economic situation is dire

[ender4]

CBI urges job suspension scheme

Business leaders have called for the government to do more to stem rising job losses, including introducing an "alternative to redundancy" scheme.

hahahaha... thats the funniest thing i've heard in ages, the CBI wants the government to stop job losses!!!

errrrrr..... i don't even know what to say to this.

[johnvillan]

Confidence is up because people keep saying the worst is over, no statistical evidence - just like a year ago when they were claiming the end of the house price crash was nigh because "the rate of falls was stablising". Destocking has completed which means the big falls have finished - it doesn't mean that the fall has finished. Many companies will fail to survive on their new sales levels, and the undemployment lag will cost them further sales.

The only evidence people can point to with regards to calling the bottom is the stock market. Which is of course all based on confidence.

So is this a confidence trick?

Basically yes, a good indicator of how badly businesses are suffering is how easy it is to obtain trade credit insurance. Trade credit insurance is bought by suppliers of goods or services to a business to protect them against unpaid invoices in the event that the business is unable to pay its suppliers.The scaling back of credit insurance can put substantial pressure on a company's cash flow because suppliers often demand a change in terms to continue delivering goods, such as payment up front or cash on delivery. Claims were up by 166% to a record £316m in the first quarter after companies were hit by a wave of insolvencies during the recession.This is only going to make trade credit insurance harder to obtain or prohibitively expensive. A good example of how this can affect any business is relating to the problems Threshers are currently experiencing.

telegraph

Threshers suffers hangover from diminution of credit insurance

Retailer's alcohol deliveries disrupted as suppliers encounter problems.

By James Hall

Published: 4:12PM BST 30 Jun 2009

Alcohol deliveries to certain franchisees of the Threshers off-licence chain have been disrupted following the reduction of credit insurance to a number of the retailer's suppliers.

Threshers, which is part of the private equity-owned First Quench Retailing (FQR), said that there have been "some temporary out of stocks in the supply chain" due to a scaling back of credit insurance.

Threshers said: "During the current recession, credit insurance has become a major issue impacting many retailers across the country. FQR has the full support of all the largest suppliers across each of our product categories who continue to extend favourable terms."

In a sign of how much the high street is suffering, FQR has also reduced the management fee that it charges its franchisees. Threshers normally charges franchisees a so-called "management service fee" of between 3pc and 5pc of the store's sales. However, on Sunday it reduced this figure for six months in the light of the "very tough" current trading environment.

Threshers said: "We recognise that franchisees are a key part of our business. We therefore provide regular stock updates to all franchisees advising them what is available to order. They are given priority allocation for stock ahead of the managed estate and this has always been the case."

Threshers has 95 franchised stores and 83 franchisees. The company has recently bought its logistics operations in-house.

FQR's most recent accounts flagged a "material uncertainty that casts significant doubt upon the group's ability to continue as a going concern".

Threshers said that it was progressing with a turnaround plan.

Last month it was reported that Paul Mason, the former Somerfield boss, was considering a bid for Threshers.

link

[johnvillan]

Bernanke looks more nervous with each interview he does.

[Gringo]

Economy not crashing as badly as last quarter but worse than the 'experts' predicted

The UK economy contracted 0.8% between April and June, more than double the figure economists had expected.

While an improvement on the previous quarter, the figures may indicate that the recovery could take longer than previously had been thought.

The contraction was much less than the 2.4% seen in the first quarter but was still above analysts' 0.3% prediction.

The latest figures take the annual rate of decline to 5.6%, the biggest fall since records began in 1955.

Liam Byrne, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, said that he was cautious but confident that growth was going to return at the end of the year and the moon is indeed made out of cheese.

[snowychap]

^Then again it wasn't quite as bad as the not as bad as last quarter but worse than the expert predictions as it was amended upwards to a 0.7% reduction.

Meanwhile, Fuel duty to rise from midnight.

A two pence rise in fuel duty will come into effect from midnight, the third increase in nine months.

Stephen Glaister, director of road users' pressure group RAC Foundation, told the BBC the government's latest rise "will hit everybody hard".

When VAT is included, the increase will actually total 2.3p. The average price of petrol across the UK is about 105p per litre.

The government says the extra duty is needed to help fund public investment.

'Huge effect'

AA president Edmund King said the timing of the rise was "pretty dire", at a time when the UK economy was trying to exit recession.

Mr King said its members were already having to cut back on car journeys due to the high price of fuel, and that this would only increase following the latest rise, meaning the government's revenues will not actually rise.

