Sometimes emergencies happen when you just have to have some money in a hurry, but that next pay-day seems like an awfully long way off. There are fast unsecured loans available to people in this situation that can be easily arranged online in only a few minutes. Even people who have bad credit can get a loan this way.
These loans are referred to as cash advances or pay-day loans. The idea is to provide people with cash who really need it … for something important they’ve got to do now. The maximum amount one can borrow this way is about $1500.
Loans of this type are not for everyone and can get you in a lot of financial trouble if you aren’t paying attention … mainly if you don’t pay them off when they come due, the borrowing costs ramp up big time.
The thing you must realize about this type of loan is that it is unsecured, and to the person loaning you the money there is a risk you might not pay it back. Added to this risk is that this type of loan is being arranged online in only a few minutes to someone they know little about. Would you loan money to someone that way?
About all they ask you is if you have a permanent job and collect a pay check. If you do … chances are you’ll have the money in an hour or so.
An example of an unsecured loan that we are all familiar with is a credit card. Credit card companies charge high rates of interest if you don’t pay off the balance owing within typically 20 to 30 days. If you borrow cash on your credit card, high interest costs start getting charged to your account immediately.
To get a pay-day loan, the lender is also going to charge a high rate of interest, but it will usually be cheaper than a credit card loan. You should only borrow money this way if you absolutely need to … AND you can afford to pay the loan off when you receive your next pay check.
For more detailed information about how all this works you can go here.
A Swiss banking panel looking at the capitalization its two big global banks, Credit Suisse and UBS have to operate under according to Basel III rules, says that even higher capital requirements are prudent.
This comes at a time when all European banks are shopping around for more capital to meet the Basel III requirements announced last month.
The panel wants risk to play a more important part in assessing how much capital is required. The Basel Committee set the capital requirement in September to be 10.5% of the bank’s total risk weighted assets. The Swiss panel thinks that number should be more like 19% for the Swiss banks.
This would mean about another $5 billion in new capital for each bank. The announcement caused the Swiss Franc to rise against the Euro … which has suffered new lows recently based on the market’s assessment that European banks are under capitalized.
Analysts suggest that shareholders are going to get hurt in the capital raising process as the new bank capital requirements of having 10% of their risk weighted assets in the form of common equity is much higher than what the Basel III rules demand.
Both UBS and Credit Suisse have said there is no reason to believe that capital raising will dilute their equity and pressure their share prices because they are in a good position to meet the requirements.
Bank of America has become the latest bank to halt foreclosure actions in some 23 states where they must have a court order before they can seize a property.
In those states, they must submit extensive documentation to a court before they can foreclose, and it seems that in the massive number of foreclosures the bank is processing these days … no official at the bank is bothering to read the documents before signing them and sending them off to the court.
Bank employees and contractors have said in sworn depositions that they sign off on as many as 8000 documents a month without having time to read them. Hell that’s 400 documents per day. It’s a wonder they can even sign 400 documents a day not alone read any of them.
The bank said they were delaying the foreclosures until they had time to see that the affidavits had been properly prepared.
Wall street has been knocking down the value of some title company stocks lately because of fears that flawed paper work might have been used to already evict people from their homes. They might now have recourse through the courts to have their property returned … which in a lot of cases has already likely been re-sold.
Connecticut is the first state to announce a 60-day moratorium on foreclosures by all banks in the state. California has done something similar to some banks, and others may follow.
In response to a growing U.S. trade deficit with China the House has voted for a measure than would allow tariffs to placed on Chinese imports to offset an advantage the Chinese policy of pegging the yuan to the dollar gives them.
As long as China keeps their currency pegged at an exchange rate 15 -20% lower than the U.S. dollar they will always have an unfair trade advantage so goes the thinking and in an election year the politicians want to point the finger.
The Obama administration has continually pushed the Chinese on increasing the Yuan exchange rate for months … and recently China did allow the Yuan to rise about 2%.
There’s a battle going on now all over the globe for countries to use the foreign exchange rates of their fiat currencies as a trade tool to keep exports flowing. Some economists refer to this practice as the race towards the bottom.
China reacted strongly to the bill after it was passed saying that it would not do anything to improve the U.S. trade deficit and would instead curb growth.
Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said “We firmly oppose the U.S. Congress approving such bills. We urge the U.S. congressmen to be clearly aware of the importance of China-U.S. trade and economic relations, resist protectionism so as to refrain from any damage to the interests of both peoples and people around the world.”
Even though the Yuan has slowly been rising lately the Obama administration says it’s still not enough, and the Chinese have to raise the Yuan still higher to make American goods cheaper to buy in China.
The bill has to be passed by the senate yet before it can become law and that vote won’t happen until after the November election.
German Minister of Economics and Technology Rainer Bruderle speaking in India to a group of India’s top corporate leaders said “India is one of the power houses of the world economy and so we are very eager to improve our already very successful co-operation. I am very happy to get a lot of ideas. That’s a feeling both sides are willing to want more and do more”.
India and Germany are working together on a $20 billion Euros German investment in India.
Bruderle also indicated his delegation “Had a very fruitful discussion, lot of exchange of ideas with the CEOs of very successful Indian companies working abroad, working in lot of states. We wanted to collect ideas to improve the very successful co-operation between India and Germany. It’s up to 13 billion Euro… volume per year, we want to expand it to 20. It was the ambition of your Prime Minister Singh and our Chancellor Merkel”.
