In White House meeting, Obama calls on banks to increase lending

 sourced from The Washington Post 

By Binyamin Appelbaum and Michael A. Fletcher

Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 15, 2009

President Obama exhorted the nation’s biggest banks on Monday to make “extraordinary” efforts to increase lending, even as some of those firms are racing to distance themselves from government control.

The nation’s most powerful bankers sat in the Roosevelt Room at the White House and nodded as the president spoke, but some executives and industry officials said afterward that increasing lending is largely beyond their ability.

Meanwhile, Citigroup and Wells Fargo announced plans Monday to spend billions of dollars — not on lending, but to repay federal aid. Citigroup chief executive Vikram Pandit missed the White House meeting to rally investor support.

Bank executives say they itch to make profitable loans, as many as possible, but are struggling to find qualified borrowers. They also say that the administration is asking for increased lending even as it pursues financial reforms that will limit the ability of banks to make loans.

Some note that a recession caused by an orgy of lending must be solved in part through greater restraint.

Obama has come under increasing pressure to demonstrate his concern for the plight of Americans caught in a rising tide of joblessness, even as the larger economy appears headed to recovery. The White House portrayed Monday’s meeting as a chance for the president to channel the anger of Americans who think federal programs intended to revive the broader economy have succeeded only in restoring Wall Street’s profitability.

“America’s banks received extraordinary assistance from American taxpayers to rebuild their industry,” the president said after the meeting. “And now that they’re back on their feet, we expect an extraordinary commitment from them to help rebuild our economy.”

Obama added that he expects not just effort but “results.”

Some administration officials privately conceded that borrowing always declines during recessions, and that they are struggling to find effective ways of spurring new lending. Furthermore, the administration’s options continued to be constrained by the belief of many officials that meddling in the details of banking is counterproductive.

The administration also is surrendering a measure of leverage over the industry as banks repay federal aid provided under the Troubled Assets Relief Program — although officials are eager to shed the political baggage of aiding big Wall Street firms. With the announcements Monday by Citigroup and Wells Fargo that they would repay federal aid, all of the nine major banks that got money late last year will be on track to pay it back.

Filed under: banking sector, news, Newspapers, recession, Recession starts Friday 23rd January, The washington Post, USA, banking sector, banks, banks increase lending, Barack Obama, Billion $, Obama, recession, US, USA, White House, world, years

Full impact of recession yet to hit UK public sector, study claims

Research says that effects of downturn will not hit some parts of Britain for several months – and that local councils need to prepare for this ‘aftershock’

 

The full cost of the worst global downturn since the second world war has yet to hit Britain’s local and central government finances, new research reveals .

Analysis by data company Experian shows that the recession – in terms of unemployment, debt, fraud and increasing demand for public services – will not hit some areas of the UK for another seven months and, in some places, will be felt for many years after growth resumes.

Experian found that the south, from Kent through to Cornwall, was feeling the least impact from the recession; the midlands, Wales and the north-east the severest impact; with Scotland between the two extremes.

Local authority areas that would be hit hardest, it said, were Blaenau Gwent, Kingston-upon-Hull, Inverclyde, Glasgow and Wolverhampton. Areas that would suffer the least included the City of London, Kensington and Chelsea, and Westminster.

Charlotte Hogg, managing director of Experian, said: “The tremors of the recession may have been felt in many households and businesses, but local and central government now needs to brace itself for the aftershock.

“So far, the public sector has been cushioned by government investment and spending. But with unemployment rising, revenues falling and the need for public spending cuts, local authorities need to think how they can do more for less.”

Over the next 10 years, Experian expects London, Edinburgh and Leeds, as well as a number of other major northern cities, to prosper the most. However, many Scottish locations such as Dumfries and Galloway, East Dunbartonshire, South Ayrshire and Argyll and Bute as well as English local authorities including Copeland, Malvern Hills, Weymouth and Portland, West Somerset and Stafford will take much longer to recover from recession due to persistent unemployment and deprivation problems.

According to the research, the people who will experience the greatest levels of financial stress are young single people on limited incomes who rent small flats from local councils or housing associations, and older pensioners who have found their retirement incomes eroded by inflation and are dependent on state pensions.

Filed under: banking sector, bbc, blog, British Goverment, news, recession, The Guardian, bbc, Britain's local and central government finances, business, downturn, global downturn, households, news, recession, UK public sector, worries effected areas, worst global downturn since second world war

Sainsbury's to hire 20,000 at Christmas

The supermarket’s expansion comes on top of 2,300 jobs it is creating in the north of England and Scotland by next summer

Sainsbury’s is to recruit up to 20,000 people over Christmas and new year – the largest number of temporary staff the supermarket chain has ever taken on.

Of these 20,000 seasonal workers, at least 1,000 will be retained in permanent positions, the company said today. This comes on top of 2,300 jobs that Sainsbury’s is creating in the north of England and Scotland by next summer.

