How many hedgies are shorting the UK market? I cannot imagine Soros or Odey passing up the chance to make mega-bucks.
As for companies getting rid of people and then having to re-hire or replace them; if only.
For those companies with a viable future this has been a perfect opportunity to review size of workforce and remove the surplus. A lot of companies have become bloated over the past few years; now they are reviewing operations and structure – and culling.
Take any sector/industry and map the supply chain as far back as you can to see how far the impacts of an economic downturn will spread.

Does anybody think that this time next year we won’t be looking at late-80’s levels of unemployment?

I think its a dead cert. It might actually be even worse. And, of course, its exactly the same places who got clobbered last time that are about to cop it again

Binners – I think what’s coming will make late-80’s look like the good old days.

Does anybody think that this time next year we won’t be looking at late-80’s levels of unemployment?

I reckon that’s a best case scenario! If a second wave hits and needs a second lockdown, and I don’t see how it won’t, we’ll be looking at depression level unemployment of 20-30%, mass bankruptcies and foreclosures, and potential collapse of the banking system and with it supply chains in every industry, including food production and distribution. And that’s before thinking about brexit.

Binners – I think what’s coming will make late-80’s look like the good old days.

I think you’re right and I think this lot knows, full well, what’s coming and they simply don’t care. Just like they didn’t care back then. For these disaster capitalists, this is an ‘opportunity’ to remodel our society completely and tear everything up. Its why they’re hell-bent on a No Deal Brexit even on top of Covid

I think the end results will be the same as last time as well too…

How many hedgies are shorting the UK market?

Lots I expect, weak £ against foreign currencies, UK uncertainty means suppressed share prices and many companies succeptible to leveraged buy outs as debt is cheap. Poor employee protection means it’s easy for a foreign take-over, strip all the assets / IP, stick the debt on the balance sheet, declare insolvency, dump the employees, leave pension liabilities to the UK taxpayer and move most of it overseas.

Interesting that Steve Mnuchin has said the US cannot afford to shut the economy again.
Given the rising R number in some states that’s quite some statement to make and we’re still to see the effects of protestors in close proximity to each other.
So that’s the US marker – wealth before health.
I wonder how much/little of the Fed’s support has worked it’s way through to businesses.

binners
Subscriber

Does anybody think that this time next year we won’t be looking at late-80’s levels of unemployment?

I think its a dead cert. It might actually be even worse. And, of course, its exactly the same places who got clobbered last time that are about to cop it again

The only glimmer of hope I can really see is that so many big economies are effected, and so many of the countries that have done well are relatively small. So it will depend who is making the decisions and on what basis- and of course, it’s right to be cynical about that. But there’s no specific reason why we have to tackle this on the usual self-defeating negative-sum game, using the economics that we already know don’t work to try and fix everything. Just maybe, enough of the world and enough of the major players and enough of the voters and enough of the employees and enough of the employers won’t be served by that.

I think it’s more likely that There Is No Alternative gets rolled out again and people get convinced fixing things so that money can continue to go upwards and get pulled out of the economy in order to make everyone poorer is the right way forward. Maybe it’ll come down to how much media and tribalism holds sway, vs how much of america and europe gets set on fire.

Very much back to the 80’s and then some with regards unemployment and resulting civil unrest. Further up the thread I said how things felt like the 70’s and whilst we’re still under the spell of furlough that remains the case.

Once furlough stops well be crashing into an 80’s type situation with bells on. The major growth will be in the black economy, those anticipating a cashless economy are in for a bit of a shock.

The major growth will be in the black economy, those anticipating a cashless economy are in for a bit of a shock.

what exactly is in this black economy?

-tax free items that are supposed to be taxed sold for low cost like cigarettes
-items in short supply resold at higher cost to those who can afford it – potentially luxury foodstuffs
-low quality fake copies of expensive items bulk imported from the far east – clothing, electronics

No, paying for services in cash, in part or in total. The infamous cash deal. It happens everywhere there is high unemployment – see Spain with it’s x% unemployment and lots of people scraping by with black work of one kind or another.

