38
Percentage of Americans who say they feel less secure about their financial situation compared to last year, according to the results of a Harris Poll
45
Percentage who believe the economy will get worse in the coming year
15
Percentage who believe the economy will improve in the coming year
Rupert Murdoch said Thursday that The Wall Street Journal will continue to charge a fee for full access to its Web site, and indicated that those charges may go up.
Murdoch was quoted by the Journal as saying that WSJ.com would "greatly expand and improve" the portion of the site that is available to non-paying subscribers, but that there will still be a "strong offering" for paying subscribers.
"The really special things will still be a subscription service, and, sorry to tell you, probably more expensive," the Journal quoted Murdoch as saying.
Murdoch was speaking in response to a question at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the Journal reported. Wall Street Journal spokesman Robert Christie didn’t dispute the accuracy of what the Journal reported but had no further comment.
Murdoch’s News Corp easy payday loan. (NWS, Fortune 500) media conglomerate completed its purchase of Dow Jones & Co., which publishes the Journal, in December.
Some material on WSJ.com is free now, but Murdoch has said he was considering opening the site to non-paying subscribers in hopes of building additional advertising revenues, which he said would likely offset lost revenues from subscriber fees.
Speculation has been mounting in the publishing industry about when, whether and to what extent the Journal’s Web site would be opened to the public. The Journal currently has about 1 million paying Web subscribers.
Japanese government bond prices closed mostly higher Friday after investors shifted to the safety of bonds as stocks extended their losses to finish at a 26-month low.
Initially, bonds fell, tracking losses in the US Treasury market after Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke said the central bank is ready to lower interest rates again to ward off a recession. Stocks in the US rose on Bernanke’’s remarks and on a report that Bank of America is close to buying struggling mortgage lender Countrywide Financial Corp.
But bond prices recovered as Japanese shares fell sharply, with the key Nikkei index closing at 14,110.79, its lowest level since November 2005.
Bonds were also supported by expectations of further rate cuts by the Fed, because lower US interest rates would make it more difficult for the Bank of Japan to raise its own key rate.
“The bond market has increased its expectation for a 50-basis-point rate cut by the Fed this month to 90 percent” since Bernanke’’s speech, said Kazuya Ito, fund manager at Daiwa SB Investments.
The Fed is scheduled to hold its next rate-setting meeting on Jan 29-30. The market consensus is for more rate cuts, bringing the fed funds target rate to 3.5 percent this year from the current 4.25 percent, said Ito.
But some market participants are expecting an even more aggressive approach to bring the rate down to the 2 percent level, he said.
With the Fed expected to cut rates further this year, the Bank of Japan will face increasing difficulty in raising its own key rate freecreditscore. The central bank is now expected to leave its key rate at 0.5 percent at least for this year.
The Bank of Japan may even lower rates, according to emerging speculation. But there will be no need to lower rates unless data show a continuing deterioration in the Japanese economy or the Nikkei falls below the 13,000-point level, said Yuuki Sakurai, general manager at Fukoku Mutual Life Insurance.
The yield on the benchmark 10-year bond closed at 1.420 percent, down from 1.435 percent at the close Thursday.
The yield on the 2-year note fell to 0.605 percent from 0.635 percent and the yield on the 5-year note slipped to 0.880 percent from 0.915 percent.
The yield on the 20-year bond declined to 2.075 percent from 2.085 percent. There were no successful transactions in the 30-year bond.
Bond prices move inversely to yields.
The price of the March futures contract for the 10-year bond rose to 138.01 yen from 137.76 yen late Thursday.
Japanese financial markets will be closed Monday for a public holiday.
Sourse
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said Tuesday the administration was exploring what would be a significant expansion of the program to help at-risk mortgage holders.
Paulson, in an interview on CNBC, said the administration was involved in discussions with the mortgage industry to expand a current program to freeze adjustable rate mortgages for five years to include borrowers of loans at prime rates freecreditreport. Currently, the rate freeze only covers a much smaller segment of adjustable rate loans, those made to subprime borrowers. Those are borrowers with weak credit histories.
Paulson did not provide any details on when this expansion might go forward.– The Associated Press
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