by Marek » Mon Sep 15, 2008 9:26 pm
This could effect all of you in a roundabout manner. Have you got a company pension plan or personal pension plan, if so then you will probably have exposure to either Lehman equity, yes the stuff that has now gone down 95% and you may even have exposure to their bonds, which are now worth about 30 cents in the dollar.
The Lehman thing is only a small headache though, the knock on effects for other major financial institutions could be pretty major. Again, if you only held UK equities in your pension portfolio that would be worth around 5% less today than it did on Friday. Some of the most secure/defensive stocks in the market place have gone down significantly in the last year, this is not good.
Then there are the knock on effects in relation to the wider economy. As much as people don't like it, the services/financial industry in the UK accounts for a significant part of the wealth creation. With a lot of jobs going in the City and the general slow down the effect on house prices and people being able to service their debts will be negative. As more bad debts arise, more problems will arise for the banks who will now have to cover more bad debts (which could be large as a lot of these people will be mortgaged up to the eyeballs having bought big houses and flats in the boom), which probably looked like very sensible loans when they gave them out as they worked for top banks that could not possibly go down.
The Bank of England has had to step into the financial markets to help ease the situation. The government is trying to put in place fiscal policy to try and ease the situation. Now, where does the money for this come from. Well, you know your council tax bill, well I would expect that to be going one way, North, and I have a feeling it could be getting very chilly. Watch out for hidden taxes suddenly coming into play.
We are all doomed to financial misery for sometime to come. This is before we even get onto the consumer market, have a feeling that we will see a few household high street names disappear in the next few months.
I feel really sorry those for all the people that have just got onto the housing ladder and those that have only recently started their careers at places like Lehman. These people will have worked very hard to get into these positions and now they will be out on a limb and scratching around a market which is now going to be saturated with intelligent people trying to find new jobs.
But look on the bright side, petrol prices should come down a bit and it has been a bit sunnier the last few days.
Cheers
Marek.....