shares

can anyone explain stocks and shares to me?
more and more the whole stock market just appears to be no more than smoke and mirrors. if it didn't have such an impact on the lives of everyone there would be a good argument that the london stock exchange is a really a care in the community exercise to keep self-important people off the streets.

i keep hearing that there is no confidence in the financial system, that banks cannot borrow money from other banks. yet lloyds are about to spend £12 billion on buying hbos. you can only imagine what it must have been like back at the boss of lloyds house when he discovered that spare £12 billion down the back of the sofa. and who knew that barclays would find a £1 billion in a drawer so that they could buy parts of lehman bank.
virgin are rumoured to be part of one of several consortium that are interested in buying gatwick airport. i am sure the £2 billion or so it will cost is just pocket change for richard branson.
they will all be paying cash because we have been told there is just no lending and borrowing going on between banks.

the credit crunch is causing house prices to drop. for some that is a disaster for others it is a boon. now the house prices that were over-inflated are dropping to reasonable levels. so first time buyers can get on to the lovely housing ladder. well they could if the banks would let them, but the banks are all keeping their money for a rainy day.
people who have bought houses are complaining that they are not making money on the deal from the moment that they moved in, and there i was thinking you bought a place to live in it.

all of this means that the stock market has seen millions and millions of pounds wiped off the value of shares. where has all the money gone? if it existed it had to go somewhere. where did it go?

marx talked of a crisis of capitalism. the socialist workers party have been talking about the imminent crisis of capitalism for the last 20 or so years now (still at least someone is happy with the current situation and you can see them all telling their mates “see i told you there was going to be a crisis, i told you”).
of course one of the ironies of this “crisis” is that the cheerleaders of the free market who wanted less regulations to free up the entrepreneurial risk taking spirit are the ones who are crying out for the state to step in and save their sorry arses.

no matter what the financial experts say in the media i still don’t understand how shares work. more and more i am thinking that neither do they.