Radio 4 Money Box - David Cameron on Pension Freedoms Shoppers lose appetite for big supermarkets However, Tesco's shares have never reached such heights since and last week Buffett made a rare and stark admission, saying: "I made a mistake on Tesco." But the "Sage of Omaha" is not the only well-known investor to be nursing wounds from the implosion of Britain's supermarkets. Qatar Holding, one of the world's biggest sovereign wealth funds, is sitting on paper losses of more than £1.5bn from its stake in Sainsbury's. So far in 2014, the food retailers are leading the FTSE 100 downwards. The supermarket industry appears to be undergoing its own version of the banking crisis. Bryan Roberts, retail insights director at Kantar Retail, said: "Tesco doesn't just compete with Sainsbury's, Asda, Aldi and so on. "Never before has there been such a plethora of choice, and never before have shoppers been so willing to exercise that choice." This increase in choice has combined with a willingness to use it. But not everyone is losing sales. Black describes it as the "age of democracy".
Retirement age to rise by as much as six months per year He said: “If someone works an extra year they can add 10 per cent to their pension for life. What we are doing is catching up with decades of longer living. “We are living longer but the labour market and people’s retirement age has not been keeping up. I have fought against a vague target of trying to get people to work longer to have something more specific.” The target is contained in a document released by the Department for Work and Pensions which makes clear that an increase of six months would be a “meaningful change”. “An increase in the average age of withdrawal of more than around 0.5 years would demonstrate an improvement,” the document states. Mr Webb has said that the growing numbers of people living into their eighties and nineties would leave taxpayers with a rising bill and meant “the sums” would never add up if people continued to retire in their fifties. Mr Webb added: “It’s an ambitious target but I would think we wouldn’t be a million miles away from it already.
Ebola outbreak: Britain sending 750 soldiers and medics to Western Africa - Health News - Health & Families - The Independent Military personnel including medics and soldiers will be sent to Sierra Leone, one of the three countries that have borne the brunt of the outbreak. The announcement came amid a growing appreciation that the West had so far failed to grasp the scale of the crisis. The US Secretary of State, John Kerry, made an impassioned appeal for wealthy nations to do more to combat the outbreak. He was speaking after health officials announced that the first person to be diagnosed with Ebola in the US – a 42-year-old Liberian citizen – had died in hospital in Texas. In Spain, there was criticism of the authorities over the circumstances in which a Madrid nurse became the first person to contract the virus outside West Africa – despite stringent anti-infection controls. Spanish have media reported that she only found out she had the virus from reading about it in a news article on her phone. Infection rates in the deadliest Ebola outbreak in history show no sign of abating. Loading gallery 1 of 36
Carl Icahn: Apple's share price is half what it should be In April, Apple said it would return $130bn of cash to shareholders, marking one of the biggest shareholder windfalls in history. It did not credit Mr Icahn directly, but the billionaire investor was quick to claim the victory. Taking account for a share split, Apple’s share price has risen more than 50pc since he started his campaign, making the April share repurchase look like a bargain. Apple shares were up 1pc at $101.78 in premarket trading on Thursday. In Thursday’s letter, entitled 'Sale: Apple shares at half the price', Mr Icahn said that Apple was at another “watershed” moment, and that he believed it was poised to take market share from Google, its “only real competitor”. Mr Icahn said the larger screen size made Apple's iPhone6 directly comparable with Samsung's Galaxy S5 and Note 4, making the choice between the two "analagous to the choice between a Volkswagen over a Mercedes at the same price". Carl Icahn, the activist investor, has Apple in his sights again
Oh boy! There was nothing wrong with fiscal policy under Labour, says top economics prof Simon Wren-Lewis, professor of economics at Merton College, Oxford, blogs to the effect that there was no real problem of overspending under the last government; the idea that there was is largely a media lie propagated by people such as yours truly, he suggests, though obviously he doesn't get down, dirty and quite as directly personal as that. There's quite a bit of this sort of revisionism around at the moment – which is odd, given that the Labour leadership has just gone the other way and come over all fiscally responsible. Normally I wouldn't bother with it; this is now basically just one for the history books. Labour has been attempting to reposition itself of late as a party that can be trusted on spending. So for these reasons alone it's worth taking issue with Prof Wren-Lewis's analysis. By the way, the really weird thing about Wren-Lewis's analysis is that in an earlier post, he seems to accept that fiscal policy was way too loose towards the end of Mr Brown's tenure.
IMF warns of low interest rates 'risk' to economy 8 October 2014Last updated at 11:30 ET By Andrew Walker BBC World Service Economics correspondent Investors could chase riskier assets if interest rates stay low, the IMF says The International Monetary Fund has warned of new risks to global financial stability. Low interest rates could lead investors to buy riskier assets as they seek better returns, the IMF says. In a new report, it says there is a danger that this behaviour could derail the economic recovery, which the IMF has already described as "weak and uneven". The report says the risks require "increased vigilance". The IMF has already given its assessment of the wider economic recovery and is concerned about its lack of vigour. This new report takes a closer look at the health of the financial system. Side-effects The conclusions are unsettling. The IMF report does not for a moment dispute that they are necessary. The measures involved are very low interest rates, now in place in the US, Britain, Japan and the eurozone, for example.
Has the London house price bubble burst? - Telegraph “A growing sense of caution seems to have taken a particular toll on the London market where buyer demand contracted more significantly than elsewhere in September, falling for the fifth consecutive month,” the report read. For the rest of the UK, the price balance fell from 39 to 30 on the sentiment index this month - the lowest reading since June 2013 as the combination of strict new mortgage rules, nervousness ahead of rising interest rates forecast for the spring, and high prices have dampened demand. Buoyed by cash buyers and a lack of supply, London is now expected to slow as over-inflated prices force workers to buy in the home counties or remain in rental accommodation. The prospect of mansion tax is also slowing the flow domestic and overseas investment into the city. Charles Puxley, estate agent from the Chelsea branch, Jackson-Stops & Staff, said: “Traditionally September is a busy month for instructions in central London.
George Osborne: Britain's economic recovery at 'critical' juncture as eurozone 'risks slipping back into crisis' "Britain cannot be immune from that – indeed it's already having an impact on our manufacturing and our exports, and we need to send a clear message out around the world that we have a stable economy [and] our economic plan is working." "You need credible fiscal plans, and the Germans would certainly agree with me on that, but I think you also need the European Central Bank doing its bit to help," he said. "Fiscal credibility and monetary support go hand in hand, they're two sides of the same coin." His comments came days after data on Britain's industrial output showed that anaemic growth in the eurozone was dragging on the UK economy. A string of influential economists have sounded the warning call on the single currency bloc. The International Monetary Fund meanwhile believes there is close to a 40pc chance that the bloc will slump back into a triple-dip recession within the next year.