House prices increase by 273% in 50 years

According to a new study by Halifax, house prices in the UK have increased by 273% in real terms since 1959 .

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¿ Crecimiento parecido al que nos van a dar en España el mes que viene?

Reino Unido sale de la recesión y crece un 0,1%


Expansin.com. Diario Expansin. Lder en informacin de mercados, economica y poltica.

Down with the Pound | Kathy Lien


Ojito que esto puede ser el primer aviso antes de que S&P baje el AAA...

comentario hecho en este enlace me parece interesante:

Greece rattled by 'hidden debt' controversy - Telegraph

"unemployment in Spain just hit four million. That's a million and a half more than in the UK, which is a much larger economy and supposedly in terrible trouble."

According to the Office for National Statistics:
61 million = UK population
38 million = those of working age
2.46 million = unemployed
8.05 million = "economically inactive"
7.71 million = work part time
6.65 million = public sector workers (not on ONS - from other source)

National Statistics Online

Which means only 13.13 million people in the UK are in full-time private sector jobs - and their taxes are supporting the rest of the infrastructure: benefits, public sector services, MP's expenses, bankers bonuses, national debt repayment...

The current average income is £451 per week incl bonuses and before tax (presumably the average is lower if you exclude bankers pay) and by 2014 the each adult in the UK will owe £48k of the national debt - on top of their personal debt. Add to that fact that 1.27 million of the 2.24 million 'new jobs' created by labour are ALL public sector and it doesn't take too much imagination to see that the UK is going to have to make some fairly drastic cuts of its own in the not too distant future. As public sector jobs disappear, I expect the 'recession' to deepen.

La fuente no es que sea de lo mas fiable pero la informacion parece interesante.

210,000 builders are chasing just 300 jobs | The Sun |News|Sun Money

By GRAEME WILSON, Deputy Political Editor
Published: 03 Feb 2010

MORE than 200,000 out-of-work builders are chasing just 300 jobs, shock new figures reveal.
The desperate scramble for work exposes the scale of the crisis in Britain's battered construction industry.

Official figures show there are currently 210,260 people on the dole and looking for construction jobs.

But the official JobcentrePlus website lists just 302 construction vacancies across the WHOLE of Britain.

The huge gulf between the number of jobseekers and posts available is exposed today by the Liberal Democrats.

They said the problem has been fuelled by the collapse of hundreds of building firms.

A total of 2,702 companies went bust in 2008, according to the most recent figures.

This was up from 1,944 in 2007 - a 40 per cent rise in a single year.

Lib Dem communities spokeswoman Julia Goldsworthy said: "This Government has done little to help the construction industry in recent years.

"Gordon Brown bailed out the banks but seems to have forgotten about the small businesses that have been hard hit in this sector.

"We don't yet know the situation for last year and 2010 could paint an even bleaker picture."

She said the Lib Dems wanted to spend Ł1.4 billion refurbishing thousands of empty houses across Britain - plans that would create jobs and new homes.

Recent forecasts have warned up to 400,000 jobs will be lost in the construction industry by next year.

Work and Pensioners minister Jonathan Shaw defended the Government's record, saying: "Let's look at the facts - latest figures show there are over 7,000 construction vacancies across the country.

Affordable

"As well as investing Ł5 billion to help jobseekers we are also investing Ł1.5 billion over the next two years to deliver 20,000 new affordable homes, creating 45,000 jobs.

"We are also bringing forward spending on building hospitals, schools and roads which will create more jobs for those looking to work in this key sector."

g.wilson@the-sun.co.u

Ánimo wapísimos, que tenéis un sítio con los PIIGGS En la G de Gran Bretaña

Bueno bueno, el efecto contagio o dominó afecta a la pérfida albión. La inflación provocada por darle al botoncito también ayuda.

Análisis de Cárpatos y su equipo en Serenity Markets

Ahora también los bonos ingleses nerviosos, que pesadilla...no es bueno para la bolsa.

Deja los tipos sin cambios en el +0,5% y pausa la compra de bonos al ver que la inflación ha subido rápidamente por encima del objetivo del 2% llegando al 2,9% en diciembre debido a los carburantes y la reducción de impuestos. Se espera que la inflación suba en enero más, cosa que es perjudicial para la parte alta de la curva de tipos.

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Un poco más al respecto - lo que sí ha hecho el banco central es eliminar las medidas de quantitative easing que mantienen a los bancos británicos fuera de la bancarrota - veremos qué es lo que pasa ahora..

