blonde poker forum

Watching panorama now.

Its promoting the credit crunch by showing things that are completely unrelated.

A terrible pub, that struggles for customers. There struggling.

[ ] This is caused by the credit crunch

[ x ] This pub is shit

A family has no money so they rent rooms their childrens bedrooms to foriegn student students

[ ] This is caused by the credit crunch

[ x ] This is a stupid person who could never afford her own bills.

Discuss

[ ] The credit crunch is real

[ x ] The credit crunch is created by the media on behalf of the government.

Yeah, I saw this and wasn't very impressed. Most of the time Panorama is really good though. I think they're allowed the occasional naff episode.

They explained that their research was non-scientific. Fair enough but it was completely misleading. Folk went onto their web site and filled in a survey. Problem is....only people affected by the credit crunch would be likely to fill out their survey because it wouldn't matter much to people who weren't.

Why would the government want the media to create the credit crunch when it's sent their popularity through the floor?

Panorama has been shit for years now. It has dropped it's standards to tabloid journalism. Very rarely is it well researched, well presented and not scaremongering.

Dispatch on CH4 pwns Panorama.

Yes you're right the credit crunch is a figment of the medias imagination.  Northern Rock would have run out of money anyway and all the big banks are using the opportunity to slash their profits and share prices and are drastically reducing the amount they lend because at heart they are b4astards.

ps agree that the panorama prog was shit

I assume you mean the American one where is started? before the effects moved over to the Uk.

Personally I blame the government for my tap leaking too.

i honestly dont know what to make of this whole credit crunch business. Everytime I watch the news and hear of people who are "victims" of it I find it hard to have any sympathy because inevitably there is a good reason for not lending them ridiculous amounts of money.

on the news a couple of weeks ago they showed the story of a single woman who was moaning that she couldnt get a 100% mortgage anymore. She then explained that because of having to pay £1500 in stamp duty and other bills she could not afford a deposit. A quick calc tells you she was therefore looking to borrow 150 grand, on a single wage, which was said to be about 25 grand a year. If this is the credit crunch, ie the banks starting to be more responsible lenders then is it a bad thing ?

But I do believe that the media are trying to talk the country into recession. Everyday we here innaccurate and poorly researched stories just for the puposes of telling us how much crap the economy is in.

+1

Heard someone on the radio the other day from an estate agents, and they were saying that the credit crunch and the government's actions (or lack of) on the stamp duty issue and at a wider level had caused many businesses like theirs to have to close branches.

Eh?  They'd obviously expanded too much when the times were good and hadn't considered what would happen when the climate wasn't so rosy. 

They're happy to reap in the profit when the going's good, but when it gets a bit sticky they want to blame someone else...

I proper lol'd at this.

The credit crunch is real, although talk of a recession is currently very overexaggerated. I do agree completely and will now find great humour in the idea of useless people blaming the credit crunch on the fact that they are in a hole that they would have been in anyway.

From this day on, every mistake I make, regardless of what type of mistake, is because of the credit crunch.

I made a bad fold the other day - I'm sure that was due to the credit crunch.  Either that, or it was boldie's fault.

you mean you folded like you ussually do?

Yesss

I folded once. Someone said it was because I was fat and lazy as I couldn't be bothered to pick up the chips but I knew in my heart of hearts it was the credit crunch

I agree, especially with companies that do not look to the future and  see the bigger picture when trade will slow down for whatever reason. I know the owner of one of Leeds top estate agents and he told me the mortgages they arranged are down 80%, sales of houses down 70%, not only have they let go alot of staff but the knock on effect goes deep, tradesman are now willing to do small jobs! that last year wouldn't get out of bed for. People are waiting to get improvements done to their houses, until the tide turns.

I don't thinks it's necessarily a bad thing people cannot borrow money as easily now, our culture of spend now pay later couldn't last forever.

An ex girlfriend of mine dumped me because she said I was immature and not commitment material.

I was bitter at the time, but I know now it was really because of the credit crunch.

The problem with the credit crunch is that those people who were greedy and spent beyond their means now expect everyone to suffer to ease their pain.

'Ooooh, please prop up the housing market so I might be able to make a small profit on my 2-bedroom flat that I bought for £400,000'

No, sod off. You paid £400,000 for a poky little flat - did you ever stop to think what you were doing?

The little row of 'shops' at the road junction by Putney rail station has fourteen estate agents. Fourteen, all together. If that isn't a massive indicator of what went wrong then I don't know what is.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7599711.stm

They are blaming the credit crunch AND the smoking ban.  But not boldie.

Strange cus this is actually my fault. Never go into a wetherspoons..they are evil..I hate those impersonal shitty chain "pubs".

though a burger and a pint for 3.50 is cheap.

