The bank-crisis spares no-one !

Even nuns and fathers are suffering a loss from the bank-crisis which is ravaging our times. Modern nuns and fathers do not longer hoard up their savings, instead they invest it. Unfortunately their prayers couldn’t prevent the crisis causing the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, where the ‘nuns of Saint-Vincentius’ had a deposit of one million Euros, and the ‘Fathers of Love’ one of 500 000 Euros. Luckily, the fathers and nuns hadn’t deposed all their money by Lehman Brothers which didn’t bring their projects in third world countries in danger.
De Standaard
Draux Andries

Don’t get lost on your road to El Dorado!

Investing in gold seems to be the most secure thing to do these days, but you better be

careful. Consumers are raring to sell their precious, hard-earned scrap of gold, but they are being ripped off to the tune of £500m a year. Heartless, sly dealers are buying this gold at a bargain price from the man in the street: the US based Cash4Gold pays as little as 20% of the gold’s market value!

So, keep your eyes open and pretend to be the wily fellow, otherwise you will be still dreaming of that new Porsche or yacht.

The Times

Jolien Gabriëls

European banks are healthy again

Even if a new crisis set in, the European banks would resist. The results of the stresstests the European Central Bank has done by 22 European banks are apparently satisfying. The majority of the participating banks would keep upright even if the real estate market decreased suddenly, the unemployment figure was more than 10% or if the economic development was negatif. Despite they would lose 400 billion euro, they will still have enough capital to weather the crisis.

De Redactie - Europese banken zijn opnieuw gezond

Alexander Lefére

Preventing financial crisis by good oversight.

The Belgian government is making new, more severe rules. Those rules should prevent having another bank crisis. These new rules should make it possible for the government to intervene faster and more effective. Setting up a good financial structure and a better informed government should prevent banks doing unacceptable things and if they go over the line there will be a commission to punish them more effective than before.

Doolaeghe Wesley

De Standaard

98 multi-millionaires less because of the crisis

10 richest Americans

1. Bill Gates: 50 billion dollars (-7 billion)
2. Warren Buffet: 40 billion (-10)
3. Lawrence Ellison: 27 billion (stable)
4. Christy Walton: 21.5 billion (-1.7)
5. Jim Walton: 19.6 billion (-3.8)
6. Alice Walton: 19.3 billion (-3.9)
7. S. Robson Walton: 19 billion (-4.3)
8. Michael Bloomberg:17.5 billion (-2.5)
9. Charles Koch: 16 billion (-3)
10. David Koch: 16 billion (-3)
















The United States has now 391 multi-millionaires, 98 less than just a year ago. Warren Buffet lost 10 billion dollars during the last 12 months, something that no one in the United States could beat. Buffet was crowned in 2008 the richest man in the world and had to admit this year that his friend Bill Gates (founder of Microsoft) was richer, losing 3 billion less. Only 28 Americans in the top 400 succeeded to increase their fortune this year. An example was a banker from Texas and passionate pokerplayer named Andrew Beal, he bought cheap loans and assets in the middle of the crisis .

Emilie De Troch

De Tijd

Banks pass stress test

According to the stress test of the Committee of European Bank Supervisors(CEBS), 22 major European banks would withstand a fall back in economic growth, a downfall of real estate prices and a major rise in unemployment in 2009 and 2010.
These test results are a reason for cautious optimism, claims Jean-Claude Trichet, chairman of ECB, because the assumptions of the test were rather strict. If this situation would occur, the banks would lose over 400 billion euro, but there would still be enough capital left. This is largely due to the capital injections European governments were forced to perform but because of the improvement of the expected returns as well.



Stijn Gillis

De Tijd

Estate tax increased by 4.5%.

Due to a new IT system, we will receive our tax assessments a couple of months later, but this isn’t the only surprise: the estate tax has never grown so fast in Belgium as in 2009. House owners pay now 4.5 percent more estate tax than last year. Normally the estate tax increases by 1.8 percent a year. The reason for this rapid rise is the strong inflation in 2008 caused by high fuel prices during the summer of 2008.

Talitha Hanssens

De Standaard