The great interest rate rip off part 1

Commerzbank, Germany's second-biggest bank, has said it is to be partly nationalised, with the government taking a 25% stake, plus one share.
The bank is to receive 10bn euros (£9bn; $13.7bn) in a second injection pf capital from the German banking sector stabilisation fund, Soffin.

Commerzbank had been seeking help after its 5.1bn euro takeover of rival Dresdner Bank from insurer Allianz.

It shares had fallen to a record low on Thursday ahead of the announcement.

In a statement, the bank said: "The federal government will hold a stake of 25% plus one share in the new Commerzbank."

Another bank part nationalised.

interestrateripoff · January 9, 2009

BBC NEWS | Business | Citi backs mortgage relief plan

US bank Citigroup has agreed to support a proposed change in US bankruptcy law to help troubled mortgage borrowers avoid losing their homes.
The controversial change, known as "cramdown", would let courts wipe out some mortgage debts.

The legal reform would help "millions of families save their homes", said US lawmakers who proposed the measure.

Opponents say giving bankruptcy judges the power to erase mortgage debt would increase costs for future homeowners.

A similar proposal failed to win approval last year amid stiff opposition from Republicans and some Democrats, as well as banking and housing industry lobbyists because of the possible impact on future borrowers.

'Bankers supportive'

However, with a recession under way and the housing market in crisis, Democratic lawmakers say that Citigroup has become the first major bank to back the reform.

"This is a breakthrough. Foreclosure is the cause of our economic problems and we have got to address that," said Democratic Senator Christopher Dodd, chairman of the Senate's banking committee.

As I've said wiping off the debt is the only option.

interestrateripoff · January 9, 2009

Barack Obama: we must spend our way out of recession - Times Online

Barack Obama declared yesterday that only unprecedented and urgent government spending could prevent the deepening recession stretching for years into the future.
Eleven days before taking office, the US President-elect said that he was entering his presidency “in the midst of a crisis unlike any we have seen in our lifetime”.

The “day of reckoning” had arrived, he said, and the risks of “doing too little or nothing at all” were even greater than those of allowing a federal deficit – already projected to reach the record figure of $1.2 trillion – to spiral on into the years to come.

Mr Obama used his first major policy speech since his election to call on Congress to act quickly on his request to pump hundreds of billions of dollars into the American economy. He said that figures to be released today would reveal that the United States lost more jobs last year than at any time since the Second World War.

“At this particular moment, only government can provide the short-term boost necessary to lift us from a recession this deep and severe,” Mr Obama said. “Only government can break the vicious cycles that are crippling our economy.”

Mr Obama’s speech was his most outspoken public pitch so far for his massive spending plan. It was the frankest recognition of his belief in the role of government to save the economy.

The President-elect’s words were strongly welcomed by Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling as clear evidence of a growing world consensus that governments must support their economies with fiscal injections.

A Downing Street official said: “We agree with every word of his call for action. You need to take action and you need to take action now to avoid a much deeper and longer recession.”

Mr Obama’s pledge came as British interest rates were cut to 1.5 per cent, their lowest level in history. But only around half of borrowers will benefit and savers will be hit by another cut in returns on their investments.

Spending your way out of recession with even more debt, perhaps we need to call in ocean finance and roll it up into one affordable loan?

You may be able to do this with spending in the right areas. However the lobbyists will make sure the money is wasted.

interestrateripoff · January 9, 2009

Bank of England interest rate cut: Era of interest-free mortgages looms, experts predict - Telegraph

Financial experts said some borrowers with tracker mortgages could see their rates drop to zero, meaning those with interest-only mortgages would have nothing to pay on their monthly mortgage repayments.
Lawyers suggested that if rates dropped further, borrowers could end up having their mortgage paid for them by their bank.

Eddie Goldsmith, of property law firm Goldsmith Williams, said: "This interest rate cut is bringing lenders and borrowers perilously close to a bloody conflict.

"Many lenders will never have taken into account the prospect of such a drop in rates and will have their lawyers scurrying back to their offices to look at the small print of their mortgage conditions as the prospect of having to pay their borrowers is to awful to contemplate."

The majority of borrowers with a tracker deal pay the bank rate, plus a percentage on top. But some deals available just over a year ago allowed borrowers to pay the bank rate minus a percentage.

