>>6073
>Already
It's been seven years since the last recession, a business cycle recession throughout the developed world is fairly likely within the next couple of years.

A cynic would think they wanted markets to crash so they could take advantage of low prices.

>>6073
About to be a good time to buy lad. Be contrarian its the only way.

>>6074
What? Why?

>>6078
>stock markets have been riding high for a while

The FTSE 100 was over 7,100 in April and it closed yesterday below 5,900.

>>6080
I meant in more general terms. We're not in bubble territory and never came close. The FTSE does have large exposure to the oil, gas and commodities industries though, and they're going to have a hell of a year.

I deleted my last two posts because I realised they weren't actually very useful, I might reword and repost if I can be bothered.

>>6081

We're still below the peaks of both the dot-com and the housing bubbles. I can't find a compelling answer to whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. Maybe we're making a steady recovery, maybe we're just stagnating.

If the crisis in China turns out to be half as bad as the bears are predicting, then we're fucked on a scale that we haven't seen since the seventies.

>>6082
Eh I wouldn't be so pessimistic. The biggest issue I see is the lack of slack the Bank of England has to deal with impending macroeconomic issues.

I've also been reading a lot of articles that've been putting a damper on the Guardian's bid to give everyone the impression that 2007 was nothing compared to the amount of debt we have now, in both the Economist, FT and elsewhere.

The overall economic picture isn't too bad. For the UK I'd give it a 6.5/10. There are significant issues, ie. potential for China to go south, persistant trade deficits and the effect that has on the Pound, likelihood of a structural recession and the lack of tools the BoE has to deal with that, but things will never be perfect.

>>6084
>Persistant
I plead guilty.

>>6076
>good time to buy
That's great if you have millions to play with already. Most people have savings measured in thousands, and even I invest all of it with perfect clarity, my absolute profit is still going to be negligible overall.

>>6086
A percentage is a percentage all the same, if anything £20 to someone with £100 would mean a lot more than £200,000 to someone with £1,000,000.

>>6084
>The overall economic picture isn't too bad. For the UK I'd give it a 6.5/10.
Hahahhaahahahahahhaah

>>6087

But losing money would mean more to someone with £100 than to someone with £1,000,000.

>>6088
Why are you laughing? The banking crisis was not caused by British household debt, and it's clear that that's the comparison your image is making.

>>6090
The picture isn't making any comparisons, it is from an OBR report. It is showing historical trends in British household debt as well as projections for the future.

In any case, the financial crisis was created because of excessive and foolish private bank lending, in Britain and elsewhere. One of the many drawbacks of UK households being obscenely overleveraged.

Here's a video that gives a good overview of why the overall economic picture is actually rather bad indeed.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVU0LpZrLlk

>>6091
>The picture isn't making any comparisons

It certainly is, the scale doesn't begin in 2005 for no reason.

>In any case, the financial crisis was created because of excessive and foolish private bank lending, in Britain and elsewhere.

Yes, of which British household debt was essentially irrelevant, constituting appaorximately 7% of British banking losses. The number of debtors who have to fork out large proportions of their income to service debt has been falling and is projected to continue to do so, down 30% since 2008, and the proportion of people having difficulty repaying installments has fallen. Employment is higher than ever, the result of that being that the number of people struggling to pay installments is smaller. Interest only mortgages have been essentially eliminated. There are tougher rules on mortgage lending.

>>6093
The point is that private debt generally, of which household debt is an element (and not an "essentially irrelevant" component by any means), is projected to explode. Household debt was unsustainable at pre-crisis levels and its expansion will have extremely damaging effects. It you want to pretend otherwise and imagine that borrowing our way out of a borrowing induces crisis is a viable way forward, you're entirely welcome to continue telling yourself comortfing stories, just don't expect anyone else to swallow them.

>>6093
>Interest only mortgages have been essentially eliminated
Hmmmm....

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/4fb26762-1e3e-11e5-ab0f-6bb9974f25d0.html#axzz3x9XZ6rR1

>>6093
>It certainly is, the scale doesn't begin in 2005 for no reason.
You do realise that going back further would only draw more attention to the fact that pre-crisis household debt was at record levels?

>>6096
But that in itself is not a cause for concern. Context is everything and that is a very limited nugger of information. We are a long way from household debt reaching pre-crisis levels. As stated above, whilst it may be proportionately high, when it comes to these things it's ability to pay that matters, not the proportion, and that's improved significantly.

>>6094
Can you stop twisting my words please? Simply put British household debt was essentially irrelevant to the financial crisis, I didn't say household debt is essentially irrelevant in itself.

>It you want to pretend otherwise and imagine that borrowing our way out of a borrowing induces crisis

Nobody's been borrowing out of the crisis except the government. The OBR expect household debt to begin increasing again - ok, but I don't think that'll pan out as I expect some sort of recession in the near future which will have people cutting into savings rather than borrowing. The OBR make everything look rosy with decent growth from here until the end of time, which is a joke.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/3/b3c2abc4-b2f7-11e5-8358-9a82b43f6b2f.html#axzz3x2Ue5xVx

>>6095
Yes, they constituted slightly over 1% of new mortgages last year.

