Krugman:
Triumph of the (Electoral) Nerds?
Nate Silver — whom everyone interested in this election should be reading — is bemused by Intrade,
which is showing a much higher chance of a Romney victory than his
analysis (and he’s actually less bullish on Obama than other quant
sites, like Drew Linzer’s Votamatic).
You should probably also know that Nate is, predictably, being accused of deliberately skewing the numbers — no doubt as part of a grand conspiracy also involving the Bureau of Labor Statistics and Area 51.
If you’re new to this, there are two basic approaches to election analysis at this point. One is the campaign reporter style, full of impressionist reporting about who won the news cycle and who has “momentum”, whatever that means (politics ain’t beanbag, but it ain’t billiards either). The other is poll-based. And that mostly means state-level polls at this point: there are more of them, and we have an electoral-college system, not a popular-vote system.
The impressionistic style has been all about Romney on the rise, a narrative that is to a large part being fed by the Romney campaign itself. But the state-level polling doesn’t show it.
In fact, the state polls pretty much say that Obama would win if the election were held right now, taking Ohio, Wisconsin, and Iowa, and quite possibly Virginia. Florida is a dead heat, too. (See the Pollster map). Nor is there any sign of movement in Romney’s direction after his big post-first-debate bump.
So why is Intrade trending Romney? One possibility is that Romney supporters are trying to manipulate the results — as Nate points out, other markets and betting forums are much less Romney-friendly. Another is that Intrade traders actually buy the spin cycle.
Whatever is really going on, we’re now getting close to a showdown between styles of political analysis. By inclination, I of course trust the nerds. But we’ll soon see."
You should probably also know that Nate is, predictably, being accused of deliberately skewing the numbers — no doubt as part of a grand conspiracy also involving the Bureau of Labor Statistics and Area 51.
If you’re new to this, there are two basic approaches to election analysis at this point. One is the campaign reporter style, full of impressionist reporting about who won the news cycle and who has “momentum”, whatever that means (politics ain’t beanbag, but it ain’t billiards either). The other is poll-based. And that mostly means state-level polls at this point: there are more of them, and we have an electoral-college system, not a popular-vote system.
The impressionistic style has been all about Romney on the rise, a narrative that is to a large part being fed by the Romney campaign itself. But the state-level polling doesn’t show it.
In fact, the state polls pretty much say that Obama would win if the election were held right now, taking Ohio, Wisconsin, and Iowa, and quite possibly Virginia. Florida is a dead heat, too. (See the Pollster map). Nor is there any sign of movement in Romney’s direction after his big post-first-debate bump.
So why is Intrade trending Romney? One possibility is that Romney supporters are trying to manipulate the results — as Nate points out, other markets and betting forums are much less Romney-friendly. Another is that Intrade traders actually buy the spin cycle.
Whatever is really going on, we’re now getting close to a showdown between styles of political analysis. By inclination, I of course trust the nerds. But we’ll soon see."
-
China Blocks Web Access to Times After Article
section A - page 12
"HONG KONG — The Chinese government swiftly blocked access Friday morning
to the English-language and Chinese-language Web sites of The New York
Times from computers in mainland China in response to the news organization’s decision to post an article in both languages describing wealth accumulated by the family of the country’s prime minister. The authorities were also blocking attempts to mention The Times or the prime minister, Wen Jiabao, in postings on Sina Weibo, an extremely popular mini-blogging service in China that resembles Twitter.
The Foreign Ministry spokesman on duty in Beijing early Friday morning
did not immediately answer phone calls for comment.
China maintains the world’s most extensive and sophisticated system for
Internet censorship, employing tens of thousands of people to monitor
what is said, delete entries that contravene the country’s extensive and
unpublished regulations and even write new entries that are favorable
to the government.
Rebecca MacKinnon, a senior fellow specializing in Internet free
expression and privacy issues at the New America Foundation, a
nonpartisan group headquartered in Washington, said that the Chinese
interruption of Internet access was typical of the response to
information that offended leaders.
“This is what they do: they get mad, they block you,” she said.
The English-language and Chinese-language Web sites of The Times are hosted on servers outside mainland China.
A spokeswoman for The Times, Eileen Murphy, expressed disappointment
that Internet access had been blocked and noted that the
Chinese-language Web site had attracted “great interest” in China.