If the bank rate falls much further, these borrowers could be paying negative interest on their mortgage.

Ray Boulger, of mortgage brokers John Charcol, said: "The Financial Services Authority has made it clear that lenders must honour the terms of the mortgage contract. Unless borrowers were told before that they signed up to the mortgage that they would not receive negative interest, lenders will have to cough up."

The latest twist in Britain's mortgage market saw Bank of Ireland - which has the Bristol & West brand - announce that it will no longer offer mortgages via brokers.

Halifax, Britain's largest lender, said it would pass on the the full 0.5 percentage point cut in the bank rate to all existing tracker customers and reduce its standard variable rate by 0.5 percentage points to 4.5 per cent.

The banks due to the BoE could start to lose a lot of money even on the mortgages that they getting the money back on?

This is on the top of the losses looming with people losing their jobs.

Nationalisation here we come.

interestrateripoff · January 9, 2009

Bloomberg.com: Worldwide

Jan. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Prime Minister Gordon Brown should buy homes on the verge of repossession to add money to the British economy and save families from being thrown out onto the street, two former Bank of England economists said.
The plan would cost about 50 billion pounds ($76 billion) over five years, Fathom Financial Consulting economists Shamik Dhar and Danny Gabay said in a report today. The program would also provide a new economic policy tool as the central bank’s interest rate approaches zero.

The Bank of England yesterday cut its benchmark rate to 1.5 percent, the lowest since the bank was founded in 1694, bringing it closer to the limits of conventional monetary policy. U.K. officials are considering other measures such as buying assets to pump money into the economy as the recession deepens and threatens to exacerbate the housing-market slump.

“The smart asset to buy would be housing directly,” Gabay said in an interview. “The ideal thing is to go at the core of the problem. This would bring forward the necessary correction. It would to a great extent put a bottom to it.”

The government would finance the program by selling bonds, which the Bank of England could buy up to expand the supply of money, Fathom said. The proposals are a more direct intervention in the housing market than measures planned by the U.S. Federal Reserve, which this week started buying up securities backed by mortgages after bringing the interest rate close to zero.

‘Social Landlord’

Brown’s government would become a “social landlord,” charging rent to families and saving them from eviction, Fathom said. The plan would also allow banks to benefit through the removal of outstanding bad debts as financial institutions worldwide nurse more than $1 trillion in losses and writedowns from the credit crisis.

More money out of thin air.

pygmalion · January 9, 2009

two basic things here:

The bank of England sets base rate and banks charge what they want. Banks are not making any profit on the basis of what the Bank of England charges, rather its the margin they charge so its a futile cause. Secondly inflation is a target of the bank of England and they have to control it.

Inflation however is not what you think it is and deflation is our issue now. This deflation was forecasted extremely accuratley whilst we were all talking about inflation in this column by a leading independent financial adviser

interestrateripoff · January 9, 2009

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/busi...icle5477870.ece

Angry Indian investors are demanding to know how PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), the auditor, missed a systematic £1 billion fraud at Satyam, the IT outsourcing group, for as long as seven years, while Merrill Lynch, the US bank, became aware of the deception in ten days.

PwC's role in “India's Enron” comes under the spotlight amid allegations that large Indian companies regularly use misleading accounting techniques and bully analysts, accountants and auditors into staying quiet.

B. Ramalinga Raju, the chairman of Satyam, shocked corporate India on Wednesday when he admitted inflating the company's profitability, which led to the presence of more than £1 billion in fictitious cash and other assets on the books. Of that total, the $1 billion cash pile investors had been told Satyam possessed was, in fact, only $78 million, Mr Raju disclosed in a letter to the board — a straightforward falsehood that the auditors might have detected had they run a rudimentary check of the group's bank accounts, according to experts.

As Dennis Beresford, a former chairman of the Financial Accounting Standards Board, the US accounting watchdog, said: “It's hard to miss $1 billion of cash.”

Satyam's bogus accounts had been audited by Price Waterhouse, the Indian auditor that has been a member firm of PricewaterhouseCoooper International since 2000-01. The company balance sheet as at March 31, 2008 was signed off by Srinivas Talluri, a partner of Price Waterhouse in Hyderabad, the southern Indian city where Satyam was based.

