Britain

The UK is in the throes of the worst of the mortgage meltdown. Financial shares are tumbling. Home builders face collapse. Many top names in British housing and banking have been caught out and are getting a deserved swift kick: Northern…

If you thought it was bad in the US, you need to read the British press. I subscribe to a number of RSS feeds for UK newspapers. I was rummaging tbough the Telegraph's news feed and I was surprised at how gloomy the mood is in the UK.…

The Sunday Telegraph is reporting yet another major Western bank is going cap in hand to sovereign wealth funds in order to stave off the inevitable crisis. This time its Barclays, Britain's third largest bank. At a time when RBS is…

I am a Euroscpetic. I admire the political will of Europe's grand designers in creating the Euro, but I have always felt that harmonisation would be a painful process fraught with tension - especially during economic downturns. And so it is…

The Telegraph is reporting that "house prices are now suffering their sharpest annual drop in 15 years, according to the latest survey from Halifax."See story.Related storiesHouse prices: Should the Government intervene?, Telegraph, 05 Jun…

The Times reports today that Bradford and Bingley was rescued from the verge of collapse by private equity investors. This follows their report at the weekend on the dismissal of the Chief Executive and the profit warning they have issued.…

This in from the Times today: Bradford & Bingley is in big trouble. They are trying to do a rights issue and issue a profit warning at the same time. Can anyone tell me how one gets shareholders to pony up another 88p to buy a stock…

MarketWatch is reporting today that Nationwide has said that UK home prices are down a record amount.House prices fell for the seventh consecutive month, dropping 2.5% from April, and were 4.4% lower than they were in May 2007, Nationwide…

Surprise, surprise. Consider this a holiday surprise as many are out in the U.S. for Memorial Day and in the UK for the Bank Holiday. Multiple sources were reporting that UBS warned in its 985-page capital raising prospectus late on Friday…

George Soros talked to the Telegraph, and in an article released today, sounded very downbeat about the prospects for the UK economy. M. Soros also said that their were many fundamental supports for the price of oil, including supply ad…