Uber Doom

[BigTime]

Ambrose is a great doom-seeker:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/mai.../ccview118.xml

..US guru Jeremy Grantham predicting a very bad end to Gordon Brown's debt experiment.

"The UK housing event is probably second only to the Japanese 1990 land bubble in the Real Estate Bubble Hall of Fame. UK house prices could easily decline 50pc from the peak, and at that lower level they would still be higher than they were in 1997 as a multiple of income," he said.

"If prices go all the way back to trend, and history says that is extremely likely, then the UK financial system will need some serious bail-outs and the global ripples will be substantial."

[DimPrawn]

Morning DP.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7569903.stm

The global financial crisis is set to get worse, with a large US bank likely to collapse in the next few months, a former IMF chief economist has warned.

Kenneth Rogoff's comments came as shares in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac sank on a report that the home lenders would, in effect, be nationalised.

Despite hopes that the US economy had turned the corner, Mr Rogoff claimed it was "not out of the woods".

"I would even go further to say 'the worst is to come'," he said.

"We're not just going to see mid-sized banks go under in the next few months," said Mr Rogoff, who held the IMF role between 2001 and 2004.

"We're going to see a whopper, we're going to see a big one, one of the big investment banks or big banks."

[Diver]

Household income is now 131pc of disposable income, compared with 93pc at the top the dotcom bubble, 79pc in the property boom of the late-1980s, and 62pc at the end of the 1970s.

That seems about right

[Xenophon]

Morning DP.

[DimPrawn]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/mai...nusecon119.xml

Summary: USA Economy FUBAR, UK to follow.