This is going to be a scarey ride

As I have perhaps mentioned before at school I was made to study American History for 'O'level, and the Wall Street crash and Hoover response then FDR's new deal are a major part of that. ( If I remember rightly whilst FDR's socialism* work initially - it then failed and things returned to being just as bad as before with WWII and the UK mortgaging its Empire, for the second time in 30 years, to the US to pay to stay alive saving the US. By the way we only just paid that lot off a year or so ago. )

You've got to worry about whats going on.

House prices are going to crash, because now there's a panic on and who would take out a mortgage just now and who would grant it ?

One of my small pension funds lost money last year - goodness knows what it will do this year. The house will be worth tens of thousands less, and tax has just gone up and up.

In the medium term I'm spooked.

In the short term my stop loss order fired first thing this morning, thank goodness. No enough money to make more than a summer holidays difference to life, but there you go.

Pensions really worry me.

Banks worry me.

Employment worries me.

In short - spooked.

I suspect shortly I'll be getting very angry ...


* Amazingly the Democrats were the party of the right before these events !

PS I like this ( its postgrad student humour - and in some ways you have to go to the truly dark place that post grad students live in - or remeber it - to appreciate it).

As safe as houses ? Boom and Bust ?

In many parts of the country house prices are heading south, just a interest rates - fuelled by border line panic by the lenders not the Bank of England - head north.

Now the BBC reports that the ex building society - Northern Rock is applying for emergency help from the Bank of England.

The only question that remains is how Gordon Brown intends to do his sloping shoulder trick with this one. The words "Tory boom and bust" seem to have been missing from his vocabulary of late.

Will he cut and run to the polls before it gets too bad - or perhaps there's nothing to worry about after all. ( Best to make sure you don't have much more than the compensation limit in any bank savings accounts just to be sure ).