Solve the crisis!

What would you do if you had white hair and caterpillars above each eye?

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I think a 3>6 month holiday period for EVERY mortgage payer in the country. It is the banks who should suffer, especially as they have had billions of investments. It would get people spending again and help all the every day people survive.

shave my hair and pluck my eyebrows

wasp said:

. . . and caterpillars above each eye?

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Oh no, please don't tell me his eyebrows have had babies!

Since man cannot defeat a recession, I'd let it go. I'd probably resign along with Gordon Brown, too, as Brown did say they'd do anything.

I'd say, "dont worry Darling, you look lovely"

I'm just gonna leave this here so we can get past the jokes.......

YouTube - Blackadder - Darling

wasp said:

What would you do if you had white hair and caterpillars above each eye?

____________

I think a 3>6 month holiday period for EVERY mortgage payer in the country. It is the banks who should suffer, especially as they have had billions of investments. It would get people spending again and help all the every day people survive.

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Gov's getting little income from housing stamp duty; we need to get the property market moving again but not revving out of control; people need mortgages. Therefore:

1. Announce temporary stamp duty holiday with immediate effect but don't say when it will be re-imposed

2. Gordo wanted to pump money into the economy so offer sensible Government mortgages (through Govt bank NRock) to sensible buyers / propositions.

3. Banks have accepted our money - don't give any more / continue with penal payback rates until they do more for their customers.

4. Shoot that woman who speaks for the British B(?)ankers Association.

3. Hold an election.

Stop fiddling with the taxes.

Reducing VAT makes no difference as Vat is not charged on food just luxury items which most people wouldn't be buying anyway, while increasing the upper taxes has just shown again that the UK on the whole hates success (Look at the way people bitch about Tesco' profit but there still charging less for lots of goods now than they used to)

The credit crisis will not be solved by robbing Peter to pay Paul.

Provide a government scheme where they provide the mortgage for half the house and a bank the other half. Then the cash will go into the economy rather than straight to the banks

Oh and stop all these people who offer loans on the TV with people like Carol VOrderman with a rate of 29% of course people can't pay it back when the interst is making the loan grow by a third every year!

the change in VAt is laughable. Businesses are going to have to swallow the difference to pay for the costs of changing systems and admin costs (I'm not going to mention how much we are charging our ftse 100 clients for the priviledge).

Headline politics....

get their face on the front of papers and makes the average voter think "oooh the govt are trying to help us" when in fact they're doing nothing but moving tax from account A to Account B effectively

The proposals would be funny if they weren't screwing so many people.

Stop thinking about what others should do, and start thinking about what you yourself can contribute.

An economy is nothing more and nothing less than a symbiotic relationship between supply and demand with a heavy dose of psychology included.

Problems start when one side of the equation doesn't have enough faith in the future to either produce or buy enough.

We can't do anything much about the production side of things nor can we try and stimulate the economy through for example lowering taxes.

But nevertheless it is all down to us for one very simple reason:

Things don't buy things, people do.

And that is all it takes to prevent service providers and producers from going bankrupt, us not going on a spending hiatus.

And the average person need not go into debt for that, it doesn't have to be a Bang & Olufsen or a haircut for 250,- to keep spending money and to yet kickstart things in an economy that is not going to turn into just another debt bubble. As always it's all about a healthy balance between savings and spending.

As the saying goes, "It is the Psychology, Stupid !"

If we think we can and have faith in the future we will be part of the solution and keep things running by spending.

If we think we can't and are totally depressed about our prospects and don't go buying any services or products any longer we simply contribute to the problem, to firms going out of business, to more people becoming unemployed, to a recession.

BSD said:

Stop thinking about what others should do, and start thinking about what you yourself can contribute.

An economy is nothing more and nothing less than a symbiotic relationship between supply and demand with a heavy dose of psychology included.

Problems start when one side of the equation doesn't have enough faith in the future to either produce or buy enough.

We can't do anything much about the production side of things nor can we try and stimulate the economy through for example lowering taxes.

But nevertheless it is all down to us for one very simple reason:

Things don't buy things, people do.

And that is all it takes to prevent service providers and producers from going bankrupt, us not going on a spending hiatus.

And the average person need not go into debt for that, it doesn't have to be a Bang & Olufsen or a haircut for 250,- to keep spending money and to yet kickstart things in an economy that is not going to turn into just another debt bubble. As always it's all about a healthy balance between savings and spending.

As the saying goes, "It is the Psychology, Stupid !"

If we think we can and have faith in the future we will be part of the solution and keep things running by spending.

If we think we can't and are totally depressed about our prospects and don't go buying any services or products any longer we simply contribute to the problem, to firms going out of business, to more people becoming unemployed, to a recession.

