A Qatar-owned company says it has taken over the famous Raffles Hotel Singapore and an affiliated luxury hotel in Paris in the latest high-profile acquisitions by the energy-rich Gulf state.
The Qatar National Hotels Co. said Saturday that it recently took ownership of the 125-year-old Raffles Hotel Singapore and Le Royal Monceau Raffles hotel in Paris.
It did not disclose financial terms in the deal with Toronto-based Fairmont Raffles Hotels International, which had owned both hotels one hour payday loan.
State-owned Qatari companies have been snapping up investments at a brisk pace in recent months, including stakes in European energy companies, Germany’s largest builder Hochtief AG and majority ownership in the French football team Paris Saint-Germain.
High unemployment has sent many Americans back to school, and they’re taking on big debt to finance their education.
Americans now owe more on in student loans, $750 billion, than on their credit cards.
Lenders are getting very worried about that. Sixty-seven percent of bank risk managers expect a rise in student loan delinquencies, according to a new survey for FICO, the credit scoring company, and the Professional Risk Managers Association. That number is 17 points higher than last summer.
You can find FICO’s press release here and the study here.
Education is usually an excellent investment — it improves your earnings for life. But it’s possible to end up worse off, not better.
Many for-profit private trade schools, the kind that advertise on afternoon TV, have online payday advance.stltoday.com/business/columns/jim-gallagher/students-should-look-at-loan-default-rates-to-judge-colleges/article_fa88b67f-51e7-5e16-b1ca-1688d2ee0a6c.html”> student loan default rates of over 20 percent. Those schools often charge outrageous tuition, and the high default rates indicate that many students are worse off for attending.
The best deals in vocational training are found at community colleges, where tuition is cheap.
Those looking for a bachelors degree should consider whether a high-tuition private university really delivers value that justifies its price. State universities are usually cheaper.
China and the United States have pledged during a visit by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to cooperate on boosting the global economic recovery, but Chinese backing for U.S. sanctions on Iran’s oil industry appeared unlikely.
China buys almost one-third of Iran’s oil exports and has rejected the U.S. sanctions as a tool to rein in Tehran’s nuclear program. That sets Washington up for a public setback if the government of the world’s second-largest economy refuses to cooperate.
Geithner was expected to make the U.S. case for sanctions in meetings Wednesday with Premier Wen Jiabao, Vice President Xi Jinping _ who is in line to become China’s next leader _ and Vice Premier Li Keqiang, another rising star.
Geithner met with his counterpart, Vice Premier Wang Qishan, on Tuesday night. He said he told Wang that the two sides “share so many important interests, and among those are increasing our cooperation on global economic issues.”
China’s official Xinhua News Agency said China and the United States pledged to further cooperate to boost the global economic recovery, and quoted Wang as saying the world economic situation is still “very complex and grim.”
Wang also called on the United States to loosen export controls of high-tech products to China, one of China’s complaints about the countries’ trade relationship. U.S. critics, meanwhile, say Chinese currency controls keep the yuan undervalued and give its exporters an unfair advantage, distorting trade at a time when Washington and other governments are under pressure to bring down unemployment.
China’s trade surplus with the United States widened 24.2 percent to $17.4 billion in December, according to data released Tuesday.
Geithner also is due to visit Tokyo, another major buyer of Iranian oil, for talks after he leaves Beijing on Thursday morning.
China has criticized U.S. sanctions on Iran, approved by President Barack Obama on New Year’s Eve, as improper and ineffective. Beijing supported U.N. sanctions on Iran’s nuclear program but says action should be multilateral.
The sanctions would target Tehran’s oil industry by barring financial institutions from the U.S. market if they do business with Iran’s central bank.
China’s oil imports “have nothing to do with the nuclear issue,” a Chinese deputy foreign minister, Cui Tiankai, said Monday.
“We should not mix issues with different natures, and China’s legitimate concerns and demands should be respected,” Cui said.
Analysts in Beijing said China has no reason to go along with the sanctions. “China does not want to be seen as helping the U.S. when China’s own interest is concerned,” said Wang Lian, an Iran expert at Peking University’s School of International Relations.
He said Chinese opposition might be reinforced by Washington’s latest military strategy report published last week. It singles out Beijing as a power with the potential to affect the U.S. economy and security.
Industry analysts say that even if China agreed, it would face formidable challenges in trying to replace Iran as an oil source.
China’s fast-growing economy is the world’s biggest energy consumer and imports half its oil. Some 11 percent comes from Iran, or about 600,000 barrels per day in November, according to energy market analysts Argus Media.
