Compare banks and save with Justmoney
Happy 2009 from Justmoney
The New Year is here, 2008 is finally behind us and 2009 has just begun.
For many 2008 was an extremely difficult year. Many lost their houses and savings in the sub prime meltdown.
Here in South Africa it was not as bad as it was in some places. Iceland went bankrupt. It is not often an entire country goes bankrupt. But even though there was some amount of decoupling from the global turmoil the effects of the worldwide shocks were still felt here and we can continue to expect further pressure this year.
The Mail and Guardian looked at what can be expected to happen in 2009 globally, and some of the effects of the 2008 crash. The slump of last year 'wiped out nearly $14-trillion in market value'. The London stock exchange lost 31% and Shanghai 65%. Gold was one of the few commodities that managed to escape having its value mangled. The opinion expressed in the piece was that government intervention this year would be able to fix the problems and get the world economy back on track. 'World governments have started pumping more than $1-trillion into their economies, and more is expected in 2009'.
In local news Business Report tells us that private sector credit growth slowed in November. This means that less people are taking credit which makes sense given the current state of the world's economy. The effects of the Reserve Bank cutting the interest rate takes time to manifest, the article quotes an economist saying the effects of any interest rate changes would take from 12 to 18 months to set in.
So the rate cut we got and the ones that are expected will only really start making things easier for us at the end of 2009 and into 2010. The timing of this might be fantastic to pump prime an economic bonanza around the world cup. The economist also felt that compared to where we where at this time in 2008 then the outlook is improving. iAfrica also covered this story.
iAfrica has been running a series of its most popular and most read stories from 2008. There is one about re-negotiating the interest on your home loan. This is possible, particularly if your circumstances have changed since you first took the loan. The banks will often not be that keen to just get you a cheaper rate, so either be persistent or get a professional service to re-negotiate for you.
And in a final story IOL tells us about a British man who noticed that 100 billion pounds hade been removed from his account and he was now overdrawn by that amount! After getting the shock of his life the banks discovered that they had made a 'technical error' and reversed the erroneous transactions, stating that no one would suffer financially because of it. Justmoney hopes that you never have to have a shock like this and wishes you a happy and prosperous New Year.