| Enhances Content and Revenue Model of Marquee Personal Finance and ...
SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--InterSearch Group, Inc. (AMEX: IGO), a leading operator of industry specific destination portals and provider of Internet search services announced today that it has rolled out the enhanced edition of its marquee personal finance online property, www.Banks.com. Banks.com is an online consumer finance marketplace aggregating information on a broad range of products and fees including: mortgages, credit cards, auto loans, college financing, debt management, retirement, and more. The online property now also features a wealth of resources and advice on personal finance topics in a convenient user format. Banks.com generates revenues through a hybrid model combining pay-per-click and affiliate arrangements with advertisers and paid search. "We acquired Banks.com in September 2006 to create a preeminent online consumer banking one-stop marketplace built around a domain name that is synonymous with that offering.
Rate rises affecting UK homeowners
New research has confirmed recent opinions that a series of interest rate hikes have led more UK homeowners to turn to fixed-rate mortgage offers, it has been revealed.A Fool.co.uk study also found that borrowers expected further rises in the coming months, with first-time buyers and those choosing to remortgage their properties among the most cautious.Currently almost eight out of ten borrowers are looking to fixed-rate products, according to Fool – double the number that were doing so in August of last year.Three rate rises since the beginning of that month have contributed to a doubling in the popularity of fixed-rate products among remortgagers, up from 40 per cent to 80 per cent since August. Nine out of ten first-time buyers are also now rejecting the option of variable rates."Currently, interest rates are expected to rise 0.25 per cent within the next two months and a further 0.25 per cent six months after that.
China and the Hedge Fund Dragon
This week we look at the possible latest entry into the hedge fund world, The People's Republic of China; review the cockroach principle of subprime mortgages; and investigate the possibility of whether we need more derivatives and not less than the $283 trillion or so we now have. It's a lot to cover, but it should all be interesting. But before we get into the meat of the letter, I want to announce a brand new web site. For the last six months, we have been in the process of creating a Chinese language web site of Frontline Thoughts. I have wanted to do this for years, and we are finally ready to go public. If you would like to read this weekly letter in Chinese, you can go to www.frontlinethoughts.cn. You will be prompted to click on English or Chinese and then enter your email address.
Fed, OCC Publicly Chastised Few Lenders During Boom (Update1)
March 14 (Bloomberg) -- The Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency took little action in public to police the $2.8 trillion boom in the U.S. mortgage market -- whose bust now risks worsening the housing recession. The Fed, which is responsible for the stability of the banking system, didn't publicly rebuke any firm for failing to follow up warnings on home-lending practices between 2004 and 2006. The OCC, which supervises 1,793 national banks, took only three public mortgage-related consumer-protection enforcement actions over the same period. Consumer advocates and former government officials say the regulators, by acting behind the scenes rather than openly advertising the shortcomings of some firms, failed to discipline an industry that loaned too much money to borrowers who couldn't repay it.
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