Credit deflation and the reflation cycle to come.

[DurhamBorn]

39 minutes ago, sancho panza said:

 

Surreal........£475k for a tiny 3 bed semi under the flight path......................madness

You need to get on the benefits if you can.We've discussed this on here before,but really shows how in huge parts of the country you're mad to work.Woprking three jobs to live when there's people polling up and getting ev erything for free....

 

If you get sickness benefit it gets added to your UB I believe.

DB would know how to do it.See your Dr tell him you've got  a bad back ....

Anxiety is far better now.When first jacked in work i decided to get some of my last years tax back and went on ESA.Went to the docs and said i was very anxious,that when i felt trapped i wanted to just thump people in my way and then other times wanted to end it all.6 month sick note and prescription i chucked in the bin on way out.Iv just finished beating them again.A family member has quite bad learning difficulties.They gave him no points and stopped his money after 3 years.Iv just got him it all back at tribunal,plus managed to get him an even higher rate than he was on before.Iv also sorted out a trust for his mum so when she dies her money goes in trust and he will keep getting all benefits and i will withdraw £2999 as trustee to give to him every now and again as a capital payment,not trust income,that way it wont affect his benefits as under the £3k capital amount.The rich create lots of things to protect their wealth,but ordinary people can make the same use of them if they want.

[MrXxx]

9 hours ago, sancho panza said:

Strange,there's been a few shows on TV lately talking over the ashes of Lehmans.ANd then the 'The bank that nearly broke Britain' piece on last night on BBC2 talking over how Alistair Darling and Merv the Swerve saved the world by getting the UK taxpayer cheque book out.TIt was like we had no choice.

Reality is that they didn't avoid a Great Depression,they just delayed it by ten years and made it worse.

And those who should have learnt a lesson the hard wa didn't, this being evident by the same behaviour ten years later...and from what I can see the powers that be are so arrogant/dismissive of the electorate they will just offer the same solution!

[Band]

9 hours ago, sancho panza said:

 Alistair Darling and Merv the Swerve saved the world by getting the UK taxpayer cheque book out.TIt was like we had no choice.

Reality is that they didn't avoid a Great Depression,they just delayed it by ten years and made it worse.

Darling really is a smug cunt, he sees barely any downside to the destruction he created and kicked into the future.

In time he will be remembered as the man who made things many times worse.

Disgusting that a quick call from a fellow jock and any amount of money they want is on tap.

[DurhamBorn]

4 minutes ago, MrXxx said:

And those who should have learnt a lesson the hard wa didn't, this being evident by the same behaviour ten years later...and from what I can see the powers that be are so arrogant/dismissive of the electorate they will just offer the same solution!

IMF report today shows the UK has terrible public finances and the 2nd worst of any industrial country for government assets because they sold most of them in the 80s and 90s.Its incredible to think that instead of building and owning assets like houses themselves that they fund through housing benefit later they are pumping money to chief execs of house builders with HTB.Of course the real reason is to trap young people into being tax payers forever.

Wont be long before they clamp down on pensions,its the only real way someone earning £50-£100k a year can avoid being fleeced in income tax.Yearly allowance cut to £30k then £20k in the budget?

[MrXxx]

9 hours ago, DurhamBorn said:

Anxiety is far better now.When first jacked in work i decided to get some of my last years tax back and went on ESA.Went to the docs and said i was very anxious,that when i felt trapped i wanted to just thump people in my way and then other times wanted to end it all.6 month sick note and prescription i chucked in the bin on way out.Iv just finished beating them again.A family member has quite bad learning difficulties.They gave him no points and stopped his money after 3 years.Iv just got him it all back at tribunal,plus managed to get him an even higher rate than he was on before.Iv also sorted out a trust for his mum so when she dies her money goes in trust and he will keep getting all benefits and i will withdraw £2999 as trustee to give to him every now and again as a capital payment,not trust income,that way it wont affect his benefits as under the £3k capital amount.The rich create lots of things to protect their wealth,but ordinary people can make the same use of them if they want.

