Posted by: Brodie Jerrems in
Bank Rates on October 22nd, 2011
POUND
The Pound was well supported against the Dollar and Euro this morning, with risk sentiment coming back in to the market as investors looked for short term profits on GBP/USD in particular. “The spike higher in Cable was a good opportunity to sell,” said a spot trader. “We maintain our bearish view on it given prospects of more QE, although a move above $1.5850 could see a short squeeze up to the $1.5930/40 area.” The Pound still remains vulnerable after the BofE signalled yesterday that there may be need to raise QE further than the £75 billion yesterday.
Buying by a U.K clearing bank overnight helped the Pound gather strength in morning trading against the Dollar, and consequently finding support against the Euro although trading on the GBP/EUR cross was still in tight ranges as expected. “The min
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Chaarat Gold Holdings Ltd., the British Virgin Islands-registered exploration and development company having assets in the Kyrgyz Republic, announced that David Tang and Luo Tao, the representatives of China Nonferrous Metals and Mining Co. Ltd, on 14 October 2011 resigned as non-executive Directors of the company. BVI company’s Board and CNMIM will continue to work together, despite the resignations, and CNMIM has emphasised that all options in respect of their holding in the company and participation in the project will remain open.
According to the investment agreement signed in 2009, CNMIM were entitled to appoint two directors to the Board of the BVI company, based on 20 per cent interest in the share capital of Chaarat. As a result of the share placement completed in March 2011, the holding of CNMIM was diluted to the level below 9%.
Bloomberg published an interesting article about boosting the economy by helping the self employed. Many of these are laid off workes that have reinvented themselves as small businesses. They face the same challenges than most larger business owners. Actually, they face worse challenges because many don’t have substantial capital and end up living paycheck to paycheck or more specifically customer payment to customer payment. One way to break this cycle and to help the small business grow is to use a business financing solution such as factoring.
There is a growing field of companies that offer small business factoring specifically to self employed individuals. As opposed to most factoring companies which only work with businesses that invoice more than $50,000, these small business factoring specialists work small businesses only those that invoice *less* than $20,000. Also, Read more…
A significant milestone for green banking was achieved when Green Bank in Texas (link) passed the $1 billion in assets mark. Hitting the psychologically-important barrier should help assure shareholders and customers that sustainable banking at a larger scale remains possible.
From the Green Bank press release:
Green Bank, N.A. has now reached $1 billion in total assets, raising its profile in Texas and placing it in the top tier of banks nationwide. Th
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Posted by: Brodie Jerrems in
Bank Rates on October 11th, 2011
Erste Bank und Sparkassen are starting to upgrade their self-service machines to provide audio instructions for the blind and visually impaired.
By the end of the year Erste Bank will have at least one upgraded self-service machine per foyer, equipped with a headphone jack and labelled keyboard.
In total there will be 246 such machines in 140 foyers, with Sparkassen adding 60 more machines in 2012.
Klaus Mattes, head of card transactions at Erste Bank Austria, expressed his pleasure at the bank becoming the first to offer barrier-free self-service machines throughout the country.
The so-called ‘blind ATM’ has been designed in conjunction with experts from the Austrian Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired (ÖBSV-Landesgruppe) for Vienna, Lower Austria and Burgenland.
The new machines follow the success of the Braille ATM card, and the period for converting old cards to the braille version for free has been extended to the end of 2011.
There have been some stories recently about some problems that Amish are having with a new rule in New York requiring EVERYONE to file electronically. This means the Amish too. This is a pretty thorough article. While it makes for a good story, I’m not sure it’s that big of a deal.
I’ve always found the Amish culture interesting and have read about it over the years. And I’ve even done sales tax seminars for them. One thing to keep in mind is that Amish rules are very intricate and convoluted. It’s not so much that they have a problem with electricity, but that they have a problem being connected to utility lines, which connects them to the outside world, which weakens their community. For Amish, preserving their community is paramount. And admirable.
So they don’t have phones or utility-provided electricity. But you’ll often see public telephones near their communities. And they may
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Gender equality matters for development
The education and health levels of women and girls have improved greatly over the years. But in many parts of the world, women are still dying in childbirth, or not being born at all, at alarming rates. Women continue to lack voice and decision-making ability in the household and in society; and, their economic opportunities remain very constrained. This inequality is manifestly unfair. It is also bad economics: under-investing in girls and women puts a brake on poverty reduction and limits economic and social development. Two new products from the World Bank inform, through data, the progress of over 200 countries towards gender equality and development.
eAtlas of Gender
The new World Bank eAtlas of Gender, the latest in a suite of user-friendly, interactive electronic atlases, allows users to map and graph dozens of gender indicators over time and across countries.
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Posted by: Brodie Jerrems in
Bank Rates on September 24th, 2011
Open a Virtual Wallet at PNC Bank and you could earn a $100 reward. The offer is good through Sept. 30, 2011. You can open a Virtual Wallet online or ask to receive a coupon that can be redeemed at a local branch. To receive the reward you must make qualifying direct deposits totaling at least $750 and 10 purchases with a PNC Visa Check Card within 60 days of opening the account.
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Back in the early days of online investingsay, 1996amateur traders moved a little “play money” out of their full-service brokerage accounts to bet with. Everyone was a genius in the late 1990s, and do-it-yourself trading became all the rage.
The past decade has been more challenging, and some of these traders have decided to retreat and get more professional help. Many online brokers have added investing advice to their sites, to retain those clients.
While there are lots of resources online for investors who want to go it alone, those who want some personal help usually find a local advisor …