Everyone Loves A Good Scandal Dame Judi Dench still worries where her next job is coming from.... Read Full Article Blog Dude Gets Rude Shock For Scribbles It was the cyber equivalent of a public stoning and 19-year-old backpacker and blogger Max Gogarty was on ther receiving end.... Read Full Article Stocks Rise; S&P Sets New Trading High Wall Street tried to hold onto its gains Friday as stocks opened flat a day after the Standard & Poor’s 500 index and the Dow Jones industrials soared to new records.... Read Full Article Take Two, As Key Rival Adds To Musharraf’s Woes The leader of a major opposition party, Nawaz Sharif, will return home from exile in Saudi Arabia today, forcing a new confrontation with Pakistan’s embattled President, General Pervez Musharraf.... Read Full Article China Rejects Darfur Criticism China said sports and politics should be kept separate, after filmmaker Steven Spielberg criticized Beijing for not using its influence to end the humanitarian crisis in Darfur.... Read Full Article |
Conde NewsExclusive: City watchdog condemns pension fundsMillions of workers are at risk of being mis-sold retirement products after being given "weak" and "misleading" advice by their pension fund, according to damning findings from the City watchdog.Read Full Article Mervyn King to grimace and bear bad newsWhen the Bank of England’s Governor unveils its latest prognosis for the economy this week, he is likely to adopt his sternest demeanour. The message from Mervyn King may not be quite as bleak as Churchill’s famous admonition that he had “nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat”, but it may not be far off. The Bank’s hardline decision last week to keep interest rates on hold despite the latest spate of dreadful news over worsening economic conditions gave a foretaste of the granite-hard façade that it is set to present to the country in its latest quarterly Inflation Report on Wednesday. The “no change” verdict on interest rates from Threadneedle Street can only have appeared to much of the country at large like an exercise in monetary sado-masochism. Yet the harsh reality that confronts the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) is that it remains trapped between an economic rock and a hard place. Far from easing as the economic outlook has grown darker, the conflicting pressures confronting the MPC – from faltering growth and activity on the one hand and simmering inflationary pressures on the other – have intensified. The deluge of ever more dismal economic indicators now leaves little doubt that the economy is facing its most testing two-year stretch since the early Nineties. Yet as the going gets much tougher, the persistence of the inflation threat condemns the Bank to talk, and act, tough, too. The MPC’s mission to ensure that inflation hits its 2 per cent target over the medium term leaves it scant room for manoeuvre. It is forced to act only cautiously, even as the demands for more aggressive and urgent action escalate. The Bank’s dilemma seems set only to be become more acute through the summer, as the Inflation Report is likely to spell out. If anything, the MPC’s latest assessment is likely to understate the full scale of dangers to growth prospects that have emerged. At the heart of the heightened risks is the increasingly dire straits of the housing market, which appears to be locked into a vicious downward spiral triggered by the mortgage lending drought. The severe squeeze on the availability of home loans is combining with falling house prices to cause demand in the property market to dry up, with cautious buyers holding out for the much lower prices they expect in future. As demand and market activity drop, and the supply of unsold houses grows, prices fall farther and faster. In turn, that farther deters would-be buyers and makes lenders become even more cautious, fuelling an ever steeper downward slide. The scale of these trends is underlined by the Council of Mortgage Lenders’ data, highlighted by Michael Saunders, of Citigroup, which shows the drastic tightening of lending conditions since the start of the year. The number of new home loans agreed plunged by more than 30 per cent in the first quarter, compared with the same period a year earlier. In March, approvals of new mortgages fell to the lowest since 1992. Although the Bank of England’s £50 billion lifeline, designed to ease the funding pressures on lenders, may limit the squeeze, Mr King has been bluntly candid that it is far from intended as a cureall for the mortgage market. The clear peril for the economy is that the toll on sentiment and household wealth from an increasingly severe housing correction now sees the credit crunch mutate into a brutal consumer crunch as households pull back their spending. The Bank tends to play down the repercussions of falling house prices for consumer demand. Yet signs are already accumulating that the consumer may embark on a full-scale retreat from the high street. Consumer confidence has slumped to 15-year lows, while polls show that concern over the state of the economy is at its highest levels since 1993. As other signs of economic weakness pile up, it is becoming painfully clear that Britain, far from being better placed than its rivals to weather global economic squalls, as the Chancellor and Prime Minister claim, is markedly worse off. As Mr Saunders argues, the UK is left badly exposed by the highest household debt burden in the Group of Seven leading industrial economies, alongside severely inflated house prices and low household savings. The price of a protracted period of