Headed back toward the double dip?

By Michael Smith (Veshengro)

The weak May jobs report figures are just the latest sign that the recovery has stalled and that the USA are headed for a serious double-dip recession. Is it time for Washington to intervene?

The May jobs report is a disaster – the weakest reading since September. Non-farm payrolls grew only 54,000 last month, according to the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. Private employment rose only 83,000 – the smallest growth since last June. Government payrolls dropped 29,000 and the overall jobless rate rose to 9.1 percent.

Together with plummeting housing prices, falling wages for non-supervisory workers, a paltry 1.8 percent growth in the first quarter, and a precipitous drop in consumer confidence, the picture should be clear to anyone able to see clearly.

The recovery has stalled and while the US are not in a double dip yet, but the odds are increasing.

But is it but the USA that are in such dire straights? I should think not. In Britain things are not better either, despite what the government is trying to tell us with massaged figures.

Heavy job losses in the public sector, pay freezes for at least the next two years, which, in fact, amount to serious drops in pay, with the public sector not taking on those that have lost jobs in the public sector, is just one of the signs.

Prices for everything are on the up, and that relentlessly so, and thus the real value of any pay packet is being reduced more and more almost daily. It is basic food stuff the prices of which are rising more than the costs of luxury items and thus the poor are proportio9nally worse affected and thus worse off.

Consumer confidence is at all all time low and people are not buying, causing the economy to shrink further.

On top of that the Euro zone is in serious trouble and it would appear that, unless the countries of that zone are going to bite the bullet and are prepared to keep bailing out the failing and defaulting nations, the Euro could unravel. This might not, to be very honest, be all that bad a thing and many Germans, for instance, would rather have the Deutsche Mark back today than in a year or never. I can't say that I blame them.

Britain did the best thing by staying out of the Euro and thus the Euro zone. It is just such a shame that we don't have the political will to hit the European Union on the head and leave that club of total madness.

Whatever our politicians may like to tell us, we are still not out of the woods yet, as far as the economy and the recession is concerned and we could go into yet another dip, and a very deep one at that. So let's keep our eyes open and our money with us.

© 2011

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Recession is 'inevitable' as long as UK economy is dependent on oil

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

First the UK's economy must break free of its dependence on oil in order to make a sustainable recovery from the current credit crunch.

This is the warning issued by University of Liverpool expert Simon Snowden, who said the world is heading for a "supply plateau".

Mr Snowden, who recently addressed the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Peak Oil and Gas, said that the accelerating cost of oil marks the approach of a peak in oil production, and that demand will soon outstrip supply to the extent where world economies will begin to fail.

The price of oil has, in the past 12 months, risen from just above $50 a barrel to a record of nearly $139 a barrel recently.

A recent report, however, from Goldman Sachs mentions that the possibility of $150 to $200 a barrel is increasingly likely in the next six to 24 months.

Mr Snowden said that, unnless we completely cut our dependence on oil, we could see years of almost non-existent growth for the UK economy. Any recovery will be short-lived and at ever lower levels.

He further stated that the cost of goods will rise even more sharply and the economy could stagnate into a recession for several years.

In order to overcome this dependence on oil we must invest – heavily – in alternative forms of energy and transport. Changing our economy in such a fundamental way, however, will take years, and therefore, in this sense, a recession is inevitable.

While this may be so it must be a definite requirement that the elderly and the poor, as well as the farming industry, be safeguarded and protected from fuel poverty.

In the United States we begin to see farmers to bring back draft animals for use in the fields as they can no longer afford to run their fuel-guzzling tractors and other machinery.

The great paradox is that the UK exports oil and gas and then imports it again rather than to keep the oil that we produce. This does not make sense. Someone said once, when I questioned him on this, that it would be too difficult to store the oil and especially the gas until needed. Why?

Is the truth not more like that the Treasury gets a nice sum from the export of British oil and gas and that that really is why we do not keep our own, home-grown, so to speak, oil and gas. It is much more beneficial for the Treasury and therefore the government's coffers to sell the oil and gas and then to have the petrochemical companies import oil and gas from elsewhere.

It has nothing to do with being difficult to store, I am sure. In the same way that we destroyed our coal mines in this country – thanks Mrs. Thatcher – and import cheap coal that is low grade and very high in sulfur content. British coal was and is high quality coal that burned well and with today's technology could be the world leader in clean coal power stations and such like. However, most of the collieries will be finished for ever as they cannot even be reopened because they were permitted to be flooded and the gas was allowed to build up in there.

