Switching Banks or Complementing Your Service: Getting the Most for Your Money + MORE Oct 6th

FRANKFURT – Top officials at the European Central Bank remain open to providing new stimulus to raise inflation in the 19 countries that use the euro as their currency — but for now are emphasizing carrying out measures they have already agreed on.
That’s according to a written account released Thursday of the Sept. 8 meeting of the bank’s 25-member governing council.
The council members stressed their commitment to continue at least through March 2017 with the stimulus program under which the EBC is buying 80 billion euros ($90 billion) in bonds every month with newly created money. The bank is also extending ultra-cheap loans to banks, in hopes the cheap money will find its way into the economy in the form of more credit to companies and consumers.
The stimulus efforts aim to raise inflation from an annual 0.4 per cent toward the bank’s goal of just under 2 per cent, considered more in line with a healthy economy.
The measures, along with record low benchmark interest rates, “had not yet filtered through to final variables such as growth and inflation,” according to the account…

Written by Barry Choi and Jackie Rosen
The big five banks are constantly trying to acquire new customers, offering everything from 40” TVs and tablets to straight out cash if we open certain accounts with them. These promotions aren’t aimed at customers who are brand new to banking. Instead, they’re trying to get customers to leave their current banks and start fresh.
Switching is no easy task. Many of us have our credit cards, payroll deposits, investments and many other services all integrated with our bank, so we would need a pretty big incentive to make a switch – hence why some of the giveaways are rather generous. But not all banks rely on giveaways. Some – like EQ Bank – offer bank account shoppers the full package: a high interest rate that others might not be able to match in an easy-to-understand, no-fee product.
Your money is just like your health. When something doesn’t feel right, you go to the doctor to check things out. When your money isn’t working for you the way it should, it’s time to strive for more and find out who – and what – can help…

WASHINGTON – Breaking up the nation’s biggest banks or erecting steep tariffs on imports may sound appealing, but the economy cannot be redesigned and put back together again without harmful consequences for many Americans, President Barack Obama says in an essay published in the Economist Magazine
Instead, Obama in the article published Thursday urged less dramatic steps to boost labour productivity, combat rising income inequality and ensure that everyone who wants a job can get one.
In an essay titled “The Way Ahead,” Obama wrote about areas of unfinished business in his presidency. He said a major source of the slowdown in labour productivity has been self-imposed constraints, namely an anti-tax ideology that rejects virtually all sources of new public funding and a fixation on deficits at the expense of maintaining the nation’s infrastructure.
Obama wrote that the political system has become so disagreeable that even previously bipartisan ideas like bridge and airport upgrades are nonstarters…

While publicly calling Ottawa plan unnecessary, financial institutions quietly embrace picking up some of burden from taxpayers

Written by Barry Choi and Jackie Rosen
The big five banks are constantly trying to acquire new customers, offering everything from 40” TVs and tablets to straight out cash if we open certain accounts with them. These promotions aren’t aimed at customers who are brand new to banking. Instead, they’re trying to get customers to leave their current banks and start fresh.
Switching is no easy task. Many of us have our credit cards, payroll deposits, investments and many other services all integrated with our bank, so we would need a pretty big incentive to make a switch – hence why some of the giveaways are rather generous. But not all banks rely on giveaways. Some – like EQ Bank – offer bank account shoppers the full package: a high interest rate that others might not be able to match in an easy-to-understand, no-fee product.
Your money is just like your health. When something doesn’t feel right, you go to the doctor to check things out. When your money isn’t working for you the way it should, it’s time to strive for more and find out who – and what – can help…