It’s been a bumper quarter for insurers.
31 Oct 2006 [0 Comments | 335 views]
Recently Britain’s biggest insurer Aviva announced a record nine months in the UK, with its British subsidiary, Norwich Union, seeing total sales of insurance savings products leaping 39 percent. And while the UK was the pick of its regions, it wasn’t half a bad period all round, with global sales up 22 percent to £22.7 [...]
Vampire bat drug back on
31 Oct 2006 [0 Comments | 160 views]
And finally, on this day of Halloween, we thought we would bring news of a potential new medical treatment developed by German company, Paion. The drug uses saliva from Vampire bats. In fact, last week the drug’s trial was put on hold over safety fears, but yesterday, news broke that the trials had re-started.
Stern Report: the US reaction
31 Oct 2006 [0 Comments | 161 views]
In all the TV and press coverage given to the Stern report there was one quote that stood out above all others that seemed to be the most telling. We are sure, the Brits have got the message by now. Climate change is a serious issue, and headlines comparing the impact of global warming with [...]
Three million people are waiting for the cost of houses to fall
31 Oct 2006 [0 Comments | 211 views]
Cast your mind back to the late ’80s. The chancellor was changing the tax breaks on mortgages taken out by couples and there was a rush to buy a home. House prices became artificially inflated, and then the rate of interest started to rise, and crash went the market. The question is this: is there [...]
Airbus gets more air miles from down under
30 Oct 2006 [0 Comments | 202 views]
At last some good news from Airbus and its giant A380 aircraft. With delays building upon delays, with the comings and goings in the management structure at EADS and Airbus almost matching the complexity of the A380 electronics, (which has often been held out as the reason for each delay), the company needed good news [...]
Immigrants contribute 3 percent of GDP.
30 Oct 2006 [0 Comments | 191 views]
The UK economy is 3 percent bigger today than it would have been if it wasn’t for immigration since 1997. But the impact is getting more significant, with immigration accounting for no less than 1 percent of GDP in 2005/06, says the NATIONAL INSTITUTE ECONOMIC REVIEW. And since most immigrants do not draw on public [...]
Golden rule to be broken as rate hits 5 and a quarter percent
30 Oct 2006 [0 Comments | 177 views]
We all know it won’t happen. Gordon Brown will change the rules, but his beloved golden rule, as it is currently defined will be broken over the next economic cycle says the National Institute of Economic and Social Research. The NIESR report, which is published every quarter, also reckons that UK plc is set to [...]
US slows to a crawl.
30 Oct 2006 [0 Comments | 147 views]
Uncle Sam’s Housing market is slowing so fast, that the slump in homebuilding knocked 1.1% off annualized economic growth.in the US in the third quarter of this year. In all, the US could manage an annual growth rate of just 1.6 percent, compared to 2.6 percent in the previous quarter and a storming 5.6 percent [...]
Tax: Why it’s the free market’s answer to climate change.
30 Oct 2006 [0 Comments | 167 views]
This weekend an extraordinarily simplistic and frequently incorrect view of the global economy and the huge challenge it faces in climate change, made its way into the mass media. The Mail on Sunday talked about Gordon Brown introducing a stealth tax to fight global warming, and said families with big cars would have to pay [...]
Is it irrational exuberance or just irrational celebration?
27 Oct 2006 [0 Comments | 147 views]
Twenty five years, that’s how long it took the Dow Jones Industrial average to regain the levels seen just before the 1929 crash. And when markets crashed in 2000, parallels were drawn. For just a couple of years, it seemed like history would indeed repeat itself, as the growth in the number of bears selling [...]
