The pound has fallen to a record low against the euro, as dealers expect more Bank of England (BoE) interest rate cuts in 2008.
The pound bought just one euro 37.6 cents in quiet Christmas Eve trading.
"There are increasing signs that the British economy has hit a brick wall triggered by the decline in the housing market," said analysts at BNP Paribas.
The European Central Bank (ECB) president Jean-Claude Trichet's recent comments have also boosted the euro.
Inflation and growth
In an interview with the Financial Times, Mr Trichet hinted that the ECB was more worried about inflation than economic growth.
He said that interest rate cuts in the US and Britain should not distract the ECB from tightening its monetary policy.
"Other colleagues are in a different situation," Mr Trichet said.
Britain's record trade deficit has also helped push down the value of sterling.
BBC NEWS
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Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Pound at record low against euro
Saturday, December 15, 2007
Federal Reserve’s Attack on Deflation Like Charge of the Light Brigade
Posted by Bill Bonner on Dec 14th, 2007
Our whirl-wind tour continues… Last night, we arrived in Baltimore, after about 24 hours of travel. A word of travel advice: avoid the American carriers. Their planes seem older…more worn out than, say, Singapore Airlines or Lufthansa – and so do their cabin crews.
The problem with modern travel is that humans were not made for it. During the thousands of generations in which our species evolved, no one ever had to reckon with jet-lag…or airline food…or security checks. All these things are unnatural and should be avoided.
What has happened in the world of money since we got on the plane?
Ah…
“The Charge of the Central Banks,” begins a Bloomberg story. Seems the Fed, the European Central Bank, the Bank of England and the Swiss National Bank got together to announce a program of coordinated inflation. Well, they didn’t call it that. They said they were merely making sure that the markets had credit, by increasing the supply of liquidity.
You see, they’re all caught in a tight spot – between the unstoppable force of inflation and the immoveable object of falling prices. So, into the Valley of Death go the central bankers.
Do you remember the Charge of the Light Brigade, dear reader? The British called Lord Cardigan from his private yacht in the Black Sea. His lordship, being new to the battlefield in the Crimean War, got mixed up…and sent his 600 cavalrymen in the wrong direction – right into the Russian’s guns. “Cannon to the right of them,/ cannon to the left of them,/ cannon in front of them,/ volleyed and thunder’d,” says Tennyson, until they were almost all dead. Except for Lord Cardigan himself, who miraculously survived without a scratch and went back to England to be declared a national hero.
Well, here come the central bankers – fresh from their caviar and foie gras – ready to ride into battle. But against what? Inflation? Or deflation? Against the unstoppable force…or the immoveable object?
There’s the problem, isn’t it? They’ve got cannons to the left…and cannons to the right.
For the moment, they regard the artillery of deflation as the greater worry. So Bernanke fired a weak volley in that direction on Tuesday. The markets fired back…saying the Fed wasn’t using enough firepower.
Yesterday, the Dow shot off a few rounds, inconclusively and half-heartedly. And the cannons on the other side opened up again. The CRB, measuring the price of commodities, hit a new high. Oil rose to nearly US$95. And gold hit US$818.
Still our guess is that the Fed is right. The cannons on the left – the side of deflation – will do the most damage in the near term. The threat of recession is growing. Or maybe we’re already in a recession. How bad will it be? Nouriel Roubini says it will be worse than 2001. We should hope so! That recession was so wimpy it did nothing at all.
Consumer spending continued to grow. Nothing was corrected – except the price of tech shares.
This next recession will be worse. Tech shares affected relatively few people. Now it is the housing market that is going down – and stocks too. A lot more people have houses than had dotcom stock.
It still looks to us as though we were headed for that “Japan-like slump” we were expecting seven years ago. Interest rates will continue to go down – if we’re right. And the US economy will go into an on-again, off-again recession that will last for many years.
And what about the unstoppable force of inflation? We doubt it will stop…not with the central banks all over the world charging in such hell-for-leather fashion. But we will see.
So here’s a little advice to the Fed:
Stop trying to fight deflation. It’s a losing battle. You’re ‘pushing on a string’. Instead, fight a battle you can win. Fight inflation!
The Fed could bring a correction on easily…simply by raising rates. Higher lending costs would stifle growth…reduce spending…lower prices…and knock tottering humpty dumpties off the wall. But don’t expect it: there are a lot of humpties; and every one of them has the right to vote in next year’s elections. Not only that, the economics profession has insisted that it can AVOID recessions by adroitly manipulating interest rates and lending standards. If the economy sinks now, Bernanke’s peers are going down to blame him – not only for the recession, but for undermining his colleagues’ pretensions.