Last year, Britain’s third-largest supermarket group, which has 817 stores and 150,000 staff, took on about 12,000 seasonal workers during Christmas.

Helen Webb, Sainsbury’s director of retail human resources, said: “Last year nearly 23 million shoppers visited Sainsbury’s stores in the week before Christmas and the huge numbers of customers means that our in-store colleagues always have something different to do.”

The supermarkets continue to hire staff as they expand their non-food ranges, in contrast to most other sectors of the economy where unemployment has shot up.

Tesco, Britain’s largest retailer, announced last week that it was creating more than 800 jobs in Scotland as it expands into financial services.

Morrisons, the country’s fourth-largest grocery chain, said it would take on 7,000 people this year.

sourced from The Guardian

Filed under: Newspapers, Sainsbury's, sales soar, Stores, supermarket, The Guardian, 000 new jobs, 20, Christmas, consumer, economy, global recession, Sainsbury's, sale, shopping, shops, Stores, Supermarkets, UK

Last days of Lehman Brothers bank to feature in BBC2 drama

Watch The BBC  Last Days of the Lehman Brothers

LA Confidential actor James Cromwell and New Tricks star James Bolam to feature in one-off about collapse of failed US investment bank.

Employees leaving Lehman Brothers’ Canary Wharf UK base in September 2008. Photograph: Graeme Robertson

BBC2 is to dramatise the final days of failed US investment bank Lehman Brothers in a one-off that will star LA Confidential actor James Cromwell.

The 60-minute special, The Last Days of Lehman Brothers, by A Short Stay in Switzerland executive producer Ruth Caleb, is inspired by the events that took place over the weekend of 12 September last year when the Wall Street investment bank collapsed.

The drama will also star former Likely Lads actor James Bolam, whose credits also include New Tricks, Law & Order: UK’s Ben Daniels, Love Soup’s Michael Landes and Corey Johnson, who appeared in United 93.

Craig Warner, who wrote Maxwell and The Queen’s Sister, will script the Lehman Brothers drama.

Caleb, who will executive produce the in-house BBC production, said: “In the year following the collapse of Lehman Brothers, writer Craig Warner has written a very engaging script inspired by those events.

“We are also very fortunate that we have an exceptional cast, including James Cromwell, Ben Daniels and James Bolam, to bring those events to life.”

The drama, which will air in the autumn, was commissioned by BBC2 controller Janice Hadlow and controller of drama commissioning Ben Stephenson.

Filed under: banking sector, bbc, British Goverment, news, Newspapers, recession, The Guardian, banking sector, banks, bbc, BBC 2, bonuses, britain, business, Canary Wharf, capitalism, drama, dramatise, economy, Emplyees, enron, global recession, Guardian, lehman brothers, london, news, UK, US investment bank

Bank of England governor voted for £75bn extra quantitative easing

The majority on the committee preferred a ‘more moderate’ expansion, saying that some of the most immediate downside risks to the economy seemed to have receded

The Bank of England shocked markets today by revealing its governor, Mervyn King, and two others had pushed for a bigger increase in its quantitative easing (QE) programme but were outvoted by the rest of the monetary policy committee.

Minutes of this month’s meeting released this morning showed that King and two external MPC members, Tim Besley and new member David Miles, wanted to expand the programme by £75bn to stimulate lending and spending in the economy.

Filed under: banking sector, news, Newspapers, recession, The Guardian, banking sector, banks, business, capitalism, economy, news, recession

Recession watch: which nations' GDP is still going down?

Economies in the UK and US are still suffering, while France and Germany are growing again – and some countries have dodged the recession completely. Find out which is which.

GDP growth around the world: a pile of money Photograph: Simon Crisp/www.newsteam.co.uk

Hopes that the economic slump has bottomed out were boosted today when
Japan, the world’s second-largest economy, joined Germany and France in
pulling out of recession. By contrast, Britain remains mired in the downturn, although it too is expected to come out of recession soon. In the United States, the latest comments from the Federal Reserve are the clearest indication yet that the world’s largest economy may have turned the corner.

GDP is the reason for the optimism. But how has it changed. This is the latest data.

sourced from The Guardain

please press more to see chart

Filed under: Changing recession, news, Newspapers, recession, The Guardian, Update, business, downturn, GDP, going down, nations, news, recession, The Guardian, watch, world

Waitrose sales grow as recession fears fade

Waitrose rides recession as middle classes spurn Tesco

The cheese counter at a Waitrose supermarket in London. Shoppers have returned to the upmarket store as recession fears have eased. Photograph: Frank Baron

Consumers’ concerns about the recession appear to be on the wane, with middle-class shoppers who tightened their belts and experimented with discount supermarkets last year making their way back into Waitrose.

