House of Cards

Although this isn't a graph or a trend I do feel you need to post some funny stuff every now and again. After yesterdays depressing dept graph, in which we saw how much shit the USA is in, I thought i'd show you a 'house of credit cards'.

Pretty cool stuff don't you think. Only a matter of time untill those credit cards fall down and mountains of dept pile up over the top of them. If some has deliberately knocked them down maybe you could sue them or call in legal preceedings. But they probably won't be charged as they are beyond the law. Notice this satire, I should be on stage. Quality stuff here. Enjoy.

Thank you for reading and please feel free to express your own views.

Credit Card Dept

Following the success of my last post on credit cards i've decided to make another post on credit cards. This one is particually on credit card dept. The graph below shows the average credit card dept to age.

As you can see the average credit card dept increase with age. It increases steadily from just under £8000 to just under £27000. This increasing level of dept could be due to the amount of people with a credit cards. Credit card companies are becoming more known for trapping people into getting into large amounts of dept. They don't tell their customers how much dept they are allowed to go in and often don't give people a chance to escape from dept before charging them extreme amounts of interest. The legality of this can be questoined, but I think the most important thing is to avoid overdrawing. I hope you liked this graph on credit card dept and all make sure you know what your bank is charging you.
Thank you for reading and please feel free to express your own views.

Credit Card Allocations

I thought i'd demonstrate one of my favourite charts here.

This Pie Chart shows the share of the credit card market. The percentages on the credit card companies aren't of the total market, but of the top 15 firms in the market. You can see that the credit company Chase hold 22% of the market while BofA are the next biggest with 21%. Other firms such as Citi and Amex hold 25% of the credit card market together while the others all hold under 10% each.
It’s pretty clear from this chart that between them, the big credit card issuers absolutely have the ability to set prices. It’s also clear just by looking at their marketing materials that none of them is particularly interested in competing with the others by reducing the maximum interest rate that they charge.

In most contexts, a chart like the one above would I think bespeak a competitive market. But in credit cards, I’m not so sure. On the other hand, do we want credit cards to be highly competitive? I’m not sure that we do: what we really want is for credit cards to be transparent.
At the margin, if the card issuers bring down their interest rates, that will only result in even more people borrowing even more money on their credit cards. But doing so is nearly always the worst possible way of borrowing money, except for maybe going to the loan shark down the street. Ideally we want the whole credit-card market to shrink, and for banks to go back to offering personal loans.

Thank you for reading and please feel free to express your own views.

Inter Bank Lending

This post will look at lending between banks. Interbank Lending has seen some dramatic changes due to the financial colapse. The graph I found gives a very nice timeline with comments.

You can see the steady rise as confidence is growing in the US markets. With only the odd annomaly, 9/11 and in 05/06, it rises from $200,000 million to $500,000 million in 8 years. Then, due to the Lehman bankrupcy credit stopped flowing. This is one of the reason the economy has suffered to much. Low levels of interbank lending has stopped the US coping with it's dept as well as it could have done. Even with the federal reserves payments, it was unable to stop the financial crisis worsening.
Thank you for reading and please feel free to express your own views.

FTSE100

2nd Post of the newly designed blog. As you would expect, the fluxuations in the FTSE100 are a keen interest of mine, and what better time period to be following it's graph than over the last 3 years. The financial situation has been changing dramatically recently and this has led to some very interesting charts, and I find the FTSE's one of the most interesting. 

From this chart you can see the booms and busts which have been happening on a cyclical level through the 1990's and 2000's. Of course fluxuations are common, but take a look at the steepness of the 07-09 period. A very sharp fall there.Very interesting indeed. You may accuse the banking sector of overspending and being too rash, but another aurgument is that these rises and falls in our economy are a cyclical event and it is important to rebuild. I think, we should take what we can from this and move on, into a financially safer, and more stable world.

Thank you for reading and please feel free to express your own views.

Change in Scene

Since becoming a blogger i've noticed how most blogs focus on the same thing. Albeight, my main interests are sport, film and music, i'm sure the blogging community have had an overdose on these subjects. For this reason i've decided to change my SportFilmMusic blog into one for trend rates and graphs. This has been a subject i've been following for many years now and i'm sure i'm not the only one. My new Trends and Graphs blog should give you an insight into interesting graphical representations and help you learn how to analyse them. If Trends and Graphs aren't up you're street, then why not keep following and see if it's the sort of thing you could get into.

I'll start with a graph i'm sure you've all seen before.

This graph shows the increase in average global temperature over the last 150 years. I'm sure you've all heard the various aurguments about global warming. Man made, natural phenomenon, or cows farting? I believe it has various factors, but one thing is for sure, it will effect us and we need to plan ways to cope with it.
Thank you for reading and please feel free to express your own views.

Black Swan

Although I don't plan to post about films too often, this film looks like it could be fantastic. I saw the trailer (below) and thought it could be a must see. Directed by Darren Aronofsky (The Wrestler, Requiem For A Dream), and another score by Clint Mansell, who also teamed up with Darren Aronofsky to produce a mesmeric score for Requiem For A Dream. I think it could be an early contender for flim of the year having already won awards across the Atlantic in the USA. With a cast of Vincent Cassel, Mila Kunis and Natalie Portman it is bound to be a hit in the UK.

Dzeko provokes Man UTD

Dzeko has scored 66 goals in 110 games for Wolfsberg so has a reputation to uphold. He has already spoken about the popularity of Man City within Manchester. But is it a good idea to take a dig at Man UTD at this stage of the season. It's well known that Man UTD hit form at this stage of the season, so why give them even more encouragement. I am also sceptical about how Dzeko will perform in the Premier League. We've had a number of players come from the second rate leagues in Europe (holland, germany, portugal) who haven't performed as expected. The likes of Postiga, Forlan and Kezman, at Tottenham Man UTD and Chelsea respectively are all examples of this. So although there is no doubting Dzeko's quality in the Bundersliga (see video below), i'm reserving my judgement for a couple months.

Tribute to Ashes winning England Cricket Team

Firstly, welcome to sportsteem. My blog will focus on the most followed sports in the UK. Obviously one of the key stories over the last week has been the Ashes series down under. Great to see rub the Aussie noses in it on there own turf. Lets hope for further success in the ODI's. They've started brightly, beating the Prime Ministers XI in Canberra. I don't know about you guys, but the thing that jumped out at me was the Ian Bells strike rate. Brilliant to see him finally reach his potential.
Prime Ministers XI vs England Scorecard
Keep reading my daily blogs which will cover Football, Cricket, Rugby, Snooker, F1, Tennis, and many more of the best sports.