The Petrol Retailers Association pointed out that the price of fuel would increase again when VAT increases from 15% to 17.5% at the end of the year.

"It would have been preferable for the government to defer this increase until 2010," its spokesman said.

Jo Tanner, director of communications at the Freight Transport Association (FTA), said existing high fuel prices were already having a "huge effect" on its members.

She said the freight transport sector had already seen its fuel bills rise by £800m since last December, at the same time as a 50% increase in insolvencies.

Richard George, a road and climate campaigner at the Campaign for Better Transport, said the government should be spending the duty increase on public transport, and not just putting it into the government's general budget.

"If the money was going into public transport, drivers would be better off as there would be less cars on the road, less congestion for them," he said.

Supermarket group Morrisons said it would not be increasing the cost of fuel at its forecourts until 6 September.

[bickster]

bugger, need to fill up tonight then

[dundeevilla]

Means I will be spending about 40 quid a week on petrol just to get to work and back.

It's getting to the point where people would be as well jacking in work and going on the dole.

[Awol]

Well tomorrow Darling will announce an increase of 11 billion in our donations to the IMF emergency fund.

That 11 billion we don't have so will have to borrow and pay interest on just to give it away again.

Is it any freaking wonder our country is broke? Tossers.

[ender4]

its ok, just print another £100billion, bury our heads in the sand, and everything looks fine.

[leviramsey]

Why no inflation?

The good news of deflation is starting to get around. At the Wall Street Journal's MarketBeat blog, Paul Vigna gets the shakes over the Bush-Obama Administration's failure to destroy the dollar:

Paul Vigna"]

I think we're closer to deflation, both here and abroad, than most people realize or care to acknowledge.

In fact, by some measures, we are experiencing it. But nobody wants to talk about that, because deflation is about as big a threat to the economy as there is, and to talk about it, to give it currency, is to court disaster. To the ruling class, perception is reality.

The Fed remains determined not to let deflation take hold, because it knows how dangerous it is, and apparently will spend any amount to prevent it. And they should, because there is nothing that will wreck the recovery and the economy like deflation. Ask anybody who lived through the Great Depression.

Consider this: what do you think the picture would look like had the government not intervened with trillions worth of various stimulants? They did, and despite that injection, the economy is still too close to deflation for our comfort.

Thanks for showing up, Paul!

Vigna's amazement that the trillions of "dollars" worth of stimulant hasn't been enough to stave off deflation is quaint, as is his assumption that we would now be experiencing horrendous deflation if not for the burial of all that Monopoly money. It's true that there's an apparent disconnect between the weakness of the dollar in international currency markets and its strength at your local Safeway. That's because the international markets are geared to respond to the sudden appearance of vast oceans of U.S. government debt. But since, among other things, this debt immediately gets bought by the Federal Reserve, no new money is actually printed.

If, on the other hand, you are participating in the dollar-denominated economy -- if you are spending actual dollars and nickels and quarters and all those other trinkets that supposedly don't matter in this post-scarcity, long-now age of abundance -- you are not willing to pay more than a dollar and a half for a gallon of milk just because Ben Bernanke's friends are getting a lot of free virtual money. Even Americans aren't that stupid.

There's a glaring error on page 2 of Das Kapital, in which the father of modern mass murder tries to refute the classical economic idea of relative value in favor of intrinsic value:

A given commodity, e.g., a quarter of wheat is exchanged for x blacking, y silk, or z gold, &c. -- in short, for other commodities in the most different proportions. Instead of one exchange-value, the wheat has, therefore, a great many. But since x blacking, y silk, or z gold &c., each represent the exchange-value of one quarter of wheat, x blacking, y silk, z gold, &c., must, as exchange-values, be replaceable by each other, or equal to each other.

The fault here is that obviously these other commodities are not of equal value to everybody. A pre-industrial economy has no need of "blacking," a silk exporter will value silk differently than a silk importer, and a society of meat eaters may have no interest in wheat at all. (Goldbugs make the same error; intrinsic value is a lie as bitter as love.)

It's perfectly reasonable that the dollar might hold different values for different people. If you're trading vast quantities of the bullshit electronic "dollars" being pumped into the economy, you're going to treat the buck the way Bernanke and Geithner want you to treat it -- as a nearly worthless marker of value. But if you actually work for a living, you know that the greenback has gotten a lot harder to earn lately, and you are less willing to spend it.

