Month: August 2018

Wednesday, 15th August 2018

It’s all over! Or is it?

The Daily Mail’s Alex Brummer was in no doubt. He said this:

‘The Bank of England has signaled the financial crisis is finally over with the decision to lift interest rates to the highest level in a decade….’

You can imagine the sheer relief that swept through the Gibson household once Brummer had issued his resounding all-clear….

At last! Thank goodness! The ‘emergency’ that began a decade ago and took interest rates to the lowest level in the Bank of England’s 300+ year history is finally over….

The Bank has raised the base rate of interest all the way from 0.5% to the dizzying heights of 0.75%….

Things can finally get back to ‘normal’….

Or can they?

What about the financial crisis that lies just around the next corner?

• Pockets of risk….

It was last September when the Bank of England’s Financial Policy Committee (FPC) described the burgeoning consumer credit market as a ‘pocket of risk’….

The consumer debt pile in Britain at that time amounted to £200 billion….

The FPC issued some stark warnings that, if the economy took a turn for the worse, rising defaults on that consumer borrowing could result in High Street banks losing up to £30 billion….… Click here to read more

Thursday, 2nd August 2018

Investments with ‘Star Quality’ rarely add-up….

I have no interest whatsoever in celebrities….

I never read Hello magazine. I’m not interested in what the Kardashians or the Katie Prices of this world are up to. I couldn’t care less who is topping the download charts or who is dating who….

I would recognize a big film star or a sporting icon. Most of the time, anyway….

But I can tell you with some small element of pride that the winners of Love Islandcould walk into my office this morning and I wouldn’t know who they are….

These days when I look at the right-hand sidebar on the Daily Mail website, I don’t recognize the faces or know the names of at least 80% of the young starlets, bronzed hunks and assorted Z-list glitterati the stories behind those links are focused on….

That is just as it should be. If it were otherwise, I might need psychological help….

• I am not the norm….

But I am not the norm. I am an outlier on the scale. An old fuddy-duddy who doesn’t ‘get it’….

The rest of the world appears to be obsessed with celebrities and their various trials and tribulations – placing an emphasis and importance on matters that seem so pointless and trivial to me that I can’t fathom it….… Click here to read more