The UK financial watchdog has fined Goldman Sachs a record £17.5 million for inadequate disclosure.
In August, they dished out a $2.4 million fine to the French bank SocGen for providing inadequate transactions reports.
This follows fines for Barclays, Credit Suisse and Commerzbank.
So, the Financial Services Authority has at long last followed the US model and learnt that with cuts looming everywhere, this is the easiest way to balance their books.
With the November mid-term elections looming, things are not looking good for President Obama and the Democrats.
The projected US economic growth forecast has just been cut again, which is not going to help the unemployment figures.
The third quarter is notorious for the US stock market, and all it will take to reverse the current surge are a few well-timed profit warnings, and late September and October is the time for these.
So the elections to be held on 2 November may come at a particularly bad time for the President.
The fact is, things are likely to improve quite well after this time, but as they say, it’s all down to the timing.
It’s long been said that nothing can defy gravity, but property prices have been doing just that in the UK, in particulate London for a long time.
Now after a dip in value for two months in a row, it looks like property will continue its downward trend for the rest of the year.
And not before time, and with the government’s tough economic measure kicking in, surely property is going to have a hard time increasing in value for 2011 as well.
For those people that overpaid for their property and are in negative equity, they may have to wait a few more years before they start seeing some value return.
The strike by London Underground staff because they are unwilling to accept job cuts makes me look forward to 2012 and the Olympics.
Make no mistake, the unions in the UK will be using this time to maximise their ability to blackmail bosses and the government. Whatever they say, this is what they will try to do.
The government needs to take action now to stop this happening, a simple banning of strikes and working to rule during the lead up to the Olympics and during the events in all key areas, from planes to trains will stop this in its track now.
Better to be safe than have a few out-of-date union men play dictator.
Listening to the potential leaders of the labour party I cannot help but wonder if this really is the best the party has to offer. They may be young, in most cases, but they are out-dated, backward and come with very dangerous policies.
Thank god that the best they can hope for is quite a few years in opposition, hopefully the British people have long enough memories and understand what an awful prospect it would be to have them in power again.
The king of spin, Peter Mandelson, is working hard – on the election for the next leader of the Labour party and the first vote about to start soon.
A few things are clear.
Rasputin wants David Miliband to win and has been busy doing everything he can to ensure it happens, including attacking his brother, Ed Miliband. Expect plenty of fireworks from other big guns in the run up.
Personally, I wish he would just shut up.
So the Blair memoirs are out and he has confirmed what everyone in the UK has known for years.
Brown was maddening, had zero emotional intelligence and should never have been Prime Minister.
Enough said.
The British Chamber of Commerce has increased it’s forecast for growth of the UK economy.
It now expects the economy to grow by 1.7% this year and 2.2% next.
But it says that interest rates need to be kept low. This is just too basic a comment. Low interest rates are not helping smaller business in any way. Because banks have increased their charges by such a large amount.
What is needed to aid growth is an environment of low bank charges, not just low interest rates. This is not going to happen unless the government looks into the high charges currently in place and does something about it.
So the Fed is looking at printing some more money to stop another US recession. The talk is that they will create another trillion of paper to help push the economy forward.
But is that what is really needed? OK, the economy is having it harder but surely this will just mean that we help create inflation and another recession further along the line.
And really, they are missing the whole point and reason for the sudden slowdown. It’s them.
The healthcare bill has companies worried; in most cases they have no idea what the cost is. What they do know is that hiring will increase that cost.
Until this is sorted, growth is going too hard to come by, with or without another trillion wasted.
Business investment in the US is slowing down. This lack of capital spending is going to mean that the US growth is going to grind to a halt, well almost to a halt anyway.
It may cause the US to go back into recession but it’s going to be a close run thing.
And it was all going so well at the turn of the year. Since then, the economy has got weaker at the same time as Obama has.
Come the mid-term elections, the democrats are going to be looking at some major losses.
