From Bling To Broke © fintag

News comments:
So the UK spends GBP20billion on housing welfare and benefits. Why is this so high? Answer: Property owners.

You see if there is a property boom, rents go up. For example, rents in London are very high and if some broke people need to be homed, the councils have to pay current market rates. If some recent immigrants have fallen on hard times and given birth to triplets and need to look after a few sick relatives, one place to consider would be SW6.

A 4 bed house in Fulham costs about GBP5,000 a month. GBP60,000 a year. Fulham is one of the most dangerous places to live in London so not only would a homeless family need GBP60k of our taxes, they would have to live with French people and endure the White Horse in Parsons Green, as well as the number 22 bus, plus a high mugging and burglary rate.

For Cameron to slash this huge bill will be very difficult if not impossible. People need to live somewhere and unless Cameron puts CGT at 100% on all properties over GBP750k, or brings in rent caps, or compulsory forces house sharing where any unused rooms will have to be handed over to the homeless, there will be people squatting in all those second and third homes, sleeping in parks and generally causing a nuisance.

Let us not forget the Anarchists Cookbook was written in a squat in the 1970s. [Editor: Complete bollox]

I look forward to see how this Government plans to cope with the new Labour homeless.

Today's shorts:
Brevan Howard: From Bling To Bread (telegraph)
America: The Land Of The Lazy (financialarmegeddon)
Limo Driver Seeks Alpha (crainsnewyork)
Bernie Has The Lat Laugh (nymag)

Today's longs:
UK To Convert All Debt Into Never Ending (cityam)
The Greece Spain Portugal Ponzi Scheme (finfacts)
Biggest IPO Ponzi Ever (independent)
Hedgies Reminisce About Paper (guardian)
Subprime ...Sovereign Debt ...The Premier League (bbc)
Goldman Forget To Open The Door (ft)
Blue Genes For Hedgies (secindustry)

Gossip:
Ocado - A man with a van to be the biggest IPO joke of all time. Do you really believe this is worth a billion? The Private Equity industry coupled with Goldman Sachs just want to offload asap. Buyer beware.