Not being judgemental here but this post (and the one above by SP) show the crux of the matter...it has now become publically acceptable to game (or be seen to game) the benefits system, whereas in my Grandparents generation the public shame was such a deterrent than even those that had a real need didn't...

...now everyone is at it from dentists splitting (and so doubling up) NHS work to MPs and their duck houses, the reason being any penalty metered out is ineffective...

...that said, the wealthy have always gamed the system via tax avoidance, the difference is they will still have a benefit/healthcare system when ours collapses, and we find ourselves in a pre~Bevan scenario again!

[MrXxx]

24 minutes ago, DurhamBorn said:

IMF report today shows the UK has terrible public finances and the 2nd worst of any industrial country for government assets because they sold most of them in the 80s and 90s.Its incredible to think that instead of building and owning assets like houses themselves that they fund through housing benefit later they are pumping money to chief execs of house builders with HTB.Of course the real reason is to trap young people into being tax payers forever.

Wont be long before they clamp down on pensions,its the only real way someone earning £50-£100k a year can avoid being fleeced in income tax.Yearly allowance cut to £30k then £20k in the budget?

And don't forget the 25% (currently) tax free lump sum on retirement...now that everyone is opted in to DC pensions I can see that tax break will gradually be eroded (and go unnoticed) each budget...perhaps a good reason to retire early if you can afford to?!

[Sugarlips]

Dead canary?

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-09/alternative-china-pmi-gauge-says-business-has-never-been-worse?__twitter_impression=true

[Majorpain]

http://www.constructionenquirer.com/2018/10/09/south-eastern-electrical-goes-under/

£50m turnover with 200 staff. 

Late payments, insurance claims, withheld retentions and invoice financing which leaves your fate completely in the hands of the bank.

Mad.

[Democorruptcy]

2 hours ago, DurhamBorn said:

IMF report today shows the UK has terrible public finances and the 2nd worst of any industrial country for government assets because they sold most of them in the 80s and 90s.Its incredible to think that instead of building and owning assets like houses themselves that they fund through housing benefit later they are pumping money to chief execs of house builders with HTB.Of course the real reason is to trap young people into being tax payers forever.

Wont be long before they clamp down on pensions,its the only real way someone earning £50-£100k a year can avoid being fleeced in income tax.Yearly allowance cut to £30k then £20k in the budget?

HTB is a way to switch people from renting and claiming housing benefit to income tax payers with an asset. It can only be a matter of time before housing equity is taken into account for benefit payments, NHS etc. The governbankment own 20% or 40% of HTB houses, no reason why they cannot start staircasing their share of your home?

Re pensions, what about them combining income tax and national insurance? Then NI could also be applied to pension payments "to help for social care blah blah...."

[sancho panza]

3 hours ago, MrXxx said:

And those who should have learnt a lesson the hard wa didn't, this being evident by the same behaviour ten years later...and from what I can see the powers that be are so arrogant/dismissive of the electorate they will just offer the same solution!

Absolutely.The public were rewarded for their generosity in 2008 by being given the very people who managed to create the crisis and still not see it coming,to solve the crisis.You literally,could not make it up.

3 hours ago, Banned said:

Darling really is a smug cunt, he sees barely any downside to the destruction he created and kicked into the future.

In time he will be remembered as the man who made things many times worse.

He came across as very smug in the video,joshing about the balti they ordered, and then the So-Called BBC getting a parade of people to come on and say how the world was near ending as we know it, NHS would stop functioning etc etc.There was no mention of the generous pay out to equity holders(who admittedly bore losses,but should have lost the lot in bankruptcy) and the bond holders who were rewarded by being paid at par despite RBS being functionally bankrupt.

