After...
Bear Stearns,
Lehman,
AIG,
Paulson's bail-out
the bans on short selling....

now THIS:



Bars across London practically giving away Dom Perignon from Noon to 9pm, every day!

This applies to all Late Night London venues across London (the single biggest chain of bars and restaurants in London - see the interactive map on their website to see just how far-reaching this is).

OK, maybe I'm taking the p1ss a little - but a definite "sign of the times"

they have run out of things to celebrate

Actually I think that's a very good indicator. Probably much less lag than gov. stats. And not fiddled

Maybe plenty of sorrows to drowned.

Watch out Mary Poppins

Mary Poppins feeling the pinch too...

End of a "golden age of nannies"?

"As bankers and money dealers fall like flies to a credit crunch that has seen three major U.S. investment banks disappear in a puff of smoke, so the nannies they have employed on salaries of up to 40,000 pounds ($73,000) have suddenly become expensive luxuries.

"The problems are just starting. In the last week or two I have started getting calls from nannies saying one or both of their employers have lost their jobs and so they have too," said Kate Baker of Abbeville Nannies in south London.

"The past 12 to 18 months have been a golden era for nannies in London but we have noticed that in recent months pay rates have started to come down a bit, and now the jobs are going too," she added.

===

It's time to go back and watch Upstairs, Downstairs as the UK slides into Depression

Corney & Barrow has certainly been quiet of late, that's for sure.

I was in the Shooting Star next to Livepool Street on Friday, had 9 people in it. Unheard of on a Friday lunchtime as this pub can hold well over a 100 plus over spill onto the pavement, it unnerved a lot of the guys i work with who have mega mortgages. I think its really starting to sink in to the sheeple

Seems to be quite widespread, the Lord Aberconway was quiet too. Of course, with all the chaos in the markets people may just have been busy elsewhere, Thursday night should give some more clues (that being the busiest time in all the places around where I work at least).

I'm working today in an office full of nice-but-dim posh people.

One guy has a friend who works for the Bank of England. "He says spread your money around different banks."

The woman I work for is just starting to cotton on that things are getting serious. "They're saying there could be another Great Depression. This article from one of the Sunday papers explains it all. Luckily I don't have any money."

There's also a bimbette whose fiance has been in New York, trying to set up "another hedge fund". "I ask him to explain what's going on," she says, "but after talking to bankers all week he doesn't want to discuss it with me."

great, I love anecdotal.

My problem is that I can't keep my mouth shut long enough, & love to ram it down their greedy throats.

Then no-one tells me anything because they know I will laugh at them & rub it in.

Their silence tells me more than I need to know.

Now I don't believe you wanted to buy that BTL flat, did you? Eh? Eh?

LOL!!! Superb!!

While I have no sympathy for estate agents, bankers etc who peddle crap to gullible punters, I do have smpathy for ordinary people who are not financially literate and who make bad decisions after taking bad advice. I have a mortgage and once followed conventional investment wisdom. Fortunately, thanks to sites like this, I have started to read a lot and look at things differently and am making different financial decisions. I think what I am trying to say is that i think the glee being expressed in some of the posts is overdone - a lot of people I know might be described as 'sheeple' but that doesn't make them greedy or corrupt.

When we first moved to New Zealand, we moved to Wellington and decided to rent until we knew where we would be working / where was nice / the end of the HPC. After looking at some really crap rental places we thought that we might have to buy outright (or have a small mortgage).

We looked for a while and found a nice two bedroomed place ready to live in, in Miramar which would have taken all our savings but also an 6 bedroomed place in Kelburn which was split into two flats (one nice, one nasty) and could probably be split further, had a great view and needed some serious 'doing up'. Unfortunately this one would take all our savings and still needed a mortgage which meant that we couldn't afford to live in the nicer flat whilst doing the crap one up as we would have needed a tennant to pay the mortgage till we found work.
We approached a mortgage broker with this dilemma and by the end of that day, he had our bank agreeing to a NZ$1m mortgage to buy both places (!) with 20% deposit. And this is for two unemployed poms who had only been in the country for 4 weeks (i.e. no credit rating)!!

We were tempted but my continuing fears about the crash and the world financial system (and some rotten underpinning in the big house) put us off. Dodged a couple of bullets there!!

They weren't bullets. One of them was an anti-tank missile

I agree with this post to some extent, people are just trying to make the best they can out of a sucky deal (being anyone other than the super rich/ banker etc). It's not their fault house prices went so high, it was the cheap credit and control on supply. Hence I don't blame BTL'rs for the HPI but I have no sympathy for them losing their money, people who can't make sensible investments don't deserve money.

If that means 99% of the population don't deserve money then they should go and learn something about economics then perhaps they wouldn't allow the government/banking cartel to get us into this mess in the first place.

Bit unfair, some of that 99% are honest grafters, but just simply don't have the capacity to understand. They are guided by mass media and educated by tabloids, it's not their fault they can't see the wood from the trees.

Have a drink in backwater village locals, observe what's being said and you'll know how unfortunate some are.

Now what was that quote

Something like "if you're average intelligence you'll know that there are 3% of people more intelligent than you"

Were you thinking of:
Former New Zealand Prime Minister Robert Muldoon, when questioned about increased levels of emigration to Australia, said that these migrants "raised the average IQ of both countries".

I think that's another one

Classic, love it!

Don't worry saviour is at hand. The masses will be educated

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7630567.stm

The major policy announcement in the speech is expected to be a £300m plan to offer free computer access to children from low income families to boost their chances in the jobs market.


Maybe GEI should offer to advertise on all these vouchers, with directions on how to link to some of cgnao's posts

I found the quote

Even funnier is a reply:

I reckon it could even be higher!

No, really! You could potentially have a situation where (say) 70% of people have below-average intelligence, with 15% of people having slightly above average intelligence and 15% being *REALLY* smart, thereby raising the average high enough for the 70% of people to be below-average.

Not quite as funny though, I'll admit.

N.B.: I'm assuming "average" = "mean" ... I guess in Steve's quote "average" = "median"

Yes median

How about this one:

Sorry Steve, my mind started wandering as soon as I read "Blonde students" and "Brazilian" ....