“We hope that full access is restored shortly, and we will ask the
Chinese authorities to ensure that our readers in China can continue to
enjoy New York Times journalism,” she said in a statement, adding, “We
will continue to report and translate stories applying the same
journalistic standards that are upheld across The New York Times.”
Former President Jiang Zemin of China ordered an end to blocking of The
New York Times Web site after meeting with journalists from The Times in
August 2001. The company’s Web sites, like those of most other foreign
media organizations, have remained mostly free of blocking since then,
with occasional, temporary exceptions.
By 7 a.m. Friday in China, access to both the English- and
Chinese-language Web sites of The Times was blocked from all 31 cities
in mainland China tested. The Times had posted the article in English at
4:34 p.m. on Thursday in New York (4:34 a.m. Friday in Beijing), and
finished posting the article in Chinese three hours later after the
translation of final edits to the English-language version.
Publication of the article about Mr. Wen and his family comes at a
delicate time in Chinese politics, during a year in which factional
rivalries and the personal lives of Chinese leaders have come into
public view to a rare extent and drawn unprecedented international
interest.
The Times’s statement called China “an increasingly open society, with
increasingly sophisticated media,” adding, “The response to our site
suggests that The Times can play an important role in the government’s
efforts to raise the quality of journalism available to the Chinese
people.”
The New York Times is not the first international organization to run
into trouble with Chinese censors. Google decided to move its servers
for the Chinese market in January 2010, to Hong Kong, a semiautonomous
Chinese territory outside the country’s censorship firewalls, after the
company was unable to reach an agreement with the Chinese authorities to
allow unrestricted searches of the Internet.
Bloomberg published an article
on June 29 describing wealth accumulated by the family of Vice
President Xi Jinping, who is expected to become the country’s next top
leader as general secretary of the Communist Party during the coming
Party Congress.
Since then, Bloomberg’s operations have encountered a series of problems
in mainland China, including the blocking of its Web site, which is in
English."
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/26/opinion/krugman-pointing-toward-prosperity.html
"Mitt Romney has been barnstorming the country, telling voters that he
has a five-point plan to restore prosperity. And some voters, alas, seem
to believe what he’s saying. So President Obama has now responded with
his own plan, a little blue booklet containing 27 policy proposals. How
do these two plans stack up? Well, as I’ve said before, Mr. Romney’s “plan” is a sham. It’s a list of
things he claims will happen, with no description of the policies he
would follow to make those things happen. “We will cut the deficit and
put America on track to a balanced budget,” he declares, but he refuses
to specify which tax loopholes he would close to offset his $5 trillion
in tax cuts.
Actually, if describing what you want to see happen without providing
any specific policies to get us there constitutes a “plan,” I can easily
come up with a one-point plan that trumps Mr. Romney any day. Here it
is: Every American will have a good job with good wages. Also, a
blissfully happy marriage. And a pony.
So Mr. Romney is faking it. His real plan seems to be to foster economic
recovery through magic, inspiring business confidence through his
personal awesomeness. But what about the man he wants to kick out of the
White House?
Well, Mr. Obama’s booklet comes a lot closer to being an actual plan.
Where Mr. Romney says he’ll achieve energy independence, never mind how,
Mr. Obama calls for concrete steps like raising fuel efficiency
standards. Mr. Romney says, “We will give our fellow citizens the skills
they need,” but says nothing about how he’ll make that happen, pivoting
instead to a veiled endorsement of school vouchers; Mr. Obama calls for
specific things like a program to recruit math and science teachers and
partnerships between businesses and community colleges.
So, is Mr. Obama offering an inspiring vision for economic recovery? No,
he isn’t. His economic agenda is relatively small-bore — a bunch of
modest if sensible proposals rather than a big push. More important,
it’s aimed at the medium term, the economy of 2020, rather than at the
clear and pressing problems of the present.
Put it this way: If you didn’t know what was actually going on in the
U.S. economy, you’d think from reading the Obama plan that America was a
place where workers with the right skills were in high demand, so that
our big problem was that not enough people have those skills. And five
or 10 years from now, America might actually look like that. Right now,
however, we’re still living in a depressed economy offering poor
prospects for almost everyone, including the highly educated.
Indeed, these have been really bad years for recent college graduates,
who all too often can’t find anyone willing to make use of their
hard-won skills that were expensive to attain. Unemployment and
underemployment among recent graduates surged between 2007 and 2010,
while far too many highly trained young people found themselves working
in low-skill jobs. The job market for skilled workers, like that for
Americans in general, is now gradually improving. But it’s still far
from normal.