Ten years of losses later and the bankers at RBS have made off with tens of billions in bonuses cumulatively.(RBS did make a profit last year I believe)And this was in an era when the BoE and Exchequer have been devizing all sorts of direct support eg Zirp and back door support eg Housing benefit,forebearance, HTB 1+2, FLS.

3 hours ago, DurhamBorn said:

IMF report today shows the UK has terrible public finances and the 2nd worst of any industrial country for government assets because they sold most of them in the 80s and 90s.Its incredible to think that instead of building and owning assets like houses themselves that they fund through housing benefit later they are pumping money to chief execs of house builders with HTB.Of course the real reason is to trap young people into being tax payers forever.

Wont be long before they clamp down on pensions,its the only real way someone earning £50-£100k a year can avoid being fleeced in income tax.Yearly allowance cut to £30k then £20k in the budget?

Yep,if you're not thinking how to hedge sterling,what's coming is going to hurt even more.

3 hours ago, MrXxx said:

Not being judgemental here but this post (and the one above by SP) show the crux of the matter...it has now become publically acceptable to game (or be seen to game) the benefits system, whereas in my Grandparents generation the public shame was such a deterrent than even those that had a real need didn't...

...now everyone is at it from dentists splitting (and so doubling up) NHS work to MPs and their duck houses, the reason being any penalty metered out is ineffective...

...that said, the wealthy have always gamed the system via tax avoidance, the difference is they will still have a benefit/healthcare system when ours collapses, and we find ourselves in a pre~Bevan scenario again!

It's not socially acceptable but it is a reality that many are faced with.Our benefits system is utterly broken.I hear these stories all the time, of people braving flogging themselves to death while those who scam the system prosper.The sooner the current system collapses,the better.

I work NHS,most people don't know the half of it.I don't mean to get political,but we're getting all these stories about homelessness at the minute from the MSM but nowhere do we hear any mention of the fact that loads of our PRS and public housing stock is being lived in by EU citizens-I'm not looking for a Brexit debate-I'm jsut pointing out the rather obvious point that if you run net migration at 300,000 for ten years,you're going to run out of housin

@spygirl is all over this.

Alcoholics and drug addicts can get sickness benefits on top of ESA/housing benefit.I genuinely pity people working 3 jobs when there's others doing 16 hours and earning more.The abuses are rife as you quite rightly say.I think the only way it will stop is when the system breaks.

[Lightscribe]

1 hour ago, Democorruptcy said:

HTB is a way to switch people from renting and claiming housing benefit to income tax payers with an asset. It can only be a matter of time before housing equity is taken into account for benefit payments, NHS etc. The governbankment own 20% or 40% of HTB houses, no reason why they cannot start staircasing their share of your home?

Re pensions, what about them combining income tax and national insurance? Then NI could also be applied to pension payments "to help for social care blah blah...."

But how many housing benefit claimants actually own any housing equity? Thats why BTL has been so rampant over last two decades. The majority example being claimants working minimum hours/salary for max tax credits, renting a 2-3 bed rental for £1k plus a month, with the housing benefit being paid by the government straight into the landlords pocket (via the tenant of course).

Most HTB purchasers would be working millennials indoctrinated in the belief that bricks and mortar only goes up.

I do agree with DB though in the fact that we are going to have a whole impoverished generation of 50 year old mothers being turfed out on the street once the kids turn 18, and they can’t have any more children to keep the credits flowing.

[sancho panza]

2 hours ago, Sugarlips said:

Dead canary?

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-09/alternative-china-pmi-gauge-says-business-has-never-been-worse?__twitter_impression=true

I think it is.Fed rate rises pulling money back,China's credit bubble imploding,Eurozone problems...

 

https://www.investing.com/indices/household-goods-components

Housebuilders all reasd over the year and YTD.

