Time to call it: the recession's over, or there's 10 years to go

wild_cat

Miss Olenska wrote: »

My Dad's not in retail...

I've other family members involved in other sectors to. I just hate this idea that ALL businesses are struggling. Its not true. Some businesses fail... even at times of economic growth businesses fail.

The ones that have failed in the town where I am orginally from are businesses and shops that opened in an area where they had no target market. The more established ones that have closed have been forced out by Tesco or forced to close and sell to cover the risks they took during the boom greedily expanding. Like no small town needs five high end shoe shops etc.

I am also afraid that some business owners are using the recession as a way of cutting wages and costs by pretending they are in a bad situation when they are not. Its like that job bridge disaster... We all know full well a good few of those companies can actually afford to higher the staff but are just using it as a way to get cheap labour ahem free labour.

At the end of the day its all about profit, just because a business is not making the high profits that it did five years ago doesn't mean business is going bad.

Could your Dad's business be somehow able to transfer to more online dealings if you get me? Open up the customer base a whole lot etc.

Miss Olenska

Saila wrote: »

so is missing the point he was making, which was about people he personally knows

And extrapolating, it seemed to me.

wild_cat wrote: »

I've other family members involved in other sectors to. I just hate this idea that ALL businesses are struggling. Its not true. Some businesses fail... even at times of economic growth businesses fail.

The ones that have failed in the town where I am orginally from are businesses and shops that opened in an area where they had no target market. The more established ones that have closed have been forced out by Tesco or forced to close and sell to cover the risks they took during the boom greedily expanding. Like no small town needs five high end shoe shops etc.

I am also afraid that some business owners are using the recession as a way of cutting wages and costs by pretending they are in a bad situation when they are not. Its like that job bridge disaster... We all know full well a good few of those companies can actually afford to higher the staff but are just using it as a way to get cheap labour ahem free labour.

At the end of the day its all about profit, just because a business is not making the high profits that it did five years ago doesn't mean business is going bad.

Could your Dad's business be somehow able to transfer to more online dealings if you get me? Open up the customer base a whole lot etc.

My father is getting offered jobs at the moment that would lose him money if he were to take them. He's not charging crazy prices but they are all small jobs and once rates, materials, bills and wages are accounted for, he would be in the red. To break even or be in the black, he would need some level of volume. A lot of businesses who took those small jobs went bust. So it's work and go bust, don't work and possibly still go bust. That's the reality in his field at the moment.

OPENROAD

starbelgrade wrote: »

But things have picked up. People are - cautiously - starting to spend again. And as I said earlier - it's not like most people don't have money - they have a bit less, but what they have they're afraid to spend.

We have massive amounts of personal savings in Ireland - one of the highest rates in the eurozone. And that really isn't a good thing.

Very very true, also I think people are also a lot more prudent now and whereas before they may well have grabbed an item without giving it a seconds thought will now think to themselves " do I really need this"

Also from personal experience I will wait for sales and even then I know that if I am patient, prices will drop even more in the last few days, looking at one particular UK clothes outlet that globally is performing exceptionally well at the moment, it's Irish sales appeared to have performed badly from what I saw, even allowing for week after week of price cutting, nothing appeared to be shifting, still made for some exceptional bargains in the last week.

LighterGuy

Victor wrote: »

While it can't be ignored, unemployment levels are not the decider of whether we have a recession or not.

I know what you are saying. As for Decider? no. Signs tho yes.
I mean lets say we are in a boom and from now to 3 months time 20,000 people loose their jobs. Something would be up. The economy has that knock on effect with things. So in the example its a pretty good sign things are going down hill.

reinald

OPENROAD wrote: »

Very very true, also I think people are also a lot more prudent now and whereas before they may well have grabbed an item without giving it a seconds thought will now think to themselves " do I really need this"

And this is rational behaviour which will hopefully lay the groundwork for a shift in mentality and a move to an economy built on sustainable steady growth.

reinald

LighterGuy wrote: »

I know what you are saying. As for Decider? no. Signs tho yes.
I mean lets say we are in a boom and from now to 3 months time 20,000 people loose their jobs. Something would be up. The economy has that knock on effect with things. So in the example its a pretty good sign things are going down hill.

It can be a good but incomplete indication. For example, there can be 'jobless' economic recoveries. This is a very likely possiblity in Ireland's case

starbelgrade

Mekhi Rapid Tribe wrote: »

I have a fair idea of the line of work you are in, out of curiosity, is the type of business you are getting now for personal projects funded by savings and lower cost of labour or are there corporate projects too?

A bit of both but in an unbalanced yet balanced kind of way.

Hmm. Not very clear!

Basically, personal projects make up the majority of the work while corporate projects make up most of the profits.

LighterGuy

reinald wrote: »

It can be a good but incomplete indication. For example, there can be 'jobless' economic recoveries. This is a very likely possiblity in Ireland's case

I think it can be an indication. If we have companies going bust & an significant amount of job loses. Its a sign.

Tayla

If the recession is over then i'm a rubber haddock

FISMA

delaad wrote: »

Well, what do you think? I want this from your own experience, not from what you heard on media; just from what you've seen happening around you, and your own gut feeling.

I'm not going to try and mix terms so I'll just call what's going on an economic downturn.

