A funny thing happened in the bond markets last week, although it mostly stayed under the public radar. While attention was (understandably) focused on the downgrades of France, Austria and other EU nations, a few days earlier investors were actually paying to lend the British government money. That’s right: the Treasury auctioned £700m of bonds last Tuesday and sold them at an inflation-adjusted interest rate of -0.116%. The UK is being paid to take cash off the hands of fund managers and bankers.
David Cameron and George Osborne regularly wheel out low borrowing costs as proof that the coalition has pulled off its primary task: of reassuring financiers that Britain is a safe haven. While governments in Rome or Madrid are paying sky-high sums just to conduct their regular business, and the folk at Standard & Poor’s are sucking their teeth over the prospects for Paris, London can still raise cash at super-cheap interest rates.
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BestCashCow has often featured articles on rewards you can get from your personal bank account. However, if you also happen to have a small business, there’s absolutely no reason why you shouldn’t get rewards from your small business bank account as well. The Capital One Small Business Rewards Checking account could be a good choice for you for several reasons.
First, this Capital One account allows you to combine rewards between your personal and business Capital One accounts, including credit cards. As we all try to save money and spend less in this economy, this feature becomes even more pertinent because it will take less time to achieve rewards levels through combined account spending. While Capital One does have the disclaimer that it limits one Rewards checking account per customer, you can link personal and business Capital One credit cards for combined rewards.
The Small Business Checking rewards work like this: you’ll earn 20 miles for each non-PIN-based transaction, and 10 miles for every debit/PIN purchase.
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Interest rates will stay on hold at their record low until 2016, according to a leading forecaster, amid warnings that the UK has already double-dipped back into recession. 
The Bank of England will be forced to keep the base rate at 0.5pc for another four years.
Growth under or around 1pc for years to come will force the Bank of England to keep the base rate at 0.5pc, cut to that level in March 2009, for another four years, the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) predicts.
The think tank believes the UK economy shrank in the last three months of 2011 and is still contracting in the current quarter, marking a recession.
It has slashed its expectations of the UK’s growth for 2012 from the already paltry 0.7pc it forecast in October to a 0.4pc fall. A still more painful contraction of 1.1pc looms if developments in the eurozone take a sharp turn for the worse, the think tank warned.
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Major events that have a significant impact on the trading of the pair GBP/USD for the week ending January 13th, 2012 are as follows:
On Monday, In United States, member of Federal Open Market Committee, Dennis Lockhart addressed at a public event.
On Tuesday, January 10th, 2012, British Retail Consortium will publish its report on UK’s retail sales. The country will also report industry data on house price balance while in United States, FOMC member John Williams and Sandra Pianalto will address at an event.
On Wednesday, January 11th, government data on crude oil stockpiles will be released in United States while US Federal Reserve will publish its Beige Book. Moreover, FOMC member Dennis Lockhart will also address at an event. In United Kingdom, official data on country’s trade balance will be reported.
On Thursday, January 12th, 2012, government report on manufacturing production in United Kingdom will be released. Mor
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The RushCard, one of the worst prepaid cards on the market, has announced a new savings tool and cash-back rewards program that it says “helps hard-working members who want to budget and save, but are finding it difficult to do so with the big banks.”
Don’t be fooled. The card is still a bad deal for consumers and should be avoided.
The new feature, called RushGoals, encourages you to set up Goals savings accounts.
For each month you maintain an average daily balance of $500 or more across your Goals accounts, RushCard will reward you with a $2 credit that will be applied against your monthly fees, $24 a year if you maintain that balance for a full year.
“With RushGoals, we not only give customers money back, we’ll also help them realize their financial goals,” RushCard founder Russell Simmons said. “This is ju
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