I predict

[Aussiejeff]

A depression in 1939 won't nessessarily be the same as a depression in 2009 or 10 but a new class of people ( those that had it and now don't ) will have next to nothing and this will cause social unrest.

Yeah, it's all a matter of "scale".

How many more Billion people are involved in this "world recession" compared to 1939?

How many more bad debt loans?

How many more insolvent companies?

How many more Ponzi operators?

How big are the Mega cities (that were built on Mega-debt loans) now, compared to '39?

How can the world's Mega cities continue to function if they can ONLY function on mountains of endless debt and loans for essential services & infrastructure?

Who will provide all this debt funding?

How much total debt does the world carry now, in comparison to '39?


So many new questions.
So little time to get the right answers.
So few good political leaders to provide the solutions.

Confidence is so low, I'm almost tempted to turn religous...

 

[MrBurns]

Confidence is so low, I'm almost tempted to turn religous...

Now there's an emerging growth business

 

[MrBurns]

ABC Web Site -

Britain tightens immigration rules
Posted 54 minutes ago

The British Government says it is tightening immigration controls in the face of rising unemployment and tough economic conditions.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith says that, from April, non-EU workers entering Britain without a job must have a masters degree, instead of the current bachelors degree, and a previous salary of at least $44,000.

The Home Office estimates the move will mean 12,000 fewer immigrants each year.

 

[gfresh]

Most Australian's wouldn't even pass that test

I think we may as well call this The Great Depression II... With the exception of Australia and a couple of others, you can't really see any country that is escaping without serious economic effects at the moment. It won't play out with the exact same scenario, or imagery, but the overall scope of it seems similar.

We're now on the brink of nationalisation of many (more) overseas banks, and despite all the bailouts, many are about to fall over again (Citigroup for instance). Unemployment is soaring in all major countries. GDP is falling by several percent a quarter. Housing is falling several percent in all major countries. Trade is collapsing. Spending is collapsing.

It took about 4 years for the very worst to bottom in the 1930's Depression, bottoming in about 1933. I think we could be on a similar timescale. This time the US started in about 07, so would expect the economic bottom may be somewhere between late 2010-2011.

I think with the more rapid spread of information in today's world, and greater awareness of economic matters, the trip down seems to be playing out quicker, which may mean the recovery may be a bit closer than last time.

 

[MrBurns]

Interest rates will fall to 3% perhaps 2% by June next year.
It's just lucky we have the room to move.

Savings income will suffer but perhaps the capital will be safer.

ASX down to early 3000's within 6 months.

Commodity boom bust and financial institutions problems means we have nothing to hold it up.

Property will collapse within 12 months perhaps less, commercial and residential will all go

Recovery ..well cant see that far ahead just yet.

And so I advise............

From Oct last year, not bad if i say so myself.

 

[robots]

hello,

top effort cheech,

thankyou
robots

 

[MrBurns]

hello,

top effort cheech,

thankyou
robots

Thanks robbi, hope the latte's were good today.

 

[robots]

Thanks robbi, hope the latte's were good today.

hello,

yes loaded up, working over Mill Park way for the week and will catch the train and ride bicycle the next couple of days, its great fun on the public transport system

you always see some great characters, got the earlybird ticket all set to go

thankyou
robots

 

[marcadrian]

From Oct last year, not bad if i say so myself.

Good Call Mr Burns. Right on all counts.... but we're still waiting for that last frontier to fall... the property market that is!

People are OK with falling stocks and rising unemployment, but the real headlines will hit when property prices drop 10%+. It might just not happen though. The middle ground of property might hold as low interest rates see's new entrants into the market and the high end dropping means people will be downsizing into more affordable homes. I think many houses in run of the mill suburbs will be stuck in that 300-600k price band for the next decade (as baby boomers sell up and move off into little townhouses by the coast somewhere).

 

[MrBurns]

Good Call Mr Burns. Right on all counts.... but we're still waiting for that last frontier to fall... the property market that is!

People are OK with falling stocks and rising unemployment, but the real headlines will hit when property prices drop 10%+. It might just not happen though. The middle ground of property might hold as low interest rates see's new entrants into the market and the high end dropping means people will be downsizing into more affordable homes. I think many houses in run of the mill suburbs will be stuck in that 300-600k price band for the next decade (as baby boomers sell up and move off into little townhouses by the coast somewhere).

