Tuesday, 27 November 2012
Monday, 26 November 2012
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: The City is braced for more radical attempts to break Britain’s growth deadlock after the surprise appointment of Mark Carney, the Canadian central bank chief, as the next Bank of England Governor.
Mr Carney, a former Goldman Sachs manager who will take over from Sir Mervyn King next June, was praised for his “pragmatic” response to the financial crisis and global recession, with Canada one of the few leading nations to escape without a bank bailout.
Considered to be more “hawkish” than Sir Mervyn after raising interest rates in Canada to offset a housing bubble, Mr Carney could move the Bank more quickly towards rate rises and unwinding quantitative easing.
A track record for cracking down on the banking sector also left Britain’s lenders as the biggest fallers on the stock market on Monday. As head of global financial regulation, he is expected to be able to drive through potentially painful reforms to make them more robust.
A willingness to try radical solutions – such as his unusual commitment to keep interest rates at rock bottom for a year in the depths of the crisis in 2009 – was widely welcomed after two years of predictable policy and economic stagnation in the UK.
Kevin Daly, UK economist at Goldman Sachs, said: “He has a reputation for being a policy pragmatist and innovator. Relative to the conservative approach the Bank has adopted under King’s stewardship, it is also possible that Carney may be prepared to engage in more unconventional forms of QE.”
The Bank of Canada Governor will become the first foreign head of Britain’s central bank in its 318-year history and will join at a time of both deep economic stress in the UK and upheaval within the Bank itself. He will see through reforms that will give the Bank responsibility for both interest rates and financial stability – setting policies that will impact every household in the UK, from mortgage rates to simple access to credit. As Governor of the new Bank, he will be the most powerful unelected official in Britain. » | Philip Aldrick, Economics Editor | Monday, November 26, 2012
Thursday, 22 November 2012
When the 27 European Union heads of state and government arrive in Brussels on Thursday evening for the budget summit, all eyes will be on David Cameron. The British prime minister is in a pugnacious mood, and has said he is prepared to veto the European Commission's budgetary proposal for the years 2014 to 2020 if he doesn't get his way.
Cameron is set to arrive ahead of most of his European counterparts for talks with European Union Council President Herman Van Rompuy and Commission President José Manuel Barroso in an attempt to outline a possible compromise. It promises to be a difficult task.
Every seven years, the EU must come together to fashion a spending plan, and each time it becomes a bitter battle over national interests. For the approaching seven-year period, the Commission has proposed raising EU spending to €1.091 trillion. And the EU's executive body has the support of the European Parliament as well as the 17 countries who are net recipients -- a group made up primarily of Southern and Eastern European countries who receive more from the EU budget than they pay in. » | Carsten Volkery in London | Thursday, November 22, 2012
TRIBUNE DE GENÈVE: Pour stimuler son marché immobilier, l'Espagne lance une vraie opération séduction: elle accordera des permis de résidence aux étrangers qui lui achèteront une propriété d’une valeur supérieure à 160'000 euros.
Entre 700'000 et 1,1 million de maisons neuves espagnoles sont en attente de propriétaires. Un tiers d’entre elles se situent dans des régions touristiques.
Pragmatique et acculée par sa dette, l’Espagne a fait savoir que toute personne prête à investir un montant supérieur à 160'000 euros (193'000 francs suisses) dans l'une de ces propriétés vacantes se verra accorder automatiquement un permis de résidence.
L’opération, décrite par le Telegraph, vise à séduire le marché chinois et russe. Et à relancer le secteur immobilier espagnol, en stagnation depuis la crise de 2008. » | Par Sandrine Perroud/ap | jeudi 22 novembre 2012
Elizabeth Chapman lives in the beautiful Ozarks with her family, where she works as a professional artist and teaches out of her home studio. The majority of her work can be described as contemporary expressionism. This acrylic painting (16” x 20” x ¾”) is available for purchase. »
Wednesday, 14 November 2012
Zum Teil in Schweizerdeutsch
Tuesday, 13 November 2012
TRIBUNE DE GENÈVE: Le record français d'Euro Millions a été battu mardi soir, lors du tirage de la loterie européenne sur France 2, par un joueur de l'Hexagone qui a remporté la somme fabuleuse de 169'837'010 euros. » | afp/Newsnet | mardi 13 novembre 2012
Monday, 12 November 2012
THE GUARDIAN: Rival hubs such as New York and Hong Kong will push beleaguered City into third place by 2015, CEBR forecasts
London can expect to lose its crown as the leading global centre for high finance this year amid a barrage of City job cuts, falling bonuses and competition from rival hubs led by New York, Hong Kong and Singapore, according to a study.
By 2015 the explosion in jobs in Hong Kong will have pushed the Square Mile into third place on a league table of international financial centres, says the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR).
The CEBR also had more immediate bad news for London's bankers, suggesting combined City bonus pools are likely to slip to £4.4bn this year, down from £6.75bn for 2011 and £11.56bn in 2008.
