Links – 05/04/07 Part 2

UK interest rates stay at 5.25%(BBC)

While the decision is likely to please borrowers, experts widely predict that rates will rise to 5.5% in May. Recent economic data has shown UK inflation edging up and retail sales still growing strongly.

UK subprime warning(independent)via (theratandmouse)

Fears that America’s sub-prime mortgage crisis will cross the Atlantic were stoked yesterday by a stark warning of the dangers of a housing slowdown and rising interest rates. The credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s said “signs of stress” were emerging in the UK’s £15bn sub-prime market, which specialises in lending to borrowers with patchy credit records who cannot get mortgages from mainstream lenders.

Spread betting on house prices(igindex)

Our Average House Price bets give you the chance to profit from the housing market without the expense and effort of actually buying property. Spread betting lets you back your judgement on the state of the housing market quickly and with minimal outlay, thereby avoiding many of the pitfalls often associated with investing in property.

The impact of Inflation(mywealthbuilder)

There has been a lot of discussion about whether people are saving too much for retirement. Numbers like $4,000,000 are causing people to question the validity of recommended retirement savings. A reason the number is so high is the effect of inflation. Inflation is the silent factor impacting savings and income needs. To illustrate, I have created tables that show the required income needed to maintain the same purchasing power of today’s income of $25,000, $50,000 and $100,000 in 15, 25 and 40 years from now.

WordPress blogging(neomeme)

WordPress.com had, in my opinion, one of the most clever(and also most painful) April fools pranks when they made everybody blog of the minute. Unfortunately, since then they’ve gone back to the same old “algorithm”, which simply ranks the 100 blogs getting the most traffic for that day and picks one out from the top. Of course, there are some excellent blogs that also get decent traffic and thus become “blog of the minute”, like the current champion, Strange Maps. I would have never discovered that excellent and unique blog had it not been for WordPress.com’s featured blogs.