RAS 0201081317

////////////More bad news on the housing market
And lastly, to the UK housing market. The fear has spread as far as the mainstream press now, with gloomy predictions reported across the broadsheets. But the most telling indicator of the rapid turnaround in sentiment was a straw poll I noticed on the thisismoney.co.uk website.
The site asked readers what they thought would happen to house prices in 2008, with a wide range of answers from “they will rise by more than 11%” down to “they will fall by more than 11%”. When I last checked the count, nearly 90% of voters had opted for the worst-case option, and more than 20,000 people had voted.
Obviously these things aren’t scientific – but if anything like that proportion of the population genuinely believes that house prices will have fallen by 10% by this time next year, then there aren’t going to be many people looking to buy houses in 2008.
Not such a bad thing of course, because banks probably won’t be able to afford to lend to them in any case.



/////////////////MONEY LETTER



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Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? · Books
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Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? is a Latin phrase from the Roman poet Juvenal, variously translated as "Who will guard the guards?", "Who watches the watchmen?", "Who shall watch the watchers themselves?", or similar.
The essential problem was posed by Plato in the Republic, his work on government and morality. The perfect society as described by Socrates, the main character of the work (see Socratic dialogue), relies on laborers, slaves and tradesmen. The guardian class is to protect the city. The question is put to Socrates, "Who will guard the guardians?" or, "Who will protect us against the protectors?". Plato's answer to this is that "They will guard themselves against themselves. We must tell the guardians a noble lie. The noble lie will inform them that they are better than those they serve and it is therefore their responsibility to guard and protect those lesser than themselves. We will instill in them a distaste for power or privilege, they will rule because they believe it right, not because they desire it."
The saying has since been used by many people to ponder the insoluble question of where ultimate power should reside. The way in which modern democracies attempt to solve this problem is in the separation of powers. The idea is to never give ultimate power to any one group; the executive, legislative, or judicial; have the interests of each compete and conflict. Each group will then find it in its best interest to impede the functioning of the rest and this will keep ultimate power under constant struggle and, thereby, out of any one group's hands.



/////////////////////////A man may fail many times, but he isn't a failure until he begins to blame someone else.
- Knox Manning


///////////////////////SMART GOALS=SMART” — specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timed



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