© M Smith (Veshengro), June 2008

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The “Stay-at-Home” Holidays

Reduce your environmental footprint by vacationing at home and save money

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Holidaying at home is good for the environment and also good for you. You save money, there is less stress and all being well you will not need a holiday to get over the holiday.

In the current economic climate and with the impact the so-called “Credit Crunch” on the finances on the individual, and not the individual alone, and also the rising costs of food and gasoline, taking once vacation at home rather than abroad and may be even very close to home, namely AT home, may be something that will needs to be considered. It is the frugal thing to do the way things stand at present and also the environmental, green and ethical thing to do.

With the rising fuel costs and the increase of the general cost of living, from food to taxes, I am sure that the time has about arrived, if it not indeed is here, where we all are going to be turning the penny around a few times more again before we are going to spend it. Therefore, vacationing at home than abroad may just be the result.

Those that have a nice home and a nice garden I have never been able to understand as to why they would, not only spend the money, but the time and effort, to travel abroad for a for a few weeks holiday and then return more exhausted than when they left.

I must say that I rather have “stay-at-home” holidays where I can do what I want when I want and I can take the occasional outing to here and there. Most places wherever this may be have some kind of areas of local interest and even historical interest, just aside from museums and if that does not suffice then a day trip to a larger city to take in the sights and especially things like history and such, is also a very nice thing to do, and, very often a frugal thing to do, as long as you bring your own packed lunch and drinks. Buying them on location, normally, works our rather costly.

I remember before the times of the package holidays and the cheap flights to all over the world that people vacationed at home, in their own gardens, or those in the urban areas on their allotments, or went for a day or so to the seaside, or into the countryside for hikes. Others, especially the working classes that had the funds had a caravan by the seaside or some hitched up a caravan and went on holiday travelling about. Yet again others went on cycling tours with tent, including with their children. But even caravanning probably is out, nowadays, with the rise of the costs of fuel.

People who could not afford to go away or did not want to, stayed, as said, at home in their own gardens, if they had such, or on their allotments, or went to the local parks and open spaces as much as possible.

Seeing the current economic climate, in the United Kingdom, as much as in the United States and elsewhere, with the rising cost of living, of fuel, of food, of everything else it would seem, it is more and more likely now that with maybe already the very summer of 2008 we may just see a beginning of the “stay at home” holidays again. Not a bad thing either, of that I am sure.

Aside from saving money the local parks and open spaces will, once again, see a real resurgence of and in use and the powers that be might then be more reluctant to even think of getting rid off parks and open spaces. The other good thing of the “stay at home” vacations is the fact that such holidays put less of an impact on the environment (do take your litter home with you from your visit to the park and the woods please) in that there is less fuel used, and that aside from the money that is being saved. This saved money, or at least part of it, can then be spent in the local economy, at home.

Flying to destinations, and even motoring to destinations in France, Spain and elsewhere, put an enormous strain on the environment, as does leaving your litter in the countryside, and the environmental footprint of your package holiday, if you had to actually off-set that (something that may still head our way), could be a rather costly affair. Anyway, I am sure that taking holidays abroad is going to be a thing of the past soon, and it would not surprise me if those people that have already booked their holiday flight to abroad for the summer might suddenly find that they are going to be surcharged because of the increase in the cost of aviation fuel and everything else that goes with it.

If you have one, get your garden organized and take your holiday at home. You will reap many benefits from that, not the least the fact that your vacation will start the very moment you arrive home from work on the last day of work before the holidays and it will end the morning you start your shift again. That is aside from the saving made in other departments.

While we are still being told by the our governments that this is not a recession or a depression but just an little blip and a slight economic downturn, all the signs do point to something much more severe.

I may not be an economist but the way things stand presently with everything on the rise as it is – let us face it, in the UK bread has gone up by a considerable about in just a few weeks and that is just one staple that I would like to quote here – I cannot see that we will not be headed further down for a while before we may, but just may, recover again.

The “Stay-At-Home” Holiday is definitely, in my opinion, a small little answer here to keep our own finances balanced a little more. Any frugal advocate will tell you that you save a great deal by staying home to have your vacation rather going away and that is just for starters. While there are savings in the money department, far greater ones are made in the sanity department.

© M Smith (Veshengro), May 2008

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