Such will be the rise in finance job numbers in the far east that London is expected to only narrowly employ more financial workers than Singapore, the region's number two financial centre, in three years' time, the CEBR predicts. » | Simon Bowers | Sunday, November 11, 2012
Sunday, 11 November 2012
THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH – PICTURE GALLERY: Prince Charles and Duchess of Cornwall attend a Remembrance Sunday service in New Zealand » | Sunday, November 11, 2012
THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD: Denmark's government will scrap a fat tax it introduced a little over a year ago in a world first.
"The fat tax and the extension of the chocolate tax - the so-called sugar tax - has been criticised for increasing prices for consumers, increasing companies' administrative costs and putting Danish jobs at risk," the Danish tax ministry said in a statement on Saturday.
"At the same time it is believed that the fat tax has, to a lesser extent, contributed to Danes travelling across the border to make purchases.
"Against this background, the government and the (far-left) Red Green Party have agreed to abolish the fat tax and cancel the planned sugar tax." » | AFP | Sunday, November 11, 2012
SPIEGEL ONLINE INTERNATIONAL: While home prices in Germany's urban areas are skyrocketing, the opposite trend can be seen in less densely settled regions. There, shrinking populations are creating housing surpluses and vacant homes in a trend that experts say will soon spread across the country as its population grows grayer.
For now, things in the Altenwalde district of Cuxhaven, a port city of 52,000 residents in northeastern Germany located near the mouth of the Elbe River, still look prim and proper in that sort of Playmobil tidiness that Germans love. The little houses are packed in close together into the kind of orderly settlement one can find in thousands of places across Germany.
One-third of all of the residential structures in western Germany are single- or two-family homes built between 1950 and 1978. These were the dream houses meant to offer their owners peace, quiet and financial security. But now Germany is undergoing a generational change. There are fewer young people and more old ones, and grandma's little house has gone from being a wise investment to a money loser.
One can already see the signs of this tectonic shift in Altenwalde. It isn't everywhere, but it still can't be missed. There are houses with empty window panes, closed shutters, empty driveways and overgrown gardens. These are symptoms of being vacant or of only being inhabited by a single, usually elderly person who cannot afford to, doesn't have the energy to or simply doesn't care to keep things up. Indeed, demographic change has arrived in Germany's famously idyllic suburbs. » | Christian Tröster | Friday, November 09, 2012
Saturday, 10 November 2012
LE POINT: Selon l'OCDE, à plus long terme, le PIB de l'Inde dépassera également celui des États-Unis, pour les reléguer au troisième rang.
Les États-Unis perdront leur place de première puissance mondiale, dépassés par la Chine en 2016 puis par l'Inde, selon un rapport de l'Organisation de coopération et de développement économique (OCDE) publié vendredi. Dans son rapport sur la croissance mondiale à l'horizon 2060, l'OCDE table sur une croissance de l'économie mondiale de 3 % par an en moyenne, avec des différences marquées entre les économies de marché émergentes et celles des pays avancés.
"L'équilibre de la puissance économique va fortement basculer au cours des 50 prochaines années", selon l'organisation regroupant les pays les plus riches de la planète. "Les États-Unis devraient céder leur place de première économie du monde à la Chine, dès 2016", précise l'organisation. » | AFP | vendredi 09 novembre 2012
He said Congress must act against the so-called fiscal cliff, a package of tax rises and spending cuts due early next year.
But in a duelling news conference, Republican House Speaker John Boehner said tax rises would not be acceptable.
Budget analysts warn the US will tip into recession unless a deal is struck.
Mr Obama has repeatedly called for the affluent to pay more, but such a plan is anathema to Republicans.
The fiscal cliff would see the expiry of George W Bush-era tax cuts at the end of 2012, combined with automatic, across-the-board reductions to military and domestic spending. (+ videos) » | Friday, November 09, 2012
Friday, 9 November 2012
Speaking from the White House, the president said he was not wedded to every detail of his plan and that he was open to compromise - but warned that he would reject any proposal that was "not balanced".
However, he said that raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans - including himself in that demographic - must be part of a plan to reduce the deficit, calling on Congress to pass a bill that would prevent Bush-era tax cuts from expiring for all but the rich.
"We can't just cut our way to prosperity. If we are serious about reducing the deficit, we have to combine spending cuts with revenue, and that means asking the wealthiest Americans to pay a little more in taxes," he said.
He also declared that his re-election on Tuesday showed that the majority of Americans agreed with his approach, and that they "won't tolerate dysfunction".
Pulling a pen from his blazer pocket, he declared: "I've got the pen, I'm ready to sign the bill," as he urged lawmakers to work together and take action. » | Source: AFP | Friday, November 09, 2012
The US has finally voted and the dark visions of America's future broadcast on television screens across the country -- and most intensively in battleground states -- have come to an end. Supporters of both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney had developed doomsday scenarios for what would happen if their candidate's opponent were to win. Four more years of Obama, the ads warned, would result in pure socialism. A Romney presidency would see the middle and lower classes brutally exploited.
But following Obama's re-election, Americans are now facing a different, much more real horror scenario: In just a few weeks time, thousands of children could be denied vaccinations, federally funded school programs could screech to a halt, adults may be forced to forego HIV tests and subsidized housing vouchers would dry up. Even the work of air-traffic controllers, the FBI, border officials and the military could be drastically curtailed.
