After watching the news tonight (basically a promo for the new Victoria Square shopping centre)
I had the thought... Are we not headed into a recession?
I have to admit it looks very pretty but does it not seem madness to open a shopping centre of this scale when we are in the midst of a global credit crunch and negative economic growth. Are people really oblivious to the world around them? Do some people think the good times will go on eternally?

Also Castlebawn- What has happened to it? Have the developers got a whiff of trouble and decided best no to go ahead with it after all? Smart move if they have.

It certainly looked very nice at Victoria but how many other shops will shut as the money goes there. I think Belfast deserves good quality shopping but the poor wages of the majority of shoppers must leave them out in the cold.

The majority can (or, at least, could) cashj in on the windfall of their house appreciation (sell or MEW). In 2006 and early 2007 people were literally getting more for doing nothing, than I did for my hard work.

I thought the exact same thing when I saw the news report, I almost put a topic just like this one up!

On UTV they were looking at £2000 (yes, two THOUSAND pound) handbags for sale. All the civil servants on £14K will be over in their lunch hour to snap them up!

They gave the impression that everyone just spends all their spare time shopping, as if we all have massive amounts of disposable income.

Ah, just 10 days of average house appreciation...

Never thought of it like that!

For every house that I can get my grubby hands on, I make an extra £2000 every 10 days! That's how it works, right!? Cause we all know that house prices go up by hundreds a week; any rise less than this would be unhealthy and ruin our fantastic house price driven economy!

I'm gonna quit my job tomorrow and go into property development

Yes but the money they were getting from their house appreciation means nothing unless they sell up and move down to a cheaper place. If they mew then they are going to have to pay it back sometime

Of course, but if you believe some people, they think the BOE will just reduce the base rate to keep the economy going (read: housing prices rising). Inflation what? Oil prices what? No industry? Eh? Average Joe hasn't got a clue and it'll be their undoing in the end.

It's surprising how many people don't know this...

They were saying on the radio this morning that with houses doubling in "value" - even if you didn't sell- then you would have the wealthy feel good factor that enables you to spend money.

This is exactly what I meant. A provinceful of feel-good people - isn't this wonderful? And if you MEW you can buy fancy stuff today, worry about repayment later! Or maybe just default...