Filed under: news, Newspapers, recession, Stores, supermarket, Tesco, The Guardian, Waitrose, business, consumer, middle-class, recession, sales, sales grow, shoppers, Stores, Supermarkets, Tesco, UK, Waitrose

Should we pull the plug – Northern Rock makes hefty losses

“is it now time to let Northern Rock go, can we all continue to support the Bank with our own money. If this was a company then it would have gone into adminstration by know. Lets pull the plug on Northern Rock and let it close down – I know at lot of people will loss money but we can’t afford to support the bank / share holders any longer”

by N Blakeley – recession 2009

 

Northern Rock has reported a loss of £724.2m for the first six months of 2009, compared with a loss of £585.4m in the first half of last year.

The nationalised bank said that 3.92% of its mortgage loans were more than three months in arrears, well above the national average of 2.39%.

It currently owes the government £10.9bn, but is waiting for European regulatory clearance for more funding.

Northern Rock was nationalised in February 2008

It had to be bailed out by taxpayers in 2007, when its model of borrowing short-term funds from wholesale markets to lend to mortgage borrowers was hit by the credit crunch.

It reported impairment losses from loans and advances of £602.2m for the first six months of the year, compared with £191.6m for the same period the year before.

Filed under: banking sector, bbc, blog, economic depression, Internet, news, Newspapers, recession, banking sector, bbc, bonuses, borrowers, business, credit crunch, global recession, Gordon Brown, loss, mortgages, news, Northern, Northern Rock, recession, Rock, share holders, wholesale, world

UK economy shrinking at fastest rate in more than 50 years

Downward revisions to official statistics show output fell 2.4% in the first three months of the year and the recession started three months earlier than thought

The recession facing Britain is even deeper than had been thought and started more than a year ago, it was revealed today.

National income fell in the first quarter of this year by 2.4%, the biggest drop since 1958, as the Office for National Statistics revised its initial estimate of 1.9%.

The figures are much worse than expected. Extended to the whole year, the drop in output in the January to March period is now equal to 4.9% – the worst since records began in 1948.

“We hope the recovery comes as soon as possible but sadly we now know this recession has been longer and deeper than we had thought,” said shadow chancellor George Osborne.

“This also means that in the future unemployment will be higher and Labour’s debt crisis will be even worse.”

Although GDP fell 2.4% in the third quarter of 1979 and first quarter of 1974, statisticians said these were rounded from 2.36% or 2.37%. The figure for this year was exactly 2.4%.

The revision is one of the biggest ever made by the ONS and it said the reasons were changes to its estimate of the construction and services sectors.

The ONS also revised down its figure for the second quarter of last year to -0.1% from zero, meaning the recession started earlier than previously thought. And the fourth quarter of 2008 figure was revised down to a fall of 1.8%.

“The recession, which now begins in the second quarter of 2008 rather than the third, is now thought to be quite a bit deeper than previously thought, and is looking ominously like the early 1980s vintage,” said Danny Gabay of Fathom Consulting.

Critics of the Bank of England who called for big interest rate cuts in the first half of last year, will feel justified by the data, since the Bank’s monetary policy committee argued into last autumn that there was little likelihood of a recession occurring and delayed rate cuts until October. In fact, the economy had entered one last spring.

Separately, the Trades Union Congress said that while there were signs of “green shoots” in the economy, this was more to do with an easing of the pace of the fall in output rather than that a big recovery was under way.

“This recession is already worse than the 1990s one and is likely to be worse than that of the 1980s,” said Richard Excel, TUC labour market expert. “It has been very severe and we are probably only half way through. It will be quite some time until employment and growth return to pre-recession levels.”

Paul Gregg, labour market expert from Bristol University, noted that unemployment had started rising earlier in this recession than in previous ones and was “encouraged” that monthly rises in the claimant count appeared to be slowing down.

sourced from The Guardian

Filed under: banking sector, bbc, blog, Changing recession, down turn, Newspapers, recession, The Guardian, bbc, business, downturn, economy, economy shrining, news, recession, The Guardian, UK economy

NEW blog in development

allaboutgrub

Hi all, I have been developing a new blog please come and visit it

allaboutgrub.wordpress.com

 - this blog is all about food, ingredients and where to buy good quality food from – add a marker to my allaboutgrub map to tell others about great places to eat out or places to buy great food from -

“go on share your food experiences with others” 

Filed under: Advert, Aldi, banking sector, bbc, blog, blogger, expansion, fresh, Get Involved, high street, homes, house price fall, housing, Iceland, Lidl, local produce, manufacturing, McDonalds, Morrisons, news, Newspapers, recession, Sainsbury's, sales soar, Stores, Strikes, supermarket, Tesco, The Guardian, The Independent, The Mirror, The Observer, The Sun, The Telegraph, The Times, Unemployment, Update, USA, Waitrose, Wild cat strikes, woolworth, basic, eating, eating out, eating well, food, free range, fresh, good quality, grub, helthy, ingredients, local, recession, Supermarkets, supply, support