http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/fb228bfa-d385-11dd-989e-000077b07658.html?nclick_check=1 Russia is bracing for further unrest as the rouble on Friday slid to a new low against the euro after a succession of moves to devalue its currency.
At at time when transparency and accountability in financial markets are of the utmost critical importance to the nation, the Securities and Exchange Commission has just announced on December 23rd that it will substantially bump up the fees it charges for records requests in the guise of recouping its costs.
http://www.sec.gov/rules/proposed/2008/34-59150.pdf
Search and review fees will be bumped up from the two categories: 16 and 28 dollars per hour to categories of 26, 40 and 70 dollars per hour.
Now, commercial developers are trying to pony up to the taxpayer trough. These egotists used immense amounts of short term debt to overpay for malls, office towers, hotels and apartment complexes. The rental income could never cover the interest expense on the debt. The only way they could possibly make money was if the next moron developer was foolish enough to overpay for the same assets. The market was flying high as the MBA geniuses on Wall Street were able to work their magic by slicing this debt into tranches, getting it rated as investment grade paper by criminally negligent Moody's and S&P, and reselling it to gullible investors throughout the world. http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article7972.html
Housing market crash has led to 32,000 estate agents losing their job
Price-slashing failed to rescue a bleak holiday season for beleaguered
retailers, as sales plunged across most categories on shrinking consumer
spending, according to new data released Thursday. Despite a flurry of
last-minute shoppers lured by the deep discounts, total retail sales fell
over the year-earlier period by 5.5% in November and 8% in December
through Christmas Eve, according to MasterCard Inc.'s SpendingPulse unit.
Considering individual sectors, "This will go down as the one of the worst
holiday sales seasons on record," said Mary Delk, a director in the retail
practice at consulting firm Deloitte LLP. "Retailers went from 'Ho-ho' to 'Uh
oh' to 'Oh-no.'" The holiday retail-sales decline was much worse than the
already-dire picture painted by industry forecasts, which had predicted
sales ranging from a 1% drop to a more optimistic increase of 2.2% . . .