The two countries believe that some of the best sectors they should work together in are bio-technology, infrastructure development, telecom, and health care.
Barry James who’s CEO at James Investment Research Inc. commented “With the Federal Reserve saying that they want inflation, that’s given people the motivation to buy gold”. He was referring to recent comments the Fed made that one of its responsibilities was to maintain a healthy amount of inflation and suggested it still wanted to see higher inflation.
Most investors have interpreted that to mean … print more money.
With interest rates at near zero levels and the Fed indicating they are going to stay that way there is nothing supporting the dollar from dropping lower.
With gold climbing to a record and the dollar down as well no wonder there is support growing for the poor man’s metal … silver. With the demand for gold boosting its price higher and investors looking for a safe stash for their savings, silver is coming on strong.
The gold/silver ratio is one of the ways investors decide on how expensive one is to the other. By dividing the price of gold by the price of silver, it tells them how many ounces of silver it takes to buy an ounce of gold.
At one time back in 1980 silver went to over $50 per ounce when the Hunt brothers tried their now famous stunt of gambling they could force up the price of silver by buying enough of it to affect the supply. They failed, but only because of some last minute devious government footwork.
With the price of silver today about $21 and gold at $1300 the ratio is about 62 and as recent as 2009 it reached 72 … so the market is saying silver is still cheap compared to gold and has a lot of room to go up.
Shares of Potash Corporation reached $147 last week which is about a 15% premium above the price on August 19th when BHP made its all cash $38 billion bid. Today’s corporate value is about $43.7 bn.
Prior to the bid in August it is believed that a consortium of banks world wide agreed to provide financing for BHP’s bid because of the miner’s strong balance sheet. 25 global banks are reportedly lined up to provide BHP with up to $2.5bn each should the deal go ahead. Banking fees to do the deal are estimated at 0.5 to 0.8% and there were a surplus of banks that wanted in on the deal.
The $40bn bid was not received favorably by Potash and they began to seek out alternative bidders to get a higher price. Speculation is now that another bidder will submit a bid and perhaps it will take $43 billion or more to buy Potash.
That’s assuming the Canadian competition regulators are satisfied and rule in favor of the take over today. Competition may not be a problem for BHP since they do not have any existing Potash assets.
This past weekend it’s believed that Sinochem, the giant Chinese chemical group has asked the Chinese government to support a bid. It is thought the Canadians may not allow a Chinese bid to succeed because China is the biggest buyer of Potash. Speculation is the Chinese would only bid on certain assets Potash owns so as not to get caught up in the Canadian competition rules.
There is also some political pressure building in Canada for the Canadian Foreign Investment Review Board not to allow any sale of Potash because it is a very strategic commodity and should be kept under Canadian control.
Fears that the Fed will continue to print money and buy up bonds drove gold higher to $1284.40 as people shift their inflated dollar savings into gold to preserve their buying power.
Other worries as to whether the U.S. might be going into another double dip recession … and what kind of government manipulations are going on behind the scenes to prop things up prior to the November elections, are all preying on investor’s minds.
Goldman Sachs said today about the price of gold that any resumption of economic stimulus measures, such as quantitative easing, “would likely accelerate the move to our six-month price target and provide upside risk to our forecasts”
Furthermore the Goldman spokesman added “We believe that near-to-medium-term fundamentals remain most constructive for crude oil, copper, platinum and corn, with short-term risk/reward looking the best for crude oil. We maintain an overweight recommendation to commodities.”
India’s Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said today the “Indian economy is back on the path of growth. The latest figure released by CSO (Central Statistics Office) and the latest industrial production figures released clearly demonstrate that it would not be difficult to achieve nine percent growth as being projected in my Budget from the year 2011-12, and surely this year, our growth would be not less than 8.5 percent”.
Further, Muhherjee added: “We have not revised our projections of achieving the growth rate of 8.5 per cent despite achieving the growth of 8.8 per cent in the first quarter of the current financial year”.
In his address to the platinum jubilee celebration of the Bank of Maharashtra he also encouraged the commercial banks to open more branches in the rural areas of India since 60% of the rural population have no banking services.
The government aim is by 2012 to provide banking services to all rural areas that have more than 2000 people.
For the first time in 6 years the Japanese Government entered the foreign exchange market Wednesday to attempt to stop the Yen from trending ever higher against the U.S. dollar.
Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan who was just re-elected as president of the Democratic Party of Japan on Tuesday told reporters “As we have said before, rapid currency fluctuations are undesirable and we will take decisive steps when needed. Today the fluctuations reached a stage where we could not leave them uncontrolled. So we intervened.”
The surprise move by the Japanese government and central bank had the immediate effect of lowering the Yen-U.S. dollar exchange from the upper Y82 Yen level to just above the Y85 line.
Observers said they are not sure if this move will curb the rising Yen trend against all major currencies but Japanese finance officials served notice they will intervene again Thursday if necessary.
It was estimated that Japan sold about a trillion Yen to drive down its price but there was no co-ordination with other central banks. It is unlikely that the Japanese move will significantly alter the trend of a rising Yen because of the deflation in Japan and the demand for Yen.
The last time Japan intervened in the currency exchange market was 2004 and they spent Y35 trillion over a 15 month period to try and stop the rising Yen.
