1 Car sales break the roof, home-buying hits
basement (Larry Elliott in The Guardian) Almost 500,000 were shifted in Britain
in March 2015, making it the best month the motor trade has had this century,
according to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders. It was the 37th
month in a row that there has been year-on-year growth in business.
It was not a great month to be flogging houses.
Demand for mortgages, according to the Bank of England, fell significantly in
the first quarter of the year, continuing the trend seen in the final three
months of 2014. Something doesn’t quite fit. Buying a home is the biggest
financial purchase anybody makes. The second biggest is buying a new car. For
the moment, the two are going in opposite directions.
Three things are of note. The first is that the
pickup in car sales is not a flash in the pan. In March, demand may have been
topped up by those anticipating getting their hands on their pension pots when
the rules changed in April. Even so, sales have been strong for some time,
reflecting rising confidence.
The second point is that the lull in the housing
market would seem to be temporary, a function of the Bank of England’s curbs on
mortgage lending in response to a market that was showing signs of overheating.
Demand for loans is likely to strengthen over the coming months as a result of
lower mortgage rates and a slight increase in the willingness to lend to
borrowers with deposits of less than 10%. And, of course, rising consumer
confidence should boost sales of homes in just the same way as it has boosted
sales of cars.
Finally, cars are being driven out of showrooms at
record rates. This should be great news for a Conservative party that is making
the economy the central, some would say only, theme of their election campaign.
So far, though, there has been no political dividend for David Cameron.
http://www.theguardian.com/business/economics-blog/2015/apr/08/car-sales-homebuying-mortgage-lending
2 US Fed split over interest rise timing (BBC) Officials
at the US's central bank were split about when to raise interest rates, latest
minutes released by the Federal Reserve have revealed. Interest rates in the
world's largest economy have been kept at close to 0% since late 2008, at the
start of the financial crisis.
Now, officials must determine when the US economy is
healthy enough to grow without help from the Fed. Some said mid-2015 would be
best, while others suggested later, in 2016.
The Fed must balance two competing priorities: the
desire to maximise employment in the US economy, while also keeping prices in
check. Some Fed officials worry that if rates are kept too low for too long, it
could lead to difficult-to-control inflation.
However, recent economic data has indicated that
prices in the US economy are not rising significantly, and chair Janet Yellen
has said she is still concerned about sluggish wage growth in the jobs sector.
3 Concern over infomercials as toddler fodder (Carolyn
Said in San Francisco Chronicle) When YouTube Kids launched in February, Google
heralded the app as “the first Google product built from the ground up with
little ones in mind.” The Internet giant said its new app would make it safer
and easier for young children to find family-friendly videos on their parents’
smartphones.
But now 10 children’s and consumer advocacy groups
charge that YouTube Kids sneaks in lots of infomercials for products and
companies, violating laws about unfair and deceptive advertising. Google said
in a statement that it consulted many child advocacy groups in developing
YouTube Kids. The app has tools to let parents limit their children’s screen
time, and to turn off sounds and search, and it doesn’t let children click
through to purchase products, it noted.
Nell Minow, who runs the MovieMom.com site about
appropriate media for children, agreed that advertising-supported content is
necessary — but she doesn’t believe Google is holding up its end of the
bargain. Hearkening back to a famous quote from her father, former Federal
Communications Commission Chairman Newton Minow, who once called television a
vast wasteland, Nell Minow said the Web is far worse. “The Internet is a toxic
waste dump by comparison,” she said.
The advocates laid out three specific complaints
about the app: It mixes advertising and programming in ways that could deceive
young children; it has numerous branded channels for companies or products; and
it distributes lots of user-generated segments featuring toys, candy and other
products without disclosing if the video creators are compensated by product
manufacturers.
Children’s TV shows have limits on how many minutes
of commercials they can show, but users of YouTube Kids could theoretically
spend hours watching promotional videos. Jules Polonetsky,
executive director
of the Future of Privacy Forum, consulted on a pre-release version of the app.
He said it passed such privacy tests as not collecting personal information,
not requesting e-mail addresses, not requiring Google account registration and
not linking to third-party sites. He said the sponsored content doesn’t bother
him.
“The app is a far more conservative and cloistered
environment than what kids are otherwise likely to be exposed to,” he said. The
trade commission “has received the letter and will review the concerns raised
by these groups," FTC spokesman Justin Cole said.
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