Wall St The Week Ahead: All eyes on Fed minutes for rate hike info July 6, 2014 WITH US stocks hitting record highs just before the Independence Day break last week on the back of strong jobs growth, the Bank for International Settlements – the global forum for central banks – said that markets were in a “euphoric” state and that keeping interest rates too low for too long could sow the [...]
Economic boom in the USA as jobless rate falls to ’08 levels July 3, 2014 Americans go into the Independence Day holiday with their economy back on the front foot Dow smashes past 17,000 mark US jobless rate falls to ’08 levels Services reach a post-crisis peak THE US recovery appears to be well and truly on track, with figures out yesterday revealing a soaring service sector and tumbling unemployment. The Dow [...]
Bottom Line: How to lose friends and alienate people July 2, 2014 MIKE Ashley looked thoroughly bored at yesterday’s Sports Direct meeting, seemingly fed up with all the commotion surrounding its latest attempt to pay him a hefty bonus. One might have thought he’d be used to it. An extremely divisive figure, often ridiculed and reviled in the football world, the bolshie and controversial way by which [...]
World Cup: Di Maria brings Hitzfeld career to a cruel end July 1, 2014 ARGENTINA 1 SWITZERLAND 0 (After extra time) ARGENTINA coach Alejandro Sabella admitted he was delighted to avoid a penalty shoot-out after Angel di Maria’s dramatic late intervention swept his team into the World Cup quarter-finals. Real Madrid winger Di Maria made amends for a sub-par display with the winning goal in the 118th minute, booking [...]
Big Benz: a no frills Mercedes crossover July 1, 2014 It took some time to convince my wife that she should be driving something a bit more “off-road”. She didn’t buy into the whole mums-in-their-Range-Rovers thing, and would have been happier with a posh saloon. Now she’s one of the legions to have bought into the crossover genre and swears by her Kia Sportage. Everyone [...]
CNBC Comment: Why Draghi can’t relax this summer June 30, 2014 WHO’D be a central banker? As soon as you restore bond and equity markets to calm or even optimism, investors start fretting about something else. Most major Western economies have returned to economic growth, and countries that were causing sleepless nights just a couple of years ago, like Spain and Ireland, appear to be market [...]
Steve Baker MP: Markets are hooked on kremlinology June 30, 2014 Bank of England staffers once used to a series of questions from MPs on parochial constituency matters have had to up their game. Steve Baker, the Conservative member for Wycombe, has just joined the Treasury Select Committee, and has brought with him a refreshing style of interrogation. I spoke to Baker just after his first [...]
New York Report: Dow down on rates rise call June 26, 2014 US STOCKS ended slightly lower yesterday, after the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis said interest-rate increases should come sooner rather than later. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 21.38 points or 0.13 per cent, to end at 16,846.13. The S&P 500 slipped 2.31 points or 0.12 per cent, to 1,957.22. The [...]
Letters to the Editor – 27/06 – Global money, Airport options, Best of Twitter June 26, 2014 Global money [Re: Bretton Woods: How stable monetary order was created and then destroyed, Tuesday] An interesting historical article, but the author displays a misguided support for a fixed international monetary system. If a floating exchange rate system is associated with the global expansion of credit, the older order is associated with the inability of [...]
Drones use cameras to politely interact June 26, 2014 “You first!” “After you!” “Thanks, but I must insist!” “This is getting silly” It is not out of the question that drones will engage in this sort of amicable conversation in the near future. Professor Sandor Veres and his colleagues at the University of Sheffield have created a system in which flying robots use cameras [...]