Tag Archives: mortgages

BBC News Bites: mortgages, RBS, RyanAir and environment

The Let’s start the last month of 2008 with a look at BBC Business News:

Mortgages: As they fall, so do house sales and prices. “Bank of England figures show that just 32,000 mortgages were approved, 1,000 fewer than in the previous month”. BBC.co.uk comments, “The number of mortgages approved, but not yet lent, is a good indicator of medium-term trends in lending”.

Banks: “the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has guaranteed not to repossess the properties of customers who fall behind on payments for at least six months. The bank, which owns NatWest, is Britain’s fifth largest mortgage lender with a 7% market share”. But the most important fact reading BBC.co.uk is that, “the government has bought a 58% stake in RBS as part of its recapitalisation plan for the banking sector.”

Companies: The Irish airline RyanAir has made a fresh takeover bid for the Irish flag-carrier Aer Lingus to the tune of €748 million. The article reports, “Ryanair’s previous offer for Aer Lingus, which valued it at €1.5 billion, was blocked by the European Commission on competition grounds”.

Environment: “Official advisers to the UK government have demanded Britain slash greenhouse gases by a fifth of current levels by 2020 – the toughest target so far”. The article reads, “The Committee on Climate Change said the cut (21% on 2005 levels) is needed for the UK to play its fair share in combating dangerous change. The independent committee recommends that by 2020 it should be made almost impossible to burn coal for electricity without technology to capture and store the carbon emissions”.

Interest rates, taxes, mortgages and the new Budget…

…the four key words of today. Everyday we receive new dark reports from the economic world about the imminent financial crisis in Uk. For example? The Guardian underlines again: “Britain will be one of the developed countries worst affected by the severest recession to hit the global economy since the early 1980s. The Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development said it expected unemployment across its 30 rich-country members to rise by 8 million to 42 million by 2010 as all parts of the West felt the effects of the financial crisis”. “Britain’s economy may not begin to grow again until the end of next year”, – explains The Timesonline.co.uk agreeing with most international opinion.

The Guardian goes on to say that the Governor of the Bank of England may work on the interest rates: “Interest rates may have to be cut more aggressively to ensure that businesses and consumers benefit from cheaper borrowing”. The Timesonline.co.uk states: “mortgage lending slipped back towards a record low in October, as consumers turned to their deposits to fund other spending”. In the meantime “Prime Minister Gordon Brown swept aside three decades of economic orthodoxy with tax increases on the rich” and plans that, Bloomberg says, “will double Britain’s national debt”.

BBC.co.uk publishes all the documents about the Pre-Budget Report: the latest tax and economic forecasts and future departmental spending plans. Have a look at them and let’s see what they will mean for us.