But what America – and the world – needs is not a boom, but a correction. So, Feds – wherever you are – listen up: While a central bank clearly has the ability to trigger a recession, it may not have the ability to stop one. Like a hitman, a central banker can always kill a boom; but he can’t necessarily bring his victim back from the dead.
You’re better off pulling the trigger on a boom that needs to die…rather than pretending to heal the poor thing with your voodoo medicine. At least, you’ll look as though you know what you are doing.
Bill Bonner
The Daily Reckoning Australia
Get Paid For Online Surveys - Avoid Mistakes, Make Money
by: Jorge Chavez
Filling out survey questionnaires to get paid for online surveys is a great way to make extra money. All you need is an Internet connection and your opinions. There are traps out there, but you can avoid them if you know how to. And your can then go on to make very good money...
Imagine yourself sitting at home or at your favorite place (anywhere you have an Internet connection) and making money filling out paid surveys. Sounds like an impossible dream? Maybe it is for some... but for thousands of others it is a daily reality. Actually, it's easy to get paid for online surveys, and paid well.
Paid online surveys are a huge business on the Net, with thousands of new surveys being made every week. Many thousands of survey participants are receiving checks in the mail or deposits in their PayPal accounts every month. You could join them, get paid for online surveys and make money, if you do it right.
To succeed you must understand that only about 20% of survey makers offer the legitimate paid online surveys that pay well, on time in cash or equivalent. Another 40% are so-so. Sometimes they pay enough to make it worthwhile, sometimes not.
The final 40% are simply time-wasters who expect you to work for free or will try to sell you things. Or worse, they will sell your contact info to shady high-pressure sales companies which will bombard you with trashy offers.
To get paid for online surveys and make money you will need a good list of legitimate paid survey panels with a high proportion of survey makers that pay (those in the top 20%. The secret is in getting that list. In reality, you will have to pay something for your list, either in a lot of work or or with $30 to $50 in cash.
Yes, there are "free lists" out there. They're one of the traps to be avoided. Few things are really free. So who is paying for "free lists"? The 80% of no-pay/low-pay survey makers must have new recruits to replace those that quit. They pay recruiting fees to anyone who sends them more recruits to exploit
For those "free lists" the list distributors collect recruitment fees and make money, the survey makers make money on the recruits. However, the list users, the survey participants, get the short end of the deal.
They don't really get paid for online surveys by those low-pay/no-pay survey makers that exploit participants. They eventually get tired of working for nothing and quit, just like those before them, the ones they were recruited to replace.
To get a good list, make sure that YOU pay for it so the seller is trying to please YOU! Look to paid survey membership sites that maintain lists of good survey makers. For a small one-time fee you can join them. get a copy of their list and get started fast, on the right track.
Only consider those paid survey sites that offer a strong money back guarantee, backed up by a bank or financial company like PayPal or ClickBank. If they won't guarantee your satisfaction, then they are not serious. Don't even think about trusting your membership fee with any site without a strong guarantee.
From this group with strong guarantees (there are at least 75 that should qualify) choose one with a low refund rate. The refund rate is the way to determine the opinions of their current and past clients regarding the quality and value or the service they provide.
Low refund rates mean happy clients. Clients who used their list, got paid for online surveys, made money and were satisfied. High refund rates indicate unhappy clients who tried their list, did NOT get paid for online surveys, did not make money, became dissatisfied and demanded their money back.
So choose a paid survey membership site with a low refund rate, join up, get their list and then apply to all of the survey makers on that list. That way you will get a good list, get paid for online surveys, make money and join the happy clients of that paid survey membership site.
To get more information and details on how to get paid for online surveys you can follow the links below...
About The Author
Jorge Chavez
To get paid for online surveys, make money with them, see: http://surveysentinel.ya23.com/Get_Paid_for_Online_Surveys.html For more about refund rates and comparing paid survey sites, see: http://surveysentinel.ya23.com
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Greenspan: Odds rising for a recession
By JEANNINE AVERSA, AP Economics Writer 2 hours, 7 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan says the odds the U.S. will fall into a recession are "clearly rising" and he believes economic growth is "getting close to stall speed."
Greenspan, who ran the central bank for 18 1/2 years, until early 2006, offered his views on the economy in an interview on NPR News' Morning Edition that will air on Friday. Excerpts of the interview were released on Thursday.
