This may not be the main thing that financial markets are looking at right now, but the Bank of England has announced it is thinking of removing another hurdle from the path or house price inflation.
Continue readingTag Archives: mortgages
Mortgage guarantee could sow the seeds of trouble
The UK government awarded hard-working medical staff a meagre 1% pay rise in the most recent budget, all the while splashing out on yet another indirect subsidy for house prices: the mortgage guarantee.
Continue readingOne third of British homebuyers don’t read mortgage contracts fully
One thing that becomes clear to a foreigner after even a short time in Britain is how obsessed people are with homeownership. Expressions like “getting on the housing ladder”, “you can’t go wrong with bricks and mortar” or “rent is throwing money away” are all too common.
Despite this obsession — or maybe because of it — it turns out that the British are not all that careful when it comes to making sure they fully read and understand the terms of their mortgage.
Libor manipulation suit could open the floodgates
The news that the US Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) is suing European banks in London for manipulating Libor should worry central bankers everywhere.
It’s all hush-hush, with details coming from reports in newspapers, rather than made public officially. The Financial Times reported that the FDIC is suing Barclays, Deutsche Bank, Lloyds Banking Group, Royal Bank of Scotland, Rabobank and UBS, as well as the British Bankers’ Association, accusing them of fraudulent misrepresentation.
Lloyds said it doesn’t believe the claim has any merit, while the others did not comment, according to the report.
Stop subsidising CEO bonuses with taxpayer money
As executive compensation continues to increase, more evidence emerges of the link between compensation and risky behaviour that could, in the most extreme cases, lead to the collapse of the firm and why not, the global economy.
And yet some CEOs’ bonuses are being subsidised by public money, especially in the UK where the taxpayer generously tops up salaries that are too low for employees to be able to live on.