Indeed. What we’ll see is the opposite of what we’ve seen recently. Services will be paid for in notes with nothing going through the books and no tax paid.

Back to the 80’s in every way

wealth before health

If only it was that simple.

Nice – I have the skills and equipment to make high quality “moonshine”*
2020 could be my year!

*untaxed single malt whisky

stumpy – in essence, that’s exactly what it is; in the US wealth will always take precedence over health.
johnson is being pushed to do the same but, having tied himself to ‘…following the science’, there is some control over what he and his clown circus do.

Back to the 80’s in every way

Can you walk straight binners?

Damn you avadave, I had money on binners being the one to post that clip.

Incedently your foum name auto corrects to ‘average.’ Sorry about that…

A few couple of points:

The number of Mystic Meg level predictions on here is laughable. Pretty much everything anyone, economists et al, has predicted over the last hundred years has been wrong. I wouldn’t have any faith in anyone who claims to know what’s round the corner.

Every thread like this also seems to result in several forum members (you know who you are) thinking it’s their big chance to do some left wing proselytising, which is very tiring. The Tories have many faults, and I would never vote for them, but the oft-repeated notion (on STW) that they’re part of some sort of capitalist conspiracy to enslave the poor is the sort of thing I’d expect to hear from a sixth form Socialist Worker seller, not a sensible adult.

That is all,

JP

JP – in case you don’t know, if you laid all the economists in the world end-to-end they wouldn’t reach a conclusion.
I usually categorise your posts alongside chewkw, the well known malaysian (?) geordie (?) troll, which means I ignore them but I agree with your observation about capitalist conspiracy bollocks – johnson’s controllers etc.
The hedgies and similar are not influenced by and do not influence johnson and his clown circus.
They make their money by speculating; who, notionally, governs is a complete irrelevance to them.
They will always find an edge.
If you have the funds, take a risk – make more money.
Tory gov may make it ‘easier’ for them to profit but, I suggest, they are generally apolitical; donations to a political party are for the optics.

All this talk of the 80’s reminds me of when I moved into the Hulme Crescents in Manchester in 86. It was beyond the reaches on law and order and normality in general, think of films like ‘Escape from New York’ or Taroskvy’s ‘Stalker’ It was also a bit like Christiania in Denmark, though maybe a bit more purgatoria if truth be told.

The anarchic (and they were) conditions that existed in Hulme and Moss Side back then were in large part due to the previous generations failure in urban planning, policing and economic decline. It made for a wonderful cultural Petri dish though…. good times.

When I look at how Manchester’s city centre has developed this century, I wonder if they haven’t designed a city of steel and glass that is as unsuitable for the coming times as the labyrinth of deck access ‘Alphaville’ type developments that went up a generation before.

The new Manchester city centre is like Logan’s Run, everyone under 30, no older people, no families, no doctors surgeries, no green space. Quite simply a temple to consumerism, trendy bars and restaurants. Under lockdown this vision has become only more pronounced. Without all the locals coming in from the surrounding districts the city looks as un cosmopolitan as can be, every person you see is middle class, in their 20’s or early 30’s at best, and dressed as they are in their ath-leisure wear they resemble the sandmen from the aforementioned movie.

Bit dramatic I know, but the new city does now look like a place made for a different world than the one were moving in to.

Ah yes, chrome and glass palaces of our future.
Come see our stunning development (built on the old gasworks site which we didn’t fully remediate), with panoramic views of adjoining high-rises; a *community* where your neighbours are ignorant, noisy, inconsiderate arseholes; open your windows and breathe in those fresh brewed diesel fumes; spacious – really?; zero sound insulation.
Denizens of these ‘luxury developments’ have run home to mummy and daddy in the suburbs or countryside to escape the shit existence which, until March, they could’t get enough of.