living beyond our means may now have to be paid. Long years of high spending, as well as heavy borrowing excess. are making the fallout from the credit crunch more painful and the boost from the Bank’s limited easing of interest rates less potent. Yet, worse still, the same past excesses, in the form of a swollen current account deficit, are adding to the acute pressure on a sharply weakening pound, already hit by Britain’s worsening growth outlook. Sterling’s steep slide – by about 12 per cent in the past year - is aggravating the Bank’s inflation headache by raising the nation’s import bills and further curbing its scope to cut base rates to underpin faltering growth. With the pound set to tumble still farther, oil prices having surged to record levels of above $120 a barrel and the cost of food in global markets soaring, the City expects that the Bank will raise its forecasts for inflation this week. It is likely to give warning that headline consumer price inflation will rise above 3 per cent over the summer, forcing Mr King to pen what will be only his second explanatory letter to the Chancellor. Against this background, the Governor can be expected to make it brutally plain on Wednesday that further easing of interest rates will be only limited and gradual. Ultimately, the extent of the slowdown now taking hold in the economy will quell the inflationary threat that the Bank is, for now, compelled to prioritise over risks the growth.$Read Full Article Amrozi ties another knotIn a bizarre long-distance ceremony, condemned Bali bomber Amrozi has remarried by proxy in an apparent attempt to generate public sympathy.Read Full Article China greets Tibetan envoys with a bitter blastChina prefaces expected talks with representatives of the Dalai Lama by condemning the exiled Tibetan leader as a criminal, while cloaking the meeting itself in secrecy.Read Full Article Ochone! Japanese whisky is voted the best in worldLike English wine, it has suffered from the taint of inauthenticity and has been the butt of condescending jokes. Now Japanese whisky has finally scotched all criticism by being voted the best in the world, ahead of its Highland rivals.Read Full Article External News for: condeLA Stuns Chicago With Late Equaliser - World Soccer ReaderYahoo! SportsLA Stuns Chicago With Late EqualiserWorld Soccer ReaderGalaxy defender Omar Gonzalez rose above Chicago defender Wilman Conde to meet Landon Donovan's corner kick and head home the game tying goal, shocking the ...Fire 1 Galaxy 1 - Game Recap and Player RatingsChicagoNow (blog)LA spoils Fire's short-lived partyESPN (blog)Scouting: Los Angeles Galaxy @ Chicago FireChicago Daily HeraldGoal.com America -Gapers Block (blog) -MLS - Major League Soccerall 180 news articles »LA Stuns Chicago With Late Equaliser - World Soccer ReaderYahoo! SportsLA Stuns Chicago With Late EqualiserWorld Soccer ReaderGalaxy defender Omar Gonzalez rose above Chicago defender Wilman Conde to meet Landon Donovan's corner kick and head home the game tying goal, shocking the ...Fire 1 Galaxy 1 - Game Recap and Player RatingsChicagoNow (blog)LA spoils Fire's short-lived partyESPN (blog)Scouting: Los Angeles Galaxy @ Chicago FireChicago Daily HeraldGoal.com America -Gapers Block (blog) -MLS - Major League Soccerall 180 news articles »Top Business and Tech News: Reddit defies parent company Conde Nast with free ... - The Star-Ledger - NJ.comThe 420 TimesTop Business and Tech News: Reddit defies parent company Conde Nast with free ...The Star-Ledger - NJ.comSocial news site Reddit defied parent company Conde Nast by putting up ads in favor of Proposition 19 after the corporation tried to ban them from the site. ...Reddit Bucks Condé Nast Owners, Runs Pro-Pot Legalization AdsWired NewsReddit challenges Conde Nast, runs pro-pot ads for freeTG DailyIn protest, Reddit rolls its own pot adsCNETGeek.com -VentureBeat -ADOTASall 50 news articles »LA Stuns Chicago With Late Equaliser - World Soccer ReaderYahoo! SportsLA Stuns Chicago With Late EqualiserWorld Soccer ReaderGalaxy defender Omar Gonzalez rose above Chicago defender Wilman Conde to meet Landon Donovan's corner kick and head home the game tying goal, shocking the ...Fire 1 Galaxy 1 - Game Recap and Player RatingsChicagoNow (blog)LA spoils Fire's short-lived partyESPN (blog)Scouting: Los Angeles Galaxy @ Chicago FireChicago Daily HeraldGoal.com America -Gapers Block (blog) -MLS - Major League Soccerall 180 news articles »Top Business and Tech News: Reddit defies parent company Conde Nast with free ... - The Star-Ledger - NJ.comThe 420 TimesTop Business and Tech News: Reddit defies parent company Conde Nast with free ...The Star-Ledger - NJ.comSocial news site Reddit defied parent company Conde Nast by putting up ads in favor of Proposition 19 after the corporation tried to ban them from the site. ...Reddit Bucks Condé Nast Owners, Runs Pro-Pot Legalization AdsWired NewsReddit challenges Conde Nast, runs pro-pot ads for freeTG DailyIn protest, Reddit rolls its own pot adsCNETGeek.com -VentureBeat -ADOTASall 50 news articles »Conde Nast Brings Back 'Gourmet' Brand - NPRNew York Times (blog)Conde Nast Brings Back 'Gourmet' BrandNPRPublisher Conde Nast plans to produce "special editions" of Gourmet magazine. Three upcoming issues will use recipes from previous issues. ...Condé Finds Another Recipe For Gourmet LeftoversNew York ObserverNewsstands Will Carry Gourmet Again, After a FashionNew York Times (blog)Gourmet Brand to Return to Print—As Special Newsstand-Only IssuesFolio MagazineEater.com (blog) -Media Buyer Planner -mediabistro.com (blog)all 16 news articles » |
i8news.com |
