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Thanks to Paul Kedrosky’s Infectious Greed and Scott Loftness for linking me up with this video: At 2 minutes 10 seconds into the video, Paul Kanjorski of Pennsylvania explains how the Federal Reserve told Congress members about a “tremendous draw-down of money market accounts in the United States, to the tune of $550 billion dollars.” According…

Today, the FT reckons it’s ex-Lehman Bros Xavier Rolet taking over at the London Stock Exchange (LSE).  Xavier sat on the LSE’s strategy group and headed Lehmans’ French business.  He was a senior relationship manager for Lehman Brothers when he was based in London, and led relations with the exchanges across Europe, including Euronext and…

With today's 0.5% reduction in UK interest rates to 1%, the lowest ever, Paul Lewis was on the BBC news this morning.   He pointed out that the Cheltenham & Gloucester mortgage tracker, which was offered in 2007 at 1% below Bank of England interest rates, will be free for borrowers now.  You can watch the…

The man voted by GQ magazine as more powerful than Alastair Darling, our Chancellor, is Robert Peston.  Peston has been the BBC man who broke the Northern Rock story, and almost every hot banking story since.  Today, he sat with other journo's in front of the House of Commons Treasury Select Committee and this time…

The man voted by GQ magazine as more powerful than Alastair Darling, our Chancellor, is Robert Peston.  Peston has been the BBC man who broke the Northern Rock story, and almost every hot banking story since.  Today, he sat with other journo's in front of the House of Commons Treasury Select Committee and this time…

The man voted by GQ magazine as more powerful than Alastair Darling, our Chancellor, is Robert Peston.  Peston has been the BBC man who broke the Northern Rock story, and almost every hot banking story since.  Today, he sat with other journo's in front of the House of Commons Treasury Select Committee and this time…

The man voted by GQ magazine as more powerful than Alastair Darling, our Chancellor, is Robert Peston.  Peston has been the BBC man who broke the Northern Rock story, and almost every hot banking story since.  Today, he sat with other journo's in front of the House of Commons Treasury Select Committee and this time…

OK, so I said banks should stop advertising and they did. Not a single bank ad at this year's SuperBowl extravaganza. With 100 million viewers, the SuperBowl spots are the most expensive ever, raking in $206m (£141m) in advertising for NBC.  That's about $3 million per 30-second slot, or $100,000 per second.  A lot more…

OK, so I said banks should stop advertising and they did. Not a single bank ad at this year's SuperBowl extravaganza. With 100 million viewers, the SuperBowl spots are the most expensive ever, raking in $206m (£141m) in advertising for NBC.  That's about $3 million per 30-second slot, or $100,000 per second.  A lot more…

Talking of the Davos jamboree, I'm going to a couple of jamborees in Asia this year.  The first is the Asian Payments Summit from 9th to 12th March in Hong Kong.  I was there last year and it proved useful, withover 160 folks talking about all sorts of stuff from regulation, infrastructures, new delivery channels,…