What goes around...
This is all nothing new - idiots in finance chasing each other's bullshit to create an over-hyped market, followed by huge reality check, financial meltdown and hysteria. Rinse and Repeat - it's been done three times in my lifetime (four if you count the Dotcom bubble) - end of the 70s when we were toally buggered, mid-Thatcher-ite 80s (Black Wednesday), then the 1990s Recession...This is without things like BCCI crashing, the Barnigs scandal, Enron, Athur Andersen, Japanese property bubble, etc, etc, etc...

In fact, things like this have happened for hundreds of years - as someone mentioned earlier, there was the South Sea bubble of 1720 when people went crazy investing in totally bogus and idiotic business based on the strength of the Government giving sole trade rights for South America to a company in return for a loan to bail it out of debt.

When it crashed, however, the company directors had their lands and property repossessed and were treated like the unethical thieving shits they were. The difference is that now, despite one of the core tenets of capitalism being the ability to fail as well as succeed as being a major balancing factor, the government would have defended the actions of said unscrupulous cunts and bailed them out with yet more money plucked from the hands of the public - in the 1720s, the newly-named chancellor (the previous one having been expelled for his incompetence), one Robert Walpole, spilt the debt across the Exchequer, the Bank of England and the "Sinking Fund" and England returned to normal after a few years of paying a portion of the national income into the Sinking Fund.

Now, why have Brown and Darling not been strung up and why have neither of them learned anything from history? Of course, "we're not allowed to learn English history in schools now, for fear of upsetting the minorities who were once colonised", but seriously, this is almost an identical situation, so surely we should be looking to it for an answer?
(Chad, Thu 29 Jan 2009, 12:08, Reply)

I once was
stranded on a desert island.

There was no money, it was a barter economy, so to speak.

The nubile lovely ladies who lived there would feed me all the pig and coconut I could eat. All I had to do was pleasure them to orgasm in return...

Fuckinhell...

I very nearly starved to death.
( SpankyHanky, Thu 29 Jan 2009, 11:45, Reply)

So.
Can anyone lend me a tenner?

/F5s repeatedly.
( Davros' Granddad a voice of calm reason in a world of spastics., Thu 29 Jan 2009, 11:40, 9 replies)

So to summarise
we've got 3 types of story form this weeks QOTW:

1) Smug Bastard:
I've got no problems me, I rent, have no debts and am in a secure job

2) Hard done by:
I'm in shit street, my company has told me it's laying off workers, I'm in debt up to my eyes and my wife is threatening to leave me

3) Funny stories

Can we please have a better QOTW this week? Something that will engender stories of pooh, sex, homo erotica and possibly soem girly kissing, preferably in the same story...

Also saw this on moneysaving tips:
www.musicmagpie.co.uk/
If you, like me, are too lazy to sell on e-bay this company will buy you Games, CD's and DVD's, it's not the best price in the world but it's a damn sight more convenient!

Just my bit to help the people who spent way too much on entertainment during those boom years!

Take it easy
(Fuckarma was masturbating into your handbag, Thu 29 Jan 2009, 11:33, 4 replies)

Due to the recession…

My pun has been laid off this week.

Before you all start cheering, I will replace a pun with a short story that applies in this situation*.

The story is about two cars that were in an accident.

These motors meant a lot to their owners and were given names. One was called ‘Hunch’ and the other was called ‘Red’.

The only impartial witness to the accident was a rather posh chap who spoke very quickly and insisted in dropping his ‘H’s during conversation.

He was eventually approached by a policeman who wanted to take a statement.

The rozzer asked the witness: “Can you tell me very briefly who was responsible? Who hit who?”

The posh chap gabbled: ”Car Red ‘it Car ‘unch.”

\coat
\here all week
\veal
\and so forth

*OK, so I lied. but so have the government…and the banks *shakes fist*
( Pooflake braces for an onslaught..., Thu 29 Jan 2009, 11:29, 3 replies)

It's been a bit of a pain, but things ain't so bad :)
I've only recently joined the workforce, but thankfully my job should be secure (I get shuttled round to various branches to cover other manager's holidays :P) it isn't glamorous - but my chosen profession (finance) has pretty much closed shop these days, so I've gotta wait it out. I rent, have no loans etc apart from student ones (and who expects you to pay those back?) so I'm alright :)

Roll on the boom :D
(comrade^, Thu 29 Jan 2009, 11:17, Reply)

Just Desserts
Well, having said earlier on this week that it didn't seem to be affecting me too badly, I've just got out of a staff meeting where we've been told we won't get paid for this month as the company can't afford it...

Ho hum, time to do even less work and even more b3ta than usual then!
( Sonic James Doom forgetting the date since... umm..., Thu 29 Jan 2009, 11:08, 7 replies)

We all have to make sacrifices…

Last night I was informed that on a recent evening out in the Coventry area, a man was happily munching on a ‘mixed-meat special’ curry when he felt something odd between his teeth

Reaching into his mouth, he removed the offending article and on closer inspection he discovered that he had indeed been chomping on…

A small microchip.

The implant kind that are used to tag dogs.

Seems that during the current economic crisis, the curry house had made a few cutbacks of their own...particularly on their meat budget.

There's a credit 'crunch' for you.

Eeeeuuuuwwww.

