Housing charity Shelter has analysed rates of possession claims in England for snapshot of struggling households
One in every 111 households in England is in danger of eviction, according to research by housing charity Shelter.
The risk of eviction is much higher in cities and other urban areas, particularly London – the 12 local authorities with the highest rates of eviction risk are all in London, partly because of high housing costs.
The charity has analysed rates of possession claims issued by private and social landlords...
MANAGERS of hedge funds like to think of themselves as seers, skilled in predicting where the market will go next. But today they are staring blankly at their liquid crystal screens and wondering where it all went wrong. The average hedge fund has fallen by around 9% this year; the S&P 500 has fallen by just 3.4%.
It is an unwelcome reminder of the past. In 2008, the average fund declined by more than 19%. This year’s euro crisis could be even worse. Managers have diligently researched undervalued stocks, only to see markets plunge after yet more bad news from Brussels....
IMAGINE you run a dirt-poor agricultural economy. Your farmers want to improve their soil but have no fertilisers, so you must either build a fertiliser factory or import the stuff. You will therefore need a port, dock workers, accountants and lawyers, roads and trucks to transport it, bankers to extend credit, and plastic bags to put the fertiliser in, necessitating plastics and packaging factories, too. Your farmers then need seeds and livestock, so you must have vets, market traders, construction companies to build barns and refrigeration systems. And you will need all this before...
IF YOU build it, they will fund. The British government has announced a plan to build infrastructure and boost economic growth, and called on the private sector to finance the bulk of it. The hope is that pension funds will supply about £20 billion ($31 billion) of the targeted £30 billion. In theory, the right kind of infrastructure project boosts the long-term productive potential of an economy and pays for itself—while providing much-needed jobs in the short term.
British pension funds have generally promised retirement...
THE parlous finances of America’s state and local governments represent “the largest threat” to the country’s economy. Defaults totalling hundreds of billions of dollars are possible, enough to rattle America’s $3.7 trillion municipal-bond market. This dire warning was delivered a year ago by an analyst called Meredith Whitney, who also predicted the banking crisis. She was dismissed as alarmist. Indeed, in the first six months of 2011 the number of municipal defaults was down...
