Resourceville blues

[JW Frogen]

We live in interesting times.

[TomB]

There isn't going to be anything left of my little town!

Buy buy buy

[Leftofcentresalterego]

Buy, buy, buy

Buy, buy, buy what? Real estate? There certainly will be plenty of desperate people who can no longer afford to keep the roof over their families head and who will have little choice but to sell at whatever price the buzzards who are currently circling demand.

I have just watched my brother-in-law and his wife lose the ability to keep the roof over the heads of themselves and their three young girls. His job was made redundant about a fortnight ago. Hers will be gone in six weeks. With so many jobs going down the gurgler, thousands of families who bought at the top of the market are now, or soon will be, sitting jobless in houses they cannot afford to keep paying for. With local demand collapsing as local employment prospects evaporate, the houses will likely be difficult to sell for anything approaching what they were bought for, many may find that they cannot sell at all. Even if a couple had a mortgage of only $100 000, you cannot service the debt if both parteners are suddenly made redundant. There are those who became over-leveraged through their own foolishness and short-sightedness and there are those who were much more prudent and sensible with debt but recessions do not discriminate.

On a (very small) positive note, I suppose that our local rental availability crisis has just been solved.

[Ethnic]

AWU thinks the real toll, including all those contracting to the plants could be more like 1100 jobs lost. FUCK!! That would be like a blow to the head with a sledgehammer for this little town. As JM and I have previously discussed, fishing village, here we come.

Are all the workers in those jobs native to the area or did they move there for the jobs? I remember when Mitsubishi closed down in Adelaide and Anna Bligh was begging the workers to come to Queensland to fill the skills shortages. She may now be asking them to leave.

[Jovial Monk]

Qld certainly had a lot of people move to it.

Don't think there is anywhere in particular for people to move to.

[Hebe]

Leftofcentresalterego on Wed Apr 22, 2009 7:49 pm
Some of them are from out of town and some of them are local Celetina.

But judging by the amount of housing developments in Gladstone and close surrounding areas over the past decade, I would say that many of them have settled here, possibly in the belief that the well-paid employment opportunities were permanent.

[Jovial Monk]

Not just Gladstone!

Worse to come as BHP output declines

Article from: The Australian
BHP Billiton has flagged further production cuts after being forced to sell more than a quarter of its iron ore on to spot markets because of deferrals, and failing to meet production expectations.

A combination of slackening demand and weather interruptions led to lower output in the miner's big businesses in the March quarter than in the December quarter.

BHP said it expected market conditions to remain uncertain in the medium term and that all of its operations would remain under review. "We will continue to take appropriate actions in any business that is cash-negative and set to remain so, or where there is a lack of demand," BHP said.
. . .
Iron ore beat production expectations but analysts said the fact the company was forced to sell 28 per cent of its production into spot markets at up to 40 per cent below contract prices would affect earnings. BHP normally sells 10 to 20 per cent of production into spot markets.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/bu ... 43,00.html

So, tell me again Sheepy you Dickhead, that the recession was not one we needed to have?