Ever since the issues first engulfed our industry 4 years ago I seem to be fed up of saying, “wow, that was an extraordinary week” and last week was no exception.
It began with some positives from the previous week; UK growth was confirmed at 0.5% in the 3rd quarter of this year and the Government launched its much anticipated Housing Strategy, pulling together a range of announcements with a couple of new ones to try to stimulate growth and return some confidence back to the house building industry.
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This week sees the next meeting of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee, (MPC), and the talk is once again about whether rates will finally rise. This time the meeting is held against the backdrop of some stinging criticism by the Governor Mervyn King of the Big Banks, that has unsurprisingly, not gone down as well as it could in Bank Boardrooms.
Basically, Merv warned that failure to reform the banking system and remove the “too big to fail” assumption could easily lead to another financial crises. Cuttingly, he stated that over the past two decades, too many people in financial services had thought “if it’s possible to make money out of gullible or unsuspecting customers, that’s perfectly acceptable”.
Also posted in Bank Base Rate, Bank Bonuses, Best Mortgage Rates, Coreco, Large Mortgage Loans, Monetary Policy Committee, Mortgage Brokers in London, Mortgage Funding, The Economy | Tagged Bank of England Base Rate, BBC, Best Mortgage Rates, Coreco, Economy, Large Mortgage Loans, Mortgage Rates, The Economy |
In the fall-out of any major, near catastrophic event, an autopsy is carried out and opinions fly as to why this happened and how we could guard against it in the future. The aftermath of the latest financial crises, is of course no exception.
So we have had to endure accusations and calls for various measures to be introduced ranging from the sensible, which should have been in place prior to the event, to the simply absurd and damaging.
One recent voice to enter the fray is Charlie Bean, a member of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee, (MPC).
With apologies to The Blow Monkeys for lifting the title of their debut album, (I love a music link), for some reason this phrase popped into my head when the latest quarterly GDP figures were released showing that we have just about limped out of recession.
The political soothsayers have been having a field day showing how we were the first into recession and the last out, and that the road ahead is going to be a frankly tortuous affair. Even Alistair Darling could not rule out the possibility of a dip back into the negative almost on the eve of the election.
So the silly season seems to have crept up on us and all of a sudden another year has almost flown by. It’s been a funny old year really, tough for most, with a lot of anger and frustration directed at our “leaders”. The Iraq War enquiry is in full swing, strike news abounds, war has been declared on everyone from MP’s and bankers to company directors, (see BA and Consignia for further details), and especially dear old Simon Cowell.
Andrew Montlake, Communications Director at Coreco and ‘Mortgage Personality of the Year 2008’, gives his views — honest and no holds barred — on the latest developments within the mortgage and property markets.
