On a hill high above Cleveland, Tennessee, stands a manor modeled after George Vanderbilt’s Biltmore. A stone-and-stucco pile topped by a copper dome, the house is perched on a 650-acre (263-hectare) estate that features two artificial lakes, a regulation-sized football field and a three- story tree house, plus stables, a greenhouse and an aviary. If this sounds [...]

consumers, credit, housing loans, US Hide

READING the fine print just got easier, if you are an American credit-card holder. Last May, the authorities in the United States stated that all information, including applications and disclosures for that piece of plastic, has to be printed in at least 12-point font. These rules are not in effect here. But The Association of [...]

consumers, credit, Singapore, spending, US Hide

LONDON: Britain faces the prospect of a decade of economic pain, after binging on cheap debt, and its recovery will rely on trading more with Asian tigers like China, forecasters warned on Monday. The economy, expected to have escaped recession in the last quarter of 2009, faces a “challenging” 2010, according to the Independent Treasury [...]

consumers, debt, investments, recovery, UK Hide

CHICAGO: Ford Motor Co. posted its first full-year US market share gain since 1995 even as industry sales fell to levels not seen in nearly 30 years, the automaker said on Tuesday. “It was a challenging and very volatile year,” said Ken Czubay, Ford vice president for US marketing sales and service. “We had to [...]

consumers, recovery, US Hide

FRANKFURT : Around 30 million high-tech German bank cards could leave owners high and dry, bank associations warned Tuesday as the feared Y2K computer bug cropped up 10 years later than expected. The problem that hit cardholders trying to use cash machines or make payments throughout Germany and abroad stems from computer chips unable to [...]

Bank failures, consumers, technology Hide

Wall Street’s first test of the new year and decade could well be whether investors are following each other over a cliff. Following a year that featured a violent stock rally led mainly by institutional investors and traders, 2010 begins with new signs that retail investors are beginning to buy into a better future for [...]

consumers, earnings, stock market, US Hide

Oct. 16 (Bloomberg) — Spending in the U.S. on luxury goods and services spurted 29 percent in the third quarter from the previous three months, as consumers with the highest incomes unleashed pent-up demand, according to Unity Marketing. Spending among 1,067 consumers with average annual income of $228,800 rose to $18,826 each in the three [...]

consumers, spending, US Hide

Thomson Reuters predicted Google would deliver $5.42 per share, but Google reported $5.89 per share As of 5:15 PM Eastern Time, Google’s stock price had risen about 16 points (3%) in after-hours trading, erasing a Thursday market loss of about 5 points (1%) that took place as the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the NASDAQ [...]

consumers, earnings, google Hide