On average, US housing prices rose nearly 14% in October, compared with the previous year. But the annual gain is only around 5% if your property happens to be in New York City.
Today is the last day of the lat. Latvia’s national currency will go the way of the deutschemark, franc and lira tomorrow, to be replaced by the euro on Jan. 1. The tiny Baltic nation will become the euro zone’s 18th member.
In a light week for economic data in Europe, all eyes are on France today.
Mikhail Kalashnikov, the Russian inventor of the AK-47 assault rifle, died on Dec. 23 at the age of 94. The famed tank mechanic-turned-military engineer’s design for the Avtomatni Kalashnikova (Automatic of Kalashnikov), has shaped the evolution of warfare for over 65 years. Cheap, user-friendly, and above all, reliable, the AK-47 was officially adopted as the standard issue assault rifle of the Soviet military in 1949 and has since become the weapon of choice for both government and opposition forces from China to Haiti to Afghanistan.
The British Medical Journal traces its history back to 1840. Over this time, the august publication has contributed much to the advancement of medical science. And if laughter is indeed the best medicine, it also promotes better health with its annual Christmas double-issue, which publishes peer-reviewed research about the lighter side of medicine. This year’s edition, published over the weekend, is a doozy.
In August, Morgan Stanley dubbed a group emerging market currencies the “fragile five” (pdf, see p. 15). These countries—Brazil, Indonesia, India, South Africa and Turkey—were the most reliant on foreign capital inflows stemming from low interest rates and monetary stimulus in the US.
Earlier this month, hedge fund manager Crispin Odey opened a $5 million short position in English soccer club Manchester United’s shares. Since the announcement, the team’s New York-listed shares have fallen by around 9%, netting the fund manager a tidy profit.
Over the past two years, credit ratings agency Standard & Poor’s has downgraded Cyprus, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Malta and Spain. Today S&P stopped beating around the bush and simply downgraded the entire European Union. The EU lost its AAA rating, dropping to AA+. “We believe the financial profile of the EU has deteriorated, and that cohesion among EU members has lessened,” the agency said.
With a nod and a wink—literally, as seen in the photo above—Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych agreed to a $15 billion rescue package with Russian president Vladimir Putin. The deal also includes a discount of around 30% on the price of gas that Russia pipes to its former Soviet subject.
The UK’s unemployment rate dropped unexpectedly in the three months to October, to 7.4% from 7.6% in the previous release. This takes Britain’s jobless rate down to a level not seen since early 2009.
For anyone born since 1960, a new report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), a think tank, makes for disturbing reading. And although it focuses on the UK, the findings could apply to a range of Western countries, where fears of permanently lower growth and dwindling savings raise concerns for the earning power of younger generations.
Bitcoin may have its problems, but it is still a more solid alternative currency than one introduced in Finland today.
The European Central Bank will introduce a new €10 note next month. To spice up this rather mundane event, the bank—masquerading as a Frankfurt-based startup out to disrupt the banknote space—is turning to gamification. To familiarize buyers and sellers with the note’s new features, the ECB launched an online clone of the video game Tetris, in which achieving a certain score unlocks details about new security features.
Things are usually pretty quiet in Europe around this time of year. People tend to spend more time organizing the company Christmas party than chasing new business. Offices empty out as workers head home for the holidays.
Baron Rothschild’s purported adage on investing, “buy when there’s blood in the streets,” is generally taken as a euphemism by contrarian investors. But as the anti-government protests in Ukraine enter their fourth week, with sporadic bouts of violence, some bond investors are taking the advice literally.
It could be better, but it could also be worse. That’s the story of the latest data (pdf) on employment in the euro zone. In the third quarter, as in the second, there was no change in the number of people with jobs in the region. As a percentage of the population, employment is still lower than it was a year ago, but not by as much as before:
RBS can’t seem to do anything right lately. The British lender, still majority owned by the state following a massive bailout five years ago, has (to borrow a phrase from a popular children’s book) suffered a series of terrible, horrible, no good, very bad days. The reverse chronology:
The combination of irony, nostalgia and novelty is a potent one. This is particularly apparent around this time of year, thanks to the inexorable rise of the cheesy Christmas sweater.
Professional athletes don’t travel like the rest of us. To ensure that they remain in peak physical condition, few expenses are spared when shuttling them around the world. But regardless of how luxurious a cabin is, spending a long time in a pressurized plane inevitably hurts athletic performance.
One third of babies born in Britain this year will live to 100. This is an eye-catching statistic from a large report on mortality published by the UK’s national statistics authority today. Relatively rare sightings of centenarians pottering around Britain today—there are around 14,000—will soon become much more common, with 111,000 projected in 2037.
For Ukraine’s beleaguered government, what’s happening in the capital markets is every bit as threatening as the throngs of protestors in Kiev’s central square. President Viktor Yanukovych’s government has already survived a no-confidence vote thanks to strong support from the Russian-speaking east of the country. No such support is on offer in the markets, where nervous investors are punishing Ukrainian assets as popular unrest continues to roil the country.
There was a trio of important data releases in Germany today. All of the numbers point to an economy that is shifting away from its dependence on exports, although perhaps not as quickly as fellow euro-zone members would like.
Sun, sea and stagnation. This is the story of Club Méditerranée, the resort operator better known as Club Med, in recent years.
When Twitter announced the appointment of Marjorie Scardino as a board member, it did it, naturally, with a tweet.
