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 [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING March 8, 2011 FINANCIAL TIMES MOVE TO SYNTHETIC US JUNK BONDS Demand is growing for “synthetic” financial instruments that enable investors to take positions in the US junk bond market without owning the underlying securities. The instruments, created by using credit derivatives on junk bond or high-yield indices, resemble transactions linked to US mortgages that proliferated before the [...]
Why the consumer is no longer king March 7, 2011 WHY are so many people still in denial? The era of debt-fuelled spending, from the private and the public sector, is over. A crisis caused by excessive and underpriced debt cannot be resolved by borrowing even more. It is a simple proposition. Virtually all companies, many individuals and some governments now understand this – but [...]
Fixed mortgage rates increase March 7, 2011 The average rate of interest on a two-year fixed rate mortgage has increased to 4.59 per cent, its highest level in ten months, according to the Moneyfacts website. Yet tracker rates have dropped to 3.4 per cent, as lenders look to tempt mortgage holders onto deals that follow the central Bank rate of interest.
ABN AMRO profit seven times higher March 4, 2011 Dutch state-owned bank ABN AMRO, which is being readied for a stock market listing in 2014, said operating profit surged sevenfold in 2010 after loan losses fell. The Dutch state nationalised the local ABN AMRO and Fortis entities in 2008 after the dramatic failure of a three-pronged hostile takeover of ABN AMRO by Royal Bank [...]
Taylor Wimpey returns to profit March 3, 2011 Housebuilder Taylor Wimpey swung to an underlying annual profit, ahead of expectations, and said it was evaluating proposals for its North American business. The builder is in the process of selling its Taylor Morrison operations to pay down debt and focus on its domestic market, with a growing list of potential buyers, including Canada’s privately-held [...]
CITY VIEWS: IS THIS THE RIGHT TIME TO START SAVING? March 2, 2011 Save or Borrow peer to peer at RateSetter.com HARRY DUNNE | INSURANCE BROKER “There’s no point in saving money. Interest rates are not appealing at the minute and the best thing you can do is pay off your mortgage.” WILLIAM LEWIS | HAMPDEN CAPITAL “This is not the right moment to start saving. Interest rates [...]