You are 100% correct. I spoke with a guy from Cavan a few weeks back, he owns Hotels and Bars around the country, he is in his 80's, and didn't over borrow during the last ten years. When asked about the recession he answered fondly with a smile "It was recessions that made me a millionaire". One Bar he bought for as little at 1500 punts, during a recession.Originally Posted by HanleyS
God, I hope you are right. My own view on the cost of everything in this country is that people were foollish enough to accept such high prices. I think they accepted them on the basis that the money sloshing around the country was actually owned by the people who had it and not the borrowed money we all now know it was and some of us knew it was all along. This attitude fed into everyting and ultimately the price of houses which everyone used as a baramoter of success and pay levels. All that is now gone and people are starting to realise the value of a euro now instead of treating it like toilet paper.
Hopefully prices will come back to a reasonable level and people wont feel as hard pressed as they do now. Things might get back to normal but it will be a long time coming I fear.
Are his prices lower than the others? I will doff my cap to the man if they are but my suspiscion is that they are not. What we need are for guys like him to pass on the savings he makes in his initial investments otherwise the rot will cycle on. On the otherhand, if this recession continues for as long as I think it will, he will be forced to bring down his prices.
me thinks your exagerating just a tad there, the mortgage on one million over 30 years would have a repayment a month of approx 5K, now a 40,000 per annum salary after tax would net about 2.8K, which leaves a delta of about 2.2K before the bmw, holidays, etc there is no way one could obtain or sustain such a lifestyle regardless of how silly the banks were being with credit
I'm not exagerating, people were blowing vast sums of money on things their salary couldn't support! There were people whom acted like that
A cousin of mine bought a house in dublin that used to belong to someone famous and it was way overpriced , he had it knocked down and rebuilt again from scratch on the same site.
Why did they buy it in the first place, just to knock it down?
They could have built their own home for significantly less, why create such expense?
There wasn't a mortgage when the got the property, but now I think the payments are much more than they can afford.
More of thiswould help, for starters!
Yep.Nobody forced people to buy a new car every year. Nobody made anyone else remortgage his property in order to buy a second home in Spain. First time buyers who were forced to take out crazy mortgages for over-priced dumps in the commuter belt I feel sorry for. Brainless keeping-up-with-the-Jonese show ponies who repeatedly splurged in fin de siecle madness (except it was le debut) can go to hell for all I care. They pushed up prices for those who were responsible and lived within their means, and it is the responsible ones who will unfairly suffer now
Unfortunately that saving grace doesn't leave us any better off, in fact it leaves us slightly worse off, in many respects similar to the broken window fallacy.
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It allows for deflation, which I see as inevitable. Huge deflation.
1 trillion in debt -collectively - you would think that would have been the lead item on the News today - what will take to get folks to sit up and take this in?
Well typing away as I am from a snowbound(until 1 hour ago) hideway up the side of Mount Leinster - the whole conversation here and over at other places has an air of total unreality about it - Do people actually realise the seriousness of the situation the whole country is in?
Both my folks are retired public servants - My Dad woke up this morning fully prepared to have his pension reduced by about 10-15% - he is totally non-political and politicians in general do his head in so he doesn't get involved - but he was an honours maths and physics teacher and union rep and he has an unerring capacity to spot a spoofer a mile off and he can do his sums - he is stunned that he wont be effected his time around and he thinks the whole political and union cabal are completely away with the fairies in they think this tinkering around the edges is going to do anything - this is like taking an aspirin to treat gangrene - It is time that the brutal facts of the dire situation we are in were put central stage in simple black and white primary school mathematics.
And I agree with him - we are rapidly becoming the financial laughing stock of Europe - if not the world - our bonds are the most expensive in Europe - we're even worse than the f$%^g Greeks - the shame of it.
forget all the budget projections and look at the realities - the tax take for January was nearly a billion down on forecast - its going to be even worse this month as companies are closing up shop,letting off all unessential staff and cutting back massively in spending - its a vicious circle thats going to spiral and spiral - the projection of 40 billion income is going to be so far off its a joke - unless there is another budget next month and tax is increased across the board by about 20% -and the Gov are trying to save 2 billion? -and the unions are up in arms - FFS- the tax take is diminishing and diminishing - the real truth of the Celtic tiger post 1999 is that all the additional resources, wage increases and manpower put into the Public Service was financed by the Property Boom and now that is history - Throw in the fact that incomes taxes and any burdens directly on the public were considerably reduced during that time aswell and now you have the receipe for the truly horrendous car crash we are experiencing right now - We lived for today and didn't think about tomorrow - every single one of us - and we would shun any politician who would have tried to tell us any different - in fact we believed that there was even more in the pot that was our due - So I cant blame any political party for the election manifestos that they produced in 2007 - it was what we all wanted to hear - so the general cribbing I hear now about the oppositions manifestos is a bit rich - everybody's a flippin genius with 20/20 hindsight - the manifestos were produced for that moment in time - and that is what we wanted to hear loud and clear.