If creating inflation were as easy as the Fed would like, or if avoiding deflation were as important as Vigna thnks it is, then why does a two-liter bottle of Coca-Cola cost today exactly what it cost during the Carter Administration? For as long as I've been drinking Coke, a two-liter bottle has cost about 99 cents at the low end to $1.50 at the high end. If you pay more than that you're getting ripped off.

That's without inflation adjustment. They've tried changing the shape. They've tried changing the formula. They've dumped Mentos into it. And yet if you go to the supermarket right now, you will almost definitely find that they are offering two liters of the Real Thing for $1.99 -- with a two-for-one purchase offer. If thirty years ago you had taken $2,000, put $1,000 in one pillowcase and used the rest to buy 1,000 bottles of Coke, the Coke would now be worth the same amount as the money (though it might be a little flat). And it has never gone to zero! Let's say that again: The price of Coke has never gone to zero.

It's a good bet nobody planned for Coke to be the one commodity that tracks the dollar precisely -- in fact, it does that because nobody planned it. It costs what the market will bear -- a concept familiar to everybody who's visited a yard sale, but alien to the government, the Federal Reserve, and apparently the Wall Street Journal.

I work for a $25 billion-a-year retailer, and in year-over-year terms, prices are still higher, since the bulk of the inflationary runup in commodity prices wasn't reflected in retail prices until last autumn. Since then, price increases have been a fairly rare phenomenon (most of them are due to segmentation efforts at store level... e.g. some items were increased at Manhattan stores and decreased at stores in East Bumfuck, PA and vice versa).

[snowychap]

I think I yawned and stopped reading any further at this:

the father of modern mass murder

Sorry.

[johnvillan]

* SEPTEMBER 3, 2009

China Set to Buy $50 Billion in IMF Notes

BY MEENA THIRUVENGADAM

WASHINGTON -- China is on track to become the first purchaser of notes issued by the International Monetary Fund, a move that would diversify its foreign asset holdings and could give the IMF's quasi-currency more clout.

The IMF on Wednesday said China has signed an agreement to purchase approximately $50 billion in notes from the fund. The notes are denominated in Special Drawing Rights, a quasi-currency issued by the fund and promoted by China as a potential replacement for the dollar ...

link

rferl.org

China, Russia Line Up To Buy IMF's First Bonds

IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn

June 09, 2009

By Kathleen Moore

The International Monetary Fund's resources have been depleted as countries from Latvia to Pakistan have lined up for emergency loans to help them weather the economic crisis.

So in April, G20 leaders meeting in London promised to replenish the war chest by tripling the fund's resources to $750 billion.

Much of that is meant to come through loans from member countries, with Japan, Europe and the United States each pledging $100 billion.

But big emerging countries have wanted to contribute in a different way. So, for the first time, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is planning to issue bonds.

IMF spokeswoman Caroline Atkinson said last week the fund was finalizing details of the bond issue to put before the board soon.

"We are working on how to draw up the terms and conditions of the bonds that we are able to issue under powers we have had for a long time, but which we now have a number of countries expressing interest in," she said.

Chief among those potential buyers is China, which said in recent days it was considering buying up to $50 billion worth.

Indian officials have also expressed interest in buying around $10 billion of the notes.

And late last month Russia's Finance Minister Aleksei Kudrin said preliminary discussions are being held in the government about the possibility of investing up to $10 billion in IMF bonds "in the near future."

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said he hopes the money will go "toward helping [countries] overcome the effects of the crisis and will support countries, including those close to us, that are suffering the most from the global financial crisis."

Growing Clout Not Reflected

Experts say there are reasons, other than altruism, why big emerging countries might want to line up to buy IMF bonds.

That's because they feel their share of voting power at the IMF does not reflect their growing clout in the world economy.

Any reform is likely to take some time. So in the meantime, the bonds will allow them to make a short-term contribution while they continue to lobby for greater representation.

"So what the emerging markets are doing by using the bonds is basically saying, ‘We understand this is a very difficult time for the world economy, that we need to provide resources to the IMF," says Eswar Prasad, a professor of economics at Cornell University. "But we are not willing to provide resources on a permanent basis unless it is accompanied by a governance reform at the IMF which would give emerging markets more say at the IMF."

Prasad says buying IMF bonds fits in, too, with the search for alternatives to the dollar by countries like Russia and China.

Both have recently called for a move away from the dollar as the world's chief reserve currency.

One suggestion has been for an expanded role for the SDR, or "special drawing right." The SDR is a kind of artificial currency created by the IMF 40 years ago but used only as a unit of accounting between member states and the fund.

