Price Of Oil Continues To Plunge

And now even UK consumers are beginning to feel some benefit. Since the highs of July, the price of oil has fallen so quickly, even the Russian stock market had to be suspended last Thursday amid the turmoil of falling prices.

In the UK, oil companies have been heavily criticised for not lowering prices after they had been so quick to raise the price when the price of oil rose to its July high.

Total Garages have become the latest petrol retailer to lower prices, a day after similar moves by BP and supermarket chains Asda and Morrisons.

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More Than 1/3rd Of UK Homes Are Uninsured

Despite a second consecutive summer of floods across Wales, Northern Ireland and the West Country, more than 33 percent of UK homes remain uninsured.

Home insurance has never been more important for the 10 per cent of all British households that have a serious risk of flooding however, recent research carried out has revealed that some have little or no cover.

Research carried out by “Fair Investment” revealed that men are less likely to take out a home insurance policy than women. The statistics show that on average just 57 per cent of men have home insurance, whereas, 64 per cent of women have taken steps to protect their homes against events like flooding.

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Shares Surge On Wall Street

Some of the leading US shares have surged upward, due in part to a report from treasury secretary Henry Paulson that the US government might announce a new plan that would help tackle the financial crisis.

Paulson announced he was looking to create a repository for bad bank debt.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average saw a frenzied buying activity after a morning lull and saw more than 400 points added, or 3.86%, to 11,019.69, a rise of 560 points from its low of the day.

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Brown Defiant At Labour Conference

Gordon Brown kicked off the 2008 Labour conference in Manchester with a pledge to do “whatever it takes” to sort out Britain’s financial issues.

The PM reaffirmed and commended the action his government had taken this past week to help stabilise the rollercoasting money markets - in particular the curbing of selling financial shares short - and he said he would now push for reforms to the global finance system.

The US Fed is also considering a similar move to combat a similar frantic system of financial shares being sold short across the pond.

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Norwich Union Goes Price Comparison Site Free

In what seems to be a new trend, started by “direct line”, the UK’s largest insurer, Norwich Union has also decided to stop advertising its insurance products on price comparison websites.

Currently “price comparison websites” are a widely used, advertised and profitable cluster of websites that allow consumers to quickly and easily access and compare a range of financial services.

However, these aggregators, which allow users to rank products according to particular criteria such as price, have been criticised recently by Which? the consumer watchdog.

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YPN (Yahoo Publisher Network) Ads Now Available In The UK

Under the stewardship of AdShack.com, this new addition to the 1plus.net stable of websites has today announced the launch of it’s Google Adsense killer, AdShack.com; which, its said, will begin sub-syndicating Yahoo advertisements to web publishers in Europe.

Claiming to pay a higher revenue share than the 42.5% Google Adsense shares with its publishers, AdShack is releasing an ad network into Europe which, together with AdShack’s own propitiatory ad network, will backfill Yahoo Publisher Network ads into the European marketplace.

Currently, Yahoo only offers its advertiser feed direct to web publishers in the US and Canada. Today’s announcement has come as a long awaited and welcomed surprise for European webmasters.

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Tax Up 51% Under Labour

Tomorrow is the start of Labour’s annual conference in Manchester. As if things werent bad enough, yet another blow to Gordon Brown’s stewardship has emerged from the TaxPayers’ alliance who have claimed that under labour (since 1997) the burden of tax has risen by 51% in real terms.

Lobby group (TPA) has issued a report that directly challenges Gordon Brown’s claim that he has been successful in running the British economy over the past decade.

Compared to other nations, the TPA said that Britain’s performance has been “poor across the board”.

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UK Inflation Rises To Its Highest Rate In 16 Years

The Bank of England governor, Mervyn King, announced on Tuesday that the consumer price inflation for August rose to 4.7 per cent, up from 4.4 percent in July. This was due to sharp rises in gas and electricity prices.

Mr King reported that the Monetary Policy Committee, of which he is the chairman, “has become firmer in its belief” that a period of economic weakness is needed to bring inflation back down.

As inflation is more than the 1 percentage point higher than the 2 percent inflation target, prompted the second letter of explanation from Mr King to Alistair Darling, the chancellor The governor is required to write every three months for the period inflation diverges more than 1 percentage point from target.

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Brown Takes Action Against Short Selling

Prime Minister Gordon Brown yesterday announced a radical move that will, in-effect, “outlaw” the age old city tradition of selling shares ’short’. The new rule will only affect selling short shares on banks and other financial institutions.

Selling short is where traders bet on the stock price to fall rather than to rise and they do this by selling something which in effect they do not “yet” own - buying the shares back at a later time. Almost as a self fulfilling prophecy, selling a lot of shares in a company forces its stock price down.

The move by Brown is an attempt to stop the credit-crunch debacle from hemorrhaging any further by adding a temporary regulatory tourniquet.

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HBOS - How Did It All Go Wrong?

The banking giant HBOS formed as a result of the merger between the Halifax Bank and The Royal Bank Of Scotland ran into difficulty this week and had to be rescued by the Lloyds TSB Bank; led, it seems, into the deal by the UK Government - fearful it seems of the prospect of having to rescue one of the UK’s largest banks from bankruptcy.

Without examining the UK Government’s blatant ignominy of the monopolies and mergers commission rules, how did such a large and profitable bank run into this mess?

HBOS were a very profitable bank, making millions per annum from the fees and low interest rates on deposits and high interest rates on loans.

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