FT.com / UK / Economy & Trade - Bank puts quantitative easing on hold

Y ésta es la respuesta de un portavoz del congreso español al escándalo en UK:

Si tuvieran que justificar los gastos, probablemente no habría un límite y los diputados gastarían más, y además habría que dedicar gente a controlar esos gastos, con su coste añadido

Los diputados españoles no justifican gastos... para ahorrar - Que.es

No sé si reir o llorar luego de leer eso. Qué cara más dura tienen, de verdad.

http://online.wsj.com/article_email/...TEwNDUyWj.html


The London Real Estate Bubble Is Back—and It's Scary

By BRETT ARENDS

FEBRUARY 5, 2010

LONDON—The one-bedroom co-op apartment is only a short walk from Hyde Park, and it boasts high ceilings and a purely decorative balcony.

Yours for a mere $1.5 million. It seems quite a high price, especially for a property whose ground lease will eventually expire, leaving you with nothing.

If you're looking for something bigger, you can get a duplex with two bedrooms in the center of town ... for $3.3 million. And if you're willing to slum it a bit and cross the River Thames to the unfashionable South Bank, you can get a modern three-bedroom apartment with a genuine balcony, and views of the river, for $4 million.

Looking at the real estate listings here is like stepping back in time to that unreal, giddy world of three years ago—before Lehman, before subprime, before AIG. Back to a period when everyone was either rich or on their way, either from flipping condos or running hedge funds, and the only direction was up.

But these prices are now, and they contain an ominous message: The London real estate bubble, arguably the biggest one of all, still hasn't popped.

If history is any guide, it surely will. Burst bubbles typically fall a long way, in due course, and there is no reason to believe this one will be any different—despite the usual rationalizations you hear in this town today, and which you heard in, say, Florida in 2005 and Tokyo in 1988.

The bubble is back: A man browses property on display at a London real estate agency.

London real estate has actually bounced off the bottom in the last nine months. Prices are now down a mere 9% or so from their 2007 peaks, according to data tracked by mortgage giant Nationwide Building Society. The average home in London, including all those dreary outskirts that go on and on and on, is $436,000. That's even higher than it was as recently as 2006, when the bubble was in its late stages. In the fashionable center of town—where the properties cited at the top of this article are all located—the prices are astronomical.

Overall, British prices have only fallen about 12% from the peak. When compared to household incomes, they stand far higher than they did even in 1989, at the peak of the last property bubble.

This matters for everyone—including those who will never visit Britain and have no direct interest in the real estate market. That's because there's one big question hanging over the U.S. and world economy right now: "Is that it?"

In other words, is the crash over? Has the Great Recession come to an end? Are we now heading back, albeit slowly, to normal economic growth rates and rising assets? Or is this just the eye of the hurricane?

No one knows the answer for sure. (I don't either, but at least I admit it.) But London real estate prices are one of the most worrying signs that "That isn't it," and that there is a lot more bad news to come. The other shoe, to put it plainly, hasn't dropped.

Jeremy Grantham, chairman of Boston money firm GMO and a British expatriate, argues that the British property bubble may be the biggest since the infamous one in Japan 20 years ago. It's notable that when that bubble burst, prices fell from 1991 through 2005. They fell again last year. There were many false dawns along the way. Many assumed the crash was over the worst after the rout of the first few years .But the real damage came afterward, as prices kept sliding, year upon year.

People here will tell you that London is unique. Well, yes. But everywhere is unique.

A money manager this week explained to me that the London real estate market now ********s as something of a global financial Laundromat: Properties are bought up by tycoons from Russia, the Middle East and elsewhere eager to get their money out of their own country. But so what? An overpriced market is still an overpriced market. Losing money on Mayfair apartments is no better than losing it to, say, a corrupt government.

Prices here were also buoyed by the hedge-fund boom. Perhaps that is back again. If so, it's something else to be worried about. Another speculative mania is the last thing we need.

But if London real estate is buoyed by the uniqueness of the town's economy, there is a disturbing degree to which the reverse is also true. This is a ridiculously expensive city to visit. I seem to hemorrhage money with every step I take. I was wondering, as I got out of a taxi the other night and severed the requisite two limbs to pay the fare, how I ever afforded to live here all those years.

The answer is, I couldn't—even though I earned a perfectly good salary. What made a difference was the money I made on my apartment, which doubled in value between 1997 and 2003. Two years after I sold it, in 2005, it had nearly doubled again. Remove this alchemy from the equation of ordinary Londoners, and the bars and restaurants and theaters would be a lot emptier.

Meanwhile, the British government is borrowing and spending on a huge scale to prevent an economic implosion. The national debt jumped by a fifth last year, surpassing 60% of annual output. In a sign of what is now driving economic activity, the average public-sector employee, according to official statistics, now earns about a fifth more than his private-sector counterpart.

The markets are certainly worried about the long-term implications of the U.K.'s spending binge. It costs twice as much to insure British government bonds against default as it does German or French bonds.

But if you looked at real estate prices, you'd never know it.

Write to Brett Arends at brett.arends@wsj.com

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