The Bank Of England has released it’s monthly Monetary & Financial Statistics (Bankstats) for October 2007. It makes fascinating reading, if you love numbers and statistics. For the rest of us it is probably more useful as a cure for insomnia. I have browsed through it to see what it reveals and perhaps one of the more interesting items is regarding mortgage loans made by banks and building societies.

It would appear that mortage lending in September 2007 had slowed and mortgage approvals are down by around 20% compared to a year ago. One important change appears to be in the value of remortgages taken out. This is may not directly impact the housing market in general but will be very significant for the economy. It is possible a significant portion of this borrowed money was being used for Buy-To-Let in which case this could be very significant for the housing market. If there isn’t the same new money coming in to the market then prices cannot rise and may well fall. All that borrowed money was being spent in all sorts of areas of the economy and remortgage borrowing from Building Societies has dropped significantly from 1,911 million in Sept 2005 to 1,234 in Sept 2007.

What we can say is that there is less borrowed money around for consumers to spend. The impact of that will be felt over the coming months and years but the feeling must be that the easy credit boom years are over, for now at least.

Money Magic: Seven Simple Steps to True Financial Freedom (Quick Reads)

ITV has charged callers to it’s phone-ins over £7,800,000 for calls that could not possibly have achieved what they had paid for. Some MP’s are questioning if this might be considered fraud. It is hard to see how it could be called anything else. Whether it was intended or not this was taking money under false pretences. What would you call that?

Callers to phone in quizzes and competitions were still being encouraged to call in, on premium rate phone calls, even after the results had been decided. This would be bad if the calls were to a freephone phone number. When the callers were charged anything up to £1.00 for the calls it is absolutely shocking. People were encouraged to call and spend money for something that was not possible once the results had been decided. What on earth was the management of these tv companies thinking? Would they think muggings and theft are ok as long is it makes good tv?

Premium rate phone calls should be banned. I can see no good reason to have them. There is no need for them and they are used to mislead people into spending money they do not intend to spend nor want to. If a tv programme wishes to have a competition with a great prize to reward their viewers for watching and joining in that’s terrific. Let them supply the prize and let the viewers phone in on a normal rate phone number. If they feel they need viewers to phone in to vote on something then they should supply a normal phone number or even a freephone phone number. The viewers are helping the show so they should not be charged for doing so.

I have never understood why premium rate phone calls were ever introduced. Actually that isn’t true. I know why they were introduced. It was so some people could make a lot of money for charging people to call. The government is supposed to be there to protect the electorate. How it came to be that they allowed premium rate phone calls to be introduced is beyond me. Whichever government minister was responsible should now step forward and repay everybody who has EVER had to pay a premium rate for a simple phone call. Somehow I don’t think that will happen.

Money Magic: Seven Simple Steps to True Financial Freedom (Quick Reads)

It has been announced that the Consumer Prices Index inflation rate for September 2007 was 1.8% which is the same as the previous month.

This will be reassuring for anyone struggling with increased repayments on loans and mortgages following the steady rate rise increases we have had over the last year or so. It makes it even less likely that there are any further increases in the Bank Rate in the near future.

Money is more expensive and less easily available currently due to the credit crunch. Oil prices are currently very high at $86 barrel and food prices are on the increase due to growing world demand. It would seem that the easy credit and spend, spend, spend, era is now over and we shall have to wait and see if the stock markets of the world continue to rise. It seems unlikely since reduced consumer borrowing and spending must surely filter through to reduce company profits and consequent company values. We live in interesting times.

Money Magic: Seven Simple Steps to True Financial Freedom (Quick Reads)