs are becoming pessimistic in unison.
Next year we can expect a harsh credit squeeze, and a fall of maybe 10% in house prices. This may well be true, but believe me, it could get much worse. With confidence gone, the economic system could fall – especially as it is nothing but confidence keeping it afloat.
I’ve been expecting it for years – and technically if the crunch had come maybe five years ago, it might not have been that bad. But central to the reason it did not come then are the banks and their cheap credit.
This was essential, for people simply had to spend to stop the system from collapsing. And every time you spent big over these last few years, the greater would become the depression when it all fell apart.
I’m hoping I’m wrong. But watch this space.

© Anthony North, December 2007

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EVERYTHING UP, BUT SOME THINGS DOWN Thursday, Nov 15 2007

Situation report on our marvelous global economy – particularly as it applies to Britain.
Petrol prices up. Food costs rising. Home heating bills going crazy. Well, it had to happen, didn’t it? After all, you didn’t really believe the lie about cheap food and fuel forever?
But you did believe it for long enough. Long enough for supermarkets to get their monopoly. Long enough for previously nationalized industries to go private to keep the fat bellies of the super rich.

And of course, wages rose in kind …

… so we all became affluent, and were able to buy our luxurious houses and take out our fat private pensions.
Except those pensions are not as fat as they were supposed to be. And those houses went up, up, up in price and turned you into a wage serf.

But never mind.

The pension and mortgage funds had your money just long enough to make everyone believe the con that new super capitalism was thriving, even though it was bolstered by the inflated mortgage and pension you were buying.
So you’ve got nothing but yourself to blame now that petrol is going up, food is going up, and heating bills are going up ….
Oh … and as house prices are about to come down.
Now that will put us in a whole new negative equity …

© Anthony North, November 2007

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ECONOMICS - THE TRUTH Sunday, Sep 16 2007

So there has been a run on Northern Rock. After going to the Bank of England for help, customers have become fearful of their money, and they want it back. Should this get out of hand, it could have dire effects for the economy.
It is so easy to bring about this situation. This is because economics is only a partial discipline. It exists for a perfect world. In the real world, the thing that decides whether an economy is strong or weak is psychology.
A strong economy is dependent upon investors having confidence in it. If ever a time comes when this is not so, then financial hardship is on the way. As such, the supposed strong western economies are nothing more than a house of cards.
This has been the case for some time. Initially, economies were backed up by hard gold. This is no more, and an economy runs totally on confidence. We used to have a word for this sort of thing. The con trick.

© Anthony North, September 2007

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SHAME IN THE CITY? Monday, Sep 3 2007

City workers have rewarded themselves this year with bonuses worth £14billion, leading to many UK politicians, trade unions and charities criticizing the sheer greed of our financial institutions.
Following soaring stock markets and many takeovers, it seems our new brand of super-capitalism is doing so well that traders can pay themselves so far over the odds that non-millionaires are being viewed as paupers.
Of course, the reality of the success of today’s capitalism lies elsewhere. It lies in the ability of big business to con the ordinary person that he needs inflated pensions funds and high mortgages.
For rather than trade fuelling the success of today’s capitalism, it is the average man in the street, his hard earned salary propping up a system that would collapse over night without him.
There should be shame in the city. Not inflated bonuses. And, of course, an admission that the entire system is a con.

© Anthony North, September 2007

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THE TAKE-OVER TAKE OVER Thursday, Jul 12 2007

At last, even some people in business are beginning to understand that big-business stinks. Richard Lambert, DG of the CBI, has warned that UK businesses are being taken over by an elite band of financiers.
Interested in nothing but profit, and building huge business empires, foreign ownership of UK firms has risen from 30% to 50% in the past decade. And there is no sign of a let up.

FORGET THE BOND

Essential to capitalism is a network of bonds that hold business to ethical conduct, and to society through service to the consumer and loyalty to the employee. All these bonds are being stripped away, in the same way as unprofitable assets.
Throughout industry and commerce, relationships are breaking down between owners and managers, companies and investment institutions, and employers and employees. And they are so big now that they have contempt for the customer.
Once upon a time industry and commerce was a different thing, with an endemic understanding of its place in society. Yes, there were some interested only in the fast buck, but in the main, profit went alongside service.

