On Wall St., An Anniversary Stumble It was a bad week for the stock market until Friday, and then it got much worse.... Read Full Article World Briefing | Americas: Colombia: Guerrillas Admit Negligence The country’s largest guerrilla group said it had erred in its management of the abduction of 11 lawmakers who were killed in its custody last month. Details remain sparse about the conditions in whic... Read Full Article World Briefing | Asia: Japan: U.S. Base Must Weigh Effect On Revered Creature Plans for a U.S. air base in Japan have failed to assess their environmental impact on the dugong, an aquatic mammal considered a Japanese national treasure.... Read Full Article Farmer Gives Low-cost Laptop A Proper Field Test FROM his hot, dusty, locust-plagued property in the NSW outback, a software engineer who goes by the name Quozl is doing his bit to help educate 1.5 billion of the world’s poorest children.... Read Full Article Birthday Baby Shelters From Dili Gangs The East Timorese baby whose life was saved by Sydney doctors spent her first birthday yesterday sheltering from gang fighting.... 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: condeCondé Nast partners with Adobe, HP to develop magazines for e-readers - BtoB Magazinemediabistro.com (blog)Condé Nast partners with Adobe, HP to develop magazines for e-readersBtoB MagazineNew York—Condé Nast announced Thursday that it has formed an alliance with Adobe to develop magazines for digital devices. 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The company, which publishes The ...Condé Preparing E-Reader Version of WiredWall Street JournalCondé Nast Officially Announces Its Digital Magazine Initiativemediabistro.com (blog)Condé Nast Creating Digital Wired For itabletI4UMinonline (subscription) -Brand Republic -Journalism.co.ukall 10 news articles »Conde Nast releases 'virtual magazine' iPhone app - New York Daily NewsNew York Daily NewsConde Nast releases 'virtual magazine' iPhone appNew York Daily NewsConde Nast released a brand-new iPhone app Wednesday in conjunction with GQ's Men of the Year issue that provides readers with a replica of the magazine on ...tomtom updates nav app, Star Wars game hits iPhone, Conde Nast offers virtual magiPhone Buzz (blog)all 116 news articles »Conde Nast Readies Titles For Apple Tablet - MediaPost PublicationsGadget Venue (blog)Conde Nast Readies Titles For Apple TabletMediaPost PublicationsProof that Apple has a tablet device in the works: Condé Nast says it will have a digital version of Wired magazine ready for the rumored gadget by the ...Conde Nast Geared Up For Apple TabletiSmashPhone (blog)The Apple Tablet Is DeadPC WorldCondé Nast makes Wired compatible with Apple's tabletStrategyEye (subscription)Geek.com -The Business Insider -Brand Republicall 166 news articles » |
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