Cascades of contrition that changed nothing

Lawrence Aitken

Quite right Rod.
Its insane, absolutely insane that property prices start to increase again. its all bullshit hype by the building societies.

Superficial Seacole Sexist

The lives of many men would be less interesting if wives didn't like shopping,I guess.

Amanda a.k.a. Desperate Seeking Escape from Houston

Rod: I vote for both: the road suddenly caved in preventing all forward movement except for those on magic carpets; and also we're stupid. Possibly even more stupid than unfortunate. Since I'm the only one voting so far, it's unanimous and overwhelming: 100% of voters say that we're unfortunate and stupid, especially the latter.

Welcome to Great Britain, and we hope you enjoy your stay. Mind the gap.

Fergus Pickering

House prices go up because people want to buy houses. Those of us who have actually GOT houses tell them they should be happy to rent, but, do you know what, they don't listen to us? Other wicked people want to exchange their money for desirable goods. Yes, it's called shopping, and chaps do it to. It's just we call it something else when we do it. 'I went shopping and bought a new car and a better set of golf clubs, oh and a couple of crates of extremely expensive booze.' Nope. That's not shopping. That's INVESTMENT. And those are things I NEED. As for bankers, they are all flipping chumps and swindlers, but when were they anything esle. Hang a few from lamp posts I say, but, hell, who listens to me.

toby seacole forward

Why 'faux'? It's a word borrowed by furniture sellers to confuse the simple-minded. 'Faux leather', they think, sounds like a special sort of leather, like 'goat leather', rather than putting 'imitation leather', i.e. some form of nasty plastic. Can't you say 'false shame' or 'sham contrition'? Please.

Wan Ton Pun

I change my name to faux cole.

Thanks for the tip seaforward.

rod seacole liddle

Fergus - that's a little bit too "I'm alright Jack" for me, mate. My point is the price of a house has been rendered artificially high by (as Lawrence says) the building societies, the property pages and Kirsty bloody Allsopp - and a vaulting acquisitiveness which was inculcated in the mid 1980s.

Greybeard

Rod,

How much is Millwall FC worth and to what part of Cristiano Ronaldo would that equate?

His arm? His leg? Other?

A J Scott

Last paragraph spot on, absolutely.
And I see no life boats named "Common Sense".

Fergus Pickering

Vaulting acquisitiveness? My daughter and her chap wanting to buy a house to live in and (I hope) hear the patter of tiny feet in is vaulting acquisitiveness. I think you want to watch those long words, Rod, me old son. Also, like many a mediaperson, I think you vastly overestimate the effect of silly TV programmes on people. Hang a banker. You can't go wrong with hanging a banker. Oh, and we could hang Jonathan Ross while we're about it. And the head honcho at the beeb whatever his name is.

Fearless Frank

House prices rose as they did to absorb the money lent by banks (more than building socs) to pay for them.
Few home owners benefit from a rise in the 'value' of their home - Where's my 100 grand?
Faux is a lovely word - like 'art': When I was a biker I bought by mail order an'art silk' white scarf... imagine that, not just any old silk but art silk. The sort artists would use

Boris

House prices perked up because fewer properties are being offered for sale. Law of supply and demand. The latter has remained solid, the former has dipped as those who saw their property values trebled are waiting, unless they must sell, for their quadrupling.

To kick just the bankers for the near financial meltdown smells of envy what with their sickening bonuses, then and now, when the poor taxpayer bails them out. Yet, no one of the greedy lot has been taken to court. Does this tell you anything? Like, where were the Bank of England, the Treasury, and the FSA when self-certified 125% mortgages were all the rage, and house owners re-mortgaged every 9 months or so, and the juicy Treasury tax receipts from the likes of RBS allowed the man of the manse to splash out like never before.

Not a popular view, but I reckon that any regulatory system only makes things worse. At best it dilutes responsibly, at worst it completely dispenses with it. Three powerful agencies of the state watched over the banking sector, and a fat lot of good did it do. Nobody, no single individual or an institution could have stopped this insanity. If, for inst. Mervyn King, probably the most trusted player, were to hike the base rate massively, the outcry from anyone – the house owning public, the banks, Brown and Darling etc. - would have ensured his dismissal within hours. Only one player was sufficiently powerful to bring it halt. The cruel, rational, and raw market.

