Double Dippy Doldrums

Can anybody here tell dippy old me if the second dip in a double-dip recession is likely to be better or worse than the first dip?

I met up with my old mates Frank, Max, Joe and Charlie yesterday. Like me, they’d flown back to the UK from their winter homes abroad to catch up with family and friends. Of course, a major topic of conversation was the financial crisis. And each of us had a horror story to tell about the way in which the recession had affected our lives.

Frank told us he’d had a terrible time so far. He’d piled into the Stock Market when the FTSE plunged below 4000, and then sold out after it soared well above 5000. Gosh how I feel for him, because the poor chap doesn’t own a single share in anything now.

And Max had a hard time too, when the government gave him and his girlfriend £2000 each to swop their old bangers for brand new cars that cost far less to run. How sad; the poor souls really loved their old cars.

Joe told us how he’d been forced to stock up on lots of goodies when the VAT rate was reduced to 15%. Then Joe broke the sad news about his son, who had bought his first home after the threshold for stamp duty was raised, and after the purchase price fell to a level where the tax was not payable.

And let’s not forget Charlie, whose fixed rate mortgage of 5.09% on his London second home expired and reverted to a standard variable rate of 2.5%. Shocking, isn’t it?

I’m down in the dumps too. Last December I exchanged 10,000 Euros for Pounds Sterling, after which I waited until June when I exchanged the Pounds back into Euros. And would you believe it, in that period of time the Euro per Pound rate changed from 1.09 to 1.21.

Alas, there’s nothing I can do about it, so tomorrow I’m leaving the UK and heading back to the Canary Islands – with my 11,100 Euros of spending money.

I wonder if the second dip of this double-dippy recession will be just as dippy as the first dip for dippy old folk like me and my mates…