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Energy suppliers are making more than £100 out of every customer by refusing to cut bills during the record freeze.

Wholesale prices of gas and electricity have fallen dramatically, but hardly any of the benefit has been passed on to customers.
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Primarrk posts excellent profits again as its strong performance at boosts its parent group, Associated British Foods (ABF), which today reported an 8% rise in sales in the past six months.

According to ABF, like-for-like sales at its 196-strong Primark chain, which strip out the impact of new stores, were boosted by “exceptionally strong performance” from the relatively new 14 Spanish stores.
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US Federal Reserve said that it was raising interest rates for emergency bank loans leading to a fall in Asian stock markets.

The US central bank took markets by surprise when it said late on Thursday that it was lifting the discount rate to 0.75%, from 0.5%.

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Barclaycard, Britain’s biggest credit card provider has had to write of £1.8billion as bad debt as more and more people bust.

The amount Barclaycard said it has written off climbed 64 per cent during last year, it said yesterday.

Industry analysts believe the total UK credit card debt written off this year could reach £5billion as the plastic spending bubble bursts.
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US debt will soon be unsustainable without higher taxes and spending cuts, even with recovery

WASHINGTON (AP) — It’s bad enough that Greece’s debt problems have rattled global financial markets. In the world’s largest economic and military power, there’s a far more serious debt dilemma.

For the U.S., the crushing weight of its debt threatens to overwhelm everything the federal government does, even in the short-term, best-case financial scenario — a full recovery and a return to prerecession employment levels.

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