State of the economy 2

[bobbi o]

Fairly depressing reading in this months contract journal,stating basically how business,which for many is fairly bad this year,will get worse next, as the squeeze on the public sector budgets kick in in the next financial year.

the local authority contracts which have been fairly unaffected this financial year,seems certain to take a hammering next year,as the money dries up and, as an election approaches.

for many it seems that this year it has been the big boys that have taken the brunt of the downturn,as the volume of work needed to sustain their operations,is simply not their.next year it ssems that the wee boys,who have been largely unaffected so far,may take a hit. hopefully things will improve before then,but its not looking too good.

[lutonlagerlout]

its hand to mouth for even us small builders, materials are rising but people have the impression that they can demand discounts that make jobs not worth doing.
we do LA work and luckily they are not expanding the number of builders on their approved contractor list,still has to be tendered for though,and the lowest tender gets the job
LLL

[Pablo]

Over here things have picked up quite nicely but the signs for the winter and next spring are ominous. The year started for me with absolutely no private work and all commercial stuff then it has swung the other way and I haven't even priced commercial stuff since easter. The good weather early on in the spring bailed us out and plenty of private work came our way which at present has us working till september but I am expecting this winter to be even harder than the last. We never ran out of work but we came close and I had the redundancy payslips ready to go. These greenshoots we're hearing about are nothing more than the natural summer upturn the whole economy has every year. It's the same this year but only on a smaller scale. A lot of jobs I go to see the client is expecting that the reccession will get them a discount that frankly is way beyond the profit margin. It's understandable why but completely unrealistic and makes for uncomfortable and sometimes embarrassing negotiations.



Edited By Pablo on 1244880425

[Rich H]

3 weeks in the diary at the moment and very nervous. I'm 'on a promise' of a driveway but even that's only 2 weeks work.

As a natural optimist and someone who's always thought that there's a silver lining to every cloud, even I'm struggling to get to sleep at night.

[dig dug dan]

no big landscape jobs, but i have enough work till september, which in this climate is a relief.
Got some mowing contracts. One is a three year local council, and that pays out end of the year.
Crusher is ticking over, and making the payments on the machine ok.
Just ordered a new truck .delivery in october as a special build. hope i still have enough work to pay for it.

[flowjoe]

Seeing signs that the housing market is starting to move again, which means more surveyors finding more problems that need rectifying. One major developer i know is gearing up for a big push in Sept/Oct as they want to have new build ready for the market early next year because they believe there will be demand ???

Engineers i work with are seeing developers who disappeared off the map returning and looking at opening shelved sites up at the back end of this year.

Hard to say if it is a seasonal thing or maybe the money is filtering through and confidence is picking up ? :;):

[beanlike]

Pablo has a good point. IMO the green shoots are simply the annual spring bounce and the upturn in the housing market has been over hyped as the bottom of the recession...
The movement in the housing market may well be pent up demand from buyers, uncertain of the prevailing conditions and seeing a fall in prices decide to grab a bargain (Bear trap?).

Since the government has implemented it's quantitative easing program (basically the Bank of England buying government debt) it's hardly surprising that the economy has improved slightly but at the expense of diluting the value of the pound in your pocket.

Interest rates kept at an all time low to stimulate the economy is Benny Hill economic policy by Gordon Brown and Mervyn King. See Gordon is shafted both ways: If interest rates are allowed to return to levels that will encourage savings and re-capitalise the banks all the house buyers who bought at or near peak and have variable rate mortgages are going to be looking down the barrel of of very large mortgage payment gun but if he continues to try and spend his way out of the crisis (and it's never worked before) the buyers of government debt will say a big “NO TA� and he'll have to cut public spending (and make a very large number of public sector workers redundant). Catch 22.

A lot of pundits seem to think that confidence needs to return to the economy (and that's a valid point to an extent) but the last ten years have been silly season and the crash had to come at some point.