Merrill Lynch, meanwhile, had been retained by Satyam ten days before Mr Raju's confession, to explore merger opportunities for the outsourcing giant, which was already struggling with corporate governance issues. Hours before Mr Raju admitted to the fraud, the investment bank severed its ties with the company. “We came to understand that there were material accounting irregularities, which prompted our decision,” a spokesman for Merrill said. PwC and Price Waterhouse would not comment yesterday, citing client confidentiality, although Price Waterhouse added that it would co-operate with the regulators.

So PWC spent several years getting paid quite well to sign of the accounts and it took Merrill Lynch 10 days to discover the fraud.

Will more of these scandals come to light?

interestrateripoff · January 9, 2009

Banks told to spend Â£1bn on new IT to prepare for failure â€¢ The Register

The Financial Services Authority is consulting with UK High Street banks about the need to improve their IT systems so that consumers will get their money back more quickly if a bank should fail.
The FSA estimates that British banks would have to spend just under £1bn to upgrade systems so they could provide a comprehensive list of accounts within 48 hours as the first step to giving them their money back. Such payments are made via the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS).

But Peter Tyler, policy director for retail at the British Bankers Association, told the Register: "We agree with the broad thrust of the FSA proposals but not how they suggest we should get there. There is a problem which needs addressing here but the FSCS is not the best way to do it.

"The FSCS was not designed with the collapse of a large or medium-sized bank in mind. Rather than have a large bank send out millions of cheques to customers who must then open new accounts, people should have constant access to their accounts."

Tyler said Bradford & Bingley was an example of a better way to deal with such failures - the government effectively nationalised the bank and shifted its book of retail accounts to Santander so customers had continuous access to their money.

The FSA consultation suggested banks would need to upgrade IT systems and modify applications in four main areas - data cleansing, eligibility account flagging, creating a single customer view - bundling all a person's accounts into one place, and additional capacity in all systems should a fast payout be required. Such systems would take at least 18 months to put in place and would cost £891.3m over five years.

FSA consults on changes to financial compensation scheme

interestrateripoff · January 9, 2009

As global crunch squeezes Gulf, debt defaults and ratings outlook downgrades mount -- chicagotribune.com

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) — Kuwait's biggest investment bank on Thursday said it had defaulted on the majority of its debt while Bahrain's two biggest commercial banks saw their ratings outlook downgraded, as the global financial meltdown pummeled an oil-rich Gulf Arab region that months ago was the focus of a much-hyped economic boom.

Further reflecting the troubles facing the region, Standard Chartered Bank on Thursday sharply revised down its outlook for economic growth in the region, citing the current global meltdown.

The announcement by Kuwait's Global Investment House marked a sharp blow for the firm, which had been meeting with creditors about restructuring what its managing director said in December was $3 billion in loans.

That push came after Global defaulted on a $200 million dollar maturing loan that month, prompting Fitch Ratings and Standard & Poor's to downgrades its ratings. In its latest statement, the company said that as a result of the earlier default, and because of cross default provisions, it was "in default on the majority of its financial indebtedness."

Are the banks going to start defaulting now?

interestrateripoff · January 9, 2009

two basic things here:

The bank of England sets base rate and banks charge what they want. Banks are not making any profit on the basis of what the Bank of England charges, rather its the margin they charge so its a futile cause. Secondly inflation is a target of the bank of England and they have to control it.

Inflation however is not what you think it is and deflation is our issue now. This deflation was forecasted extremely accuratley whilst we were all talking about inflation in this column by a leading independent financial adviser

The banks have been following Libor which usually moves the same as the base rate in setting loan interest rates.

Inflation is not the target of the BoE because they have never had control of it, they admit Chinese imports have been masking UK inflation and they did nothing to tackle House Price inflation, so I don't agree that they target "inflation". What they target is a tiny part of economic inflation hence the result of poor policy decisions.

The problem now is not merely deflation, it's full scale economic collapse the global economy is grinding to a halt. The global economy has growth because of rampant consumerism funded by debt.

Credit facilities have been removed as the banks can no longer keep selling the risk onto the markets via securitisation this means the only money they have to lend is what they have in deposits and what they get back via capital repayments. This in now covers the about being lent over past decade.

If there is no consumption the global economy collapses.