Still, Geithner’s trip might not be wasted, because Washington is only starting a campaign to promote its sanctions, Peking University’s Wang said. He said China might face pressure to cooperate if other governments agree to comply.
“The U.S. is not wasting their efforts,” Wang said. “Pressuring China is what they can do, but it is fairly difficult to get China to stand on their side.”
The Hyundai Elantra edged out the Ford Focus and Volkwagen Passat Monday to win the 2012 North American Car of the Year award.
The prestigious industry award was announced at the start of the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, which hosts media previews this week and opens to the public on Saturday.
The Land Rover Range Rover Evoque won the North American Truck of the Year, beating the BMW X3 and Honda CR-V.
Jaguar Land Rover North America President Andy Goss said it’s a tremendous honor and humbling for the company, which has had finalists but never a winner in the 19th annual independent awards program.
“We’re going to market the hell out of this,” said a smiling Goss on a stage above the four-cylinder sport-utility vehicle. The U.S. is the world’s largest Range Rover market.
Fifty automotive journalists voted on the winning vehicles from a group of finalists, and the vehicles must be all new or substantially changed to be eligible. Organizers accept no advertising, though automakers capitalize on the marketing value of the honors low interest rate personal loans.
John Krafcik, Hyundai’s North American CEO, said the award won’t help the compact’s sales much because the company already is selling as many Elantras as it can make at its factory in Montgomery, Ala. But the award should help solidify the brand’s image in the eyes of the American public, especially in the highly competitive compact car segment.
“It should be helpful for our brand going forward,” he said.
The company is looking at ways to boost production at the Montgomery plant, but Krafcik said Hyundai plans to focus on maintaining quality at the factory before deciding on any increases.
Hyundai sold more than 186,000 Elantras last year, nearly a 41 percent increase over 2010 figures.
American employers stepped up their hiring in December, bringing the unemployment rate down again.
The economy added 200,000 jobs in the month, the Labor Department reported Friday, closing out the year with 1.6 million jobs gained in 2011. Only 940,000 jobs were added the year before.
Meanwhile, the unemployment rate fell to 8.5%, its lowest level since February 2009.
"This is a good solid report, and the big message here is that 2011 was much better than 2010," said Scot Melland, CEO of Dice Holdings, a provider of career websites. "We’re headed in the right direction."
The encouraging news was coupled with revisions to the Labor Department’s data going back five years, which showed the unemployment rate has fallen for four consecutive months.
While private businesses have been adding jobs consistently since March 2010, the government has been slashing payrolls. In December, private employers added 212,000 jobs, and the public sector cut 12,000 jobs.
Young workers getting hired again
The manufacturing, health care and education industries were all bright spots in December, each adding more than 20,000 jobs cheap business cards. Even the construction industry, which had been bleeding jobs the two prior months, hired another 17,000 workers.
Jobs in retail and the food services were also on the rise, as were positions for couriers and messengers. In spite of the Labor Department’s seasonal adjustments, some analysts caution that these positions could be related to holiday hiring.
Still, more than 13 million people remain unemployed in the United States, and 42.5% of them have been so for six months or more.
Overall, the job market has a long way to go to fully recover from the financial crisis. The economy still needs to add about 6 million jobs to get back to 2008 employment levels.
Were you falling out of the middle class even before the Great Recession hit? Are you better or worse off than your parents? Do you have a job but still feel you aren’t upwardly mobile? Email realstories@cnnmoney.com with your name and phone number, and you could be featured in an upcoming story on CNNMoney.
Volatile markets and shaky economic times have made Americans hungrier than ever for financial advice, and Larry Swedroe is happy to oblige.
It may not be the advice they expect, however. Rather than telling you how to react to the latest news out of Europe or Washington, Swedroe wants you to tune it out. Especially, he says, you should ignore the experts who predict that the news will be good or bad for the stock market.
He’s just published his 11th book on investing, but Swedroe is no market guru. If anything, he’s an anti-guru. By the time you read about an event, he says, its implications are already reflected in the price of everything from stocks to bonds to crude oil. No one prognosticator can know more than millions of market participants.
“When they’re right, they attribute it to their genius,” Swedroe says. “When they’re wrong, they blame bad luck. There are no clear crystal balls, only cloudy ones.”
In the new book, “Investment Mistakes Even Smart Investors Make,” Swedroe lists 77 common errors, several of which are especially dangerous during turbulent times. Being swayed by popular opinion is mistake No. 6, and paying attention to the experts is No. 10. If you try to time the market in any way, you’re guilty of No. 49.
