Treasury officials have dismissed what they describe as hysteria over government borrowing...

Part 94 of Liam Halligan ranting on in the Telegraph about how we're going to be Zimbabwe in 6 months time on account of Quantitative Easing. This week, unusually, he raises an interesting point. Is the so called 'output gap' as defence against inflation any more than an economist's fantasy? I've yet to hear an adequate explanation for it, even though it's a key part of the deflation argument many have bought into. Maybe he's right after all.

The number of vacant properties in Scotland has soared to a four-year high of 103,000, (4.2% of the total), a Bank of Scotland survey has shown.

Today on This is Money, we launch our annual poll of house prices. In 2008 readers were bang on the money, although we suspect there was a large influx of bearish voters from housepricecrash.co.uk. We had more than 26,000 votes.

kevin maxwell it appears has never worked for a company that makes a profit(please correct me if wrong) and yet has run up huge debts in his 'business career'....is this not an example of why we are in this stupid debt bubble..I noted recently that BT had £11 billion of debt and vodafone and astonishing £32 billion of debt,yet both apparently make a profit

According to the research conducted by UK’s largest tenant eviction and rent collection service bureau – Landlord Assist – residential buy to let landlords with property portfolios consisting of expensive flats are more likely to face arrears. Despite the fact that it seems more logical that tenants with lower household income are more prone to falling into arrears, the research of Landlord Assist showed that tenants with high income have been hit hard by the economic downturn and, as a consequence, oftentimes fall into arrears on rent payments.

Some rare stats for the London market: Some two-thirds of the 5,500 new houses and flats sold in London during the first three quarters of 2009 were purchased as buy-to-let properties, according to property research group MoliorLondon. So the banks have funds for the buy to let but not enough funds for credit worthy families who need a home in London.

Forget the stockmarket and high-interest savings accounts – the best place for your investment cash during the noughties was in bricks and mortar. House prices have doubled between the start of the decade and now, even taking into account the property crash of 2007-2009.

I'm not a supporter of political parties but this gave me real hope.... ;-]

In the source link is the chart of how the Elliott wave "generally" sees things going forward. I.e. we are at or close to a P[rimary]2 second wave of 5 of the C wave - at cycle degree . STR2007said that he thought the next wave was supposed to be the most severe. It is but in terms of price not necessary slope. That then shows the end of the whole bear market at 2015 - 2016. http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_OpWmYZm7O8I/SpbPUKkmKWI/AAAAAAAAAKw/POZLC_SPSBc/s1600-h/0binve-Dow-80-years-long-count.jpg for the big picture http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_OpWmYZm7O8I/SwcAqtU7H2I/AAAAAAAABQE/n8P5_H2QC_8/s1600/0binve-001-202.png for a zoom in and http://marketthoughtsandanalysis.blogspot.com/ for an explanation. The point is IF this theory is correct (and it might not be) then all assets will fall in value