 

FTSE 100 only has 30 in green for the year 70 red .Take away the top and bottom 5 performers at either end-takeovers/crashers, and the top 25 are all up under 13%,bottom 65 start at minus 33%.The UK is heading into a recession imo.

https://www.investing.com/indices/investing.com-uk-100-components

[sancho panza]

2 hours ago, Majorpain said:

http://www.constructionenquirer.com/2018/10/09/south-eastern-electrical-goes-under/

£50m turnover with 200 staff. 

Late payments, insurance claims, withheld retentions and invoice financing which leaves your fate completely in the hands of the bank.

Mad.

There are loads of these companies around,healthy looking from the outside,but exposed if they get one big late payer.

1 hour ago, Democorruptcy said:

HTB is a way to switch people from renting and claiming housing benefit to income tax payers with an asset. It can only be a matter of time before housing equity is taken into account for benefit payments, NHS etc. The governbankment own 20% or 40% of HTB houses, no reason why they cannot start staircasing their share of your home?

Re pensions, what about them combining income tax and national insurance? Then NI could also be applied to pension payments "to help for social care blah blah...."

And social care packages running at £1000's per month currently funded by councils.I think merging NI/income tax makes a lot of sense.

[spygirl]

17 hours ago, Banned said:

I always thought Bishop Auckland was a fairly upmarket plae to live.

Thats the prices houses would be in the south in interest rates were a couple of percent above inflation, QE never existed and all the other props were removed... inc IO BTL mortgages.

Bit of fraud going on with the last sold price

Year Sold	Sold Price
2002	£11,500

If you grew up in Somalia.

Bishop Auckland is even more pikey than Darlo.

 

[spygirl]

14 hours ago, sancho panza said:

Strange,there's been a few shows on TV lately talking over the ashes of Lehmans.ANd then the 'The bank that nearly broke Britain' piece on last night on BBC2 talking over how Alistair Darling and Merv the Swerve saved the world by getting the UK taxpayer cheque book out.TIt was like we had no choice.

Reality is that they didn't avoid a Great Depression,they just delayed it by ten years and made it worse.

Nope.

They spread the pain out over 20 years, with most of the pain falling on the under 40s (in 2007).

The shit storm thats brewing up, Cuntbyn, Trump and all that, is the fall out.

Take the hit when it occurs.

UK aanks should have gone bust.

The bank pension funds should have been used to bail out the creditors.

Bank employees, esp. Fed th shred, should have been made total paupers.

[spygirl]

3 hours ago, MrXxx said:

And don't forget the 25% (currently) tax free lump sum on retirement...now that everyone is opted in to DC pensions I can see that tax break will gradually be eroded (and go unnoticed) each budget...perhaps a good reason to retire early if you can afford to?!

Everyone???

Remove people from publci sector in DB pensions.

Remove people not acutally working.

You are talking a pool of ~30% of the UKPOP.

[spygirl]

37 minutes ago, sancho panza said:

Absolutely.The public were rewarded for their generosity in 2008 by being given the very people who managed to create the crisis and still not see it coming,to solve the crisis.You literally,could not make it up.

He came across as very smug in the video,joshing about the balti they ordered, and then the So-Called BBC getting a parade of people to come on and say how the world was near ending as we know it, NHS would stop functioning etc etc.There was no mention of the generous pay out to equity holders(who admittedly bore losses,but should have lost the lot in bankruptcy) and the bond holders who were rewarded by being paid at par despite RBS being functionally bankrupt.

Ten years of losses later and the bankers at RBS have made off with tens of billions in bonuses cumulatively.(RBS did make a profit last year I believe)And this was in an era when the BoE and Exchequer have been devizing all sorts of direct support eg Zirp and back door support eg Housing benefit,forebearance, HTB 1+2, FLS.

Yep,if you're not thinking how to hedge sterling,what's coming is going to hurt even more.

It's not socially acceptable but it is a reality that many are faced with.Our benefits system is utterly broken.I hear these stories all the time, of people braving flogging themselves to death while those who scam the system prosper.The sooner the current system collapses,the better.

