Boom & Bust

[onyirtodd]

Who else do we blame Tod ? its the Government's that controls the purse, past & present.

If a Government continualy hands out monies to people who cant possibly pay back and are spending beyond their means who else but the Government we can blame .

We can blame ourselves for falling prey to their game aye , we are but a pawn on thier chessboard.

Perhaps taking a wee bit of personal responsibility wouldn't go amiss.

I'd welcome details on all the monies Government continualy hands out and how to hold of some of it.

[Mori]

Government controls the economy therefore in my eyes they do the handing out, as for self control , lead us not in to temptation as the saying goes, its the realization of self control that we have to learn to adapt, is where the root of the problem is.

[sds]

Government controls the economy

Not quite. Government dictates policy which influences the economy.

(Likewise, the condition of the economy influences the policy decisions made by government.)

[Roxburgh]

Waterford Wedgwood files for bankruptcy:

http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/news/di ... ration.php

http://money.cnn.com/2009/01/05/news/co ... 2009010508

[Its_a_gamp]

Passion for Perfume gone into administration as well.

Had never heard of them myself but apparent the are a biggish perfume chain and there are several in glasgow, EK, cumbernauld etc

Also Morgan womenswear have applied for bankruptcy protection - usually a bad sign, I am more worried that one of the major shareholders that owns cruise (designer clothing) has big problems and that all their businesses are being looked at

[tedmaul]

Having access to finance/credit is a definite good any society. Ask Muhammad Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, or Hernando de Soto, the Peruvian economist who advocates property rights in shanty towns as a means of collateral to lift them out of poverty.

There's a danger here of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. No-one should want a return to the days when an ordinary working person acquiring a mortgage was a byzantine process which usually included having a long-standing relationship with the bank and certainly on speaking terms with the bank manager. The relaxation of strict credit rules was to the benefit of society in the long-term. The clock can't be turned back on that. Clearly, some people are in over their heads and, despite what Gordon Brown might think, these people will have to be allowed to fail eventually. The system can't sustain them forever.

There's a danger of Brown's Government becoming too obsessed with protecting borrowers. The fact is that there are more savers in this country than borrowers and there's no reason why they should be penalised just to bail out a few borrowers for a short while. There's going to be unpleasant outcomes for some people in all this but by interfering in it and trying to 'save' people, Brown might actually make things more unpleasant for lots of other people.

[onyirtodd]

Tedmaul make some valid points, particularly regarding bank managers. It's no surprise things began to go wrong around the time hole in the wall machines appeared on our streets. Till then, if you needed cash, you faced a potentially embarassing trip into the bank where a sharp eyed teller might shop you to the manager who would pop his head out and ask if you 'could spare a minute'. But once the banks saw the savings that this sort of automation made and that it could be extended to decision making things went downhill.

I'm not so sure about Brown's obsession with borrowers.

[tedmaul]

There was good and bad in the old system. The bad, as I said, was that one had to rely heavily on the largesse of your local manager. The good was that more decisions were taken based on personal circumstances and knowledge. It was a delicate balance and somewhere along the way the balance was lost in certain institutions. Too many banks seem to have forgotten sound financial principles - like mortgages based on certified multiples of income - in the haste to be more friendly to customers.

There's a story that when Barclays first introduced the Barclaycard in 1967, they sent invitation letters to a select group of elite customers. The following morning, the bank was inundated with these irate customers clutching their invitation letters. They had regarded it as insulting that the bank considered them in need of credit. Changed days!

The era of cheap credit gave people a false impression of the value of money and the nature of credit. The money expert Alvin Hall was always amazed at the number of people who regarded the unspent amount on their credit card as 'savings' rather than, in reality, potential debt. Too many people got into a false mindset and not even I would blame the government or banks entirely for it. A wake-up call was needed for them and it's arrived.

A lot of good will come from this 'crisis' though not everyone will have a happy outcome, I admit.

[Mori]

ET

THE last remaining Woolworths stores will close their doors for the final time at the end of trading today.

The closures, including the Argyle Street and Shawlands branches, bring to an end a massive clearance which even saw the stores' fixtures and fittings sold off at bargain prices.

The collapse leaves 27,000 workers out of work.

Flicker

[Dave]

The collapse leaves 27,000 workers out of work.

That ought to be corrected. The administrators were made an offer which guaranteed each and every single one of those 27,000 jobs as well as retaining all shops (all be it not as Woolies).

[Armadillo]

Byres Road c1984


Byres Road 2006

Byres Road 2009

[Josef]

Did you have to wait days to get exactly the same woman in the first two photos?

[Dave]

Did you have to wait days to get exactly the same woman in the first two photos?

Naw, she went in the sale as part of the fixtures and fittings

[Armadillo]

There was no wifey with a bag this time, coz there was nothing left to buy in Woolies......

[Dot]

Seems that Iceland have bought some of the Woolies stores and this should create some jobs later on.