The high days and holidays started with a month dominated by news of a business’s standard practice included hacking, the US managed to overtake the headline-grabbing with the standard dominant phrase of debt ceiling. This headline will likely change, over the coming weeks, as we learn more about their economy predictions, long term issues and impacts of the situation.

With tougher regulation and  the eurozone  crisis continuing, Banks are starting to give out their interim reports this month.  So far Barclays have shown their profits are down because of PPI scandal payouts, Lloyds of London insurer Hiscox  produced its worst half-year for a decade after a string of natural disasters which left an £86m loss  and Lloyds are still seeking a buyer for their 630 branches up for sale  because of  Project Verde’s deadline.

The Queen’s remark to her party guests that Banks need to ‘change their attitude’ might be deemed as been taken up by HSBC as they announced they are to lay off 30,000 workers, despite interim pretax profits of £6.8Bn,  in order to focus on emerging markets whilst they’re set to hire up to 15,000 in other markets.  Entrepreneur James  Caan stated his belief that employment could be eradicated if each of the UK’s 4.9 million businesses each took on one employee while Capital’s SME Employment & Optimism Pulse revealing that UK SME’s plan to create 470,000 new jobs in the coming year.

August 10 the Bank of England releases its quarterly Inflation Report. Rates are anticipated to stay at 0.5% because of the subdued Q2 GDP growth figures of 0.2%, figures which seem to have been affected by data reading challenges; due to changing factors, such as winter weather, Japanese Tsunami and extra Bank Holidays. According to a study by Santander inflation hit out at children,   with parent power maybe having to change as the study shows a 68% rise because of  the cost of goods and services, typically bought by 10-16 year olds, rising  by 14.3% against RPI 8.5%.  The only change that doesn’t seem to be happening is stagflation.

With poor GDP data in the UK, the USA government having spats, Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Ireland throwing their rattles around, it seems the high days and holidays of the summer are in full swing.

(Image and Article credit: Copyright SUF)