January 21, 2011
Is There Credit After The Crunch?
I am looking out over a battle field, there are bodies and bits of twisted metal scattered everywhere. There’s the private sector strewn battered and bruised across the barbed wire. And in the fox hole, the public sector. I’d get out of there if I were you! Like a war we went into the recession as brothers and sisters, in debt but happy and as we battled on we lost companies and people. In my village alone over the past couple of years, three people have committed suicide on the back of business failures. Now we are not so happy. And some say it may get worse.
It goes without saying it would be incredibly risky to up sticks and embark on a new career with decent jobs so scarce. For most though, it could be the only way to secure a pay rise, with wages freeze’s still common, on top of jobseekers and other benefits to be slashed by the coalition. Combine this with the scarcity of credit and the comfortable situation that arose, particularly in Britain, Europe and US, of owing and being owed high amounts in a cycle of debt. Many find themselves on the remortgage merry-go-round, but the once plentiful remortgage deals have now all but dried up.
So onto the scene comes Jonathan Davis, a top wealth management advisor and a man whose expertise is regularly featured across the UK media. This man is going to know a thing or two about what is going to happen with money markets and specifically lending trends over the next 3 or 4 years. It started to become abundantly clear that serious damage like this will take long time to clear up. Deep wounds don’t heal overnight, we have just been through major surgery and the surgeon is still looking for his watch. Jonathan, as incisive as ever, explains that this problem has been building up for a significantly long time, “the big picture is that for 30 years, we’ve had a growing debt problem”. Of course it’s not just us this affects all the major markets in the West. Debt in the West I suppose! It all bubbled in 2006-2007, and now we’re experiencing the hangover of the debt party. I refer you to the 1930s, and the depression based upon de-leveraging effects following, by then, the biggest debt bubble in history during the 1920s.” Jonathans next comment made me think, and shiver, ” This time it’s from the biggest debt bubble of all time.”
“The banks are, technically, insolvent themselves. You’d be hard pushed to find a bank or building society in the UK that is solvent, when real assets are taken into account. It’s all well and good to have property, but if that lies vacant, and there’s a loan outstanding, then it’s a loss. Look around in every town, in every city. Look up, and you see To Let everywhere. 10 per cent, or at least 10 per cent of shops are lying empty, then you’ve got warehouse, office and manufacturing facilities. “In other words, you’ve got an enormous swathe of bad debt coming down the line. That’s one of the reasons banks are reducing lending, because they know they will be cutting red ink right across the balance sheet in due course. On top of that they also have the wider G20 issue, of what’s called Basel 3, which is a change in the regulations of international banking,” Davis continued.
As we call for tighter banking regulations, it still seems as though the average British Citizen is the one bearing the brunt of the current state of affairs. Amidst the bailout controversies lays the Basel 3 agreement, which emerged from the G20, which calls for banks to have a higher level of constant cash reserves. As a result, the banks are limiting what they lend, a level that is unlikely to return to its pre-recession levels for quite some time. Davis reiterates this, “Basel 3 is to prevent a future bubble emerging, followed by a crash. We’re still in one crash right now, and it will continue for years”.
From this I can see we can safely assume that lending restriction are going to stay in place for some time to come. One thing I certainly would be interested in is how this all affects interest rates, in terms of are we going to see massive rates just to be able to borrow money? “People are already massively in debt. The amount of debt in society is more than there ever has been. I read surveys from big financial institutions that say if the cost of living goes up £100 per month, people couldn’t afford to live- that’s how bad it is,”
While the experts are always worried about people turning to the more shady elements to gain credit, the fact interest rates are up and criteria is simple according to Davis “The banks are actually discouraging folk from taking on more debt by increasing interest rates, way beyond the base rate- really it’s all they can do, it’s not because they want to.”
“So the trend in the future will be that people will not be taking on more plastic credit, they will not be increasing consumer spending, they will not be taking on mortgages, because they simply can’t.” So we can’t get into debt, because nobody is prepared to lend. Jonathan goes onto explain that this brings us full circle to the original hypothesis, which is that the banks have got no money. Hence they can’t lend. So in the UK we have the smallest quantity of mortgages being underwritten for a decade.
The biggest worry when it comes to a lack in lending by the banks is the increased potential of an emergence of unscrupulous loans that can scam the vulnerable. Davis warns that “once you start dealing with those types of businesses you’re hiding to nothing – they’ll just take your house off you for the sake of a few thousand pounds”. Unfortunately, such companies can, on the face of it, have attractive offers, but they will take no prisoners when it comes to repayment. However, MP Stella Creasy is currently on a mission to place restrictions on these so-called ‘legal loan sharks’.
We all know that crystal balls don’t work but Jonathan Davis makes sense, real sense. We have just run out of petrol and now we are walking in the rain. It is going to take time to get use to it but we are going to have to. So what about credit after the crunch? Probably not advisable unless under professional advice. Like a lot of things in life!
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