All the banks should be required to do is to insure retails deposits up to a specified ceiling, perhaps with an offshoot of the Treasury. The rest of how the banks or other financial institutions tick should be up to them. Let them take any risk they like, and pay any bonuses they fancy. If that turns them belly up, tough luck for the equity and debt holders. You can bet on it that in such environment the banks would behave differently.

workie 'phil' ticket

Being both thick and an (ex) house owner (as in I'm going to hopefully buy one again soon) I've seen some property programmes. Rather than that Allsop one you could reserve your ire for the quintessential noughties property mania programme - Property Prophets - I'd love to see the re-runs. It specialised in showing mainly young couples, who didnt have that much money, round pokey flats in war zones in places like Coventry and Hackney that were GUARANTEED to increase stratospherically every year or so. Any poor sods suckered in now will find themselves in places that were not 'up and coming' but 'never going to be'. The makers and presenters (including some bloke off the Apprentice) should by rights be in jail.

Liddle Bunnykins

I suppose modern day culture dictates we need someone or something to blame for our mistakes - in this case, listening to siren cries of the banks and the building societies. But whatever happened to living within ones means? Or is that concept too prosaic?

Kevyn Bodman

Let banks do whatever they want and pay whatever they want subject only to the laws about honest accounting.
Then their customers and suppliers can decide whether or not to trade with them, their creditors can decide whether to lend them money.
That's all the regulation needed, PROVIDED that if they foul up nobody rescues them.
That proviso is essential.

Arnie Sagnussen

Well said Rodders.

It does indeed seem as if we are being taken down that same road, by which we are encouraged to believe it's a good thing to see the value of your house soaring to a level far beyond the reach of the kids now doing their homework in its attic.

And all so that estate agents and bankers and sundry 'professions' can rake off ever larger fees for talking such horseshit.

Some business plan that.

De Rigueur

Who owns the estate agents?

Wouldn't be your local HSBC, Barclays or Lloyds would it?

Don't be suckers chaps. Demand a flat interest rate for the entire life of your mortgage.

Now's the time to ask!

HairyNoddy

Gordon Brown did all he could to facilitate the rise in house prices, and is continuing to do all he can to avoid a housing collapse. For instance by lowering interest rates to almost zero, by guaranteeing mortgage payments for mortgagees who lose their jobs, by encouraging buy to letters, and of course by flooding the country with immigrants. I think that house prices will collapse anyway, and that the hundreds of billions of pounds that Brown has splurged so far will simply postpone the inevitable for a few years. If the collapse happens during a Tory government (fairly likely), he'll consider it a job well done and money well spent.
The thing is, the housing price collapse needs to happen though. The young / first time buyers are being hit hardest by current house prices. The young seem to be hit hardest by the current financial mess, they are the ones who are going to have to carry the burden of paying the debt. They will have less chance of gaining a professional qualification than previous generations due to increase in university fees, they are less able to buy a house due to increased house prices. How many will be prepared to stay in this country to pay for the stupidity of previous generations when they can live overseas and dodge that burden? China's age demographic is far worse than ours, they will be crying out for able workers in 20 years or so. Who could blame our young for leaving behind a country full of bitter, selfish, greedy and weak old people?

Chronic

more satire!!
My sides can't take much more of this.
great work Rod.

A. MacAulay

A short essay in this weeks, Der Spiegel, outlines the “Laws of unexpected consequences”, posited by the physisist and Wall St. risk analyst, Robert Arvanitis. (freely back-translated)
#1. People are quick and clever, organisations are inert and stupid.
#2. It does not follow that when we make mistakes, we don’t make any more mistakes. We just make other mistakes.
#3. Businessmen are in the business of making profits. They will try to trick lawmakers and find legal loopholes.
#4. Good managers will be rewarded and promoted up to where they arrive in positions beyond their abilities.
#5. Politicians are in the getting elected business. One cannot expect that anyone will solve the problems of the other side so long as each side follows its egoistc aims.
#6. The world economy is too complex to be understood through models or theories, let alone to be controlled or guided.
#7. Markets may be in the short term chaotic and inefficient, but in the long term they are efficient and safe and always were.

Some truisms there, but worth repeating. Also, more disturbing than yet another “Bubble” that burst before our bows, is the utter faliure of our culture, in the sense of the reponse of artists to this. Ton heavy blocks of red wax creeping through the RA just shows that there are more bubbles on the way. That or agitprop puppet shows. Pathetic!

A. MacAulay

May I Rod, suggest also a quick test to see if narcissism has reached inter-planetary dimensions or has gone beyond that, to where egos boldly go looking for a final frontier. Give your wife a signed photo of self and say, "I'm just popping off to the shops, dear." Ensure that you come home sooner then expected and see if she's communing with the Holy Twofoldedness.

Either that or she'll think you've gone mad, either with the pics, or doing the shopping.

May the Force be with you

GutClean

Gnu Britain off again.