The point is that America is still suffering from an overall lack of
demand, the result of the severe debt and financial crisis that broke
out before Mr. Obama took office. In a better world, the president would
be proposing bold short-term moves to move us rapidly back to full
employment. But he isn’t.
O.K., we all understand why. Voters have been told over and over again
that the 2009 stimulus didn’t work (actually it did, but it wasn’t big
enough), and a few days before a national election is no time to try to
change that big a false belief. So all that the administration feels
able to offer are measures that would, one hopes, modestly accelerate
the recovery already under way.
It’s disappointing, to be sure. But a slow job is better than a snow
job. Mr. Obama may not be as bold as we’d like, but he isn’t actively
misleading voters the way Mr. Romney is. Furthermore, if we ask what Mr.
Romney would probably do in practice, including sharp cuts in programs
that aid the less well-off and the imposition of hard-money orthodoxy on
the Federal Reserve, it looks like a program that might well derail the
recovery and send us back into recession.
And you should never forget the broader policy context. Mr. Obama may
not have an exciting economic plan, but, if he is re-elected, he will
get to implement a health reform that is the biggest improvement in
America’s safety net since Medicare. Mr. Romney doesn’t have an economic
plan at all, but he is determined not just to repeal Obamacare but to
impose savage cuts in Medicaid. So never mind all those bullet points.
Think instead about the 45 million Americans who either will or won’t
receive essential health care, depending on who wins on Nov. 6."
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Links 10/24/12
Cat recovering from NH barn fire has pig to thank Associated Press
This dung beetle’s air-conditioning unit is crap. No, really Discovery. Another Richard Smith anti-antidote.
FDA probes deaths linked to Monster Energy drinks Raw Story. The FDA lapse here is terrible. Caffeine is extremely toxic. We just happen to get highly diluted doses in coffee and tea.
Town’s Passion, Retired Doctor’s Concern New York Times. While we are on the subject of health risks….
Strip-Club Fees Aren’t Tax Exempt, N.Y. Top Court Rules Bloomberg. The fact that they had enough dough to take an appeal this far undermines the idea that they merited an arts exemption.
Lorca earthquake ’caused by groundwater extraction’ BBC
The Continuing Tragedy of L’Aquila Understanding Uncertainty (Richard Smith)
On Mexico City’s flat roofs, tiny gardens help feed families, provide an urban respite McClatchy (Lambert)
More on China’s PMI MacroBusiness
Is China Still a “Currency Manipulator”? Ed Donlon, EconoMonitor
Oldest Auschwitz survivor dies aged 108 AFP
Golden Dawn adopts the Nazi salute YouTube. Nikki: “At the end he says, as he gives the salute first with one arm then with both, “these are clean hands, these are not dirty hands”. (Note that the word I am translating as ‘dirty’ is also used for the stench of garbage.)”
Malaria returns to crisis-torn Greece Telegraph
Uruguay plans to legalise marijuana under state monopoly Guardian (furzy mouse)
The IMF and the End of Austerity Ann Pettifor, Huffington Post
HOW COLONEL GADDAFI AND THE WESTERN ESTABLISHMENT TOGETHER CREATED A PANTOMIME WORLD Adam Curtis, BBC
Mourdock: Rape Pregnancies ‘Something That God Intended to Happen’ TPM
Joe Klein’s sociopathic defense of drone killings of children Glenn Greenwald
Nine Things to Remember During the Iran Section of the Presidential Debate Tonight Wide Asleep (furzy mouse). Still useful even though clearly from yesterday.
Robert Waldmann: Romney Suffers from CEO Disease Brad DeLong
Japan Is Not A Good Example Of How Deflation Typically Plays Out Stoneleigh
Nightmare on Electric Vehicle Street OilPrice
Saturated Fat: McDonald’s to Revisit ‘Dollar Menu’; Reflections on Same Store Sales and Commercial Real Estate Michael Shedlock (furzy mouse)
Insight: Nevada struggles with dark side of Macau casinos’ growth Reuters (Richard Smith)
Hedge fund manager donates $100M to Central Park in largest gift ever New York Post. Debra C via e-mail:
Eurozone crisis as it happened: Greek leaders fail to agree on austerity package as markets slide Guardian and US results raise fresh fears for economy Financial Times. I had wanted to post on this. It’s feeling like we have finally hit an inflection point where faith in the ability of central banks in keeping economies and markets afloat is fading. And per this: Firms Don’t Share Consumer Optimism New York Times, retail is always the last to figure things out…
* * *
This dung beetle’s air-conditioning unit is crap. No, really Discovery. Another Richard Smith anti-antidote.