Shit becoming real
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-53015467
Hope donny remembers that as he claimed credit for Wall Street rising he also owns falls; what a dick.

A couple of good things might come out of this – I reckon Trump and Johnson are both toast. People change governments when their bank balances look worse, regardless of why.

I saw an ordinary family (parents and kids of about 4 8 and 12 respectively) going for a ride on their bikes up Deansgate yesterday. As they bumped up and down the kerbs pooling around like they were in a country park it reminded me of those images of a deer living in the shadow of Chernobyl.

It wasn’t just the emptiness and lack of traffic that stuck me, it was more just seeing a normal family, visiting this alien, domed city that existed on their doorstep.

Looking out of the windows of my flat on the edge of the city centre I can see 20 residential tower blocks going up. Back in 2008 worked was stopped on a few that were under construction then and they stayed as half built relics for a few years before eventually being demolished but they haven’t stopped working on them this time.

I wonder who will end up living in them? The Hulme I moved into years ago hadn’t ended up being populated by the people they were intended for. Why would it be different this time?

inkster – good analogy with Chernobyl.
I think high rise resi developers are well and truly stuffed.
In addition, estate developers are also facing significant problems; short term blip in interest/demand but harsh economic reality will kick in – redunders, short time working – then prices will fall.
Unemployment rising; no new markets/technology to take up the slack.
Lots of talk about green technology but, that’s it – just talk.
Furlough, in too many cases, is nothing more than deferred redundancy.
Talking with colleagues in my nationwide construction network confirms that.
A common observation is that sites cannot operate safely even if social distancing was reduced to 1 metre.
Increased prelims to cover costs of enhanced PPE or changed working arrangements are generally being rejected by clients.
Clients are forcing essential safety costs and consequent reduced margins onto their contractors as they won’t accept cost increases.
Contractor margins have been too skinny for too long even before this.
Clearly, this is not viable.
My previous glass half empty attitude has changed; I’m now 3/4 empty.

From someone who’s seen market turmoil and made money from it.
http://investorfieldguide.com/jeremy-grantham-an-uncertain-crisis-invest-like-the-best-ep-177/
His view is the market is (massively) over-priced.
Twist or stick?

Economy shrinks by I’ve 20% in April. We all knew it was coming but written down…

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-53019360

Predictions for how this will affect the lay person in the October and April budgets?

Surely tax increases, fuel duty will go on I reckon as it comes back in use but the prices are low, Beer and Spirits a little bit not too much to revive things and produce some kind of feel good factor, but what’s the betting of a opposing comparison with a C19 Chart, a massive decline followed by a long slow haul back to economic normality paving the way for high taxation and cuts during the conservative reign…

I think the only response is to take an approach similar to post war. Basically huge direct investment by Government in infrastructure and industry to keep the economy going and improve productivity – tax increases will be necessary but mainly massive borrowing. Need to grow ourselves out of this crisis, even the most ideologically hidebound Tories must see this…

Every thread like this also seems to result in several forum members (you know who you are)

And you’re always around to do some dissing without any kind of informed comment. How are you doing, JP? Business OK? Did you see this coming years ago and make sure you had the financial resources to ride the storm? Did you live modestly is the boom to prepare for the inevitable bust? Did you go cash rich when it was clear the virus was out of China?

If you can answer all that positively then congratulations and keep gloating. I can but I’m not going to gloat because I’ve survived being poor, finishing school before the Winter of discontent, graduating in 82 with 3 million unemployed and being dealt a poor economic hand. All those economic lessons have paid dividends, because I was lucky enough to have ten years of being in the right place at the right time in a period of relative prosperity – the 90s.

Junior and his contemporaries are right in the thick of the economic fall out, what they are living now will change the world down the line and I reckon ultimately for the better.