A bond issued in SDRs would mean greater use of that quasi-currency -- though the bonds would only be sold to member countries' central banks.

"Given the amounts involved -- for instance, China has committed to buying about $50 billion of IMF bonds -- in a pool of $2 trillion of reserves, this is not going to make a big difference," Prasad says. "But symbolically it's still very important that these emerging markets are looking for an alternative to the dollar in the short turn, and this might be a viable option."

Increase Legitimacy

The bonds are also an easier way to contribute for countries where direct loans might require legislative approval and be politically unpalatable.

Mark Weisbrot of Washington's Center for Economic and Policy Research says the chief attraction for the IMF, therefore, is to increase its legitimacy.

"So [the IMF] can say, ‘We're the global crisis fighting machine and we've got support not just from the rich countries that run the organization, but also from developing countries.' That's where the bonds come in," Weisbrot says.

Not everyone sees the IMF bonds as a significant development.

Edwin Truman of the Petersen Institute for International Economics in Washington describes the exercise as "cosmetic" -- whether countries lend through buying bonds, or other ways, makes no real difference.

"It's certainly a way of making a point that, ‘We want to participate on our terms rather than the standard terms.' But the truth of the matter is the substance is no different," Truman says.

RFE/RL's Russian Service contributed to this report

link

Now that China can get rid of it's US Dollars for a basket of more stable currency's , is this the point that the US takes a back seat and China starts to lead?

[johnvillan]

marketwatch.com

Sep 3, 2009, 6:22 a.m. EST

Hong Kong recalls gold reserves, touts high-security vault

In a challenge to London, Asian states invited to store bullion closer to home

Explore related topics

Banks Asia Pacific

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By Chris Oliver, MarketWatch

HONG KONG (MarketWatch) -- Hong Kong is pulling all its physical gold holdings from depositories in London, transferring them to a high-security depository newly built at the city's airport, in a move that won praise from local traders Thursday.

The facility, industry professionals said, would support Hong Kong's emergence as a Swiss-style trading hub for bullion and would lessen London's status as a key settlement-and-storage center.

"Having a central government-sponsored vault would create a situation where you could conceivably look at Hong Kong as being a hub, where metal could be traded for the region," said Sunil Kashyap, managing director at Scotia Capital in Hong Kong, adding that the facility was the first with official government backing in the region.

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority, which functions as the territory's unofficial central bank, will transfer its gold reserves stored in other vaults to the depository later this year, the Hong Kong government said in an earlier statement.

The monetary authority reported $63 million in physical gold reserves as of July 31, according to its International Reserves and Foreign Currency Liquidity statement. The authority wouldn't disclose where the reserves are held, but local media reports cited gold traders as saying that London's the most likely location.

Traders said the new depository facility could also foster new financial products, such as exchange-traded funds based on precious metals.

The 3,660-square-foot depository, located at the city's main Chek Lap Kok Airport, will serve as a "storage facility for local and overseas government institutions," according to the government statement.

Martin Hennecke, a financial advisor with the Hong Kong-based Tyche Group Ltd., said that could be appealing to regional central banks unnerved after watching the global financial system teeter on verge of implosion last year.

"Central banks are increasingly aware of the importance of having gold reserves at time of financial crisis and having it easily available at their own disposal," he said.

Meanwhile, local newspaper reports said the Hong Kong Mercantile Exchange had signed an agreement to use the depository for its physical settlement and storage needs.

Marketing efforts will be launched to convince Asian central banks to transfer their gold reserves to the Hong Kong facility, according to reports citing Raymond Lai, finance director with the Hong Kong Airport Authority.

Efforts will also be made to reach out to commodity exchanges, banks, precious-metals refiners and ETF providers, the reports said.

Management firm Value Partners planned to launch an ETF gold fund that will use Hong Kong instead of London as a repository for the gold backing the fund, local reports said Thursday.

Chris Oliver is MarketWatch's Asia bureau chief, based in Hong Kong

link

I wonder if the cupboards are bare in London ? Maybe they are trying to buy one or two bars before the Chinese army turn up looking for their Gold. Gold price link

[snowychap]

Nicolas Sarkozy threatens G20 walkout over bonuses

Nicolas Sarkozy is threatening to walk out of next week’s G20 summit in Pittsburgh if the other nations fail to agree on curbs bankers' bonuses, the Elysée Palace said today.

Claude Guéant, chief-of-staff to the French president, made clear that Mr Sarkozy was trying to repeat the brinkmanship which he performed ahead of last April's G20 session and which, he claimed, won a breakthrough on tax havens.