FDA probes deaths linked to Monster Energy drinks Raw Story. The FDA lapse here is terrible. Caffeine is extremely toxic. We just happen to get highly diluted doses in coffee and tea.
Town’s Passion, Retired Doctor’s Concern New York Times. While we are on the subject of health risks….
Strip-Club Fees Aren’t Tax Exempt, N.Y. Top Court Rules Bloomberg. The fact that they had enough dough to take an appeal this far undermines the idea that they merited an arts exemption.
Lorca earthquake ’caused by groundwater extraction’ BBC
The Continuing Tragedy of L’Aquila Understanding Uncertainty (Richard Smith)
On Mexico City’s flat roofs, tiny gardens help feed families, provide an urban respite McClatchy (Lambert)
More on China’s PMI MacroBusiness
Is China Still a “Currency Manipulator”? Ed Donlon, EconoMonitor
Oldest Auschwitz survivor dies aged 108 AFP
Golden Dawn adopts the Nazi salute YouTube. Nikki: “At the end he says, as he gives the salute first with one arm then with both, “these are clean hands, these are not dirty hands”. (Note that the word I am translating as ‘dirty’ is also used for the stench of garbage.)”
Malaria returns to crisis-torn Greece Telegraph
Uruguay plans to legalise marijuana under state monopoly Guardian (furzy mouse)
The IMF and the End of Austerity Ann Pettifor, Huffington Post
HOW COLONEL GADDAFI AND THE WESTERN ESTABLISHMENT TOGETHER CREATED A PANTOMIME WORLD Adam Curtis, BBC
Mourdock: Rape Pregnancies ‘Something That God Intended to Happen’ TPM
Joe Klein’s sociopathic defense of drone killings of children Glenn Greenwald
Nine Things to Remember During the Iran Section of the Presidential Debate Tonight Wide Asleep (furzy mouse). Still useful even though clearly from yesterday.
Robert Waldmann: Romney Suffers from CEO Disease Brad DeLong
Japan Is Not A Good Example Of How Deflation Typically Plays Out Stoneleigh
Nightmare on Electric Vehicle Street OilPrice
Saturated Fat: McDonald’s to Revisit ‘Dollar Menu’; Reflections on Same Store Sales and Commercial Real Estate Michael Shedlock (furzy mouse)
Insight: Nevada struggles with dark side of Macau casinos’ growth Reuters (Richard Smith)
Hedge fund manager donates $100M to Central Park in largest gift ever New York Post. Debra C via e-mail:
So John Paulson, the man who made billions shorting RMBS’s that he chose to fail, is donating 100 million dollars to the Central Park Conservancy. For plutocrats, it’s a twofer or threefer. Underfund the public sphere, like funding for parks for everyone. So that they fall apart. Create a private entity like the Conservancy so that private persons can come to the rescue of the foundering public enterprise. Destroy the public sector through undertaxation and then have the private one ride to the rescue of the incompetent and inefficient public sectorThe Social Economics of Thorstein Veblen Michael Hudson, EH
They get lots of social kudos for doing “good” and also get to prove once more the utter uselessness of government and public ownership and control of public space.
In THIS case, though, how the donor got rich enough to give away $100,000,000 has a bloody trail that might be uncovered.
Because Paulson didn’t give 100 million dollars. The people and institutions he scammed with his scheme THEY gave 100 million dollars.
Eurozone crisis as it happened: Greek leaders fail to agree on austerity package as markets slide Guardian and US results raise fresh fears for economy Financial Times. I had wanted to post on this. It’s feeling like we have finally hit an inflection point where faith in the ability of central banks in keeping economies and markets afloat is fading. And per this: Firms Don’t Share Consumer Optimism New York Times, retail is always the last to figure things out…
* * *
Act on pledge to ease Irish debts, IMF urges EU
25 Oct 2012
| 1 Comment
Debt crisis: as it happened - 25 October, 2012
25 Oct 2012
| 203 Comments
http://robertreich.org/post/34302125733
If You Succumb to Cynicism, The Regressives Win it All
"Thursday, October 25, 2012
This is for those of you who consider yourself to
be progressive but have given up on politics because it seems rotten to
the core. You may prefer Obama to Romney but don’t think there’s a huge
difference between the two, so you may not even vote.