That and more is looming just over the horizon according to the White House if the country is allowed to plunge off the "fiscal cliff" at the beginning of next year. Coined by Federal Reserve head Ben Bernanke, it refers to the vast array of cuts and tax increases which will automatically go into effect if Republicans and Democrats can't agree on measures to slash the US budget deficit.
In total, the cuts add up to $1.2 trillion over the next nine years, with half coming from the military and half from other government programs, and with $65 billion coming in the first year alone. They were enshrined in law with the Budget Control Act of 2011, which also increased the debt ceiling. And though a deadline of Jan. 2, 2013 was set, they were never meant to come into effect. The plan for deep across-the-board cuts was intended as a way to prod Democrats and Republicans into reaching agreement on a long-term plan to reduce America's vast budget deficit. » | David Böcking | Thursday, November 08, 2012
Wednesday, 7 November 2012
NEUE ZÜRCHER ZEITUNG: Die Erleichterung über die Wiederwahl des amtierenden US-Präsidenten Barack Obama hat an der Schweizer Börse am Mittwoch rasch wieder einer pessimistischeren Einschätzung Platz gemacht. Stark ins Minus sank der Dow Jones.
(Reuters) Nach einem Anstieg auf ein Jahreshoch setzten Gewinnmitnahmen ein und die Börse schloss tiefer. Die von der EU-Kommission gesenkten Wachstumsprognosen sorgten Händlern zufolge für neue Verunsicherung. » | Mittwoch, 07. November 2012
Monday, 5 November 2012
CPI FINANCIAL: The 1st Muscat International Islamic Finance Forum runs at al Bustan Place Hotel 4-5 November under the auspices of Sayyid Asa'ad bin Tariq al-Said. The opening ceremony was attended by a number of ministers, undersecretaries and more than 400 attendees from the region.
His Eminence Sheikh Ahmed bin Hamad al-Khalili, the Sultanate's Grand Mufti said the conference would cast light on Islamic Banking and its importance for the Islamic Ummah.
Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohammed, former Prime Minister of Malaysia delivered a speech where he said that Islamic countries should exploit the bounties provided to them by Allah through following the teachings of Islam. He added that, “There is a dire need for Islamic banking in this age to make the optimum utilisation of the available capital in the Islamic world.” » | Robin Amlôt | Monday, November 05, 2012
SPIEGEL ONLINE INTERNATIONAL: Cyprus could soon seek aid from the European Union's bailout fund. But according to a secret report by Germany's BND intelligence service, the aid might mainly benefit Russian oligarchs who have parked illegal money in bank accounts in Cyprus, SPIEGEL has learned. Russian deposits there total $26 billion.
The German foreign intelligence agency, the BND, has written a report suggesting that the European Union aid that may soon be paid to Cyprus could mainly benefit Russians who have deposited illegal income in accounts on the Eastern Mediterranean island, SPIEGEL has learned.
In a confidential report, the BND said Russians have deposited $26 billion (€20.25 billion) in Cyprus banks, an amount greater than the island's annual gross domestic product. These deposits will be guaranteed if European bailout money is paid to shore up the island's banks. The BND also accused Cyprus of still providing opportunities for money laundering. » | Monday, November 05, 2012
Thursday, 1 November 2012
Une fois encore, c'est le grand quotidien populaire Bild, qui saute dans le plat à pieds joints. «La France est-elle en train de devenir la nouvelle Grèce?», s'interroge le journal. La question provocatrice lancée comme un signal d'alarme est volontairement outrancière. Cependant, elle traduit le malaise réel des élites allemandes et du gouvernement d'Angela Merkel à l'égard de leur grand voisin: la France est devenue un sujet d'inquiétude en Allemagne. S'exprimant lors d'une conférence organisée par l'institut sur l'avenir de l'Europe - fondé par le milliardaire Nicolas Berggruen - l'ancien chancelier social-démocrate, Gerhard Schröder, n'a pas mâché ses mots. Il a taclé ses camarades socialistes français, comparant la France d'aujourd'hui à l'Allemagne de 2003, alors considérée comme «l'homme malade de l'Europe». Schröder l'avait sortie de l'ornière grâce à sa cure de réformes libérales, «l'Agenda 2010». » | Par Patrick Saint-Paul, Service infographie du Figaro | jeudi 01 novembre 2012
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Electrical retailer Comet could file for administration as soon as Thursday, putting another 6,000 jobs under threat on Britain's struggling high street.
The retailer has been under increasing pressure from suppliers to pay upfront for stock before the critical Christmas trading period. The company is trading without credit insurance, which protects suppliers against the failure of a retailer.
Those demands are understood to have intensified in the past fortnight after it emerged that OpCapita, the private equity company that owns Comet, had received approaches for the chain.
Deloitte has been lined up as an administrator in what will be the 29th high street retailer to go into administration since the turn of the year.
The prospect of Comet's administration is the latest blow for a brick and mortar retailer grappling with the [the] increasing popularity of online shopping and UK consumers with less money to spend. » | Richard Blackden | Thursday, November 01, 2012
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