The New Austerity, pay cuts, evictions, bashed heads will all be done in the name of ‘saving the economy’ with the tentative (but polite) support of Sir Steir Karmer*. Robert Adam Crescent 1980 exemplified how if you treat people like dirt they are more then likely to become it, if they weren’t already. It was such a desperate dystopia they put students (!) in to civilise it. Awful circumstances polarise, witness all that and you’re either a serious socialist or a fascist. Or today, you’d want to pull down reactionary icons or tug your forelock and venerate imperious statues of your social superiors.
Already on the news we’re getting claims of conspirators exploiting the innocent demonstrators, it’s all about wrecking shops, Floyd was a bum who didn’t deserve a dignified funeral, police being trained in the latest wack’em techniques in the occupied territories. ‘Saving the economy’ actually means saving people who own businesses (not you, muppet). Forget about CV numbers, get back to work and ‘stay alert’ meaning ‘take your own risks’. I know a lot of self-employed who play the tax system, they won’t have had a good time. Despite wanting a bit of work doing, I’m not stirring it all up with employing anyone for quite a while yet. At least Blair’s taken one sheet from the Corbyn hymnbook on providing the outrageous, commie pipe-dream, ridiculous, free internet (that the French did through the Metro tunnels years ago). The saddest thing is, I think many people will take it on the chin if they’re not already flat on their back.
*shamelessly nicked from an interview with Tariq Ali on FB Counterfire.

We really have to invest and grow out if this – austerity has slowed recovery and increased wealth inequality since the financial crash + and that was nothing compared to this.

Austerity measures taking the money out of the pockets of normal people through pressure on public sector pay, in and out of work benefits is massively short sighted.

The only period of sustained growth in modern UK history is the post WW2 period and that was linked to massive Govt investment in infrastructure, introduction of universal benefits NHS etc. Policies that persisted after the 45 Labour Govt went out of power.

The bullshit about balancing the books and reducing debt will hopefully be exposed as the nonsense they are. No credible economist has thought this for 20 years.

National debt is not to be feared, interest rates are historically low, its time ( or will be when lockdown eases a bit more) to invest and grow our way out of this hole

it’s their big chance to do some left wing proselytising, which is very tiring.

So discussing anything that doesn’t fit within the extremely narrow constraints of neo-liberal economics is left wing? That’s just plainly ridiculous. Put it this way, if the existing economic and financial system was capable of dealing with the pandemic, would the US and UK governments be rushing to abandon efforts to contain the virus resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths?

capitalist conspiracy to enslave the poor

There’s no conspiracy, just the plain reality that those at the top will do anything to protect their wealth and power, irregardless of the impact on everyone else. Do you deny this is the case?

I wonder who will end up living in them? The Hulme I moved into years ago hadn’t ended up being populated by the people they were intended for.

You’re familiar with the term Hulmeosexuals? Hulme is now host to Manchesters gay population.

I’m old enough to remember the urban hell that was the crescents. We used to score weed in the Spinners in Mossiside. I remember James Anderton (Gods Cop) coming on telly to state that there were no ‘no-go’ areas for the police in Manchester. As someone living next to Ordsall at the time, my, how we laughed.

In answer to your question about who will live in the new city centre apartments, they fall into two categories

1. Students. A lot of those developments are being fuelled by the relentless expansion of the Universities. How that will work in a world of online learning and Brexit, who knows?

2. Nobody. Last year 85% of the non-student residential apartments were bought ‘off-plan by foreign investors who have moved on from London as it was overpriced. Again… what happens to them in a post-Brexit country in the midst of economic collapse?

I doubt either is going to go well. I suspect a lot of those gleaming glass and chrome palaces are going to sit empty

A question of interest rates.
We’re currently historically low.
The ’80s saw some high rates, I remember my parents battling a mortgage cost increase.

Back to the start of the thread.

As well as unemployment and stagnant economy, will we see interest rates rise?

