Come on, let's shackle ourselves to a house, and watch the next meltdown.

George Osbourne seemed quite pleased with himself this week, regarding our country’s recovery.

OK, so there is an upturn in output.
But put that in the context of a pretty broken starting point, and an acknowledgement that wages need to probably remain static, in the light of an ever inflating cost of living.
So, if everyone accepts getting ever-poorer, we can keep on slowly recovering. Hmmm.

This is where we are:
The government, via The Bank Of England has chucked endless new money into the economy over the last few years via quantitative easing, and also started up their crazy schemes like the new one to offer help to buy houses for people who can’t afford them.

Crap dog-themed analogy follows.

It’s a bit like this: Your dog (our country and its economy) gets hit by a truck (yonder financial collapse around 2008).

It fights for its life, sure. But you take it to the best vet money can buy, no expense spared (quantitative easing, cutbacks, crazy schemes).

Then you stand up and tell everyone how the dog’s getting better all by itself, and how great that is. Plucky old Fido. We knew he could do it.

Meanwhile, all those vet bills you have secretly been paying with IOUs need settling, and another truck is circling the vet clinic, waiting…

And what’s this doing to house prices? Unbelievably, house prices are rising again. This is happening because of the intervention measures. Prices have never fallen back to where they should be.

And now they’re rising, despite requiring bigger deposits, despite stagnant wages, and a rising cost of living. It just makes no sense.
House buyers are putting themselves into even riskier situations than pre the last crash. The wage v borrowing ratio is still absurd.
It’s all still so very unbalanced.

Those that don’t risk buying end up living at home for the foreseeable future, or entering the equally inflated private renting arena.

Overall. It’s not going well at all.
I hope that if you have children, that you get on with them. They’re never leaving home….

Related stuff:

Guardian:
http://gu.com/p/3jq4m

BBC:
UK growth fastest for three years
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24668687