It will still happen, there's no way whats happening around the globe won't effect property here, it's already started of course but seems minute compared to the share crash.

You just have to look at the unemployment figures emerging to know there is a lot worse to come.

The FHB grant and low interest rates have kept it afloat for the time being.

On the surface it seems like a good time to buy but it's all manipulated and the market is distorted by current events. low interest rates, temporary, and the FHBG also temporarily Doubled.

 

[white_goodman]

It will still happen, there's no way whats happening around the globe won't effect property here, it's already started of course but seems minute compared to the share crash.

You just have to look at the unemployment figures emerging to know there is a lot worse to come.

The FHB grant and low interest rates have kept it afloat for the time being.

On the surface it seems like a good time to buy but it's all manipulated and the market is distorted by current events. low interest rates, temporary, and the FHBG also temporarily Doubled.

funny thing we forecasted a 2010 fight back through resi property today at our quarterly research meeting... i debated it but we shall soon see

 

[sammy84]

I predict fantastic buying opportunities around the corner. The end is near....

 

[MrBurns]

I predict fantastic buying opportunities around the corner. The end is near....

Make up your mind

 

[sammy84]

Sorry should have clarified, the end of the bear is near. We need one last big drop

 

[MrBurns]

Sorry should have clarified, the end of the bear is near. We need one last big drop

I got it, only joking, .i hope you're right but I don't think so.

7 of our 10 largest trading partners are in recession.

 

[grace]

Just reading about the comments on property.....

Well, I was talking to a person who holds a fairly senior position in one of our banks last week and their comment was (that particular Banks' view) that they didn't expect Commercial property to improve for AT LEAST three years.

Rural property has now dropped 15-20% from the highs. Rural property did peak earlier than residential though, back in 2007.

Personally, I just can't see why we would be the only country in the world to come out of this without some hurt in the housing market. My personal view is the hurt will be very bad, after all, a commodity based bubble that has now bust with plenty of flow on through every corner of our Country can't keep the fire warm.

 

[michael_selway]

Interest rates will fall to 3% perhaps 2% by June next year.
It's just lucky we have the room to move.

Savings income will suffer but perhaps the capital will be safer.

ASX down to early 3000's within 6 months.

Commodity boom bust and financial institutions problems means we have nothing to hold it up.

Property will collapse within 12 months perhaps less, commercial and residential will all go

Recovery ..well cant see that far ahead just yet.

And so I advise............

From Oct last year, not bad if i say so myself.

Hey yep thats pretty good

However what do you see from here on in? e.g. what will be the absolute low of the AORDS and Dow Jones and when etc?

Thanks

MS

 

[MrBurns]

Hey yep thats pretty good

However what do you see from here on in? e.g. what will be the absolute low of the AORDS and Dow Jones and when etc?

Thanks

MS

I thought someone would ask me to do it again

The all ords depends on company profits and viability, by rights all the bad news should already be factored in but the decline in profits I've seen reported so far would lead me to believe that many of these companies wont survive, certainly not at their present levels.

The Nikki fell 80% and Japan was in recession for 10 years, so to answer your question, I don't know but all I can say is I'm staying out because I know nothing about trading and will wait till property tanks and buy in there...I think.

 

[Glen48]

Here it a good indicator the bottom is close coming to a Suburb near you???

Feb. 27 (Bloomberg) -- When Berlin resident Simone Klostermann returned from vacation and couldn’t find her Mercedes SLK, she thought it had been towed. Police told her the 35,000- euro ($45,000) car had been torched.

“They’d squirted something flammable into the car’s engine block in the gap between the windshield and the hood,” said Klostermann. “The engine was completely destroyed.”

The 34-year-old’s experience isn’t unique in the German capital. At least 29 vehicles were destroyed in arson attacks this year, most of them luxury cars, according to police. The number is already about 30 percent of the total for 2008. The latest to go up in flames was a Porsche, on Feb. 14, two days after a Mercedes was set alight in a public car park.