Your cynicism is understandable. But cynicism is a self-fulfilling prophesy. If you succumb to it, the regressives who want to take this nation back to the 19th century win it all.
The Koch brothers, Karl Rove, the rabid Republican right, CEOs and Wall Street titans who want to entrench their privileges and tax advantages – all of them would like nothing better than for every progressive in America to throw in the towel.
Then America is entirely theirs.
The alternative to cynicism is to become more involved in politics. Help create a progressive force in this nation that grows into a movement that can’t be stopped.
We almost had it last year in the Occupy movement. We had the arguments and the energy. What we lacked was organization and discipline.
I’ve spent years in Washington and I know nothing good happens there unless good people outside Washington are organized and mobilized to put pressure on Washington to make it happen.
This isn’t new. In the election of 1936, a constituent approached FDR with a list of things she wanted him to do if reelected. “Ma’am,” he said, “I’d like to do all those things. But if I’m reelected, you must make me.”
We must make them.
I suggest a two-step plan.
Step one: Vote for Barack Obama for President and vote for every Democratic senator and representative in Congress. Get off your ass and make sure your friends and relatives do the same.
Step two: Starting Election Day, regardless of who’s elected, commit at least three hours every week to political organizing and mobilizing. Connect with other progressives in your city and state. Help find and recruit new progressive candidates to run against Republicans in swing states, and against conservative Democrats. Support the members of the progressive caucus in Congress. Raise money. Raise a ruckus.
Make it our goal to reverse Citizens United, even if it takes a constitutional amendment. And have public financing of elections (including requiring the media to provide free political advertising as part of their commitment to public service).
Also break up the biggest banks and resurrect the Glass-Steagall Act.
Put a 2 percent surtax on wealth in excess of $3 million. And a one-tenth of 1 percent transaction tax on every financial transaction. And restore top tax rates to what they were before Ronald Reagan became president.
Use half this revenue to pay down the national debt and half to make sure every American has a world-class education.
Put a tax on carbon, and use the revenues to reduce or replace payroll taxes.
Have a single-payer health-care system that delivers care at far less cost than our current balkonized and inefficient one.
And much else.
You say it can’t happen — the system is too rotten.
It won’t happen if you wallow in the comfort of your cynicism. But it will happen if you and others like you get fired up.
We’ve done it before.
I remember when progressives joined with African-Americans to get enacted the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts. I remember when progressives stopped the Vietnam War. When women finally got freedom of choice over their own bodies. When the Environmental Protection Act became law.
Who would have imagined two decades ago that America would elect an African-American as President of the United States? Who would have supposed gays and lesbians would begin to achieve equal marriage rights?
Of course we can take America back.
Stop complaining and start organizing.
And by all means, vote."
Your cynicism is understandable. But cynicism is a self-fulfilling prophesy. If you succumb to it, the regressives who want to take this nation back to the 19th century win it all.
The Koch brothers, Karl Rove, the rabid Republican right, CEOs and Wall Street titans who want to entrench their privileges and tax advantages – all of them would like nothing better than for every progressive in America to throw in the towel.
Then America is entirely theirs.
The alternative to cynicism is to become more involved in politics. Help create a progressive force in this nation that grows into a movement that can’t be stopped.
We almost had it last year in the Occupy movement. We had the arguments and the energy. What we lacked was organization and discipline.
I’ve spent years in Washington and I know nothing good happens there unless good people outside Washington are organized and mobilized to put pressure on Washington to make it happen.
This isn’t new. In the election of 1936, a constituent approached FDR with a list of things she wanted him to do if reelected. “Ma’am,” he said, “I’d like to do all those things. But if I’m reelected, you must make me.”
We must make them.
I suggest a two-step plan.
Step one: Vote for Barack Obama for President and vote for every Democratic senator and representative in Congress. Get off your ass and make sure your friends and relatives do the same.
Step two: Starting Election Day, regardless of who’s elected, commit at least three hours every week to political organizing and mobilizing. Connect with other progressives in your city and state. Help find and recruit new progressive candidates to run against Republicans in swing states, and against conservative Democrats. Support the members of the progressive caucus in Congress. Raise money. Raise a ruckus.