I work NHS,most people don't know the half of it.I don't mean to get political,but we're getting all these stories about homelessness at the minute from the MSM but nowhere do we hear any mention of the fact that loads of our PRS and public housing stock is being lived in by EU citizens-I'm not looking for a Brexit debate-I'm jsut pointing out the rather obvious point that if you run net migration at 300,000 for ten years,you're going to run out of housin

@spygirl is all over this.

Alcoholics and drug addicts can get sickness benefits on top of ESA/housing benefit.I genuinely pity people working 3 jobs when there's others doing 16 hours and earning more.The abuses are rife as you quite rightly say.I think the only way it will stop is when the system breaks.

https://ukcampaign4change.com/2018/10/10/ex-tory-minister-expresses-horror-at-the-way-nhs-it-money-is-allocated-but-will-anything-change/

'His comments suggest that no lessons have been learned from the disastrous £10bn NHS IT programme NPfIT and that more failed IT schemes are inevitable.

Freeman is no stranger to the world of IT. Before entering politics he ran a predictive toxicology business that created an algorithm to look at existing drugs and side effects and how drugs could be more effective.

When in government in 2014 he was Life Sciences minister with a responsibility for digitising the NHS. In 2016 he moved to head up the upcoming Prime Minister Treason May’s policy board. He resigned from that role last year.

Now the So-Called BBC reports a talk by Freeman to the Taxpayers’ Alliance in which he described his “horror”, when he was Life Sciences minister, at being handed £4.2bn to create a “paperless” NHS in England by 2020 without a plan how to do it.

Although Freeman’s ministerial role was digitising the NHS, he had not been involved in the 2016 public spending talks. He said his civil servants were ordered to set out how they would spend the money only after it was allocated.

This is how things are done in government, said Mr Freeman. This is why schemes go wrong, he suggested.

“The deal was done between Jeremy (Hunt) and George (Osborne) – it was a good thing, a big chunk of money to digitalise the NHS,” he said. His civil servants were delighted to have secured the money, he said, but when they were asked to produce a delivery plan, involving 26 different “work streams”, the “system” proved incapable of doing it.'

 

[sancho panza]

On 08/10/2018 at 15:17, sancho panza said:

I think it's akin to the issue of FRB,where credit expansion beget credit expansion as balance sheets become firmer(on paper).The reality is that the amount of capital underpinning said balance sheet may not have strengthened as much as the balance sheet has if you get my drift.

Wolf St with what amounts to a prediction of debt deflation with chaos to follow.

Central banks wanted CPI but got API,destroyed velocity,built up enormous risks within the financial system.

https://wolfstreet.com/2018/10/09/why-did-qe-money-printing-not-cause-consumer-price-inflation/

I was asked two important questions in this mind-boggling era of QE: The Bank of Japan has monetized 50% of its national debt; so why has there not been a surge of inflation? And why can’t the Fed restart QE and do the same without triggering inflation?

“Inflation” can be a lot of things. Here we’re not talking about “monetary inflation.” We’re talking about price inflation – when the currency loses its purchasing power. There are several types of price inflation that are accounted for separately, including:

• Consumer price inflation
• Wholesale price inflation
• Wage inflation.
• Asset price inflation.

The questions were about consumer price inflation; but the answer lies in asset price inflation.

It’s true that despite QE globally – not just in Japan – there has been relatively little consumer price inflation in the countries whose central banks perpetrated it. But it has caused enormous asset-price inflation. We call it the “Everything Bubble” where practically all asset classes globally have become ludicrously inflated.

Asset price inflation means that the currency loses purchasing power with regards to assets, such as real estate. The house is the same, only a little more run-down, but now it takes twice as many dollars to buy than five years ago.

When asset-price inflation reverses, which it invariably does, it can be deadly for the banks and the financial system overall. There are plenty of examples, including the US housing and mortgage crisis that was part of the Financial Crisis.

