After a year of voting for more, Posen praises QE2 October 11, 2011 ARCH-DOVE of the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee (MPC), Adam Posen, welcomed its decision to print £75bn, in a speech yesterday. Posen has long been an advocate of expanding the asset purchase programme and has voted for another £50bn of quantitative easing (QE) in every monthly MPC meeting since October 2010. The decision exceeded [...]
OPEC SLASHES OIL DEMAND FORECAST October 11, 2011 GLOBAL economic turmoil is reducing demand for oil, the Organisation of Petroleum Producing Countries’ (Opec) monthly report revealed yesterday. OPEC has cut demand growth forecasts for 2011 from 1.19m more barrels per day to 880,000. That brings total output to 87.81m barrels, up from 86.93m in 2010. Weak Eurozone and US economies were blamed, as [...]
CITY MOVES | WHO’S SWITCHING JOBS October 11, 2011 LaSalle Investment Management The global real estate investment manager has announced the appointment of Chris Brett in the newly-created position of European head of strategic partnerships. Brett joins LaSalle Investment Management from Jones Lang LaSalle, where he headed the international desk in London and focused on advising major investors from the Middle East, Asia Pacific [...]
BEST OF THE BROKERS October 11, 2011 VODAFONE Investec notes that the Indian authorities published a draft policy for telecoms this week. While lacking in some details, it believes there are many positives to be taken from the policy changes for Vodafone. It says India is an emerging positive catalyst for the Vodafone investment story. It reiterates its “buy” recommendation, maintaining a [...]
FTSE breaks winning streak on worries over Euro bailout October 11, 2011 THE FTSE 100 share index snapped a four-day winning streak yesterday, as worries over Europe’s debt problems and the impact on the global economic recovery prompted investors to bank some of the recent gains made in commodity and financial stocks. The index closed down 3.3 points, or 0.1 per cent at 5,395.70, but recovered from [...]
Wall Street stays flat ahead of vote October 11, 2011 US stocks were little changed yesterday, with major indices seesawing between gains and losses before a key vote by Slovakia on expanding the Eurozone rescue fund. The back-and-forth moves on Wall Street follow several days of sharp gains. The S&P 500 has risen 8.7 per cent over the past five days, its biggest five-day move [...]
America’s solar scandal is a warning: Bankrupt climate policies boost tax, not jobs October 11, 2011 IN SEPTEMBER 2009, the United States Department of Energy gave a $530m (£339m) loan guarantee to the solar company Solyndra. President Barack Obama said at the plant: “It’s here that companies like Solyndra are leading the way, towards a brighter and more prosperous future.” In September 2011, the company collapsed, the jobs which the Vice [...]
Cameron’s own cabinet doesn’t meet his target October 11, 2011 DAVID Cameron has written personally to the chairmen of many of our largest companies, admonishing those who have failed to set out plans for how they will appoint female directors to a quarter of all board seats by 2015. He will be hosting a meeting in Downing Street this evening with Lord Davies to trumpet [...]
Subsidising the fat is no way to slim the UK October 11, 2011 DAVID Cameron is worried about how much fat people are costing his government. “Look at America, how bad things have got there” he implored a Five News reporter only last week. “What happens if we don’t do anything? Yes, that should be a wake-up call.” What he thinks we should do – or, at least, [...]
RAPID RESPONSES October 11, 2011 Losses for lenders Andrew Lilico’s plan for passing bank losses to lenders, as laid out in The Forum yesterday [This economist believes we shouldn’t bail out the banks: Let their lenders pay instead], makes complete sense and lots of people would agree. But where can we vote for this, where can we demonstrate, where can [...]
