Is the British Consumer Dead? Doh!

Brown and Obama leading the world out of recovery with 'stimulus' and 'quantative easing' huh? Well, how much of an increase has there been in consumer credit in the US?















Oh, none at all.

Ok, if you borrow some money you need some security. You get a loan on the basis of a piece of land you have, or some gold you keep or your car or your second home or whatever. The problem is that when all that 'collateral' has ALREADY been used to get a loan you can't use it any more. Everything is loaned against. And so, no-one is lending and no-one can borrow any more even if they wanted.














Exactly where does anyone see a 'consumer recovery'? It doesn't exist no matter how much Brown, his press chums and everyone else want it to.

As Karl Denninger of Market Ticker says:

We cannot recover until we purge the excess debt from the system, and the longer we take to do that, the longer the pain will last and the worse it will be.

What we are getting from everyone from banks to corporate economists and from government to the press is 'pretend and extend' tactics. They think that by throwing taxpayers' money at the problem everything will be ok. So, they print and print because otherwise we'll have to accept that the banks are all insolvent. Why do you think the government can't get the banks to lend money? Cause the banks need money to shore up their losses. Credit is not coming back. As we see above, the consumer is dead.

DEAD