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Virtual Heist Nets 500000+ Bank, Credit Accounts
Washington Post, United States - According to several analysts at iDefense, a security intelligence firm in Sterling, Va., more than a dozen criminals operating the Sinowal data theft … |
THE Westpac result underscored its strengths and the systemic threats now gathering around Australia’s Four Pillars.
For the first time since 1992, profits of the major banks went into collective retreat over 2008 as the surging funding costs and rising provisioning chopped a chunky 23 per cent from total earnings of $21 billion.
The key lesson from the profits delivered over the past two weeks by NAB, ANZ, Westpac and its merger partner, St George, is that life only gets tougher from here.
Kelly stresses that 2009 is going to be a challenging year for Westpac, for its competitors and for wider Australian economy.
What’s more, economic times will be seriously straitened for at least two years, as the dislocation of the global financial crisis works its way through Australia’s real economy.
WHILE there are many causes of the financial crisis, the main one is the fall in US housing prices. Despite protests in 2005 from then Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan that housing price bubbles in the US only appeared to be localised, it is now clear that there was an economy-wide bubble.
The most recent data shows that US house prices fell 17% in the year to August and there is little sign that house prices have stabilised. A glut of houses for sale due to foreclosures and defaults means that, at best, housing prices can be expected to stay low, but further falls are more likely. House prices in Britain have also fallen, though only by 8% in the past year.
Brisbane, Australia — Around 1.9 million workers in Australia are defaulting on mortgage and credit card payments, according to a study released Wednesday by the Workplace Research Center in Sydney. The rising default woes are clear indicators of average households struggling to cope with an economy on the slide.
The report is the second in a five-year study of Australian workers, and provides the most authoritative data on Australian work life from the workers’ perspective. Although at the time of data collection the present financial crisis had not kicked in, workers said that managing their household income was getting difficult and they were struggling to make ends meet.
MAJOR players in Australia’s wealth management industry have rejected the Government’s suggestion that frozen mortgage funds become banks, saying this will not help tens of thousands of retirees to access almost $14 billion in savings.
Even those fund operators who cautiously welcomed the news were seeking more clarity about how it might work.
The Government was unable to say how many funds it expected would take up the suggestion, despite arguing that an almost 10% boost in funding to Australia’s prudential regulator this year alone was designed in part to cater for an anticipated rise in bank applications.