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Some firms and businesses NEED to go bankrupt.
A few banks and mortgage services for a start. They are the idiots that started it all. At the very least the people at the top should be kicked out of their jobs. No bailouts that the taxpayer shells out for. Can't they understand that there is nothing left to 'bleed' from us
Mind you any 'leader' that sells off our gold reserves at a historical market low should be put against the wall and shot! What a stupid man.

options said:

Some firms and businesses NEED to go bankrupt. A few banks and mortgage services for a start. They are the idiots that started it all. At the very least the people at the top should be kicked out of their jobs.

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Very much agree with that.

Change and adaptation are key ingredients behind great services and products, and that entails accepting failure from those who couldn't keep up, and then being replaced by those who have better products and are faster, eg most listed companies on the worlds stock exchanges aren't that dreadfully old at all because most of their failed predecessors had at some point turned into bureacratic monsters dealing mainly with themselves, and not their customers needs any more.

We must spend to keep our economy growing, but not on products / services that just don't cut it, but that choice is up to us, we just need to understand our tremendous influence in that regard, we make and break economies and companies collectively, and it's entirely up to us to reward those who deserve it while withdrawing business from those who don't.

No doubt at all.

But re big banks failing right now, I know where you are coming from, but the danger there is simply that that might be a too big blow for our pretty vulnerable financial eco-system right now.

But what is clear is that those responsible need to lose their jobs and they should actually be held liable and prosecuted for damages.

No reason why thousands of lowly bank employees should go and join the ranks of the unemployed, while those responsible through their combination of short sighted greed coupled with a complete lack of comprehension of what they were actually selling should enjoy a well padded pension.

There really must be a clear message sent from all this: outcomes need to be coupled with consequences from now on for everybody with a position of influence.

VAT isn't just on luxuries, although I am old enough to remember that that was how it was introduced to us way back when (at a rate of about 8%, which the Tories lost no time in raising, so that they could cut income tax - a clear case of the poor subsidising the rich).

Waitrose are one of the few shops where one buys everyday goods that make it clear (on the till receipt), which items carry VAT and the total of VAT paid. So such things as cat food attract VAT - ok, a "luxury", but many old people would be lost without their cats, and it is said that cat owners live longer than non cat-owners, i.e. there is a social good in cat-owning. Similarly, pure fruit juice attracts VAT at the same rate as Coca-Cola, although most people would probably think the former is better for people than the latter, so I wonder about the joined-up thinking here, since the government believes it is encouraging us to be healthy. (As it happens, I disagree about fruit juice, but that's for another place). Hot food has been VAT-able for years (the logic being that a service has been provided, so it's value has been added-to, presumably...another questionable assumption!).

I wish that everyone was fully aware of exactly how much VAT they paid....e.g. kiddies on their sweets, etc (ok, maybe that is justified on health grounds, but they (and their parents) should be fully aware - I doubt if many are.

I find it very hard to believe that the admin costs of changing VAT are really going to be that much, and it's not something that's going to change again every 5 minutes. What I do expect though is for it to be used as a way of sneaking in crafty price increases which will not be detectable by most people.


Housing market - Do we really want to "get this going again"? There was an insane bubble in housing over the last decade or so. My son and his partner, both in good jobs with savings in the bank, still cannot get on the housing ladder in our area (or anywhere near), even after prices are supposed to have been coming down. Not round here they are not, and I hear similar in other areas. This can't be right. My wife and I, with similar jobs earning similar salaries (adjusted for inflation) thirty years ago, were each able to get on the housing ladder, on our individual earnings alone. Something has gone badly wrong. The way my son puts it is that his generation have been royally screwed over by our generation, and I think he is not far wrong.

Totally agree with all of that BSD, very eloquently put. Of course I would not like to see the employees put out of work when the problem was with the higher echelon, I have had too much of that myself throughout my 'normal' working life. These stupid and greedy people in government work for us. Not the other way around. England does not have a democracy at all any more. It is a dictatorship.

By 'stealth' methods they have made it harder and harder for the man in the street to rebel.

options said:

Some firms and businesses NEED to go bankrupt.
A few banks and mortgage services for a start. They are the idiots that started it all. At the very least the people at the top should be kicked out of their jobs.

Click to expand...

Watch the video, there is a very short commercial first:

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VIDEO CLICK: Dealbreaker - A Wall Street Tabloid - Business News Headlines and Financial Gossip - Staking Out Dick

I don't believe that house prices need to be increased but i think that the credit crunch has brought the market to a standstill so no-one is able to get mortgages and buy at any price (realistically).

SO money needs to be made available to stimulate the sales/purchases of houses without raising prices again to where people lie about their income to get a big mortgage which they cannot pay which will then lead to negative equity and banks going bust and so on and so forth.........

If you feel you may be able to sell your home when you want you may be more willing to spend than if you're worried you're stuck in a house with a price dropping like a stone and no buyers