Make it our goal to reverse Citizens United, even if it takes a constitutional amendment. And have public financing of elections (including requiring the media to provide free political advertising as part of their commitment to public service).
Also break up the biggest banks and resurrect the Glass-Steagall Act.
Put a 2 percent surtax on wealth in excess of $3 million. And a one-tenth of 1 percent transaction tax on every financial transaction. And restore top tax rates to what they were before Ronald Reagan became president.
Use half this revenue to pay down the national debt and half to make sure every American has a world-class education.
Put a tax on carbon, and use the revenues to reduce or replace payroll taxes.
Have a single-payer health-care system that delivers care at far less cost than our current balkonized and inefficient one.
And much else.
You say it can’t happen — the system is too rotten.
It won’t happen if you wallow in the comfort of your cynicism. But it will happen if you and others like you get fired up.
We’ve done it before.
I remember when progressives joined with African-Americans to get enacted the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts. I remember when progressives stopped the Vietnam War. When women finally got freedom of choice over their own bodies. When the Environmental Protection Act became law.
Who would have imagined two decades ago that America would elect an African-American as President of the United States? Who would have supposed gays and lesbians would begin to achieve equal marriage rights?
Of course we can take America back.
Stop complaining and start organizing.
And by all means, vote."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business/market_data/overview/
 |
|
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 LondonParisFrankfurtWall
StreetTokyo
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Share Prices
|
|
Summaries: London | NYSE | Nasdaq | Paris | Frankfurt | |
|
Search share prices by name or symbol*:
|
|
View
London's top shares by sector
|
|||||||
|
|
||||||||
* In London, New York, Paris, Frankfurt and on Nasdaq.
|
|
||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||
|
|||||||
£
|
$
|
€
|
¥
|
|
|||
£
|
-
|
|
|||||
$
|
-
|
|
|||||
€
|
-
|
|
|||||
¥
|
-
|
|
|||||
|
|||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||
|
|||||||||
price
|
change
|
%
|
|
||||||
| Brent Crude Oil Futures $/barrel | 108.33 |
+0.48
|
|
+0.5
|
|
||||
| West Texas Intermediate Crude Oil Futures $/barrel | 86.01 |
+0.40
|
|
+0.5
|
|
||||
| Forex Gold Index(pm fix) $/oz | 1715.50 |
+9.00
|
|
+0.5
|
|
||||
| Coffee "C" Futures US cents/pound | 160.75 |
+1.20
|
|
+0.8
|
|
||||
| Copper 3mo Unofficial Confirmed $/m tonne | 7832.50 |
+5.00
|
|
+0.1
|
|
||||
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-20079104
"Spanish bank Santander
has said its quarterly profits fell by more than 90% after taking
provisions for bad property loans in its local market.
Net income fell to 100m euros (£81m) in the third quarter from 1.8bn euros in the same period last year, it said.The bank also said that UK profit fell 21% to 337m euros in the three months.
So far this year Santander has set aside 3.5bn euros for provisions for property losses - a problem facing all Spanish banks.
The Spanish government has found itself in financial difficulty since the 2008 global financial crisis caused a big crash in the country's over-heated property market, and many fear that it will need a full bailout on top of the banking loan that has already been agreed.
Santander said that total problematic property assets amounted to 18.5bn euros.
"The bank's capacity to generate profit enables us to set aside hefty real estate provisions in Spain in 2012 and significantly increase non-performing loan coverage," Santander chairman Emilio Botin said.
Loans grew in emerging market such as Latin America and Poland and declined in economies that are "deleveraging" - that is, cutting down on debt - such as Spain and Portugal, the bank added.
Spain is struggling with a shrinking economy and 25% unemployment.
Spain's banks will need an injection of 59.3bn euros to survive a serious downturn, an independent audit recently calculated. However, Santander - along with six other banks - was found to have no need for extra capital.
The Spanish government is still hoping to avoid requesting a bailout from the eurozone rescue funds, but many think this is inevitable."
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/25/oct-24-in-polls-romneys-momentum-seems-to-have-stopped/
243.9 Romney
-2.5
since Oct. 18
294.1 Obama
Electoral Coledge
+2.5
since Oct. 18
.
No comments:
Post a Comment