Wheels are coming off the bus

[AtW]

Yes, agreed that this will be an accelerator factor for the decline in house prices but how this can impact the job market?

The job market will blow because there won't be money available to sustain level of sales - credit no longer will be available and credit tarts like MarillionFan won't be able to jump from one credit card to another for their free 0% balance transfer rates.

The economy in this country and many other countries was pushing forward in the last few years exclusively due to cheaply available credit, so now that credit won't be available at pretty much any rates the chickens will come home and peck stupid home owners to death.

[threaded]

Amateur economists! This debt is all ephemeral, it's not real. So, some boys in the city will lose their shirts, and in retaliation they'll scupper a few deals, but India and China will keep powering on, and like a great big iceberg the world economy will continue on its way.

[AtW]

India and China will keep powering on

Who will they be selling their services and products when people in the West won't have money to pay for their morgage?

[threaded]

Who will they be selling their services and products when people in the West won't have money to pay for their morgage?

They don't need the west.

[AtW]

They don't need the west.

And how will China pay for raw materials needed to produce all these products if they are going to sell them to the Chinese who don't have lots of foreign currency in which said materials are sold?

[Clippy]

They don't need the west.

Interesting (and convincing) article in yesterdays Telegraph supporting this view:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/mai.../cmindia10.xml

[daviejones]

I thought the wheels on the bus went round and round...?

[BrilloPad]

http://www.saveourbus.org/

[shaunbhoy]

We're now having to take planks from below the waterline...

And from Eastern Europe!!

[DaveB]

Shirely steam ships were made of iron?

Surely.

Warships made of wood and powered by steam engines were a common feature of navies in most of the 19th century. Steam engines were first adopted for tugs and gunboats in the 1820s and 1830s. Through the 1840s they became common in medium-sized ships like sloops and frigates. In the 1850s, steam-powered wooden battleships briefly dominated naval warfare. From the 1860s onwards, these wooden battleship was made obsolete by the ironclad warship, but wooden steamers continued to be important in other roles until the very end of the 19th century.

Wooden steam warships combined the new technology of steam power with very traditional wooden construction. Most of the larger steamers combined their steam engines with a sailing rig.