Assets are used as collateral by banks and other lenders. When asset prices get inflated, they support larger loans. But inflated asset prices invariably deflate at some point, and suddenly, when the borrower defaults, the collateral is no longer enough to cover the loan. Asset price inflation feels good because it translates into free and easy wealth for asset holders, but when it deflates, it tends to bring down the banks – even or especially the biggest ones – and causes all kinds of other mayhem.

Asset price inflation means risks are building up in the financial system.

So central banks, while they try to stimulate some asset price inflation, are worried when it goes too far. The Fed has expressed this worry in various forms for two years. The ECB is now murmuring about it. And even the Bank of Japan is suddenly fretting about the “sustainability” of its QE program, and its impact on the financial markets.

This is why QE cannot be maintained without setting the stage for another, and much bigger and even more magnificent collapse of the financial system, the Big One if you will, and all the real-economy mayhem it would entail.

Consumer price inflation – defined here as loss of purchasing power of the currency with regards to consumer goods and services, as measured by a consumer price index – is in part a confidence game.

Consumer price inflation results from a mix of market forces, psychology, and other factors. What exactly causes consumer price inflation is still not fully understood, as evidenced by the surprise that economists experienced when QE failed to cause it.

One factor in consumer price inflation is confidence in the currency – often measured as “inflation expectations.” Like so many other factors in economics, it’s psychological!

When the people have confidence that the purchasing power of their currency remains stable, and when businesses therefore cannot raise prices because people and other businesses would refuse to pay these higher prices, then inflation is “well anchored,” as central bankers say. This is expressed in various “inflation expectation” indices. But confidence can vanish, and once gone, it’s devilishly hard to rebuilt.

Over the past two decades, the Japanese have learned that there is very little or no inflation in their system:

All economic players have adjusted to it — consumers, government entities, businesses, pension funds, etc. This confidence has made it effectively impossible to raise prices on many goods and services (with some exceptions). When companies tried to raise prices, consumers simply switched to alternatives or cut back, and the price increases didn’t stick.

The Japanese are hording cash (via yen deposits and other low-risk yen instruments) because they know it will retain its purchasing power. They trust the yen! This attitude – “inflation expectations” – has helped keep inflation to near zero. It’s a self-reinforcing mechanism.

On the other hand, there’s Argentina: Successive governments have for decades trashed any kind of confidence or trust people might have had in the peso. Argentines get rid of pesos as soon as they can (convert them into dollars or assets). In other words, they constantly sell pesos. The entire economy has adjusted to dealing with a currency that rapidly loses purchasing power. It too is a self-reinforcing mechanism.

During the 1970s, there was a lot of inflation in the US, reaching nearly 15% in 1980. It had to be stopped before it would spiral completely out of control. Fed Chairman Paul Volcker, with the gutsy public backing of President Reagan, went to work with rate increases of a full percentage point per meeting that shocked. This was accompanied by a publicity campaign.

It was radical surgery to rebuild confidence in the dollar, and it caused a nasty “double-dip” recession that threw millions of people out of work. But inflation began dropping. And over many years, it gradually rebuilt confidence that prices might rise by about 2% to 3% a year, not more. In the Fed’s terms, “inflation expectations are well anchored.” As long as that confidence persists, inflation will have a hard time spiraling out of control.

But in the US, this confidence is still fragile. Inflation expectations already ticked up to 3%. Once inflation expectations rise, all bets are off.

This can also crop up in Japan, and when it does, nothing and no one will be prepared for it – after two decades of price stability. If consumer price inflation gets out of hand, the loss of purchasing power of the yen will destroy much of the wealth of the Japanese and the purchasing power of their labor.

That is a risk. And it comes on top of the more immediate risk associated with asset price inflation – what it does to the financial system when the prices of leveraged assets deflate. That’s the mechanism by which QE becomes destructive. That’s why the price of free money can be very costly.

