Why we shouldn’t bail out Portugal March 24, 2011 HERE’S a heretical thought: let’s not bail out Portugal. The near-bankrupt country has just seen its Prime Minister resign after losing a key vote on his government’s fourth austerity package in a couple of years, while Fitch has just downgraded the country’s credit rating. Yet the talk now is of a bailout – even though [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING March 24, 2011 FINANCIAL TIMES BARCLAYS AT CENTRE OF LIBOR INQUIRY Barclays is emerging as a key focus of the US and UK regulatory probe into alleged rigging of benchmark interbank lending rates that are the reference point for $350,000bn in financial products, people familiar with the investigation said. Investigators are probing whether communications between the bank’s traders [...]
WHAT DOES THE CHANCELLOR’S BUDGET MEAN FOR YOU? March 23, 2011 CATHERINE GANNON, 48 MANAGING DIRECTOR OF CITY LAW FIRM GANNONS LAW LLP Catherine is single with two children, earns a gross income of over £100,000 a year and pays a mortgage on her family home. She has a share portfolio and also has mortgages on various investment properties. She does not drink or smoke. She [...]
HOUSING SUPPORT March 23, 2011 CHANGES TO STAMP DUTY LAND TAX ON BULK PURCHASES If the buyer chooses then the rate of stamp duty land tax (SDLT) on properties can be determined by the mean value of the homes bought, rather than the aggregate value that is currently the case. This will be subject to a minimum rate of one [...]
Lloyds beats lending targets March 23, 2011 Part-nationalised bank Lloyds Banking Group has met its targets for lending to businesses and for mortgages, it has announced. The high street lender extended £11.7bn in lending to small and mid-sized businesses and £37bn to larger companies in the year to February 2011, beating its annual target by £4.7bn. It also provided £23.5bn in gross [...]
Osborne to hike tax allowances March 22, 2011 GEORGE Osborne will today unveil small tax cuts, help for first-time buyers and a series of symbolic measures to show he is tough on the rich. But his Budget could be overshadowed by spiralling inflation and weaker public finances, preventing him from pulling any rabbits out of his hat. The chancellor will announce that he [...]
US Treasury Department to sell off $142bn in securities holdings March 21, 2011 THE US Treasury Department said it will begin later this month to sell off $142bn (£87bn) in mortgage-backed securities it acquired to combat the 2007-2009 financial crisis. The move to dispose of its portfolio of agency-backed MBS by selling $10bn worth each month was seen as a signal of the government’s confidence in the recovery, [...]
Property asking prices up March 21, 2011 Asking prices for houses in England and Wales are 0.9 percent higher than a year earlier, a monthly survey by property website Rightmove showed on Monday. March’s annual rate of growth in asking prices picked up from a reading of 0.3 per cent in February. The month-on-month rate of growth, which is subject to seasonal [...]
BEST OF THE BROKERS March 20, 2011 TAYLOR WIMPEY Deutsche Bank rates the housebuilder “buy” with a target price of 53p. The broker says in its review of the UK building sector that the firm’s recent mortgage deals with 95 per cent loan to value could pave the way for others, easing lending conditions for buyers this year. LEGAL & GENERAL Standard [...]
How to squeeze more out of UK plc March 9, 2011 ONE of the most influential books in America today – Tyler Cowen’s The Great Stagnation – argues that technological innovation peaked in 1873 (yes, you read that right). Most of the progress of the past 100 years has come from the application of innovations made prior to 1914, he says; what we now think of [...]