Mr Sarkozy has cast himself as the scourge of high-paid bankers. His demands for a legal cap on financial sector remuneration at Pittsburg on September 24-25 have run into opposition from Gordon Brown and President Obama.

“There must absolutely be an agreement to make things change and the president is absolutely determined on that score,” Mr Guéant said in a radio interview. Asked if that meant a walk-out, he replied: "This possibility must be taken seriously." Mr Sarkozy was also quoted by le Figaro newspaper as saying: "If there is no concrete decision [at Pittsburgh], I will leave."

Mr Sarkozy believes that his walk-out threats ahead of the April meeting in London pushed reluctant leaders to agree to black list tax havens. His strong-arm tactics went down well domestically, but were seen by fellow leaders as grandstanding for the home audience.

After summoning French banking chiefs and lecturing them on the dangers of rewarding risk-taking, Mr Sarkozy last month has won their consent to a system of limits and delayed payment of bonuses.

He has won the support of Chancellor Angela Merkel for an absolute cap on bonuses and stiff sanctions for companies that break it. He failed to win backing from Mr Brown, the only leftist in the trio of Europe's big power leaders.

Mr Brown finally signed a letter with the other two Europeans on restricting bankers' pay but only after the wording had been diluted to a commitment to "explore ways" of limiting bonuses.

The G20 Finance ministers backed away from the idea of a bonus cap in their meeting to prepare the G20 two weeks ago. The focus of the Pittsburgh session has shifted from bankers' pay to the need to impose higher capital requirements on banks, as Mr Brown and Timothy Geithner, the US Treasury Secretary have urged.

Meanwhile, Mr Sarkozy sought to blaze another new trail today, adding a "happiness index" to the usual measure of economic growth. Mr Sarkozy commissioned a report from the economists Joseph Stiglitz and Armatya Sen with the idea of shifting emphasis from gross domestic product to well-being and sustainability.

Receiving the report in the Sorbonne University, Mr Sarkozy said the old measure of GDP gave a false reading because people saw their living standards deteriorating while GDP was growing. "In the whole world, people think that they are being lied to, that the (GDP) figures are false, or worse, manipulated," he said. "Nothing is more destructive to democracy".

The President called for a revolution. New factors is national performance should include such things as "the services which are rendered inside the family", the quality of public services and access to leisure activities.

Despite his frenetic activity since last September's banking crash, Mr Sarkozy has not impressed his citizens, a poll showed today. Only 40 percent had a positive view of his handling of the economic crisis while 58 percent were negative, according to the survey for Libération newspaper.

I think I'm starting to warm to Sarko...

Though my suspicions are that this is firmly the work of Mme Lagarde and she is most definitely a star.

[leviramsey]

Nicolas Sarkozy threatens G20 walkout over bonuses

Despite his frenetic activity since last September's banking crash, Mr Sarkozy has not impressed his citizens, a poll showed today. Only 40 percent had a positive view of his handling of the economic crisis while 58 percent were negative, according to the survey for Libération newspaper.

Libération is, of course, the French version of teh Grauniad....

[snowychap]

Libération is, of course, the French version of teh Grauniad....

Nah, that would be Rabelaition. :winkold:

(Okay it doesn't quite work but I hope you get the pun )

[trimandson]

Big day for me tomorrow /CLENCHED BUTTOCKS SMILE

[johnvillan]

Bloomberg

Former Beneficial CEO Finn Caspersen Dies in Apparent Suicide

Share | Email | Print | A A A

By Michael Moore and Phil Milford

Sept. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Finn M.W. Caspersen, the former chairman and chief executive officer of Beneficial Corp., was found dead from an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, authorities said. He was 67.

Police, responding to a call to check on him, found Caspersen on Sept. 7 behind an office building in the Shelter Harbor community of Westerly, Rhode Island, where he owned a home, said spokesman Edward St. Clair. He died from a single gunshot wound, the medical examiner said.

“Finn was always a gentleman and always made his resources available,” said Rhode Island state Senator Dennis Algiere, who represents the seaside region, just across the state line from Connecticut. “He was a very charitable individual. He donated a lot of time and money to various organizations in our community over the years.”

Caspersen sold consumer-finance company Beneficial to Household International Inc. in 1998 for more than $8 billion, His father, Olaus W. Caspersen, had joined Beneficial in 1920 and ran the company for 18 years. Finn Caspersen was paid almost $24 million in severance and other payments from the sale to Household, which became HSBC Finance Corp.

