john2605:

I am certain this is no media myth, please allow me some of your space to give my experience with the credit crunch.

For several years I have worked for a large foreign company, the company has alway's boasted of its success, it always made a healthy profit margin although it has always needed the banks help with finance, this was never a problem as the bank always got a healthy return for its investment, But in November 2008 the bank was no longer able to supply the finance the company needed, basically the bank had no money to lend, even to a profitable business.

The reason why the banks no longer have money is because of reports about how the banks have no money and every one will lose the money in their bank accounts.  The credit crunch only happened because people took news reports too seriously.

No one likes to take the blame for things so instead of the public being blamed for things they say it is an indstary's fault.  The reason why banks lost money is not only because banks lent to people/companies who would not be able to pay it back and they over spent on buying out other banks.  If people hadn't taken their money out of their bank accounts the banks would still have money.  People dont like to take the blame for things so the banks are blamed for lending money.  It is like when fast food is blamed for making children fat, it is the parents, children dont usually have the money to buy food, their parents take them to Mc Donnalds or KFC, how many 3 year olds do you know who take their parents to a fast food resturaunt and buy a meal for them?

Thank you so much for your great sharing

 

 

People should start getting into renewable energy and produce their own electricity through wind power or solar, and get rid of the cut throat energy companies!

peterralph:

People should start getting into renewable energy and produce their own electricity through wind power or solar, and get rid of the cut throat energy companies!

Renewable energy can barely power anything unless you have thousands of them.  They are also a waste of money and very inefficient.  It takes arround 1000 wind turbines to make any where near the amount of a neuclear power plant and 3000 wind turbines to make the amount of a coal power plant.  If you were to go to an apple orchard and connect all of the apples you would probably get more energy than a wind turbine.

Wind turbines dont just appear my magic for free, a lot of them are at sea so it costs more to build foundations and pay for boats so engineers can expect them and it involves a large amount of lorries, ships and machines to install wind turbines.  Where as other power plants can be built on land.  No one can run their house only on personal turbines or solar pannels, they just dont make enough energy.

Even if it did work how is not spending going to help the economy? if you don't spend it would get worser

Must say definitely agree with you on the point of how the public in general don't like to take the blame for things. I have begun to manage my income better and I know that if I get into debt now, its my own fault! In the past it was so easy to get credit but the bottom line is, we are all responsible for our own borrowing and for the decision to do so. The temptation to spend, spend, spend is always there with adverts thrust in our faces and our need to keep up with the Jones's. I truly belive that having to tighten our belts is a good thing and has totally made me reassess what is important to me in life. As a nation we have become far too materialistic and its actually a breath of fresh air to step away from all that and be grateful for what we have.

So-So.. it affects more people then others.

Restaurants and other such like business have suffered greatly. The place where i work used to be HEAVING on a saturday night - turning people away every sinle table taken (53 table restaurant). Last saturday - 7 reservations and 3 cancelled. Great.

As well as this, theft has also increased dramatically, so it must be affecting peopl somewhere along the line. Shops ect..

 

the crunch is, when will business stop increasing prices using this excuse. take a look at fuels. how can they increase in price when there is no war in iraq??????? there is no difficulty or uncertanty because of conflicts, so what is driving the prices up. maybe i'm foolish in thinking its just greed using the credit crunch as an excuse.

civvy863:

the crunch is, when will business stop increasing prices using this excuse. take a look at fuels. how can they increase in price when there is no war in iraq??????? there is no difficulty or uncertanty because of conflicts, so what is driving the prices up. maybe i'm foolish in thinking its just greed using the credit crunch as an excuse.

I would guess that the prices of fuel would have gone up because less people are using their car to save money so there is less demand for it, this means they are unable to buy in larger quantities and get better deals from the distributor for buying in bulk.

When there is a recession the best thing for everyone to do is spend money because it is a lack of money that causes a recesion so not spending would make it worse.  I have found the in general the people who moan about the government is buying shares in banks and how the recession is so bad are the ones who are causing it by stopping spending and taking their money out of their bank account.

If there weren't news reports at the start about someone finding out about Northern Rock was borrowing money from the bank of England, as all banks can do annonymusly, then no one would know and any funding gaps would have solved it's self in the end.  However instead after many news reports about banks loan companies losing money some members of the public thought it had something to do with their bank accounts and shares so withdrew all their money / sold their shares causing the banks share prices to go down.

A few days ago the FTSE 100 reached it's highest point this year and came close to in November 2008 so it is recovering.  I noticed when I went shopping earlier this week there were more people shopping than there have been compaired previous times and new shops too

The labeling, by politicians and the media machine alike, of the world's present economic plight aka 'the credit crunch' is lazy journalism and expedient politics.

What the term does is trivialize a very serious situation for those of us who are not fortunate to be "well off", those of us who do not have particularly secure jobs, and those smaller businesses who have bank-rolled the governmental financial package which prevented the banks and thus the economy from complete collapse.

I find it galling when I experience representatives of the banking industry, now there's a contradiction in terms, using the term as if it is one big joke open to discussion after a few drinks and a kebab.

The banks, and economists are taking the proverbial *** when they use the term, as are politicians.

What is more galling is the use of the term by Conservative politicians, both past and present, quickly followed by the usual banal diatribe and non-genuine venting of the spleen towards the present government.

Using monies of the body politik to strangle itself slowly with the capitalist system's favorite tool, debt is simply a continuation of a long-term plan instigated by Margaret Thatcher and her Tory cronies. Abandoning publicly owned housing programs and getting us to swallow whole the idea we must own our own homes via mortgage was the first essential step, selling off essential public utilities such as water and gas was the second, and privatizing all public transport was the third.

Subsidizing the banks with our own money whilst allowing them to refuse the necessary finance to invest in business and spend our way out of recession just adds salt to the wounds of this strangulation.

Meanwhile, we continue to pay for the political pygmies' homes (often 2 of them!), groceries, and chauffeur-driven cars.

Perhaps the argument goes, if they were smart enough to increase our "comforts" by small degree's each generation, enough to convince us such comfort's are not something we wish to lose, so that we continue to accept their bribes then they are smart enough to convince us that the market, and the debt each nation owes the other is somehow separate from us and not something we can choose to control, defer, or cancel in order to look after each other, the strong and the weak, regardless of race, nation, or creed.

In this way they continue to enjoy the fruits of our labour while we wonder how we can give those we love the Christmas we would love to give them. I doubt they will have to face the same issues; the politicians and economic advisors whom took us along this road and those still benefitting from the bonuses in the banking system which we are supposed to own.