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The oncoming recession seems to have had little effect on online bookmakers as the introductory offers encouraging users to sign up remain very good. So good in fact that I took advantage of another one of these offers last weekend.
This time they were offering a £50 free bet after the first £50 qualifying bet which I turned into a £30.70 profit using the matched betting technique. Then by placing a further ten £10 bets I received another £50 free bet which I was able to match out for a £32.27 profit.
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The Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, said that inflation, on the old Retail Price Index measure, will probably fall into negative territory next year for the first time since 1960, as mortgage rates come down.
This is great news for graduates as interest on student loans is based on the RPI measure of inflation. Whether this means loans could actually be reduced by negative inflation remains to be seen, but either way it looks like interest charges will be coming down although any benefit will not be seen until Sept-09, when next years student loan interest rate is set.
Amazingly this years Children in Need appeal raised £20,991,216 on the night which is even more than the £19m achieved last year. This puts it well on the way to beating the £37m in total that was raised last year.
This has got the Daily Mail all confused as they were clearly ready to roll out the stories about us all being “less charitable as the country heads into recession“.
I’ll leave it to the psychologists to debate whether we are more or less charitable during harder times, but for what it’s worth I reckon Pudsey benefited from the ‘Credit Crunch’ as it’s likely that more people stayed in this year and were therefore at home to donate on the night. Although the Sun newspaper would dispute this as they think the ‘Credit Crunch’ means we are all too busy creating the next baby boom!
Out of 10 items that I re-listed on eBay only one of them sold making me a £1.20 profit. Hopefully I will have a bit more luck on Wednesday when I have another 12 items that I re-listed due to end.
And if you are wondering about the headline, well it was a pair of shorts that I sold so I couldn’t resist! Plus I am still feeling short changed from one of the original auction winners refusing to pay up with his excuses for not paying getting worse by the day.
These are not my words but those of the Bank of England following their aggressive 1.5% cut in interest rates taking the base rate to its lowest level in more than half a century.
Whilst it may seem like great news for house owners with mortgages that track the base rate, any feel good factor is likely to be short lived as the reality of the property slump sets in. So far house prices have dropped by 15% in the last year according to the Halifax but as I warned back in March house prices could drop by up to 37.5% (although I should reiterate this was merely an opinion and not based on any scientific calculation).
The real losers today though are the savers as interest rates are likely to be rapidly slashed and whilst inflation is forecast to come down, in the near future it will significantly erode any returns.
It’s not all doom and gloom today though. For those that love Christmas (and I don’t mean the big spending type of Christmas) the odds of a white Christmas have been reduced down to just 7/1 at some bookmakers today giving us a glimmer of hope for that extra special Christmas this year!