[Barnsey]

One chart doing the rounds lately...

[sancho panza]

8 minutes ago, Barnsey said:

One chart doing the rounds lately...

Priceless....I wodner how accurate the data is and how they got it?

Reminds me of Dough Short's chart on NYSE margin debt.

thanks for keeping positng these tweets and charts barnsey.I'd never come across that except on here.

 

[A_P]

15 minutes ago, Barnsey said:

One chart doing the rounds lately...

 

What does client cash refer to? Cash in the clients trading account I assume versus their total net cash position in other accounts?

[Harley]

7 minutes ago, sancho panza said:

Priceless....I wodner how accurate the data is and how they got it?

Reminds me of Dough Short's chart on NYSE margin debt.

thanks for keeping positng these tweets and charts barnsey.I'd never come across that except on here.

 

Ah, that's what Puplava meant in this weekend's podcast when saying that pretty much only retail investors were in the market.  And in index tracker funds - which he seems to see as financial WMDs!  Are these individual investors putting like 90% of their accounts into the market?  At this point?  Are they mad or are they happy dancing close to the exits?

[sancho panza]

10 minutes ago, Harley said:

Ah, that's what Puplava meant in this weekend's podcast when saying that pretty much only retail investors were in the market.  And in index tracker funds - which he seems to see as financial WMDs!  Are these individual investors putting like 90% of their accounts into the market?  At this point?  Are they mad or are they happy dancing close to the exits?

If you're right then as I said a a few pages back,things could get interesting when punters start exiting the ETF's as it will cause mechanical selling,which will cause more mechanical sellling.The frame work is in place a for a nasty sell off.However,the USA may hold off until next year.Most other stock markets are heading into bears imho.

18 minutes ago, Admiral Pepe said:

What does client cash refer to? Cash in the clients trading account I assume versus their total net cash position in other accounts?

It'll be their net cash position in their Charles Schwab stock trading a/c.

[DurhamBorn]

5 hours ago, MrXxx said:

Not being judgemental here but this post (and the one above by SP) show the crux of the matter...it has now become publically acceptable to game (or be seen to game) the benefits system, whereas in my Grandparents generation the public shame was such a deterrent than even those that had a real need didn't...

...now everyone is at it from dentists splitting (and so doubling up) NHS work to MPs and their duck houses, the reason being any penalty metered out is ineffective...

...that said, the wealthy have always gamed the system via tax avoidance, the difference is they will still have a benefit/healthcare system when ours collapses, and we find ourselves in a pre~Bevan scenario again!

Agree 100%.I very much was old school as were my family.That was until i started dating and seeing families who claimed to be poor pulling in more in benefits than my parents both earned.When my dad was made redundant after 38 years of working the DHS treat him shocking.Our system is so bad now you have to defend your family by learning it.The whole system needs massive reform,but until then its protect your own family the best you can.

[Democorruptcy]

1 hour ago, Sideysid said:

But how many housing benefit claimants actually own any housing equity? Thats why BTL has been so rampant over last two decades. The majority example being claimants working minimum hours/salary for max tax credits, renting a 2-3 bed rental for £1k plus a month, with the housing benefit being paid by the government straight into the landlords pocket (via the tenant of course).

Most HTB purchasers would be working millennials indoctrinated in the belief that bricks and mortar only goes up.

I do agree with DB though in the fact that we are going to have a whole impoverished generation of 50 year old mothers being turfed out on the street once the kids turn 18, and they can’t have any more children to keep the credits flowing.

I'd like to think it's none, that's my point.

More and more people have seen that working doesn't even put a roof over your head, so they have gone for benefits instead. HTB is trying to stop the flow and get them on board, working and paying tax instead. At the moment someone living in a big house mortgage free can claim benefits, I don't see how that can last. What HTB also does is introduce shared equity with the governbankment. In the future I can see means testing including housing equity. Just because someone is not claiming benefits now doesn't they might not in the future.