Monevator: The UK's leading website for private investors

Video: Tony Blair warns of the financial crisis

by The Investor on March 1, 2010

Admittedly Blair’s warning of the financial crisis was 20 years too early… 🙂

This is a great news report from the 1987, which reminds you that there’s always something terrible going on in the markets. Panic is nothing new.

Doesn’t Tony Blair sound wise? And posh? And young?

And prescient, when it comes to the financial crisis:

“The real problem we’re left with is that we now have an economy which is so locked in to international trading, so dependent on what happens in America, that anything that happens in Wall Street reverberates around the world. Now the key lesson that we’ve got to take out of this is the necessity for governments of any political colour to work together to stop the excesses of the free market, because that’s what’s really been shown over the last few days.”

Perhaps Blair saw the writing on the wall for the markets while still Prime Minister, and so let Gordon Brown take his job – and later the blame for the financial crisis?

{ 0 comments }

Buffett: Why the property bubble bursting was a good thing

by The Investor on February 28, 2010

One of the most tedious aspects of the bursting of the property bubble has been the endless bleating that lower house prices are universally bad news.

In fact, lower house prices can be good news for at least two important reasons:

If you don’t own a house, lower prices mean you (or your children) are more able to afford a home.

Lower house prices mean extra money to go into more productive and economically useful assets.

You can repeat these facts to homeowners and financial journalists, but the truth bounces off their skulls like moral justice off a banker’s back.

But perhaps they will listen to Warren Buffett?

Weekend reading: Introducing Stock Tickle

by The Investor on February 27, 2010

My weekly roundup from the financial and money blogs and newspapers.

What do you do when you love writing your investing and personal finance blog but it disrupts your work, your weekends, and even your cinema nights?

You start another!

Wait: There is method in my madness. My new site, Stock Tickle, is a very different beast to Monevator.

[continue reading…]

{ 6 comments }

How to increase your salary without changing your job

by The Investor on February 26, 2010

Let’s not delude ourselves: You’ll have to do or be more to increase your salary.

But you don’t have to change your job. Handy if you love what you do!

Understand that anyone senior to you must be able to justify your raise to someone higher. Therefore, whining or pleading won’t work (not for long). And if your boss is the owner of the company, he or she will be the hardest person to convince – they know that every penny counts.

You do a great job, but you’ve previously been underpaid? Tough, it’s too late to moan now. You lost that fight when you signed up.

I’m serious! You’ve already been pigeonholed and to get the pay you deserve you have to show you can fly – either for the company, or if you must then away from the company.