It is a game of poker and chicken mixed together. Lots of excitement. We draw the line with policitians who have the backbone to refuse to help these lazy socialist Europeans. They have to learn what happens if you don't take the medicine and we have to stand by and watch them throw up all over the carpet.If our banks are overexposed then they will go belly up and be nationalised.Ten years ago I put a "no euro" sticker on the front of the office and people laughed....
I think it is a case of "pigs will fly"
The only reason to lend a serial defaulter is because it gets him off your back . As they say - when you owe the bank 310k you have a problem , when you owe th ebank £10m , the bank has a problem.
Out of interest when was the last time a developed country went truly bankrupt and failed to pay it's civil servants and its pensioners ?
People talk about it but does anybody really believe it could happen?
Not sure how you define 'developed'; but Argentina and a lot of South/Central America went bankrupt in the 80's. Brazil? Not sure.
I don;t see the elections as a big problem. France will be told to just forget it if they want to revise the financial stability pact in a big way and the probable conclusion will be a cosmetic re-write so Hollande appears to have gained something. We get to watch them try the tax-the-rich approach and see if it works. I hope it does - the usual squeals from fat chats have started and to be fair the line is set at E1M income in order to hit 75%.
Sadly for Greece I'm afraid they've blown it. The time to go bankrupt and cause trouble to the rest of us was 2 years ago. All the institutions who have lent Greece money have written it down with the benefit of QE money and now a default is more a case of recognising reality rather than blowing a hole in anyone's balance sheet. It's like the end of Speed when all the hostages have left the bus and Dennis Hopper has no-one left to blow up.
Internal political turmoil? Sure. Riots in the streets? Probably. Leaving the Euro in a chaotic way? Certainly. Contagion to Portugal and Spain? Less likely by the day.
Not sure that increasing top rate helps anything . It is a disincentive to work . The self employed will ensure that they don't pay it and it prevents talent from coming in. Nobody disputes that but it is populist with the proletariat.
I have a supplier in Turkey , which I always thought would want paid in Euros as they are "trying" to get into the club , but he only takes US dollars. For now I am smiling............
Not exactly as you put it. The avergae punter has motivation to pay the rent and feed the kids but it is not motivation in the sense that the harder you work the more you earn as opposed to paying a higher rate of tax becasue you have worked more. Mr Average usually has no opportunity to earn more but the talented ones do and they are wealth creators and employers themselves.
I suspect that in Syria the tax take reduces for the top earners in inverse proportion ot the thickness of the brown envelope proferred
Of course a civilised socity has to cater for the less fortunate but it does not mean that a big earner should pay a higher rate - they are anyway pouring in money by virtue of earning more
Mea culpa ! It was I who used the term "proletariat" and the reason I did so was to air my opinion that too many decisions are taken or not taken with a political agenda although the decision - makers would never admit it in a month of Sundays.
The 5% per se doesn't make or break an entreprenuer's decision but it is a pivotal point in the direction of where the tax rate is heading. If it goes up from 40% to 50% the next step could well be 55% or even 60% at which levels decisions of whether or not to create wealth are affected. Bit like watching a share price.
Who is going to turn down £100,000 because they will only get an extra £50,000 (instead of £55,000 with 45% rate). Anyone other than an employee can usually avoid the 50% anyway! Logic has nothing to do with government decision anyway. It's more a case of which voters to court and nourish, and which voters they aren't bothered about (until they overdo their hand and get bitten).
EDIT: the 40/45/50% rate comes along with an 10% reduction in NI anyway, which everyone on higher rate conveniently forgets about when it suits them.
Perhaps sharing 50 percent of your income with the state won't put people off but when it creeps up to 60 or 70 percent I suspect people will think twice. Remember , many of these earners are highly mobile and work for large firms so will up sticks and take their talent elsewhere
Paranoid ? Me ? Not at all . But the directional movement of a tax rate or a price is an accepted indicator of what could come. Movements send messages to markets.The better-off are still participating in the economic pain but in a different way to Mr and Mrs Average. If you were earning a £2m a year and had set up your lifestyle to live in such a fashion and now you have dropped to £1m per annum , you're bust - that means potentially losing your house , your luxury car , your holiday home . They had a lifestyle that many can only dream of but comaprewith the £50k a year man who bought a 2nd car or went on 2 foreign holidays a year and now has to cut back to 1 car and 1 holiday. The latter is not bust - so who has has the most pain ?
I do indeed advocate such a lifestyle. The income drop example was to show that the "rich" are sharing in the pain and perhaps sometimes in a greater proportion.
There is probably more chance of a £2m earner losing half , than a £50k earner dropping to £25k.
But these "numpties" get it - do they even realise that a message has been sent ?
They need to understand that their pensions are still generous - that's the deal. Lower pay but better pension, which they will still enjoy. Not forgetting that at 55 they go on to work part time or start a consultancy on TOP of their generous pension.
Yes, I agree about the redundancy . they either lose it all or face a cut in living standards due to rising costs. The clever ones will be insured against losing their jobs and the self employed will duck and dive a bit more.
Perhaps we need compulsory financial education instead of sex education....but then again if you don't understand figures you'll never get it
Harsh but true . Nowadays it is "illegal" to say or do things that may possibly offend somebody , not because it is nasty or racist , but because it doesn't allow them to hide from the fact that they may be impaired in some way and does not allow them false equality. All this does is bring down the whole system for all.
