The penny drops
Reading this post will cost you about 10 pence.
According to figures that have been described as optimistic, the UK government is set to borrow an extra £700 billion over the next five years.
There are countless figures and articles trying to put this in perspective using various techniques, including writing the full £700,000,000,000 number, or saying that interest payments for this amount will be more than the UK budget for defence.
There are then of course those who recall those bankers were deemed evil for borrowing too much with no real plan for repaying.
I decided instead to do this to understand the concept of time:
60 minutes x 24 hours = 1,440 minutes in a day.
x 365 = 525,600 minutes in a year
x 5 = 2,628,000 minutes in 5 years
And this to break down the numbers:
£700,000 million is the new debt (note the word new, this is to be added to existing debt)
26 million income tax payers in the UK
i.e. £26,923 new debt for each tax payer.
And then worked out that
£26923/2,628,000 minutes= £0.01 per minute
Equals 1p a minute
Every UK tax payer (me including) will borrow 1p a minute every minute, even when they sleep for five years.
And paying it back will also cost interest.
And that's also optimistic.
It's like picking up the phone and leaving it connected for five years.
Did the penny drop?
Ten principles for a Black Swan-proof world
Came across this article in the FT recently.
Interesting to see that people have started providing some feedback on what needs to change. I wonder if our politicians will turn any of this into policy.
Less worse
Apparently, there are some "signs of recovery" in the world economy in recent days.
Well, economists and the US President have re-defined "recovery". Yes, unemployment is rising and bankruptcies are rising sharply. Yes, the housing market is still dead. And yes, car manufacturers and others are joining the banks and going to the government for help.
The governments themselves are not too rich either and are slowly creating a debt crisis of their own right.
But, things are getting "less worse" (a new term). That is to say, the stock markets are not falling as much as people thought, housing transactions and values are on a downward trend but not as sharp a trend as people thought, and so on.
In other words, the decline continues, but at a rate slower than some analysts were predicting.
Which could either mean stabilisation is on the way, or that those analysts panicked so much with "sell sell sell" as they did with "buy buy buy" in 2008.
My advice to everyone is not to listen to analysts, or at least to choose your analysts wisely.
What does deflation mean
For savvy consumers, it means bargaining for the best deal and feeling proud to get better prices than last year. Accroding to Office of National Statistics Personal Inflation Calculator I've been living in deflation for a while.
For businesses though, this can mean making a challenging environment even worse. Once people get used to thinking that prices will fall, they postpone buying anything until they do. Which in turn adds to the economic problems.
This BBC article discusses what deflation meant for Japan in the 90's - just as the UK reports its first deflation in decades.
World recession
This is pretty serious news. Japan shrinking a good 7%, the rest of the world also shrinking for the first time since WWII.
And noone wants to see WWII devastation anywhere.
Economics has definately become my new favourite topic.
Shares rally
For few days in a row, shares in stockmarkets have been rallying. Is there any logic in this?
Governments are borrowing at a record breaking rate. Unemployment, and recession are also progressing at record breaking rates.
China is also seeing some effects of the economic downturn - making it truly global.
Surely it's not the time to be investing in equities.
But then what can one invest in? Property is illiquid, so you can't react if the market turns worse. Interest rates are zero so you can't be keeping cash or government bonds. Gold is generally overpriced in what analysts have started calling the next bubble. Long term investments are also not to be considered with such volatility and uncertainty.
More and more investors seem to be turning to trading shares, or share derivatives with inherent margin. They either buy like mad, or sell like mad, and change their minds every day based on market sentiment. This is pure speculation, with no reference to any underlying fundamentals.
Could this signal the bottom of the market, the beginning of a new bubble, or just vain attempts to make bit of money while you lose what's left?
The comparison to the Asian Financial Crisis
Singapore's real estate market went down 80% in the wake of the Asian Financial Crisis, and that city is still there as well.
The recent article on AMEInfo compares Dubai with Singapore at the beginning of the Asia financial crisis, and suggests that the current talk of Dubai's troubles is hype - just like the talk of Dubai's boom a year ago.
There's certainly a lot of truth in this comparison. Indeed the Asian Financial Crisis saw property devaluations in most of the commerce centres of the region. The Hong Kong is a classic case study and one that can be used to discuss Dubai.
On the more positive side, Dubai has positioned itself not only as a financial centre but also as a tourism one. Little comfort while tourism is as hard hit as finance, but we could expect some recovery in tourism faster, once consumer sentiment grows.
The negative view is that the current crisis is more global and may take longer to resolve. Those Asian countries were also not that reliant on expats who can get up and leave when the crisis hits.
How will China cope?
An interested question that has started coming up in some side columns is the likely effect of the global economic crisis on China. Robert Peston has even gone there for a week to report from the ground, ignoring his reporting here at home.
Clearly, the Chinese government is better prepared for this than the West - with well capitalised banks, and a big fiscal surplus in recent years, the Chinese can at least count on borrowing and government spending for some time.
However, the problem remains. If there is no demand for your products, loans to keep a business going serve little purpose.
I hear that the Chinese have started a big campaign to boost internal demand. They are encouraging people to buy household appliances and cars. In economic terms, this is encouraging using some of those savings that have accummulated to prop up businesses in this downturn. It's better to equip each house with a TV at the expense of the state than to close down the TV factory.
In real terms, what we are actually seeing is the beginnings of a massive increase in living standards for the biggest nation on earth - while the West is experiencing the sharpest decrease in living standards in decades.
Is this the time when the world really converges? Globalisation scholars will tell you that this shift was long overdue. I bet some people in the West never wanted, and still don't want to hear.
A new blog is born
On many occasions, I have wanted to write about something that matters to me but is probably too boring for my friends to read.
Whether a theory, or something relating to my industry, or something that interests me academically - this will be the place where I share snippets of my thoughts.
Happy reading.