While youths in Athens protest by throwing Molotov cocktails, in Paris by toppling barricades, and in Budapest by hurling eggs at politicians, protesters in Berlin rage at their economic plight by targeting the most expensive cars -- symbols of German wealth and power.

A group calling itself BMW -- the initials stand for Movement for Militant Resistance in German -- has claimed responsibility for several attacks in left-wing magazines and Web sites, police spokesman Bernhard Schodrowski said.

One-third of the incidents are classed as “political,” prompting officers to assign a special unit to investigate, Schodrowski said. No arrests have been made. Schodrowski attributed the arson to “a protest against the world economy and rising rents.”

‘Quick to Attack’

German unemployment began to rise last November after almost three years of declines. Deutsche Bank AG Chief Economist Norbert Walter predicts the German economy, Europe’s biggest, may shrink by more than 5 percent this year.

The worst recession since World War II is fueling anger among youths across Europe who “perceive their future as rather precarious,” said Margit Mayer, a politics professor at Berlin’s Free University.

“Whether you look at the Berlin events or these anarchist groups in other European cities and countries, they are all making reference to the deepening economic crisis and how the various governments are dealing with them,” said Mayer, a specialist in urban social and protest movements.

Some groups are “very quick to attack whoever they can make out as responsible for having robbed them of decent life prospects,” according to Mayer.

The Berlin car burnings have been concentrated in up-and- coming neighborhoods such as Prenzlauer Berg, where Klostermann’s car was destroyed in May.

‘Don’t Move in Here’

There, new housing and building redevelopments are pushing out the squatter scene that flourished after East and West Berlin were reunited in 1990, said Andrej Holm, a sociologist at Goethe University in Frankfurt who has studied the change.

Rents that were about half the city average 10 years ago are now about 40 percent above the average, and the car attacks are an attempt to drive wealthy newcomers away, Holm said.

“It means: ‘rich people, don’t move in here -- your cars will be trashed, we don’t want you here’,” he said.

Representatives from Porsche Automobil Holding SE, Daimler AG, the maker of Mercedes, and Bayerische Motoren Werke AG declined to comment on the attacks. Daimler spokeswoman Ute von Fellberg said the matter was about security in Berlin.

Berlin Matter

“This is not a matter for the producer, rather it’s a matter for the city of Berlin,” BMW spokesman Alexander Bilgeri said today in a phone interview.

While Prenzlauer Berg and other central neighborhoods such as Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg are thriving, at least in parts, Berlin as a whole remains Germany’s “subsidy capital” almost 20 years after the Berlin Wall fell, said Tobias Just, a real-estate economist with Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt. Unemployment, at 14.1 percent in February, is almost double the national average.

Oliver Kappelle, who moved with his wife and two children to Friedrichshain, is unfazed by the perceived threat.

One night last month, Kappelle came across a “heap of junk that used to be a Porsche the night before,” he said. “I was just relieved that he didn’t park in the empty space behind me.”

Baader-Meinhof

Berlin has a history of political protest, with anarchist demonstrators regularly clashing with police on the streets of Kreuzberg during May 1 marches. Kreuzberg, which abutted the Berlin Wall, is represented in parliament by the Green Party’s Hans-Christian Stroebele, a former lawyer who defended members of the Baader-Meinhof gang in court.

Likewise, arson attacks on cars are not new: a Web site, “Burning Cars,” was set up to track the incidents in May 2007, one month before a summit in the northern German resort of Heiligendamm of the Group of Eight industrialized nations. There have been 290 attacks on cars since then, among them 55 Mercedes and 29 BMWs damaged or destroyed by fire, the site records.

“I wouldn’t advise someone to park their Porsche on the street” in Kreuzberg, Berlin police commissioner Dieter Glietsch told the Taz newspaper in June last year.

As the frequency of attacks increases, Klostermann, a company manager who has lived in Prenzluer Berg for 12 years, remains unbowed.

“I would never want to be regarded as someone who can be driven out of a place where I enjoy living,” she said.

 

[MrBurns]

Some years ago I believe Mercedes were going to make their cars less showy just for times like this.

I cant see how there will be a fast rebound, this will be messy for a few years, cant see beyond that and i'm not keen on living in an enviroment like that for years but it seems thats what we're in for.