Apparently this is in the local papers but I don’t read them so cannot substantiate the claim. This must be an urban myth…If someone can prove / disprove it for me I’d appreciate it :)
( Pooflake braces for an onslaught..., Thu 29 Jan 2009, 11:02, 4 replies)

CC Cock Ups!
You would hope the people in charge of our economy would have so many advisors and experts that things like this can't take us by suprise.
However its not just us western thicko's who spoon it up! Around 2002 in Japan the government allowed property prices to reach such ridiculous levels that at one point the land the imperiat palace, tokyo is on was technically worth more than Canada!
(colonelc81 100% Nylon, Thu 29 Jan 2009, 10:55, Reply)

Beerconomics
The rising costs caused by credit frenzied individuals leading to hyper inflation and the declining income the subsequent and totally unavoidable (que scary muzac) CREDIT CRUNCH has brought required drastic action. So, I packed up my family and moved to China.

Now we are living in Shanghai, where its polluted and grimy atmosphere blankets everything in a layer of toxic dust and not one bastard speaks anything like the Queens English and every person who owns a car has no fucking idea how to drive it and behaves like a right cunt on the road while every square inch of footpath is taken up by a stream of clapped out push bikes thicker than a 10 pint piss and the food contains fucking great hunks of unspecified animal guts but, we can by cartons (ie Box, Slab, Case, 12 X 750 ml bottles or 24 X 375 ml cans) of Beer for 3 quid (USD 4.00, EUR 3.50, AUD 6.00, ZWB 159, 813, 720) which makes surviving this depression easy.

Alcohol the cause of and answer to, all of life’s problems.*
(* H.Simpson 2001)
(bad_advice QOTW survivor from the first trollocost!, Thu 29 Jan 2009, 10:39, 1 reply)

No money - quick spend what's left of it!!
Sooo with the rapidly snowballing ball of credit crunch crapness starting last year, I begin to suffer...

I still have my (very stable) job. I get free accommodation, bills paid, car (and fuel) and even my food provided.

So, what suffering ask you?...

All the talk of poverty grips me like a smelly unwashed fist. I'm gripped. I CAN'T STOP BUYING THINGS!!!

It's as if, suddenly, the onset of the CC has made me panic that if I don't buy buy buy now I'll never buy again.

And so, over the past few months I've bought - clothes, ah the clothes, and boots and shoes, and EVERYONE got great Christmas presents this year. I bought a new shiny laptop - not because I need it - I'm writing on the one I'm provided with at work! - but because I thought I MIGHT need one in the future. You know, of my own.


And now I find myself in quite a large pile of debt. Which, in its own way, the credit crunch can be blamed for.
(But at least I have lots of shiny toys to play with in my poverty, too)
(Psyche finishes work at the end of June! Yay!!!, Thu 29 Jan 2009, 10:33, Reply)

Chucking cash around
I went into my local Barclays to pay-in a small cheque just yesterday. During this 30 second transaction, the till-hag handed me a little card, recently spat from a teeny printer.

"Wossis?" says I

"You is pre-approved for a loan, based on your account activity and long standing customer loveliness" quoth she...

[btw - overdrawn at the end of every month, £5k credit card bill with the very same bank, and rising... customer since 2007]

How much d'ya reckon?

By signing the little card and handing it back, the cash would be mine to spend in full wonga in my currrent account, that very day... right there and then....

Twenty

Four

THOUSAND

'king

Pounds.

I mean, wtf? The bank would lend me the best part of a year's gross wage when I'm already uncomfortably close to not having enough.

Natch I signed.

See ya later Barclays... I'm off to a hot palce with no extradition treaty.

Laters.
(bastardboy loves his mummeh, but hoo is daddeh?, Thu 29 Jan 2009, 10:00, 2 replies)

This has been going on for quite a while now, hasn’t it…?

We had a new carpet fitted in our drawing room* this week.

Before we bought said carpet, the present Mrs Pooflake and I discussed our options as to where to begin our search; i.e should we help a smaller local business, or possibly save ourselves a bit of cash and go to a mahoossive faceless corporation.

TPMPF said: “Oooh, daaahling”** ,then continued in a reminiscing style: “We should go to that little ‘Stockroom’ place, in the backstreets, owned by the sweet old man who remembers our names. We always used to go for our furniture and carpets when we were struggling – that would be nice”

“Hmm” I said, but agreed. As we climbed into the car I mentioned: “I wonder how the old place is coping in the current recession?”

I got my answer as we pulled into the car park.

The place was completely derelict. Every window smashed, little fires had long been started and extinguished and the whole building was covered in overgrown moss.

It must have been abandoned for five years at least. The sweet old man is probably dead…death by extreme poverty and the broken heart of his life’s work collapsing before his very eyes.

I pondered for a moment about the lives that are affected by this global economic crisis…

…then promptly fucked off to the cheap carpet megastore round the corner and blagged a lovely £1200 carpet for £150 in their closing down sale***! Woo!

So it’s not all doom and gloom...


*I know it’s a fucking ‘lounge’ – please grant me one indiscretion of pretending to be posh every now and again.

**She didn’t really, she bellowed “Oi! – UGLY McCUNTYCOCK!”, but that sucks a bit of the romance out of the situation.

***Fitting cost me an extra £65 – for 30 minutes' cunting easy work! - money grabbing total wankbats. However, I rose above it and still tipped them another £20….and not just because it made me feel superior…although it did…a bit.

( Pooflake braces for an onslaught..., Thu 29 Jan 2009, 9:07, 9 replies)

legend has it that my family invested in the south sea bubble of 1720
and we've only just recovered enough to buy a bungalow.
there's a moral here but i can't be fucked trying to find it.
(Fuckpig "That's not even a pound a midget.", Thu 29 Jan 2009, 2:42, Reply)