Interest rates will fall to 3% , the cost of living will also fall dramatically

I believe we will have further drops in interest rates and they will be sharp. I forecasted 4% last year but I think it may need to go as low as 3% to stimulate the economy. In the meantime the traders in speculative commodities such as oil, food etc have had a torrid time and whilst this is having a real impact on energy stocks in the FTSE, it is easing inflationary pressures at a rapid rate. So expect the cost of living to fall dramatically (hampered I expect by tax increases). Expect prices at the shop to fall too and expect your mortgages to be a lot lower than they are. A fall from 5% to 3% would be a 40% drop in expenditure.

In the meantime the government's intervention with banks may well have made their currency a lot weaker but this can be good. A weaker currency means we stay in the UK more and spend our money here but also we are a lot more attractive to overseas tourists. Manufacturing can also be buoyant as the cost of exports can be cheaper because of the currency differences.

Rates are going to go much lower than 3% cited here, everyone will end up with 0%.

interestrateripoff · January 9, 2009

washingtonpost.com

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- As the economy sputters and tax revenue plummets, governors and mayors across the United States are lining up to ask President-elect Barack Obama and the new Congress for hundreds of billions of dollars to plug holes in their budgets, arguing that services will suffer and joblessness will rise if Washington does not come to the rescue.
In Ohio, which has shed 100,000 jobs in the past year, Gov. Ted Strickland (D) and his budget team spend a lot of time delivering bad news to constituents and plotting ways to wring money from the federal government. He announced $640 million in cuts for the budget year ending June 30, for a total of $1.9 billion since the economic crisis began.

"We're not crying wolf. This is real," Strickland said in an interview in his statehouse office, pointing to charts that project the most serious erosion of state income in 40 years and a two-year budget deficit of $7.3 billion. Revenue shortfalls in the upcoming two-year budget could amount to about 25 percent of the state's discretionary spending.

Strickland recently picked up the telephone and called Rahm Emanuel, the incoming White House chief of staff. When he heard the recorded voice of his former congressional colleague, he left a message: "Rahm, it's Ted. You've never failed me and I need $5 billion."

Obama has promised money, contending that the need for a stimulus justifies an expansion of the record federal deficit. Vice President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. last week promised a down payment on a middle-class tax cut, plus spending to improve roads, bridges and water systems. He called the package the new administration's "most urgent order of business."

"There is no question about it," said John Habat, a budget specialist at Cleveland's Center for Community Solutions. "At this point in the financial crisis, federal aid is the only lifeline left for Ohio."

And the crisis deepens now the states are running out of cash.

interestrateripoff · January 9, 2009

Bloomberg.com: Worldwide

Jan. 9 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. lost 524,000 jobs in December, making last year's collapse in employment the worst since the end of World War II and underscoring the severity of the recession President-elect Barack Obama will inherit in less than two weeks.
The decline in payrolls was in line with forecasts and followed a drop of 584,000 in November, bringing job losses for 2008 to 2.589 million, the most since 1945, according to a Labor Department report today in Washington. The jobless rate rose more than forecast to 7.2 percent, a 15-year high, from 6.8 percent.

The outlook for 2009 is no brighter as retailers from Wal- Mart Stores Inc. to Macy's Inc. slash profit forecasts and manufacturers including Alcoa Inc. cut output and staff. The figures will intensify pressure on U.S. lawmakers to speed Obama's proposed fiscal stimulus through Congress in an effort to save or create 3 million jobs.

``We're seeing pretty ugly numbers as the recession is worsening,'' Michael Gregory, a senior economist at BMO Capital Markets in Toronto, said before the report. ``It's going to be devastating in terms of consumer confidence and spending. The next couple of months will be dismal.''

Payrolls were forecast to drop 525,000 after a previously reported 533,000 decline in November, according to the median estimate of 73 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News. Estimates ranged from losses of 350,000 to 750,000. Revisions subtracted 154,000 from payroll figures previously reported for November and October.

The jobless rate was projected to jump to 7 percent from a previously reported 6.7 percent in November. Forecasts ranged from 6.5 percent to 7.1 percent.

interestrateripoff · January 9, 2009

CrossingWallStreet.com: The Great Crash of 1906

We recently celebrated the 100th anniversary of the start of the longest bear market in history.

What’s that, you say never heard of the Crash of ‘06?

On January 19, 1906, the Dow peaked at 103. That date may not ring throughout the annals of history, but it was pretty important for the stock market.