They only made £55 million, next thing Wetherspoons will anounce its in trouble due to its lack of profit. Then the government will buy it and we will have our first public sector pubs.

The best one i saw was in the Sun a couple of months back. The headline was house repossessed/credit crunch. The story then went on about a couple who had now moved into a friends pigeon shed, there children were living with relatives. They had lost their house due to the credit crunch. Interesting points in the story were, that the husband was on disablity for some breathing disorder from his unhealthy obssession with pigeons, he received £400 a month. The wife had just had her hours cut so she could work closer to home, this sent her income from £200 a week to £400 a month. They bought there house for £27,000. They decided to have 6 children. They took out a loan to pay the mortgage, it was £5,000 but due to missed payments they now owed £25,000.

Why would the Sun use the word credit crunch in these story. Surely a more appropriate headline would have been....

PIGEON F&*CKER AND LAZY COW POP OUT KIDS TILL THEY GO BROKE, THEN TAKE OUT LOANS TO COVER THERE £150 MONTHLY MORTGAGE PAYMENT

But oh no, they werent shown as stupid, they were just an example of what the credit crunch does to people like us.

Please dont get me started on the Stamp Duty holiday................................................

 rotflmfao

Thanks - reading this just made me splutter strawberry and banana smoothie all over my desk.

That wasnt my fault it was the ................

That was your problem, right there.

+1 :)

Very good point Dan, but you should see how angry I get when i read the more serious newspapers!  :pop:

Not half as angry as the s*n makes me.

I love this post............. ;applause;

Geo

Oh please !
The media clearly dont help in with things like this and yes Panorama is utter rubbish but the credit crunch is very real in terms of what that teram actually means.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2007/07/22/cccredit222.xml

This link provides a good explanation of what is actually meant by the credit crunch and it has f all to do with a bored editor creating a headline.

Felt a bit woozy this morning so I thought a bar of chocolate from the sandwich lady who goes around the offices might help settle my stomach. I didn't have enough money on me to pay for it, so she said I could give her the money on Monday instead.

Ate the chocolate, but now I feel even worse.

I blame the credit crunchie.

 ;yellowcard;

Just a warning this time.  But next time it'll be a ban.

A better link
http://www.moneyfacts.co.uk/Banking/guides/credit-crunch-explained.aspx

This isnt accurate either. Basically Northern Rock bought in their product for one price (in their case, borrowed from banks) and sold it on at another price (in their case fixed rate mortgages).

If they borrow at 5% and charge 7% (for example) to their mortgage holders then happy days they make 2% (very simplistic I know).
When the banks stopped lending so freely to each other and liquidity dried up, the interbank rates (Libor) increased sharply. This caused Northern rock to run out of money when they couldnt afford to borrow at the higher rates, or in some cases couldnt even get banks to lend to them. Hence the Bank of England emergency lending and the inevitable collapse.

They would not have run out of money had they been able to continue to borrow to fund their balance sheet as they always had

One interesting question with regard to the Banks, and in fact companies such as Tesco's, Sainsbury's etc is at what point do their profit levels have to get to before it just gets to the point where they are bleeding the british public dry?

In 2007 the UK main banks made around £50bn between them. That is a rediculous sum of money to be made from services that everyone has no choice but to use.

It is obviously impossible though for the government to tell the banks they cant make their profits as the banks answer to their shareholders.

Its the same for the huge supermarket chains who provide a service that everyone has to use but at what point to the profits simply become unethical?

(P.S. most of the banks will report hugely reduced profits in 2008 but not because the public isnt still paying the same for their servcies, but because they are having to right off billions in bad debt provisions)

They can make as much money as they want for me. Ive only dealt with HSBC but i find them amazingly helpful, and all charges and rates are very reasonable.

Its the same with supermarkets none of the food in a supermarket is unreasonably priced. I like tesco's myself, they have their fingers in so many pots, they are incredibly cheap on EVERYTHING they do from bread to car insurance. If they can make a mint doing it why shouldnt they?

Of course the banks are going to report reduced profits but there still going to be profits.

I agree with some of your other points, but I honestly think one of the main factors in Northern Rocks problems was the way it was portrayed in the media. Things were obviously bad, but the worst thing that could possibly happen was for someone to wind everyone up and blow it out of all proportion causing everyone to rush and withdraw every penny they have!

did you know that you can buy a new sarcasm meter with pokerstars fpps?

Most of that £50bn was not made from providing Personal Financial Services to everyday retail customers, the actual retail market in the UK is very competitive and banks struggle to make a decent return. Where the money is being made is in Private Equity Funds, Commercial Banking and Global Investments. Also one of those companies is HSBC which although based in the UK operates in 50+ countries and only makes about 5% of its profits from UK retial banking.