| Subprime & Contagion |
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'Death in Kovalam' by John Francis Kinsella
The
story is set in an Indian beach resort, popular
amongst British tourists, over the Christmas
vacation period. Tom Barton, a City mortgage broker, arrives
in Kovalam after abandoning his business in
the wake of the subprime crisis. In his luxury hotel he meets Emma, the wife
of Stephen Parkly, the CEO of a London bank,
West Mercian Finance. Stephen Parkly falls gravely ill with a
mysterious infection and is hospitalized in
a local clinic.
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His situation rapidly
declines and he is put into intensive care. At
the very same time his bank is caught in a
Northern Rock style run. Dr. Ryan
Kavanagh, a specialist in internal medicine, on
holiday with his mother and sister Sarah,
discovers an attempted cover-up by the Indian
authorities. The disease is diagnosed as cholera, panic sets
in when tourists start to fall ill with the
deadly infection, just as the tourist season is
getting into full swing. Thousands of British
tourists enjoying the sun on the beaches are
unaware of the pending epidemic. Many of the
same tourists, ignorant of the crisis facing
West Mercian Finance, are about to see their
life savings wiped out in the collapse. For all
details please contact:
sumpinein@gmail.com or check it out on
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| Microsoft - Yahoo |
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Is a battle developing for
Yahoo as
Rupert
News Corporation starts talks with
Microsoft about joining in its contested bid
for
Yahoo, according to people involved in the
discussions. The combination, which would join
Yahoo, Microsoft’s MSN and News Corporation’s
MySpace, would create a behemoth that would
upend the Internet landscape. It seems that the
huge takeovers seen in recent years are not over
in spite of many burnt fingers. |
| BOOKS |
| The Legacy of
Solomon is the latest novel from
John
Francis Kinsella. The story commences at
Shakespeare and Company in Paris, a
second hand book shop once frequented by
James Joyce, with a meeting between a
novelist and a strange Biblical
archaeologist. It develops in
Israel where the writer investigates the
archaeological story behind the work to
discover the site of the Jewish Temple, the
biblical legend, against
a background of conflicting evidence and the
conflict between Israel and Palestine. Visit
http://herod.tk |
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Olympics Farce |
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real question is didn't the
Olympic committee know that
China behind all the glitter has
an old fashioned communist
government. Besides that it's a
field day for all the high (and
low) profile do gooders. Have
they forgotten
Darfur,
Palestine,
Chechnya and
Haiti?
The media sells the public
stories, orients them, perhaps
not deliberately, but
nonetheless efficiently, to the
latest headlines.
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The Independent New
York Times will be pleased to receive your
articles and comments. Please contact our
editorial desk at the following address
sumpinein@gmail.com
and we shall endeavour to answer you promptly. |
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House Price Crash |
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So
finally it looks like HPC is
international with the UK joining
the USA as mortgage companies announce a
brutal fall in house prices for the
month of March. Once again home owners
on both sides of the Atlantic will be
faced with negative equity. The Bank of
England reduces interest rates and the
pound sterling falls to a new low
against the euro. The US mortgage crisis
has spiralled into "the largest
financial shock since the Great
Depression" and there is a one-in-four
chance that it will cause a full-blown
global recession, the International
Monetary Fund warned yesterday. As
finance ministers and central bankers
arrived in Washington to discuss ways of
tackling the crisis, the IMF warned, in
its twice-yearly World Economic Outlook,
that governments might be forced to step
in with more public bailouts of troubled
banks and cash-strapped homeowners
before the crisis was over."The
financial market crisis that erupted in
August 2007 has developed into the
largest financial shock since the Great
Depression, inflicting heavy damage on
markets and institutions at the core of
the financial system," it said. |
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Commercial property funds have
lost an average of around 35pc over the past
year |
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HSBC has
introduces mortgage Rate Matcher
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| Mugabe |
| Did anybody
rush in to save the people of
Zimbabwe
after decades of disaster under a cruel
and crazy dictator? Of course not,
there's no oil stupid! |
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Oil hits $122 in trading this week |
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Our only adds are
for charitable organizations. So why not donate
a dollar or two directly to one of these
charities! |
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| Dreamliner |
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Boeing's new
Dreamliner
aircraft is causing more headaches, with the US
plane-maker announcing a third delay to its
launch, pushing the 787 aircraft's first test
flight 15 months behind the original date. The
twin-engined jet is now expected to take to the
air in the fourth quarter this year, three
months later than the second revised plan, while
customers will have to wait another six months
for the start of deliveries. Redesigns on the
carbon composite aircraft and the decision to
handle more work in Boeing's own plants have
contributed to delays. Boeing has ended up
suffering the same fate with the Dreamliner as
Airbus did with its much delayed A380. |
| Fuel prices
weigh on airlines |
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Record-high fuel prices and the industry’s
fragile finances have led to a new round of
bankruptcies among smaller carriers in recent
weeks, including
ATA Airlines, Skybus and Aloha
Airgroup.Bigger airlines are shrinking their
fleets to cut fuel costs, even as demand for
travel remains strong — meaning flights are
growing more crowded and unpleasant. |
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