U.K. November Housing Sales Decline to 30-Year Low

Discussion in 'Economics' started by ASusilovic, Dec 9, 2008.

  1. Dec. 9 (Bloomberg) -- U.K. home sales declined to the lowest level since at least 1978 as Britain plunged deeper into a recession, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors said.

    Real-estate agents and surveyors sold an average of 10.6 homes in the quarter through November, the least since the series began three decades ago, RICS said today. A separate report showed retail sales fell in two consecutive months for the first time since at least 1995.

    The Bank of England last week reduced the benchmark interest rate to 2 percent, the lowest in a half-century, as policy makers sought to prevent deflation from taking hold in the economy. With homebuyers shunning the housing market and a squeeze on bank lending, central bank Governor Mervyn King has refused to rule out cutting the rate to zero.

    “The problem is partly mortgage finance, but the other thing is the state of the economy,” Simon Rubinsohn, chief economist at RICS, said in an interview on Bloomberg Television. “Prices are continuing to fall fairly sharply.”

    The percentage of real-estate agents saying prices dropped exceeded those reporting gains by 76 percentage points, an indicator that has been negative since August 2007, RICS said. The index still rose for a third month to the highest level since February.

    http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aWOd4MeQVgHc&refer=home

    To say it in Churchil´s words : "We shall never surrender." :)
     
  2. "No Rates Cuts Before 2010"
    -- Mervyn King

    :cool:
     
  3. BIS warns of collapse in global lending

    Global lending has fallen at the steepest rate since records began this year, with cross-border loans worldwide plunging by $1.1 trillion in the first half, reflecting the scramble by the financial industry to cut leverage by pulling credit lines and slashing risky exposure, according to the Bank for International Settlements, reports the Daily Telegraph. Foreign lending by UK banks fell by a staggering $884bn, equal to 81% of the entire contraction in international lending, according to BIS data. The City of London - the epicentre of Europe’s structured credit industry - is facing a double blow since worldwide issuance of bonds and securities has also gone into freefall, plummeting 77% from over a trillion dollars to $247bn in the third quarter The collapse in bond issuance reflects the near-total closure of the capital markets in the late summer as credit spreads surged. Bonds issued in euros dropped by 94% from $466bn to $28bn over the quarter. In its quarterly report, the BIS warned the US Fed, the Bank of England and other central banks that near-zero interest rates and emergency monetary stimulus may come at a cost.
     
  4. U.K. factory production dropped almost three times as much as economists forecast in October, extending its worst contraction since 1980 as recessions in Britain and overseas sapped demand for goods.

    Manufacturing output fell 1.4 percent from September, the Office for National Statistics said today in London. Economists predicted a 0.5 percent decline, according to the median of 22 forecasts in a Bloomberg News survey. Factory production fell for an eighth month, the longest streak since the 1980 recession, when Margaret Thatcher was prime minister.
     
  5. There are people that framed it and hung it on the wall:

    [​IMG]
     
  6. Depression.

    I wonder where all the fancy football stars are going to go to when the public invades the pitch to eat the grass.