Thursday, 6 December 2007

House and Home

Thank or blame George Bush's destruction of the dollar for the interest rate cut. But why are so preoccupied with house process, anyway? The explosion in house prices means that most younger middle or upper-working-class people stand no chance, if things stay as they are, of living out the middle-aged peak of their powers in properties remotely resembling the ones in which they grew up. "Bricks and mortar" do not, at least ordinarily, constitute an "investment". They constitute a place to live.

Why do we care so much more for borrowers living on the never never than for the savers who make it possible for them to do so? We saw that when the Northern Rock crisis first erupted. The London media could not contain its scorn for the queues of "pensioners with tartan trolley bags in Northern towns". You live on their money, you know. But, of course, the only people still allowed to be politicians come from, and move in, exactly those same circles.

And there is no law against fixed interest mortgages. Does no one out there feel like making a mint by offering them?

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