Oh and banks are deleveraging. UK bank assets have fallen by 20% since 2007.

The optimistic years are over. The west has peaked.

Living standards are getting worse. Housing is getting more expensive and poorer quality. Job security is becoming a distant memory. People are not having children like they used to (except for immigrants - since to them, life *is* getting better).

>>6110
Well. I'm not an economist, but is it not possible to get to a level where you can't get better any more? Demand for oil can't keep on increasing forever, right? It has to stop at some level.

>>6110

Living standards aren't demonstrably getting worse, by most reckoning they're just stagnating. Housing cost and standards is a problem mainly isolated to the UK only. Job security isn't a big issue, compulsory redundancies are happening at quite a low rate currently, but I think there is a high rate of people leaving jobs voluntarily. People having few children is usually seen as a marker of a strong economy, not a struggling one.

All in all, >>6112 is more on the mark. Since the post-war era, global economic growth has been driven almost entirely by increasing manufacturing capacity further and further, demand more or less rose hand-in-hand with supply. However in the past decade or so, we've become far too good at making things. Prices of most things have fallen and the quality has increased, the worlds consumers can't or wont buy new things fast enough to keep up with the rate of production.

I don't know anything about the economy or debt or any of the things being debated in this thread but last time I went out with Croydon Night watch there were about 70-odd who turned up for the free sandwiches and soup, something like triple what there was ten years ago (the majority were white, English blokes) and just ten minutes ago I passed seven people begging on Oxford's main street alone. I feel a bit sick. Something is obviously wrong and it's getting rapidly worse. This is not civilisation.

>>6116

That's the patriarchy for you.

>>6117
Fuck off.

>>6116

Everyone who voted Tory can't remember how fucked we were before labour introduced the minimum wage. People were having to run households on £2.50 an hour. Some people got their wages doubled after the NMW was introduced. Now, the lower classes have been raised and the middle classes dragged down to meet them and the working class yuppies are voting Tory because they think they're middle class now and the middle class are voting Tory as they always have.

Back to Earth with a bump. It pays to pay attention to the trends and cycles in politics if you plan on voting and not just voting for the guy with the nicest teeth. Everyone suffers under the Tories, except the lucky few, but under Labour everyone is equally miserable. That is Free Market Capitalism Vs Socialism in a nut shell.

Labour weren't really a socialist party any more though, which is why they lost. If you're going to stand, stand for something. Dignity in defeat. You don't see the Tories being torn apart by an internal values crisis or their Scottish contingent being annihilated, because they know what they stand for.

It's all moot anyway, I reckon I'll probably be living in a different country from the rest of you within twenty years. GB has a use by date. The United Kingdom of Scotland, England and Northern Ireland here we come.

>>6119
>Now, the lower classes have been raised and the middle classes dragged down to meet them
Well that's a relief. For a moment there I was worried I was going to have to read the other three paragraphs.

>>6120

You should, they're great.

>>6121
I'd rather just put on some Michael McIntyre, if you don't mind.

>>6119
>Everyone suffers under the Tories, except the lucky few, but under Labour everyone is equally miserable. That is Free Market Capitalism Vs Socialism in a nut shell. Labour weren't really a socialist party any more though

I... er... hmm.

>>6119
Thanks mate I needed a laugh.

>>6123
>>6124
Out of interest, are you laughing at the idea of Labour being a properly socialist option, or are you trying to assert that everything was sunshine and roses under the last Labour government?

>>6125
Neither, I was puzzled by the paradox 'this is socialism in a nutshell, delivered by a party that wasn't socialist'.

>>6126
To be fair, that's the closest we can get to socialism. Britain and almost all the Anglophone world simply does not like socialism. Maybe it's because of greed, or protestantism, I don't know.

So what do you all genuinely believe is in stock for us this year?

Food prices going up? Rents increasing? Increased inflation?
All of the above, combined with harder-to-find jobs and lower wages?

>>6130

Whatever happens, this thread will still be on page one of /*/.

Screencap this post. Or just scroll up the thread in late December.

>>6130

70% chance of business as usual - stagnant wages, modest inflation.
20% chance of a tentative recovery.
10% chance of global depression due to collapse in commodities prices, weak demand from the middle-income countries and devaluations of tech & pharma companies.

In any scenario, I think the gap between wages and property prices will persist in the UK and worsen in London, thanks to British property being the piggybank of international arseholes.

>>6130

I think the biggest threat to the UK is the security of companies in sectors reliant on commodity prices recovering.

If insolvencies and job loses don't become too significant, there will be little impact on us, it will just be a case of stagnation with low commodity prices balancing out any other factors at work.
House prices will probably peak this year with a big spike just before the new restrictions on buy-to-let mortgages come into effect. I don't expect any fall in prices though whatever happens.

Seems like a buying opportunity to me.