I believe that the economy of the US and its housing market is in for a lost decade or thereabouts. Let's say 8-10 years.

I believe the US is about midway through and that Ireland is about the same, perhaps, lagging by a bit.

Sorry for the doom and gloom. It's just my opinion.

FWIW - I think right now might be the chance of a lifetime, if not generations, to buy property.

DEFTLEFTHAND

If Tipp do it tomorrow the recession doesn't exist for me for at least 24 hours.

don ramo

all that ill say is that we aint seen noting yet, you think its bad now give it another 3 years, when peoples unemployment mortgage repayment plans are running out and the unemployment is at 20%,

just wait, were ****ed and we dont even know it,

gigino

The public sector workers are still well off, any of them that I know have their foreign holidays and their gravy train pensions to look forward to. A shopkeeper I know in a small town who sells luxury goods ( over 300 euro each ) made a point of asking his last 20 customers what they worked at and / or where they worked ....18 oyt of 20 were public sector workers eg teachers, nurses, Gardai , civil servants etc.

Average public sector pay in this country is still close on 49,000 a year according to the cso....its much higher than average private sector pay.
Guess who has the best security, holidays + pensions ? So the recession is not affecting everyone equally.

7sr2z3fely84g5

gigino wrote: »

Guess who has the best security, holidays + pensions ? So the recession is not affecting everyone equally.

A lot seem to be set for retirement,look at the bonanza :eek:-
http://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/unions-say-pension-changes-to-prompt-flood-of-public-sector-retirements-519132.html

At the moment, retiring public sector workers are typically entitled to a pension worth 50% of their final salary plus an untaxed lump sum equal to 150% of their final salary, the Sunday Business Post reports this morning.

reinald

gigino wrote: »

The public sector workers are still well off, any of them that I know have their foreign holidays and their gravy train pensions to look forward to. A shopkeeper I know in a small town who sells luxury goods ( over 300 euro each ) made a point of asking his last 20 customers what they worked at and / or where they worked ....18 oyt of 20 were public sector workers eg teachers, nurses, Gardai , civil servants etc.

Average public sector pay in this country is still close on 49,000 a year according to the cso....its much higher than average private sector pay.
Guess who has the best security, holidays + pensions ? So the recession is not affecting everyone equally.

Again there is probably a lot of truth in this but I would regard it as an overgeneralisation. I don't think anyone is suggesting that the recession has affected everyone equally, either between the public and private sectors or within the public and private sectors. A substantial proportion of public sector workers are not particularly well off and are stuck on salaries at a very low grade. Equally there are obviously a lot of private sector workers who have experienced serious reductions in pay and conditions since the onset of the recession. I would argue that the picture is more complicated and that the emphasis on public and private sector comparisons is a deliberate diversionary tactic from the main causes of the Irish crisis. The public/private dichotomy seems to be largely motivated out of a sense that now is the perfect opportunity to look over the garden fence and engage in largely pointless one-upmanship.

The_Thing

Nobody should take any notice of what gigino has to say.

His \ her account has been permabanned from the Irish Economy forum for spouting the same begrudging bull**** there.

Cee-Jay-Cee

I think the media have made it way worse than it should actually have been. Every opening headline in newspapers/radio/tv for the last few years have been about recession/banking crisis/property market crash/etc etc This creates fear in people who in turn stop spending which fuels a recession.

Joe f**king Duffy has a lot to answer for!

gigino

Rayne Ripe Sadness wrote: »

A lot seem to be set for retirement,look at the bonanza :eek:-
http://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/unions-say-pension-changes-to-prompt-flood-of-public-sector-retirements-519132.html

At the moment, retiring public sector workers are typically entitled to a pension worth 50% of their final salary plus an untaxed lump sum equal to 150% of their final salary, the Sunday Business Post reports this morning.

+1. It means the average public sector worker gets more in retirement from the taxpayer for not working, than the taxpayer ( net contributer to the government ) makes while working. Very unfair.

reinald

CJC999 wrote: »

I think the media have made it way worse than it should actually have been. Every opening headline in newspapers/radio/tv for the last few years have been about recession/banking crisis/property market crash/etc etc This creates fear in people who in turn stop spending which fuels a recession.

Joe f**king Duffy has a lot to answer for!

Respectfully disagree with this. If anything, I think the true extent of the crisis has been underplayed or not sufficiently captured by the media to date. This may be attributable to a mix of lack of expertise in the media and/or sympathies with particular political parties. For example, I'm thinking particularly about the quality of reporting with respect to the banking system. The media largely went along with the mantra that Irish Life and Bank of Ireland should survive state ownership when the gut feeling of many (even non expert) observers was that this was implausible. We have seen what happened to ILP and BOI is probably next and the taxpayer will pick up the tab in the end

reinald

CJC999 wrote: »

Every opening headline in newspapers/radio/tv for the last few years have been about recession/banking crisis/property market crash/etc etc This creates fear in people who in turn stop spending which fuels a recession.

Irrational exuberance got us into this situation in the first place, would be wary of being positive just for the sake of being positive regarding a recovery. Having said that, there is definitely huge fear out there which is depressing spending more than perhaps should be the case, particularly amongst those with mortgage arrears, who substantially comprise a younger demographic and otherwise would be spending.