Although this has been another busy week with meetings and a lot of leafletting the main topic of conversation is the collapse of the banking industry and efforts to stave off economic disaster. We are not economic experts and take our chances like everyone else. It was once said that if all the economists in the world were laid end to end they would still not reach a conclusion so what chance have we got.
At least we had some good news this morning with confirmation that BCC has no money tied up in Icelandic Banks. It appears that nearly 100 local authorities and several other public institutions, Fire & Police Authorities, Transport for London and others have over half a billion pounds in accounts which may longer exist. At least we stayed clear of that mess.
On a personal note from Keith "I decided about 4 years ago to reduce my debt as much as possible. I had a small mortgage but was maxed out on 2 credit cards. I decided to only use them for purchases when I needed them to be insured but other than that have not used them at all and made great efforts and got them down to zero. This meant I was not paying all my disposable income to the card companies and when I need a loan, for instance a newer car last year, I can shop around for the best deal. The reason for my caution was that I could not understand how we could be a successful economy by doing each others accounts and when working for a hardware company I saw that virtually everything was imported from India & China. This could not go on and I now feel this has been vindicated. This is no comfort to all those who are staring into the abyss of job losses and repossessions so lets hope that the action being taken affords some hope for the future, although I fear the worst."