A severe slump in the housing market, a stubborn credit crisis and turbulence on Wall Street are endangering the country's economic health. Growth in the current October through December period is expected to have slowed to a feeble pace of just 1.5 percent, or less.
Economists, including Greenspan, have warned that the chances of a recession are growing.
Asked whether the economy will tip into a recession — something that has not happened since 2001 — Greenspan said, "It's too soon to say, but the odds are clearly rising."
He said he felt this way because of the slowing pace of growth. "We are getting close to stall speed," he said. "We are far more vulnerable at levels where growth is so slow than we would be otherwise," he added. "Indeed, it's like someone who has an immune system that's not working very well is subject to all sorts of diseases and the economy at this lever of growth is subject to all sorts of shocks."
Greenspan's remarks come just days after the Federal Reserve, under Chairman Ben Bernanke, sliced a key interest rate for a third time this year to prevent the housing and credit troubles from sinking the economy.
The situation poses the biggest challenge yet to Bernanke since succeeding Greenspan in February 2006.
Some analysts have questioned whether Bernanke waited too long to cut the Fed's key rate and whether he has acted aggressively enough to soothe the economy's woes. The Fed initially dropped its key rate in September, the first reduction in four years. That was followed up by additional rate cuts in late October and then again on Tuesday.
Greenspan again rejected criticism that his policy actions helped to feed a housing boom that eventually went bust. Critics say Greenspan held interest rates too low for too long after the 2001 recession.
To have prevented such euphoria in housing that fed a bubble in prices, Greenspan said the Fed would have had to jack up interest rates so high that it would have damaged the economy. "That would have broken the back of the economy, and brought the housing boom down," Greenspan said.
Lufthansa buys stake in JetBlue
Star Alliance member Lufthansa has agreed to acquire a 19% equity stake in US low-cost carrier JetBlue Airways.
The transaction, which has been approved by the boards of both companies, represents the first significant investment by a European airline in a US point-to-point carrier, say the airlines in a joint statement.
Under the terms of the agreement, Lufthansa will purchase in a private placement about 42 million newly issued common shares of JetBlue, or 19% of the New York JFK-based airline’s equity.
Lufthansa is acquiring the shares for $7.27 apiece, or a total of about $300 million. This represents a 16% premium to yesterday’s closing price of $6.25.
A Lufthansa nominee will be appointed to the JetBlue board upon closing of the transaction, which is expected to occur in the first quarter, pending regulatory review and approval.
Opportunities to further cooperate will be explored, say the airlines.
In addition to previously-announced discussions with Aer Lingus, JetBlue has made known its interest in forging potential new international partners. In April, JetBlue told ATI that its dominance at JFK gives the carrier a strong position in offering North American feed to the international airlines that serve JFK.
Today’s agreement “reaffirms our belief in JetBlue’s disciplined growth plan and will also improve our balance sheet and give us greater financial flexibility as we move into 2008”, says JetBlue CEO Dave Barger.
Lufthansa Group chairman and CEO Wolfgang Mayrhuber adds: “The transaction links two airlines with international reputations for quality, innovation and a service culture.
By Mary Kirby
Monday, December 10, 2007
Black gets six-and-a-half years
Former media tycoon Conrad Black has been sentenced to six-and-a-half years in prison.
He has been told to report to prison in 12 weeks and will remain free on $21m (£10.3m) bail until then.
The sentence was at the lower end of the guidelines outlined by the judge, Amy St Eve. He was also fined $125,000 (£61,000) by the Chicago court.
The member of the UK's House of Lords was found guilty of three counts of fraud and one of obstructing justice.
Black will also have to forfeit $6.1m, which is the amount that a pre-sentencing report sent to the judge calculated had been stolen from shareholders.
Government prosecutors had called for a prison term of between 16 and 24 years.
He still professes his innocence and plans to appeal.
Tax-free bonuses
Together with his business associates, Black was convicted of stealing millions of dollars from shareholders of Hollinger International, of which he was chairman.
They were found to have paid themselves tax-free bonuses from the sale of newspaper assets without the approval of the company's board.
In addition, Black was convicted on one count of obstructing justice, after being recorded on tape removing documents from his office in Toronto after US regulators had informed him he was under investigation.
If the judge had accepted more of the prosecution's assertions about the size of the fraud and Black's role in it then he could have faced as much as 35 years in prison.
"It's a lenient sentence - the judge was clearly very tolerant of his remorseless tirades," Black's biographer Tom Bower told
BBC News.
Sunday, December 9, 2007
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