Swedroe’s advice is so simple that it’s difficult for most people to follow. You should invest in low-cost index funds, diversify across asset classes and be cognizant of tax considerations.
“It’s not just buy and hold,” he explains. “It’s buy and hold, tax-manage, rebalance and if anything happens like a birth or death in the family or an inheritance, then revisit your investment plan. People think buy and hold means do nothing, and it’s more than that.”
Swedroe criticizes brokerage firms, mutual funds, hedge funds and even the financial media because he thinks they prey on investors’ weaknesses. Mistake No. 29, for example, is believing that actively managed funds can beat the market, and No personal loans for bad credit. 53 is working with a commission-based adviser.
Swedroe is research director at Clayton-based Buckingham Asset Management, which works on a fee-only basis and puts its clients’ $3.5 billion of assets into index-like funds.
The firm had just $11 million of assets when Swedroe joined in 1994, and his books have helped Buckingham grow. He insists, though, that they’re written to educate, not market a service.
Indeed, there’s no hard sell here. Swedroe says he’s happy if a do-it-yourself investor follows his methods, or even if a reader chooses a competing firm that embraces the same principles.
Swedroe’s books do get repetitive; “Rational Investing in Irrational Times,” published in 2002, was also organized as a collection of common mistakes. (Back then, he tallied only 52 errors.)
Each volume, though, adds new research and examples, and Swedroe says he’ll keep evangelizing as long as he can think of new ways to spread his message. He had thought “Investment Mistakes” might be his last book, but he’s now working on a shorter, breezier primer for people with brief attention spans.
Swedroe figures that his books have sold almost 200,000 copies combined, a respectable but not huge following.
What’s most rewarding, he says, is hearing from readers such as a doctor who used to day-trade and obsess over his investments. His wife was threatening to leave because he had little time for her or their small child. Reading a Swedroe book saved his marriage.
That’s why this anti-guru is so passionate about his message. It’s not just about money, he says, it’s about life.
WINDING DOWN: After 58 years of selling music, Webster Records is pulling the plug.
The store at 117 West Lockwood Avenue in Webster Groves will shut its doors on Jan. 31, Bill Wondracek, a clerk, said today.
The store has mainly been reduced to selling rock ‘n’ roll CD’s to teens over the past few years, despite having a history of specializing in classical, jazz and pop music, much of it on vinyl, Wondracek added.
Jennifer Bellm has owned the shop for about five years. She was not available for comment.
Prior to that, it was owned by Dan Warner who sold it when he became part of the team that was involved in trying to revive the Switzer’s Licorice brand low rates payday advance.
Until the shop is shuttered, remaining inventory will be on sale, store manager Jim Lovins said in an email. Starting today it’s 30 percent off of retail and prices will be discounted through the month, he added.
Credit card rewards are the new social currency.
Citibank customers can now use Facebook to pool their rewards points online.
The bank on Tuesday launched a Facebook application that lets users team up to use their points, whether it’s for charity, a group gift or a personal goal. Citi says it’s the first bank to offer such a feature.
The app builds on a service Citi introduced last year that lets customers transfer points to one another on the bank’s homepage. After getting feedback, executives decided to expand the rewards sharing capability and offer it through social media.
“Now we’re delivering it to where customers are every day,” said Ralph Andretta, who heads Citi’s loyalty programs and co-branded cards.
Andretta noted that customers will have far more flexibility with their points, whether it’s to help a friend fly home from college or team up for a big-ticket reward. The company is giving away 2,500 free rewards points to each of the first 4,000 customers to sign up.
To get started, customers download the ThankYou Point Sharing App, which is linked on Citi’s Facebook page at http://www payday loan.facebook.com/citibank.
Customers can then start a rewards pool by naming a recipient and explaining its purpose. The recipient of the points maintains control of any contributions, so it’s best if you know and trust that person.
Pool recipients must be individuals and cannot be an organization, even if the intended goal is a charitable donation.
Users can promote their goals by sharing links on their Facebook pages or privately inviting other Citi customers to contribute. Donors can see the total number of points a cause has amassed.
The app can collect personal information from Facebook profiles. But Citi says it does not share any customer account information with Facebook.
The program isn’t only for credit card holders either. Citi checking account customers can also earn ThankYou points. Citi introduced its lineup of ThankYou credit cards last year.
Manufacturing in India and China improved in December, a sign the world
Manufacturing in India and China improved in December, a sign the world
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