A graduate of Harvard Law School, Caspersen donated $30 million to the school in 2003 to help jump-start a capital campaign. He was also a graduate of Brown University.

An equestrian who specialized in carriage driving, Caspersen won three national championships and represented the U.S. in three world championships. He had been a board member of the U.S. Equestrian Team since 1982, was named president in 1990 and chairman in 1992.

No One ‘More Caring’

“I don’t think you could find someone more philanthropic or caring,” said Tucker Johnson, an equestrian and a friend of Caspersen’s, according to a statement on an equestrian Web site.

Former New Jersey Governor Thomas H. Kean said Caspersen gave away tens of millions of dollars to charity, according to the Newark Star-Ledger. While running Beneficial, Caspersen built a corporate headquarters in Peapack-Gladstone, New Jersey, the newspaper said.

Caspersen gave about $590,000 to the Republican Party between 1998 and 2001, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

He was chairman of Knickerbocker Management, a private firm overseeing the accounting and investments of various trusts, foundations and individuals, according to a 1999 press release from the Hodson Trust, a philanthropic organization.

Caspersen was chairman of the board of trustees of the Peddie School, his high school alma mater in Hightstown, New Jersey. The school has 530 students and an endowment of $218 million, according to its Web site.

Caspersen is survived by his wife, Barbara, and four children, according to the equestrian Web site.

link

The Wall Street Journal

* SEPTEMBER 16, 2009

Death of Rockefeller's McDonald Is an Apparent Suicide

By CRAIG KARMIN

James S. McDonald, head of investment-management firm Rockefeller & Co. and a board member of NYSE Euronext, died on Sunday in Massachusetts, according to people familiar with the matter. He was 56 years old.

In a statement Monday night, Barclay McFadden III, who identified himself as a friend of Mr. McDonald's family, said he "took his own life." The family has "no further comments beyond this," the statement added. "

Jim McDonald was an exceptional individual who provided strong leadership of Rockefeller & Co. for over eight years," Colin Campbell, Rockefeller & Co. chairman, said in a statement on Monday. "He will be missed by all of us privileged to have known and worked with him."

[rockefeller and mcdonald] Bloomberg News

James S. McDonald was CEO of Rockefeller & Co. since 2001.

Mr. McDonald had been president and chief executive since 2001. The New York-based investment-advisory firm evolved out of a family office set up by the oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller in 1882 to manage his family's assets, and it still manages some family money. Other clients include endowments, foundations and family offices. The firm, not affiliated with the Rockefeller Foundation, has $28 billion assets under administration and doesn't disclose its investment returns.

The circumstances surrounding Mr. McDonald's death weren't clear. He is believed to have died in New Bedford, Mass. A police spokesman there couldn't be reached for comment. A person who responded to a phone call to Mr. McDonald's home in New York City declined to comment.

A graduate of Harvard University with a law degree from the University of Virginia, Mr. McDonald also was chairman of the Japan Society in New York. Prior to joining Rockefeller & Co., he was head of Pell, Rudman Trust Co. in Boston.

Richard C. Adamonis, a spokesman for NYSE Euronext, where Mr. McDonald has been a director since 2003, said: "The NYSE Euronext community mourns the loss and offers our deepest condolences to the family, friends and colleagues of Jim McDonald, an outstanding and accomplished individual who served our capital markets and NYSE Euronext with great commitment and integrity."

In May, Mr. McDonald was one of three directors on the board of beleaguered lender CIT Group Inc. to retire from the board, citing "increased demands related to CIT becoming a bank-holding company .. and time constraints related to each of their other professional commitments," according to CIT's proxy statement.

Rockefeller & Co.'s chief operating officer and chief financial officer, Austin Shapard, has assumed day-to-day leadership of the investment firm, according to a company spokesman Joseph Kuo.

link

I think we may be getting some bad news about the Dollar soon.

[leviramsey]

Bloomberg

Former Beneficial CEO Finn Caspersen Dies in Apparent Suicide

Share | Email | Print | A A A

By Michael Moore and Phil Milford

Sept. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Finn M.W. Caspersen, the former chairman and chief executive officer of Beneficial Corp., was found dead from an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, authorities said. He was 67.

Police, responding to a call to check on him, found Caspersen on Sept. 7 behind an office building in the Shelter Harbor community of Westerly, Rhode Island, where he owned a home, said spokesman Edward St. Clair. He died from a single gunshot wound, the medical examiner said.

That's only about a mile from my summer house... (Haversham FTW)

[johnvillan]

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