I notice that £1bn has been wiped of the share value of the UK’s seven largest house building companies as a result of the government’s programme of cuts. I think this is one of the tests of the economic theory about another recession. The multiplier effect of this and the likely unemployment that follows may well show that we are heading for a another recession.
Conversely the price of insuring government gilts dropped since the announced cuts. Double dips are actually exceedingly rare historically though the opposition are doing their best to talk it up – it was ever thus.
Yes cuts are bad news, especially to Labour party membership.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11049538
Lord Prescott as prospective Treasurer seems to think that Labour could go bust owing millions – now that would be, a double dip recession.
In the face of the Entire Human Civilisational ‘House’ being still both unable and unwilling to ‘live within its means’ and do all-round demand vs supply budgeting, Britain’s overall Housing situation and potential is plentifully adequate.
In the long-term increasingly threatening shadow of World-Overpopulation, our Housing
is in point of probability over-capitalised.
The World’s technological expertise at designing and speedily building low-cost durable houses qua accomodational-dwellings, even whole small townships thereof, that are now both longlife-suitable and re-locatable)
appears to be unwarrantedly denied.
The Western 1st World now dominantly hedonistic-luxury Individual-Capitalism civilisation’s formulation of Demand versus Supply budgeting, Markets, GNPs, and Household-budgets has long been resulting
in an increasing negative ‘shortfall’ between what humankind is Demanding and what The Earth is capable of Supplying.
The more expensive and costly the Housing, and the Built-Infrastructure, the more Collectively occupied and utilised it needs to be made.
Most workers and most off-duty lifestylers, and one could reason Utilitarianly here that “All” on-duty workers and “All” off-duty lifestylers (“consumers” if you must)
would surely benefit and be long-term more economically* secure, healthy and happy, on a new ‘universal’ basis, of a Common comfortable-frugality workplace and lifestyle formulation and moral-structure.
The Supply versus Demand graph of Earth-Lifesupports versus Human-Demands shows humankind’s continuing and increasingly irreversible destructivity towards non-renewable resources, and also increasingly towards renewable resources, to have long since passed the point of irreversible cross-over, a runaway-shortfall between human Demands and Earth’s ability to Supply that increasingly destructive Demand now prevails concealed behind Denial and Short-term Mind-functionally-impaired Blindness and Greed and their evil brood of many kinds of Corruption.
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Think also about building ‘underground’, for the survival of a critically-minimum human-civilisation, against the event of asteroid-strike, destructive epidemic, pandemic, plague, pestilence, famine, drought, tsunami, flood, earthquake, fire, chemical, biological, nuclear, runaway terrorism, and warlord anarchy.
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Many of us even at ‘poverty’ level are yet very securely and comfortably housed, fed, watered and exercised; in my case behind double-glazing and a large Housing Association’s traditionally successful management, very quiet by day and by night.
Millions of us permanently-low-income-recipients in Britain have quite adequate sustenance, security, time, citizenship-equipment (computer. telephone, cellphone, TV, Recording-devise, portable-radio) and possibly have increasable capability, for participating in getting Britain’s civilisation onto a long-term strong and sustain-worthy basis, commensurately and Win-Win-Win with every other civilsation around the current World.
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So I wouldn’t be too worried about drasticly reducing and economising-on* house-ownership, and greatly increasing and improving housing-association type renting.
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* economising = eking-out, making every penny go further; *not* sharemarket-investing and perpetually-upwards-GDP-pretending.
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JSDM1327M23Aug10.
It may merely be an observation about a casino, where prices go up and down, and people gamble on it.
However when the big Property companies went bust in the last recession, in the late 80s, the banks merely took them in, and paid out capital sums in interest, until the recession abated.
When businesses are trading solely on Capital value with very little income, and remortgaging with every planning approval
valuation that comes along, there is scarcely any other way of functioning.
Futhermore such is the expertise and organisation of the property traders that when the recession recedes, one suspects that the only people the bank can employ to resuscitate the business are precisely those from whose hands it was taken in bancruptcy.
No! Merely a sleight of hand of the Casino trader.
We need to have some Peers forming a group to run a regular weekly Strategic-Issues Post, in which any-one can (as briefly as possible) ‘Nail the Fallacy’ in some topical political. economic. governance, human-development, human-rights or whatever issue.
One trigger news issue today (W08Sep10) would be from the Daily Express front-page “4 million Households Where Nobody Works – leading to a drain upon the Taxpayer”.
We have long known that Economics has its fundamental equation wrong that the Earth’s Lifesupports are increasing on an exponential upwards graph, but are actually being degraded, by Human-Industrial-and-Hedonistic-Civilisation, downwards on a logarithmic scale such that the vacuum-like shortfall is almost at run-away level and past the point-of-no-return;
and we know that the Wastage is rooted in the 25% timeframed Economics-Workplace which itself causes the 75% timeframed Lifestyles-Consumerplace to be wastefully-hedonistic;
and we also know that the VA-Tax paid by these “unemployed” 4 million households is only a few ‘peanuts’ lower than the VA-Tax paid by the “employed” 20 million households;
and we know that unemployed people neither cause costly rush-hour traffic nor n early as much environmental and lifesupports damage as ‘necessarily’ must The Workforce;
and we know that Thw Workforce’s potential ability-to-learn and to effect their own better human-development and sustainworthy Earth-citizenship is Nil or very low, in contrast to that of the “unemployed”:
and we know that Housing is much more cost-effective and less socially-brittle when tenancy-grouped under Housing Associations, rather than proliferated as “Own Your Own Home”, “Get On The Home Ownership Ladder”, “Save on Rent by Taking Out a Mortgage Loan”, and “Be a First Home Mortgage Success”.
(Here I suggest it is your turn to make a point or two, please ………………………. ).
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(JSDM0019Th09Sep10)