As someone due a mortgage renewal next year, I’m borderline cost wise remortgaging early and tying in for 5 years at a lower rate than I’ve currently got…

I was astonished that all those blocks got planning permission. Some are in each others’ shadow and there’s little infrastructure in the area to support the occupants. I’ve read that most of the occupants of 1 Deansgate have had mental health issues arising from their ‘life changing’ increased debt arising from them having to pay for removing the combustible cladding.
The people who bought the flats off-plan must have assumed there would be sufficient numbers of wealthy people to occupy them. The average income in Manchester is £26k. There’s plenty of homeless and people unsuitably accommodated in Manchester and there’s new blocks going up. Nah, no chance. They will be derelict before they ever meet people’s needs.

2. Nobody. 85% of the non-student residential apartments were bought ‘off-plan by foreign investors who have moved on from London as it was overpriced.

This. After the last recession an acquaintance who was a manc city centre estate agent told me one of his jobs was to go into places like Beetham tower every evening and turn on the lights in empty apartments so potential tenants and buyers wouldn’t be put off at the prospect of living in an empty tower block.

Manc city centre is f**** quite frankly. As inkster says it’s devoted entirely to consumerism and has precious little function in a world of social distancing and economic deflation. The restaurants, bars and coffee shops will soon be boarded up, the offices will be empty and those who live there will either be trapped by collapsing property prices, or will flee to the suburbs if they have the means. What’s left behind won’t look like anything that exists now.

Binners in the Spinners eh.

That used to be my local when I first moved to Manchester. I think our paths may have crossed many times sir. (Didn’t you say you used to work at the hacienda? I did too though quit in 89 when the ‘Hit Man and Her’ came to the gaff so we may have missed each other on that occasion.)

The initial, Urban Splash led redevelopment of the city was exciting and innovative. Post millennium the council rolled over and allowed developers to do whatever they wanted. They sell the city as an oasis of urbanity when in truth they’ve created a monocultural, cultural desert.

Ordinarily, when faced with an economic downturn developments like these would remain unoccupied. However, I think things will be different this time. The homeless problem was more or less solved instantly when empty hotels were temporarily used to house street sleepers. We could see a rise in squatting as well. Whilst these developments arent as easy to squat as an old Victorian house, It wouldn’t surprise me if you see a ‘squat the block’ campaign start up.

One thing about the old Hulme Crescents and similar properties around Manchester was that although the properties were sub standard, they provided plenty of surplus capacity for housing the homeless. You either popped down the Moss Side housing office and they would give you a key on the spot or you just squatted the first empty property that took your fancy.

To have thousands of empty city centre flats alongside a housing crisis will be intolerable under the new normal.

Faisal Islam on Five Live now has just given an overview of what he thinks, as an economist, needs to happen as a reaction to a fall in the economy of 20% and what he thinks will actually happen:

What needs to happen:

Brexit needs to be immediately put on hold and the government should immediately apply for an extension on the withdrawal agreement. The government should then take advantage of record low-interest rates to borrow for a Keynesian response of investment to boost the economy.

What will actually happen:

The Brexiteers running the show have become even more entrenched in their refusal to extend the withdrawal period so we’re full steam ahead for a no deal crash out in December and the huge detremental impact that will have on an eceonomy already on its knees. They will not borrow or invest but will instead go for an even more severe version of George Osbournes austerity programme

In short, we have the very worst people we could possibly have in charge at the moment. They are idelogical zealots who will pursue their agenda no matter the untold misery it will inflict on millions and millions of people

The next few years in this country are going to be grim! And this lot couldn’t give a shit

Inkster – I did work in the Hac in the early 90’s. Our paths must surely have crossed on plenty of occasions by the sound of it. Did you used to go to One Tree Island and the parties in the Crescents that the Hulme Hippies used to put on?

One thing about the Crescents and the general grimness around Manchester at the time was the reaction it provoked in creativity. A lot of which have massively contributed to making Manchester the City it is now, culturally.

I wonder if the same will happen this time around. Because we’re in for a carbon copy repeat of the 80’s, where the economies of Northern towns and cities will be devastated once again, and a Tory government in power who genuinely couldn’t give a toss about us and will simply leave us to our fate. Again