Gone

All quiet on this front recently... because I'm about to get married! Woo hoo!!

Yep - I have been very busy in and out of work. I'm getting married on Friday then heading to California for a ten day honeymoon. So my ranting and raving will be on hold til the end of the month.

As I've said before I'm not a huge fan of traditional weddings, and neither is my wife to be, so we're trying to have as relaxed a day as possible yet keep the families happy. It's all a bit of both worlds, but it has kept the expense and stress levels down for all concerned and for that I'm grateful.

I did up my own invites, RSVP cards and CD cover for the wedding favour I'm doing, (a selection of the wedding music):

Sunday Bloody Sunday

It didn't occur to me that there'd be a way Northerners could make the Lockerbie bomber release about them and their own grubby little internecine nastiness. How naive of me.

Complete Control

A truism of life is that people are convinced that the world is becoming an ever more dangerous or violent place, that the generation coming after them values life less and has less respect for others.

In Ireland people think back to the 50s and 60s when the murder rate was non-existent and people, apparently, could leave their doors unlocked. That we now know children were being beaten and abused in their thousands by the religious orders seems to be by-the-by. Anyway the fact is those times were a blip in Irish history. Ireland had higher murder rates in the 1800s than it does today, for example.

I recently came across this:

"Now that social scientists have started to count bodies in different historical periods, they have discovered that the romantic theory gets it backward: Far from causing us to become more violent, something in modernity and its cultural institutions has made us nobler. In fact, our ancestors were far more violent than we are today. Indeed, violence has been in decline over long stretches of history, and today we are probably living in the most peaceful moment of our species' time on earth..."

Unsurprisingly he fingers modern media for scaring the crap out of us. Something I have raged about before. It's worth reading.

A Sort Of Homecoming

As you may know I tried to catch a falling knife last year in that I bought a house for about 20 - 25% off its peak value, but an equivalent house in my estate is now down another 10% from that peak (raw figures of approx 390K, to 300K to 260K).

Out of curiosity I did a search in my general area to see how much prices were coming down. Amazingly one particular estate - Mount Oval in Rochestown - is seeing a savage collapse. Houses that routinely sold for 360K and more as low as 220K with 1-beds down below 200K.

One caught my eye because of the following, desperate, sales pitch:

"Last price reduction, this is a bargain not to be missed.The price is set for a quick sale and at this price, the gross cost before tax relief of a 92% mortgaqe of €207,000 over 35 years would be approximately €1,095.40 at a rate of 5.5% APR, allowing for tax relief for a couple, which is €232, the net cost before life assurance would be €863.40, which is about what you would pay to rent, the only difference is at the end of the day you would own the property."

Oh dear! A 35 year mortgage on a one-bed apartment is the same as renting it! That's a good thing!?!

In America, according to David McWilliams and some NY Times article I can't find right now, the long-term price of a house is equal to 14 times the annual rent the place can generate. If that was replicated for this example the apartment is, in fact, worth €145,000.

Or, to put it another way, bargain my hole.

Silver And Gold

So the krauts and the surrender monkeys are coming out of recession already. Good news... except the ECB might jack up interest rates again to head off inflation. So maybe not so good news. If other EU countries are recovering we better be hanging onto their coat tails for dear life.

Overpowered By Funk

I've finally realised why I've been to very few small gigs this year (all I've really done is go to Elbow in Wembley in March and U2 in Paris in July. I'm also going to Muse in the Dublin O2 in November) - the beer brands haven't been sponsoring anything this year. There's been no Bud Rising and no Heineken Green Energy. Coupled with a decision I made to stop going to Dublin for midweek gigs, all of a sudden I have had very little to go to. Besides, I have a feeling that I'm on the verge of entering a late 90's esque period of underwhelment with regards to new music. There's so much being raved about that just doesn't float my boat. Only the Friendly Fires album has proved to be a pleasant surprise.

It's 12:34 and 56 seconds on 7th August 2009.

Or 12:34:56 7/8/9.

Silver And Gold

Some things...

The government announced that VAT receipts are behind forecasts but what the hell did they expect after the April budget?... "Tax receipts are some €575m, or 3%, behind that profile, mainly due to a shortfall of VAT (€448m behind)." Personally I'm down about €300 per month since then. Of course my (and everyone else's) discretionary spending was going to drop.

90% of the people who were in employment during the boom still are and, of those, it appears that about 40% of private sector workers have been forced to take a pay cut by their employer (through pay cuts but more so through reduced hours, reduced overtime and reduced bonuses; and 100% of public servants have taken an effective pay cut).

But people, being the lemmings they are, have also reversed their spendthrift ways and started saving. A lot. "Recent revisions to national accounts showed that the Irish household savings rate fell to 2.3% in 2007 (bar 2000, the lowest proportion of after-tax income ever saved). That rate has spiked to over 12% in 2009, equating to a massive withdrawal of spending from the economy. It has overshot and precautionary saving will eventually ease. Possible triggers for a reversal include the likelihood of smaller-than-feared tax hikes in December."

So, room for hope after all.

As for my shares the Eurostoxx50 have powered ahead to €26.83 - up 38% on what I bought them at, while MAN Group have been very volatile but are now trading at £2.78, plus I've banked a dividend of 15p per share, meaning a 48% improvement.

This market rally can't continue one would feel. A correction in September seems on the cards. I might cash in the lot in the coming weeks and wait for that correction.