Archive for January 8th, 2010

I finally succumbed to my feelings of guilt at 3 o’clock on Thursday afternoon.

For four days I’d procrastinated, coming up with a variety of excuses for not attending. Too hot, no tickets available, parking too awkward, personal admin to clear up, and other lily-livered fabrications.

But with England seemingly assured of saving the 3rd Test at… »

MANY people start the new year by resolving to change their old ways. Not China. On December 27th Zhong Shan, the country’s vice-minister of trade, declared that China will continue to increase its share of world exports. Figures due out on January 11th are expected to show that China’s exports in December were higher than… »

WHEN you think back to the gold standard and to Bretton Woods, you can think of how obsessively governments fought to maintain their exchange-rate parity. They believed that a fixed exchange rate attracted investors and facilitated trade flows.

In the end, countries succumbed to devaluation because domestic pressures were too… »

THE effect of free money is remarkable. A year ago investors were panicking and there was talk of another Depression. Now the MSCI world index of global share prices is more than 70% higher than its low in March 2009. That’s largely thanks to interest rates of 1% or less in America, Japan, Britain and… »

Johannesburg, Jan 08 (I-Net Bridge)   South African stocks opened firmer on Friday ahead of US non-farms data out later.
At 09:19 the JSE all share index had added 0.53%, with resources up 0.45%, gold producers slipped 0.02%, along with platinum miners moving 0.20% lower.
Banks however, were up 0.10%, financials were flat (up 0.04%) and industrials put… »

Johannesburg, Jan 8 (I-Net Bridge) - The South African Reserve Bank’s (SARB) dollar-denominated holdings of gold and foreign assets declined by US$783 million to US$39.706 billion in December from US$40.489 billion in November, data released on Friday shows.
Net reserves declined $627 million to $38.960 billion.
Foreign exchange reserves were down $439 million, while… »