The Royal Bank of Scotland lost a record £24 Billion last year, I’m sure most people should have heard that by now. This is the biggest loss in UK corporate history.
The man behind it all Fred Goodwin is still to recieve his £650k per year pension as a well done pat on the back. This is simply disgraceful, if any employee of a company caused losses of hundreds or even thousands they would be severly repremanded. Possibly even losing their job. But if you are a senior director of a bank you get a pat on the back!
Senior directors of big British companies are almost never sacked, no matter how badly they perform. Some may think that such custom-and-practice is obscenely favourable to incompetent chief executives, but that’s just how it is.
here’s a joke I heard on the radio:
Whats the difference between a bank and a computer?
**when the bank crashes you can’t fix it with ctrl-alt-delete**
Some say mr. goodwin should lose his pension or at least have it severly reduced due to the performance of the bank. Where is the incentive to do well if with £24billion lossess you still get such a huge pension?
The Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee voted today to reduce the official Bank Rate to 1 percent. Thats the fifth rate cut in a row as the UK recession takes its toll. The rate cut is good news for borrowers and struggling businesses with existing loans. Savers are hit again though as the interest recieved on money in the bank goes down yet again.
I welcome the rate cuts as the interest I pay mortgages of mine seem to be getting lower and lower in the last few months. One of my mortgages with BMS is at 0.95% below base. Thats at an amazing 0.05% of interest. I think my monthly payments will probably be in the region of £50 a month, thats almost too good to be true! I’m also curious as to what will happen if the base rate drops again to lets say 0% then the interest on my mortgage would in theory be - 0.95% Would BMS then actually pay me every month instead?? That would be very nice!
!!Gung Hei Fat Choi!!
Wishing everybody health, wealth and prosperity in the year of the OX
Another year another celebration. I love chinese new year; getting together with family, stuffing my face with delicious foods and getting red packets from all my older relatives.
From this year forth as I am now married me and Sally have to give red packets to the younger ones of our family. Its tradition and is for good luck and as the old saying goes “its great to give!”.
Google and Baidu the two most popular search engines have again changed their homepage images for the festive days.
Google:
Chinese New Year Ox Google image
Baidu:
Chinese New Year Ox Baidu Image
For those of you who have never heard of Baidu, Baidu is the most used search engine in China. Which is probably why its main page is in madarin. In China surfers tend to mainly use Baidu and Yahoo. Google is not too popular.
Anyway which image do you like better?
The Pastel shades of the Google image or the traditional red and gold Ox head drawing from Baidu?
The struggling bank may see as much as 10 billion pounds of cash from the government to ramp up mortgage lending. The Treasury has yet to make a final decision, which may also see the bank hiring new staff. Spokesmen for the Treasury and Northern Rock, which is due to unveil a new business plan in the next few weeks, could not immediately be reached for comment.
Northern Rock the first British casualty of the credit crunch, revealed that it had been forced to seek emergency support from the Bank of England in September 2007. The bank has been nationalized since early 2008 after attempts to find a private sector buyer fell through. Northern Rock has been shrinking its mortgage book and focusing on repaying a government loan since its nationalisation.
5 billion pounds of new equity would allow Northern Rock to write about 50 billion pounds of new lending, providing the capital is not eroded by bad debts. Could this be what the UK housing market is waiting for?
If Northern Rock offer sensible loans at resonable interest rates it could just be what the UK public needs.
Official government figures have today confirmed the UK is now in recession for the first time since 1991.
The generally-used technical definition of a recession is two quarters running of negative economic growth. Gross domestic product fell by 1.5% in the last three months of 2008 after a 0.6% drop in the previous quarter. It represents the biggest quarter-on-quarter decline since 1980, and a 1.8% fall on the same quarter a year ago.
The figures are from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), showing that manufacturing contracted the most by 4.6% despite hopes that the weak pound would help exporters. This worse than expected shrinkage sent sterling to a 24-year low against the dollar, with one pound buying $1.355. (guess we’re not going on holiday to the US then for a while!)
How long will this last?
The last two recessions lasted for just over a year and many forecasters believe a recession could stretch into 2010 and be as severe as that of the early 1990s.
What does this mean for most of us?
Well I wouldn’t expect a pay rise any time soon, and I would be fearful of job losses as most companys will be cutting their workforces.
Crime will be on the increase too as many people will resort to theft.
Apparently drug additions go up in a recession.
The range of choices when you shop will see a decline too.
On the positive though things should get cheaper in terms of food and fuel as the government does what it can to help struggling familys and boost the economy.
The Government now has a £200m package of measures designed to prevent some of the most vulnerable families losing their homes due to repossession. The government scheme subject to a range of eligibility criteria is aimed at households who are eligible for homelessness assistance. In the scheme housing association will be able to buy part or all of the struggling homeowners home. The owners will then be able to stay on as a tenant at a reduced rent.
Does this sound familiar to you? I think the government has decided to offer its own Sell and Rent Back scheme to struggling homeowners. Using tax payers money of course!
To what extent will the government be able to help? well lets look at the amount involved £200m. With the 200m they reckon they will be able to help 6,000 homes avoid repossessions across England. his may seem like a large number, but compared to the ammount of yearly repossessions, this figure is but a drop in the ocean. In 2007, 27,000 homes were repossessed by their lenders as the homeoweners could not afford to pay their mortgages. This figure rose to 45,000 in 2008. This year the number of repossession will be set to rise 75,000 (CML estimate) as the recession takes its toll. 6,000 homes saved will only therefore be 8% of homeowners that will be able to benefit from the new scheme. What about all the other 92% of homeowners who face repossession?
Will this be opportunity for the investor with private sale and rent back schemes? I think so, but any investor getting involved in rental properties will have to be cash rich as most buy to let mortgages now require at least 25% deposit.
Christmas time, mistletoe and wine
Children singing christian rhyme
With logs on the fire and gifts on the tree
A time to rejoice in the good that we see
Ooops a little late but merry xmas to all my friends, both on and offline!
Hoping you stuffed yourself with plenty of turkey and drunk plenty of liquor.
Nearly the end of another year, but me and Mrs So just managed to squeeze one more holiday in. This time we went to Hong Kong for 2 weeks. Whilst over there we went on a 4 day trip to see the sites in Beijing.
Hong Kong is a lovely city and is described by the HK tourism board as “the worlds international city”.
Messing around in LKF
The Olympic camp in Beijing is truly amazing. I’m hoping London can live up to this in 2012.
The forbidden city is so humungus, it really is a city of its own.
Category: 
03/03/2009