SUPER-CAPITALISM

This is no longer the case. The danger of new super-capitalism to the planet is well documented in the news today. But rarely is big-business blamed for the growing sense of insecurity among the workforce.
Neither does the consumer complain enough about the way this mega-control freakery rides over the sentiments of the customer. Companies used to rely on their reputation in dealing with the customer, but now they don’t give a damn.
And why should they? If a customer is unhappy and goes elsewhere, chances are he has gone to another company which is nonetheless part owned by the same financiers. Company names, you see, mean nothing today. It is the same greedy fingers in so many pies.

© Anthony North, July 2007

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CAPITALIST SERFS Tuesday, Jul 10 2007

Mortgages are well out of control in the UK, with the news that interest payments have hit a ten year high, topping £100billion. This adds up to £1 in every £8 spent by British households on goods and services.
These debt levels are the highest in the developed world, and there is a definite connection with this appalling capitalist serfdom and the position of the UK as 4th or 5th biggest world economy.

MODERN ECONOMY

The UK simply does not have a population big enough to support a thriving economy in the way required to be a world class trading nation. Hence, big business and the banks have slowly devised a simple way of achieving it.
Basically, this involves starving the country of housing, forcing house prices to hit the roof, and thus claiming inflated investment from the average British householder. The massive mortgage the Brit now pays keeps big business afloat.
To a lesser extent, the system works throughout the developed world, but is more obvious in the UK. Mortgages, along with insurance and private pensions, are, in reality, the foundations of big business, rather than business acumen on their part.

THE NEW STOODGE

Capitalism wasn’t supposed to be like this. The ethic behind the ideology was for people to have ideas, borrow money from investors, turn those ideas into business, and fuel a thriving economy through wages and taxation.
But that was before capitalism turned into empire building masquerading as business practice. Today, globalization has produced the multi-nationals, gobbling up any sensible ideas others have, and feeding off the incomes of the worker.
I am, by nature, a capitalist. Enterprise is good, and the best way for a vibrant economy to rise and survive. But the supposed economy of today is a confidence trick, with empires of businesses that only survive by being propped up by the wage packet.

© Anthony North, July 2007

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WEALTH, OR WHAT? Friday, Jun 1 2007

We are said to be a thriving economy with the average person far better off than before. Is this the case, or is it a con? Go back thirty years and the average person felt that £200 or so would sort out his finances adequately.
To most people, this would have been a month’s wages, thereabouts. A survey by NS&I has shown that, today, those same aspirations would take £100,000. What could be achieved within a month or so would now take, on average, five years.
We could say this is simply due to greed, with people wanting too much, but this is not the case. Household expenses are now calculated in thousands rather than hundreds. A new car can set you back a small fortune. Even a plumber can decimate a huge chunk of your salary.
It seems that, in relative terms, our affluence is a con. We have been duped into a super-consumer society where the benefits are not what they were supposed to be. Rather than freeing us and giving us choice, our new world has changed us into wage slaves like never before.
Welcome, good reader, to the new serfdom.

© Anthony North, June 2007

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A HOME OF YOUR BANK MANAGER’S OWN Monday, Mar 19 2007

House prices still rocketing. Despite three recent interest rate rises in the UK, prices are rising at £110 per day. Average asking price is currently £228,000. I feel like I’ve fallen down the rabbit hole and met Alice.
Why do we put up with this absurdity? Do people really think they’re rich with a mortgage like that over them? No, listen. You’re not. You haven’t a penny. You’re poor. Do you hear me, you ain’t got any money at all!
Too many people have swallowed the belief that they are empowered by such high house prices. The only people who are actually empowered are the banks and the corporate world the house owner is slaving to keep afloat.
Get the message. Mortgages are not for your benefit, but to finance investment in big business. Yes, with a reasonable mortgage you do end up with the house. But the inflated prices today mean you exist in nothing more than a new form of serfdom.

© Anthony North, Mar 2007

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