Take A level results and university access for all....
Problem is that once the genie is out of the bottle it is difficult to put back inside - that's where we have been for a long time with pensions. Wehn I was a wee boy a man of 70 was going well to get there and the pension age was as it is now. Man of 70 ? Commonplace and no feat , even man of 80 perhaps. Retiring age ...still at 65.
And why if we have sex equality enshrined in law should women be able to retire earlier than men ? Am I missing something here ?
I have undoubtedly built my business on the back of the booming economy in the early
"noughties" but I don't think the £50 or so they paid for a company formation was on borrowed money and in any event a large percentage were contractors who didn't really have a business anyway.
I agree wholeheartedly that the less fortunate have to be helped , indeed I spend a lot of my working week and evenings doing just that , but one has to know where to draw boundaries and let people stand on their own two feet and the only way to do that is tough love.
In the current economic turmoil continuing to dole out benefits to people who are
playing the system is not the answer
I don't disagree with you but when you have families where 3 generations live off benefits and are proud of it it makes you wonder.
My wife was recently in a house on a local "estate" , in a professional capacity .
One of the team commented on how nice the garden was and received the reply from the householder that they were the only house on the street of 20 or so , that was working and not living off benefits.
The authorities let it happen becuase it is the price of "buying off" rioting . These people have no apsirations because they are mired in a system that is broken and discourages enterprise. The trouble is that we have to work to pay for it - that is why the welfare reforms have broad support in the country. People are waking up
I also know of families taking the mick and of working people who are genuinely sick but driving smart motors with their mobility allowance when they anyway would have had a car just like everybody else. The raneg of cars on offer is mind boggling and I suppose the argument goes that Mobility is a commercial venture etc etc , but somethign just seems wrong. Remember the old blue invalid tricycles - I doubt that the suspect claimants would be queuing up for them nowadays if it was the only thing on offer.
It is a veritable gravy train , just like everything else linked to spending other people's money. Since joining the "not for profit" sector as part of my community work I have had my eyes opened to money that is dished out like sweeties and the commissions that are creamed off by consultants. If you want to set up a charity and pay yourself £75k a year what are you waiting for ? It's jobs for the boys.....
Depressing ? :-(
Only because you're not on board ! :-)
The CC is a paper tiger. The joke is that in their newsletters the trumpet their successes in enforcement but they don't really have any substantial successes. I reckon they are happy to sit around shuffling papers and making it difficult for genuine applicants to complete the registration process by asking stupid questions and nitpicking. If they opened their eyes they would most likely find widespread abuse and playing of the system , never mind the money flowing to terror groups under the guise of "relief" . I bet the penpushers don't know the meanign fo the word "audit trail" and never stepped out of their cosy offices to visit non-existent schemes abroad. On the subject of foreign schemes are charities exempt from the new bribery rules or do the relief workers still buy their brown envelopes wholesale and dish them out with impunity ?
Looks liek we are singing from the same hymn sheet. I sense a general mood that people are fed up of those milking the system and the benefits cap is long overdue. When we all prospered we turned a blind eye to it and now it is "game over" for shirkers, but we'll see how it plays out in practice.
It's like anything - push your luck too far and eventually something gives. I just watched the history of the 1970s on BBC iPlayer with Dominic Sandbrook , very well presented and nostalgic (especially the 1978 Scottish World Cup fiasco) . He aired Maggie's political party broadcast of winter 1979 and narrated how she was spot-on for the mood of the country against unions who had played the system and pushed their luck.
The cycle goes on and on and on. Now it Germany versus the Greeks
Instead of the unions holding us to ransom we now have big corporations and banks holding us to ransom! Things never change with government policy ... they just get rid of one problem by causing another!
Just been chatting with a colleague and he reckons Greece will be bailed out by Germany and I reckon they are leaving the Euro. If Germany foots the bill how will they stop the Greeks doing it again. It's like a bad apple on the staff - if they cannot be trusted , sack them. They cooked the books to join the Euro and that is like a fake CV . It's dishonest so out they go....
You don't want to be caught holding any olive oil at the moment - price is bound to plummet in desperate attempts to kick start their economy
Perhaps Stelios could help them and rename the country easyGreece - after all they've spent the last decade doing nothing and milking the Krauts. They change their flag to orange and people can be charged for carrying bags to the shops to get their groceries
I've been blogging on my website www.formationsdirect.com for some time with my non-PC view of the world of economics,business and other stuff. If you like to read the views of somebody who doesn't "toe the party line" you've come to the right place. Government cock-ups, financial turmoil , business scandals and people's behaviour - I've got something to say about it , whether you like it or not.
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Will the threats happen?
We have just thrown more money their way as apparently, it is cheaper to throw more money at them than let them go bust. Something there reminds me of the banking crisis!!!
Where do we draw the line? It's time the banks, and everyone else, are told to be responsible for their own actions. We paid for the banks twice, once to bail them out, then again (in higher interest rates) to make them the profits they needed to pay off their debt to us. It will be a bottomless pit with Greece.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2104059/Greece-bailout-UK-faces-added-1bn-save-crisis-hit-euro.html