The stock market soon crashed and by 1907, the Dow bottomed out at 53. Now that’s a bear market! None of this wussy 1.8% nonsense.

The Dow eventually recovered, but the January 19, 1906 high haunted the market for years to come. Even by 1914, the index was still in the 80’s when the exchange was shut down due to troubles "over there." Soon traders started doing business on the street, so the NYSE opened again that winter. And once again, the Dow plunged 53.

Nevertheless, the Great War was good business, and the Dow finally hit a new record of 103.11 on September 28, 1916. The Dow nearly got to 120 in 1919, but there were still some nasty corrections. The Dow fell below 70 in 1917 and again 1921.

By 1923, the market took off. The Dow broke 100 in 1924. In early 1928, it hit 200, and a year later it smashed through 300. Over the summer, the Dow peaked at 380.

Three years later, it was at 42.

After Pearl Harbor, there was another slow sell-off. On April 28, 1942, the Dow finally bottomed out at 92.92.

Wanna read something scary? This is from FDR’s fireside chat that day:

Yesterday I submitted to the Congress of the United States a seven-point program, a program of general principles which taken together could be called the national economic policy for attaining the great objective of keeping the cost of living down. I repeat them now to you in substance: (1.)

First. We must, through heavier taxes, keep personal and corporate profits at a low reasonable rate

.

(2.) Second. We must fix ceilings on prices and rents.

(3.) Third. We must stabilize wages.

(4.) Fourth. We must stabilize farm prices.

(5.) Fifth. We must put more billions into War Bonds.

(6.) Sixth. We must ration all essential commodities, which are scarce.

(7.) Seventh. We must discourage installment buying, and encourage paying off debts and mortgages.

Whoa! I can't imagine any politician talking like that today.

The market started to rise. July 2, 1942 was the last time the Dow closed below 103—an astounding 36-1/2 years after it first hit that level.

For comparison, 36-1/2 years ago was the time of Woodstock and the Moon landing. Today’s Dow is over 12 times higher than it was back then. That's a good fact to keep that in mind the next time you hear someone complain.

Edited January 9, 2009 by interestrateripoff
To add link

interestrateripoff · January 9, 2009

Great Depression jobs parallel may not be far flung | U.S. | Reuters

NEW YORK (Reuters) - When economists tell us the current U.S. slump could never turn into another Great Depression, they all point to one thing: one of four Americans was out of work in the 1930s.
But since the definition of joblessness has changed over the years, this expert assessment might be too rosy.

As many as 25 percent of Americans were unemployed during the days of bread lines that symbolized the Depression, but that figure is more than three times the current 6.7 percent unemployment rate, the economists say. Even the most pessimistic estimates only foresee the rate rising barely above 10 percent.

"We are in a very, very different place than the U.S. economy was in the 1930s," James Poterba, president of the National Bureau of Economic Research told a recent Reuters Summit.

Or are we? Figures collected for Reuters by John Williams, from the electronic newsletter Shadowstats.com, suggest that, while we are not there yet, the comparison is not as outlandish as it might initially seem.

By his count, if unemployment were still tallied the way it was in the 1930s, today's jobless rate would be closer to 16.5 percent -- more than double the stated rate.

"I expect that unemployment in the current downturn, which will be particularly deep and protracted, eventually will rival, if not top, the 25 percent seen in the Great Depression," Williams said.

He and other critics have one particular sticking point with the current way of measuring unemployment: the treatment of discouraged workers.

Under President Lyndon Johnson, the government decided individuals who had stopped looking for work for more than a year were no longer part of the labor force. This dramatically decreased the jobless rate reported by the government.

"Both part-time workers wanting full-time work and discouraged workers tend to make the unemployment rate lower than it would otherwise be," says Robert Schenk, professor of economics at St. Joseph's College, Indiana.

The latest report, due on Friday, is expected to show another month of more than half a million job losses in December, and a jump in the unemployment rate to 7 percent.

However, some economists, including Kenneth Rogoff at Harvard University, now say joblessness could top 11 percent. Under Williams' methodology, that picture might look much more like the Great Depression.

interestrateripoff · January 9, 2009

Long Depression - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Long Depression is a term for a period of deep economic recession in the United States following the Panic of 1873. The National Bureau of Economic Research dates the contraction following the panic as lasting from October 1873 to March 1879. At 65 months, it is the longest recession identified by the NBER.[1] The depression has been dated from 1873 until as late as 1897.[2]
Some commentators suggest that the depression actually lasted into the 1890s, and was a price depression, not a production depression. According to some economic historians, this was not really a Depression if production and GDP grew throughout the period (see table below). The confusion comes from the fact that prices were falling because of greater industrial productivity and the presence of sound money (gold and silver). There is no clear agreement among historians and economists.