Recessions are merely a re-adjustment of the economy from misplaced investment into productive enterprises and that re-adjustment is being prevented from happening (car scrappage scheme anyone?)
Give it till 2012 then I'll start believing the green shoots stories..

Recessions have happened before and they'll happen again but will we see the the largest credit bubble in history again..I dunno...will we see another real estate bubble (there was one in the twenties BTW http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_land_boom_of_the_1920s) maybe..

Until the recession is allowed to properly run it's course we aren't going to see any real recovery. The seventies was basically one big recession that was never allowed to fully unwind and not until about 81 did things finally sort themselves out.

I'm not holding my breath...and I'm sure as shite not buying a new house. I'm pretty busy right now but It happens every year in my trade (apart from the last two when it chucked it down almost all summer). Come the winter I think things will start getting shaky again.

Hopefully when the Tories (hack-put!) win the election they'll allow this thing to run it's course and we'll have a nice quick recession but if they bottle it we could well be looking at another 1930's style depression.

Some links for anyone who gives a toss :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_estate_bubble
self explanatory.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tU8jCa_dKTM
Peter Schiff (American so bear with me.)

http://video.google.co.uk/videopl....4&hl=no
Krassimir Petrov Bulgarian economics professor talking about business cycles for when your really bored but all his videos (and there's lots) are excellent.

(well you did go and talk about the economy)

[flowjoe]

Tories get in.... on what policies ??????

They had better get their act together sharpish, watch Brown call an election on the day of Jacksons Circus, i mean funeral



Edited By flowjoe on 1246219186

[rab1]

In the major industrial/commercial markets we`ve had 3no 6million plus M&E jobs moth balled this year, banks wont fund the developer etc. The major banks are asking for breakdowns off every claim etc.

For the likes of myself the government are still building schools, hospitals & universities etc. The commercial office builds are dying, finish an 11 story office next week, next phase was planned for November. we have been told this will not happen.

At one point we were paying off men in batches of 99 to save on major union troubles. (when I say we - I mean my employer)

[lutonlagerlout]

i hear that another medium building company has gone bust in luton this week, no sun shine this way
LLL

[slickboy]

It was huge Keynesian style public spending by Roosevelt throughout the 30's that eventually prevented the total collapse of capitalism and is why we still live in a capitalist society today. When Roosevelt reigned in public spending in '38 unemployment rose and things started to go tits up again. It was only the economic mobilisation of WW2 that re-invigorated the world economy, and that was a form of public financial support of the economy. Gordon's high spend policies willl in later years be seen, rightly, as the reason why we are not entering a Great Depression. Unfortunately the reason for the last Great Depression, poor financial regulation, will not be dealt with by this half-arsed government and so someday we will return to this shit state of affairs where private companies risk is underwritten by the taxpayers while their profit is taken with a big up yours by their directors and does not benefit the public one iota.

[lutonlagerlout]

so what we need slickboy,is WW3?

thing is necessity is the mother of invention,and sadly most great advances in the last few hundred years have been driven by military need, rather than any social welfare aspiration.

thing is if you look at the great superpowers of the last 2000 years where are they now? rome greece turkey persia mayan incas great britain???

things are shifting toward brazil india china and russia
who knows what is going to happen to the UK building industry

but at least grant bovey and anthea turner havent been kicked out of their mansion,they might have done the humble taxpayer for 20 million spondulies ,but hey! they are celebs so that's ok, right?
LLL

[rab1]

At the HQ of a large bank now owned by everyone here the md had a large burn rerouted so it went past his office window. must be nice to be the boss (same man with the pension who likes his signature on the notes)

[rab1]

The thing with the big boys of construction is that they all have minimum tender values, less than x we`re not interested.
spoke to the head qs of one major uk builder who said if you require a large garage domestic, we`ll give you a price, 18mth ago 3mil plus and above was their level. Its all about keeping lads in the job at the moment.

[lutonlagerlout]

we are scratching about now ,still working but its bits and bobs,got a couple of 70k+ jobs in the pipeline if we get them it will see us to xmas :;):
LLL