The fiscal crisis in Britain in 2007 had begun due to the breakdown of the Northern Rock, the nationalized bank. Now it is expected that, in this year also it will remain as a loss making entity by slowing down in efforts to sell it. Though going back into the private sector is also on discussion but still the picture is not quite clear.

On Wednesday, an announcement was made by the lender that it had made a pre-tax loss of £223.5m in whole year. This loss was done by making a sale through a stock market flotation.

A Congress panel, which has been given charge of overseeing the financial matters of the government after the crisis, is going to question executives of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. They are going to be questioned for the amount of compensation packages that they have received via the taxpayers' money.

Recently only, the Republican in the US House of Representatives, asked for repealing of the Affordable Care Act. And for the same they unanimously voted.

This is a health care reform that has been passed by the Democrats. Even the senate Republicans voted against the implementation of the act. However, since these Republicans were not able to stop the passing of the act since they have no control over the Senate.

Reports suggest the involvement of Britain's biggest banks in behind-the-scenes talks concerning a common plan intended to cut bonus payouts and increase lending to small businesses.

Some discussion had taken place last week by the senior executives from Barclays, HSBC, Standard Chartered and Royal Bank of Scotland. Ever since the politicians and business leaders have been asking for the lowering of pooled bonus pot ahead of January's bonus round, all the authorities are busy discussing ways and measures.

The euro is on the way to another currency crisis as response of the problematic financial situations in Ireland, Portugal and possibly Spain. Financial analysts report a second low month of the European currency against the US dollar.

The volume of foreign exchange trading, however, stayed to be light as the US national holiday Thanksgiving approaches.

On Wednesday, Brian Lenihan, Irish Finance Minister showed his confidence in the Ireland's economy by saying that the problem of debt crisis in the country would not cause havoc for the Euro Zone.

Speaking with France 24 television Lenihan said, "I have absolutely no doubt that Ireland will not cause any serious dislocation in the euro zone". He was of the view that for a small country like Ireland, the problems that erupt are addressed by an EU monetary support package.

According to the government spokesman Steffen Seibert, Germany being confident in Dublin's plan for tackling financial problems, is not forcing Ireland for accepting aid from the European Union.

Stefan said, "The German government greatly supports the Irish government's policies and has great confidence in the courageous reform policies contained in the four year programme it is expected to present in early December."

He didn't reveal anything about the possibility of increase in corporate taxes.

A parliamentary committee has blamed the WA Government for investing in a project without even evaluating the prospects of the investment. The investment in question is related to the millions of dollars that were spent by the West Australian Government on the development of Oakajee Port.

It needs to be noted that it was way back in May, 2009 that the state government had committed the $4.4 billion Oakajee project, a sum of $339 million. The promised money was borne by the Commonwealth, after Premier Colin Barnett had strongly supported financing of the project.

On Thursday, the Australian Office of Financial Management (AOFM) sold Treasury notes worth $2.2 billion in three tranches.

The first tranche of $1 billion of Treasury notes would mature on January 21, 2011 and it has a weighted average yield of 4.8590%; the second trance worth $600 million has a maturity date of February 11, 2011 with weighted average yields 4.8572%, while the third tranche of $600 million of notes and weighted average yields of 4.9633 % will get matured on April 29, 2011.

No offer has been taken up by the Reserve Bank.

Tuesday saw Barclays PLC post a dramatic fall in net profits for the third quarter, in the wake of market volatility that has created reluctance among investors in its investment banking business.

The UK bank's Core Tier 1 ratio was at 10% on September 30. It has taken measures to ease concerns regarding raising capital ahead of new regulatory requirements.

Despite having positive returns from almost all the fund types during the quarter ending September, the so called 'bumpy ride' is not over for the KiwiSaver investors. This information has been given by funds management consultancy Mercer.

The survey has shown that while the performance of KiwiSaver funds has been between 60-100 per cent, the best median performance was still close to 5.8 per cent. This is the return that they are getting from fees but before tax for the September quarter.

Citigroup, a major financial services company based in the US, has announced plans to create 500 jobs in Belfast over the coming 5 years. The corporation is planning to employ these staff in its Titanic Quarter offices.

The corporation’s Deputy First Ministers made the announcement on Thursday as they opened the new Titanic Quarter hub.

Online payment service PayPal has apologised for the inconvenience users faced due to service outage over the weekend.

The company held a hardware failure in a data centre responsible for the worldwide outage on Friday. Users around the globe were receiving error messages on the website and suffered delays in transactions.

According to chief technology officer Scott Guilfoyle, the hardware failure occurred at around 8:07 am and they could restore the service by 9:24am, but interruptions restarted at 11:30am which could be resolved by
12:21pm.

The Government's spending review, last week is said to have put forth its decision to cut deficit, Credit rating agency Standard & Poor said. They are said to have raised some prospects concerning the stability of Britain's triple-A credit rating. Following the announcement, various analysts are said to have put forth their views and opinions about the same.

Kenneth Broux, Market Economist, Lloyds TSB, London said that this 4-5 year plan was a very positive effort by the Government to reduce the deficit. And the GDP numbers were certainly enough to raise confidence.

Following an agreement reached between the UK and Switzerland, billionaire Britons might have a reason to be worried about. Britons, with money stacked away in Swiss bank accounts, would probably be brought under the scanner by the income tax authorities.