This "long depression" affected much of the world and was contemporary with the Second Industrial Revolution. At the time it was regarded as the Great Depression, remaining so until the Great Depression occurred in the 1930s. It was most notable in Western Europe and North America, but this is in part because reliable data from the period is most readily available in those parts of the world. The United Kingdom is often considered to have been the hardest hit by the Long Depression, and during this period it lost much of its large industrial lead over the economies of Continental Europe. The Depression is usually believed[by whom?] to have ended by 1897. The global economy grew at an impressive rate from that year to the start of World War

interestrateripoff · January 9, 2009

Jayati Ghosh: The outcry is muted, but the food crisis is getting worse | Comment is free | The Guardian

Just a few months ago, we were being told that this is a period of stark, unprecedented and unfolding food crisis, with looming shortages and huge global imbalances between demand and supply. Everyone who matters - from officials in international organisations to leaders of rich and poor countries - warned us of the terrible social, political and nutritional consequences of doing nothing, of the millions who would go hungry and the riots that would occur if the imbalances persisted or increased.
But now the whole problem has disappeared from the international radar, relegated to the inside pages of newspapers and perfunctory afterthoughts in politicians' speeches. So what happened? Was it not such a problem, after all?

No, the "silent tsunami" has simply been overwhelmed in public awareness by the much noisier tsunami in the world of international finance, with the giant sucking sounds of possible bank collapses and enormous bail-outs grabbing all the attention. Yet the global food crisis is far from over, and is even likely to intensify in the near future.

One reason why many analysts decided that the food crisis may not be so intense is the global decline in crop prices that began sometime in the middle of last year. For about two years before that, commodity prices, including both food and non-food crops, had been increasing, and in the first few months of 2008 they soared. But in early June last year the prices of both oil and food crops fell, so that they are now lower than they were even a year ago.

When food prices were rising, there was much talk of the shifts in demand that were causing this trend. President Bush joined those who decided that this reflected the increased demand from China and India as their per capita incomes grew. This was a ludicrous argument because food consumption has actually declined in both countries. Both economies have shown even sharper declines in per capita food intake despite the continued presence of widespread hunger, because of increased income inequalities within these countries. In any case, that argument about more food demand from China and India quickly collapsed along with the fall in global prices. Now it is more than evident that the wild swings that have been observed in food and several commodity markets over this year have been the result of speculative forces, rather than any real changes in global demand and supply.

But despite this volatility and the recent price decline, the food crisis remains. And it does indeed reflect patterns of demand and supply - but not the ones that have been talked about. The basic problem now is not even one of absolute shortage so much as the inability to pay for food, and this problem will get worse for many developing countries and their poorer citizens.

“Northern unemployment is an acceptable price to pay for curbing southern inflation” Eddie George former Governor of the Bank of England

Staving people is an acceptable price to pay for curbing inflation.

This is the bit the economic text books omit in their grandeur.

Although the world population is reaching its peak of what can be fed.

interestrateripoff · January 9, 2009

Worst year for US unemployment since Second World War - Times Online

Disgraced Satyam founder to face regulator - Times Online

Northern Rock finance chief exits with £900,000 - Times Online

Manufacturing output drops 2.9 per cent

Price policy sends John Lewis sales up 27.4% - Times Online

Madoff ‘asked UK arm for £100m’ before arrest - Times Online

Interest rate cut 'will starve banks of cash', as savers are deterred

Eidos plunges as Tomb Raider sales fall

Foxtons hopes for mini revival after failing its lenders

Clifford Chance asks partners for £40 million - Times Online

Mecom to slash debts with German sale - Times Online

Nissan cuts 1,200 jobs as Gordon Brown tries to soothe fears for motor industry - Times Online

