Friday, July 7th, 2006 at 4:06 pm
The Halifax, the UK’s biggest mortgage lender, has reported that house prices fell by 1.2% in June. This doesn’t mean the market is about to crash but it is significant. High levels of employment and low interest rates are supporting the housing market at it’s current levels.
The UK Bank Rate is set to remain at it’s current level for the next month following a meeting of the Bank Of England Monetary Policy Committee yesterday.
The two items taken together might be a sign that house prices really are teetering on the edge at last.
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Thursday, July 6th, 2006 at 3:12 pm
My thanks to TheRegister for bringing this story to my attention. I needed a good laugh. If you have been struggling to pay your credit card bills lately then I’m sure some news from Mastercard will reassure you. Apparently they had a few problems and felt that a good rebrand would solve their difficulties.
Your interest payments will now help them to ” reflect the company’s globally integrated structure and its strategic vision of advancing commerce worldwide”.
I expect you were wondering about that as you saw the credit card statements drop through the door. It was probably your first thought. Perhaps you wouldn’t pay them any more since their old logo looked so uninteresting and dull.
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Monday, July 3rd, 2006 at 5:15 pm
There’s a new card in town. It’s a contactless small-payments card on a trial being run by Mastercard and Royal Bank Of Scotland at the banks headquarters in Edinburgh. It is intended to be a replacement for cash for small purchases for such things as a cup of coffee or a snack.
The payment is made by simply passing the card past a reader and is said to halve the time taken to make a transaction. There will be a charge made to the businesses using the system but for the trial it is free.
Businesses like it because of the time saved so staff costs (and jobs?) will be less.
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