How to stop rogue automatic payments?!

Nowadays most people live on autopilot as far as goes financial live. Some of our costs are being deducted automatically from our account, but what if you canceled one of these costs and the biller won’t stop pulling money from your account? The answer to this question are the Fed rules: if your authorization to the company has expired, the bank must block the future payments and the bank can’t wait for the biller to stop the authorization. In other words, the bank has the right to block upcoming payments so that it isn’t possible for the biller to deduct money which is not his.

Evelyne Reynebeau

http://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/04/how-to-stop-rogue-automatic-payments/?scp=16&sq=credit%20card&st=cse

Banking & Finance

'Fat' tax on European banks?

To target pay and profits at financial institutions, the European Commission considers a financial activities or “Fat” tax in Europe.  The commission thinks that banks are now not paying enough taxes and should contribute more to repair the damage they caused to the economy during the financial crisis. However , the tax could be difficult to execute on an EU-wide basis  because member states are still responsible for this issue. To give you an idea of the size of the taxation, the FAT tax could bring in a gain of £ 4bn for the UK.

(http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/now-the-ec-backs-a-fat-tax-on-banks-2100975.html)

Jonas Plouvier

The restriction of unlimited liquidity

The European Central Bank has changed the lending rules for the banks in the eurozone.  The changes, published on Saturday 16 October, clarify the ability of the ECB to refuse certain assets as collateral, so they have more certainty about the value of the underlying assets. The timing of the new rules  is significant, since ECB policymakers have become increasingly frustrated about a number of banks who remain addicted to the offers of unlimited liquidity. The ECB has been preparing this new policy since the collapse of Lehman Brothers two years ago.

                                                                                       Charlotte Vanderstraeten

Soaring prices threaten new food crisis

Source: The Financial Times online

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/12b06cee-d300-11df-9ae9-00144feabdc0.html

Unfortunate weather circumstances this summer have caused a large decrease in production of grain and oilseeds all over the world. In Russia and Ukraine the government has decided to restrict the export on wheat. This delicate supply and demand situation has raised the concern of many importers because not only are these crops used as basic food for men, they are used to feed cattle and poultry too. As a result grain and oilseed prices have soared, meat shares have fallen and traders can’t use future contracts because of the restrictions on trading.