Fuel prices may be at a 5 year low right now, but it’s only a matter of time before the oil barons get greedy again. I was thinking about that this very morning, when the news came on the radio about strikes at some oil refineries in Scotland, and I thought, “here we go again”. This is exactly the excuse the oil industry was looking for to get prices up again, with oil workers on strike it creates the illusion that oil is now in short supply. The way the whole oil industry regulates its own pricing, reminds me of the old salesman’s trick of ‘We’ve only got 50 left and we’re not entirely sure if we can get anymore? so we want top dollar for these!’ It still amazes me that the general public think that the oil industry actually knows how much oil there is left in the world? Scientist’s don’t even know what’s at the bottom of the deep sea yet, never mind what’s below the sea bed. With the sea covering two-thirds of this blob we live on, i’m fairly well convinced they’re just taking wild stabs in the dark with guestimates. When I think back to 20 years ago, scientists then (commissioned and funded by oil barons) were predicting that we would run out of oil in the next 20-25 years, they’re still singing the same tune today with estimates of 20-25 years. They just beef up the price of oil by creating the illusion of scarcity, it would’nt surprise me if they had paid someone to instigate the damn strike themselves! I also think that Gordon Brown won’t be too happy about the strike, as he’s working hard to keep prices down, how else will the economy recover? Oh yeh, if we all just ‘get up to our eyeballs in debt’ and use our credit card’s ‘like it’s free’, the economy will recover just fine. I almost soiled myself yesterday, when a newsreader on ITV (uk news channel) announced that the government may be about to announce that we’re ‘officially in a recession’. I think the banks collapsing around us and billions being lost on the stock market were a big clue!
Posts tagged Recession
Gold in them Hillmans
2008
Written by admin
It turns out we’ve got a few months before the Large Hadron Collider sucks us all into a black hole, and it seems rumours of the finance sector’s death have been exaggerated, but we aren’t out of the woods yet. The prime minister is warning of a recession and, having been chancellor for ten years, he probably knows what he’s talking about.
So, shares, house prices, and the pound are sliding, and pretty much anything else you care to invest in is coming down in value. If you’ve got money to save you could put it in a high-interest account, but it was the dodgy lending decisions made by some of the world’s banks that helped get us into this mess in the first place. The uncharitable amongst us might think that, if we’re already buying them out of trouble with our taxes, we shouldn’t top it up with what we’ve got left.
It’s at times like these, so I’m told, that smart investors look to buy into commodities with an intrinsic value. That means something rare and precious, the supply of which is unlikely to be affected by what happens to everything else – something like gold.
But although gold’s pretty to look at, it doesn’t really do a lot else. Cars, on the other hand, are fun. Unfortunately, you’d have to be pretty optimistic to see a new one as a sound investment – even premium small cars like the Mini lose a chunk of their value the moment you drive them off the forecourt. But choose a car that hasn’t seen a forecourt for, say, 25 years and you might really be onto something.
Classic cars are, at least in some ways, a bit like gold. They’re in limited supply, and we can all agree that they’re worth something even when we aren’t sure about our houses and the money in our pockets. As with everything at the moment, though, it’s hard to be sure exactly what they’re worth. Motoring pundit Quentin Wilson says prices are falling, but auctioneers BCA are putting a positive spin on recent sales.
My solution? Cover all your bases – money, transport and housing – by investing in a classic car that, should it all go wrong, you can live in. VW Camper, anyone?
IMAGE by Flickr user Elsie esq.