So where do we go from here - not very far going on most responses on the web - everybody is too busy defending their entitlement to the pie and tearing strips off everybody else. - but I would like to hear our socialists/marxists friends ideas about what we should do hear from a real left point of view - all we've had so far is the usual demonization of the perceived rich and lots of shots at the admittedly target rich environment of the Banking sector , nit-picking at anything that FF are doing and anything that the party of the Great Satan (FG) proposes to do - Apart from Eamon (Bob the Builder) Gilmore's only positive contribution to the debate (We'll set up a progamme to wrap every house in the country up in two coats of insulation and hey presto all our unemployment problems solved overnight - "get the country moving, get the economy moving,movin,movin,movin- Vote Eamo") - there has been precious little from both the mainstream and fringe left about where the country is going, where they would like to see the country going and where they see the country in 10-15-20 years time - apart from the lots of mass burial sites containing bankers,developers,Yankee Imperialists,Fine Gaelers and Israelis - so I challenge them - come on here and give a coherent,thoughtful response - I am familiar with Marx,Engels and the left (I used to be a serious leftie after all- treasurer of the UCD communist party back in the day-no less!) - you can think outside the box as much as you like (which I thought was the whole raison d'etre of Communism) - you might surprise yourselves and come up with something good that might actually sell on the doorstep- but spare us more than the usual OTT denunciations of the "elites"and cheap negative shots at Fine Gael - which for a party that has only been in power for 11 years out of the last 50, normally dealing with the usual shipload of crap left behind by Fianna Fail and in 1994-1997 was part of ,IMO, the most egalitarian,Financially responsible,socially liberal, Forward looking administration in the country's history - I really wonder what we do to deserve such unmitigated abuse from the Leftist elite and their fellow travellers in this country - probably something do with the fact that we just wont go away and leave the field open for the arrival of the much anticipated "left wing" arrival, which in true Beckett Fashion , will arrive anyday now - might be more to the point and more profitable to look at the fact that the majority of people in this country who would describe themselves as left of centre voted and have voted for the last 70 years for Fianna Fail and try work out how to untie that particular granny knot.
Anyway back to reality
Well from a personal point of view - I got word from the receiver of my company today that on the completion of his duties in the near future I will get the princely sum of 0 euros from the demise of the company of what Im owed (3 months salary and the rest) - there is virtually no money in the companies accounts and what there is ,goes to the government -its a limited company so we can't chase the shareholders and anyway they've already lost their entire investment in the company which was not inconsiderable - Yippee -so all I can get is my statutory redundancy, which I have paid for thru my social insurance for such an adventuality - direct from the Government for which I will have to jump through a good few hoops to get - so next stop the Employees tribunal - next available date is August - after that all going well - 12 weeks until the Department pay out - and sods law the next budget will probably cut the amount I can claim , to save money - to pay for the Public services , to pay for my dole probably - which will probably be cut again to pay for the Public services -I have been looking around for alternative employment and reviewing whats available in my line of work - salary offers are coming in at around 25-30% less than I would have expected 2-3 years ago - nearly all perks cut to the bare minimum [- I have been called to 3 interviews so far - no success yet - first one - I turn up at the company to find them all walking out the door with the pink slips as the company went into liquidation on the day of my interview - second one - I was called the evening before I was due to attend to say that the company was rationalising and that the department I was interviewing for was being transferred back to Germany for the forseeable future - 3rd one - Well I actually got to the interview at least! -3/4 way thru it - the interviewer was polite enough and honest enough to tell me that because of cutbacks the position would be filled internally and they were just going thru the legal motions and he said I was doing a great interview and was the best candidate he'd seen, but the decision was out of his hands - I said Fair play to ya, I needed the practice and day out anyway. As you can see its a barrel of laughs in the private sector -at the rate things are going -the Social Welfare office on signing on day will be the social event of the month - you are starting to meet all types there, engineers, architects,estate agents,journalists,sales people - what do they all have in common - their employers are going to the wall - everybody had taken pay cuts - but even this wasnt enough -the country finances and economic activity are drying up at a rate of knots so you can probablyy understand why I look at todays events with a certain degree of disbelief.
What we really need is a politician who is brave enough to stand up and show vision - tell us straight in the eye where just how totally in the crapper we are - tell us where he wants to bring us - where he wants the country and me to be in 10-20 years time,in detail( smaller time spans are utterly pointless and they smack of indecision and fear - we will be crucified for that - if we havent already self-inflicted the mortal wound already) and what we need to do to get there - no matter how tough it might be - if it sounds anyway sane - spreads the pain as much as is possible among all - I'll go along with it - just shut the kcuf up about the past - whats done is done - we suck it up, learn our lessons and try and make the future better than today.
Last edited by Edo; 4th February 2009 at 01:22 AM. Reason: the PC regarding Vocab around here is nuts!!
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