Quantitative easing extended

Uncertainty over extra lending leads the Bank of England to extend its run of quantitative easing

As the government-based yo-yo between “let’s throw more money at the banks” and “let’s be careful in case Brussels thinks it’s a bad idea” continues, the Bank of England has pledged to extend quantitative easing. Predictably, this saw a broad fall in Sterling. The Bank of England held interest rates at a record low 0.5 percent and said it would keep the scale of quantitative easing under review.

In insolvency news, a record high of 33,073 people in England and Wales were declared insolvent between April and June. This is a rise of 27.4 percent on last year’s statistics; job losses and a clampdown on credit are the most obvious reasons. The number of company insolvencies has also seen a sharp rise of 39.1 percent on last year’s figures to a total of 5,055.

Bankruptcies also rose by 15.3 percent over the year – will the credit clampdown make any sort of recovery within the next 10 years? Will credit ratings rise as quickly as they fell? Rising unemployment and the perpetuation of unmanageable debt suggest otherwise.

In Internet news, the owners of the famous Beano and Dandy comic books (from your childhood - remember that?) have snatched Friends Reunited away from ITV for a not-so-bargainous £25 million. It was the pager to this year’s Twitter and Facebook, a foreshadowing precursor to the future of social networking. With some 19 million members and 650 million names on the database of its sister site Genes Reunited, the future of the site may lie elsewhere.

ITV had purchased Friends Reunited for £175m as a move to give the company some online presence, and ITV’s chief operating officer John Cresswell said the channel were not embarrassed by the decision to sell at a fraction of the original price.  “This current management believes that the future for online for ITV is about video, and we're investing our money into itv.com...”. He continued: “that's where we think the strategic direction of the business should go.