DSK (Dominique Strauss Kahn) has had his $1 Million Bail Money refused by a New York Judge.   The prosecution convinced the female Judge at Manhattan Criminal Court that DSK was a flight risk and should be not granted bail.     DSK’s wife had already wired through 1 million dollars from her personal account to cover the bail. It was not needed. Judge Jackson ordered that Strauss-Kahn should be held over and detained at [...]

An idea to reward the hard-hit British taxpayer with a share certificate worth £1000 ,in the Banks they effectively part own, has been put forward by the Centre For Policy Studies (a Conservative Think-Tank) and the Liberal Democrats.   It really sticks in most taxpayers gut that they bailed out RBS and Lloyds with their hard earned tax and yet have nothing to show for it. In fact even worse the major Banks have stopped [...]

European Finance Ministers and IMF Board members met in Brussels today, Monday 16th May, to thrash out the amount of bailout money that Portugal would receive.   The IMF were without Strauss-Kahn , the Head of the IMF, as he has been detained in New York on sex crime charges.   This didn’t stop Ministers and IMF members from agreeing a deal. The total amount of bailout money Portugal will receive is 78 BILLION EUROS. [...]

For Savers there appear to be very few safe havens with good returns. In the current market with low bank rates there aren’t any phenomenal returns to be had unless you fancy higher risk investments, where there is lots of opportunity right now.                                           However the National Savings & Investments Bonds have returned for safe [...]

Dominique Strauss-Kahn is the 62 year old Head of the IMF (International Monetary Fund). The Frenchman is also a leading figure in the Socialist Party in France and was seen as a leading candidate to challenge Sarkozy for the French Presidency at the next round of elections.       However that has all been thrown into chaos, along with the running and leadership of the IMF after yesterdays events in New York. Strauss-Kahn has [...]

Lloyds Banking Group has been found guilty of mis-selling PPI Policies, otherwise known as Payment protection Insurance, on a grand scale.   Lloyds are going to have to find £3.2 BILLION (Sterling) to repay consumers who have been misled. This is a huge sum and will push Lloyds deep into trouble financially themselves. The part tax-payer owned and bailed out Bank continues to disappoint.                       [...]

  Why is it called ‘offshore’ banking ? The term ‘offshore’ originally comes  from the Channel Islands which operate some of the most well known and respected offshore banking facilities in the World. Jersey and Guernsey are ‘offshore’ from the rest of the UK mainland. Many offshore tax havens are island nations, Barbadoa, Antigua and Belize being obvious examples. However, an offshore bank doesn’t actually need to be physically located ‘offshore’. Switzerland is possibly the [...]

Cash Buyers are King in regards to House Buying in the United Kingdom. That’s what new figures from the CML (Council of Mortgage Lenders) are suggesting. The CML started keeping stats for this sort of thing in 2005. In the space of 5 – 6 short years the amount of cash buyers has doubled.     The CML’s records began in  April ’05,  16,457 properties were bought by cash buyers. At bthe time, this was [...]

  Iceland is in a huge Financial mess. You would have to have been living on the moon for the past 3 years not to have known this. Whilst no country in the world right now is having a happy financial time of things, Iceland’s predicament is perhaps the worst, for them, in the developed World. During 2008 and over the entire decade 1998-2008 the OMX Iceland 15 was the worst performing stock index in [...]