Lehman managers to buy merchant banking arm - Times Online

US shuts 'Ponzi' scheme targetting priests - Times Online

South Korea takes interest rates to new low - Times Online

We are all heading towards 0

Deutsche trader to set up own hedge fund - Times Online

OECD blames weak bank regulation for financial crisis - Times Online

PwC in spotlight over missing billion at Satyam, 'India's Enron' - Times Online

One 'bad bank' may allow the rest to be good - Times Online

Going back to the future is a hazardous enterprise - Times Online

interestrateripoff · January 9, 2009

US economy suffers worst year for job losses since 1945 - Telegraph

Staying out of the euro has spared us a Spanish-style catastrophe - Telegraph

Recession rescue measures might just be working - Telegraph

Whoops! Browser Settings Incompatible

Government should buy homes on verge of repossession, former Bank of England economists say - Telegraph

John Lewis New Year sales jump - Telegraph

Bernard Madoff: DreamWorks chief Jeffrey Katzenberg says loss is 'humiliating' - Telegraph

Merrill Lynch says rich turning to gold bars for safety - Telegraph

Tomb Raider publisher Eidos warns on debt covenants and profits - Telegraph

Chevron warns slump in oil price to hit profit - Telegraph

Inquiry launched in PWC's auditing of Satyam's accounts - Telegraph

Interest rates and the economy: Does anyone in charge have a clue what to do? - Telegraph

No they are all idiots

interestrateripoff · January 9, 2009

Foxtons stuck in housing market slump - Business News, Business - The Independent

Brown goes from boom to bust - UK Politics, UK - The Independent

German government injects €10bn into Commerzbank - Business News, Business - The Independent

Manufacturing output suffers steepest fall in nearly 30 years - Business News, Business - The Independent

VAT cut just an annoyance for retailers, says Sainsbury's - Business News, Business - The Independent

Jeremy Warner: Bank is fast running out of road on rates - Jeremy Warner, Business Comment - The Independent

The IT crowd crunched - Business Analysis & Features, Business - The Independent

interestrateripoff · January 9, 2009

Era of cheap energy 'will never return' - Green Living, Environment - The Independent

BBC NEWS | Business | US job losses hit record in 2008

BBC NEWS | Business | Iceland buys 51 Woolworths stores

BBC NEWS | Business | Mandelson considers car loan aid

BBC NEWS | Business | India sacks scandal firm's board

BBC NEWS | Business | UK manufacturing declines sharply

BBC NEWS | World | Europe | EU gas monitors arrive in Ukraine

BBC NEWS | Business | S Korea cuts rates as woes deepen

BBC NEWS | The Reporters | Robert Peston

BBC NEWS | Business | Spain jobless hits 12-year high

BBC NEWS | World | Americas | Did Bush cause the financial crisis?

BBC NEWS | Business | Spanish industrial output plunges

interestrateripoff · January 10, 2009

South Korea automaker files for bankruptcy - CNN.com

SEOUL, South Korea (CNN) -- Ssangyong Motor Co., South Korea's fifth largest automaker, filed for bankruptcy Friday, citing the company's worsening finances.
Ssangyong is seeking court receivership and filed its application for protection from creditors with the Seoul Central District Court, the company said in a statement. During reorganization, Ssangyong plans to cut costs through voluntary retirement and paid leave, according to the statement.

Ssangyong is the South Korean unit of China's Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp., which holds a 51 percent share in the company.

Ssangyong has been battered by the global financial downturn and credit crunch like many other automakers. A large portion of the company's profits used to come from SUVs, which was hurt by high gas prices earlier in the year before the credit crunch additionally cut into sales.

Last year vehicle sales at Ssangyong dropped

Another one bites the dust, although I think they mainly make SUV's.

interestrateripoff · January 10, 2009

Taxman steps up investigations to fill £7bn shortfall at Treasury

Higher-rate taxpayers and those who are self-employed face a greater risk of a tax investigation, as the Revenue deploys tougher tactics to fill a £7 billion black hole in Treasury coffers.
Simple mistakes in tax returns, big changes in income or expenses from last year or big purchases risk triggering an inquiry by Revenue investigators, tax experts told The Times.

Buy-to-let property investors, wealthy individuals, savers with offshore or foreign accounts and self-employed people who have had a drop in turnover are most at risk, accountants said.

The financial details of partners in law firms or medical practices are expected to be examined closely. Barristers are also under the spotlight because the taxman thinks that they may have been fiddling expenses, including the costs of cleaning gowns and wigs.

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The great interest rate rip off part 1

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