Garrett Tedeman, MBA, CPA

Lowest since 1694?!?

Bank of England Reduces Interest Rate to 1% to Fight Recession

By Brian Swint

Feb. 5 (Bloomberg) — The Bank of England cut the benchmark interest rate to the lowest since the bank was founded in 1694 to help drag the British economy out of the deepening recession.

The nine-member Monetary Policy Committee, led by Governor Mervyn King, reduced the bank rate to 1 percent from 1.5 percent. The decision matched the median estimate of 61 economists of a Bloomberg News survey.

The U.K. economy will shrink the most since 1946 this year and faster than any other industrialized country, International Monetary Fund forecasts show. Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s government has given the central bank powers to spend up to 50 billion pounds ($73 billion) on bonds and commercial paper as interest rates lose their potency to aid economic growth.

“We have a deep recession and a credit crunch,” said Michael Saunders, chief Western European economist at Citigroup Inc. in London. “Why wait? The debate is about how the economy can ever recover, and the Bank of England has the answer to that in its hands.”

King will present the bank’s updated economic forecasts on Feb. 11. Minutes of this month’s meeting, showing how the members voted, will be published on Feb. 18.

The Bank of England has now lowered its rate by 4 percentage points since October. The U.S. Federal Reserve has reduced its key rate to a range between zero and 0.25 percent. The European Central Bank will probably keep its rate at 2 percent today.

On Friday, January 23rd, Microsoft announced their new “BI Strategy” in which the main planning component of PPS will receive one further update in SP3 in June, but will have no further development after that point.

Specifically, this will affect two component pieces.  The Planning Business Modeler and the Excel Add-in.  The Monitoring & Analytics, Dashboarding, and ProClarity pieces will be rolled into Sharepoint Server beginning on April 1st.  More from The BI Blog:

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Microsoft BI Strategy Update

Hi everyone,

I wanted to provide an important update on the Microsoft BI strategy!  For over ten years we’ve been on a mission to deliver BI to everyone in the organization, and have made strides towards achieving this goal through the broadly adopted tools of SharePoint, Excel, and the SQL Server BI platform. Based on customer feedback, we’re announcing today that Microsoft is consolidating the scorecard, dashboard, and analytical capabilities from PerformancePoint Server into SharePoint Server as PerformancePoint Services, making these capabilities available to millions of SharePoint users around the world. This move helps us extend our vision to deliver BI more broadly to everyone in the organization at a lower total cost of ownership.  Our customers keep telling us—my IT spend is not going up—how can you help me?  Well, help has officially arrived!

Now you might be wondering what will happen with rest of PerformancePoint Server?  In mid 2009, we will release PerformancePoint Server 2007 “Service Pack 3” which will include updates to the product’s planning module. Thereafter, our customers and partners should not expect further investment in standalone versions of PerformancePoint Server.  Throughout this process the support of our planning customers is our top priority.  But in the end, these changes enable our customers around the world to deploy a complete BI solution in many cases with existing investments in SharePoint Server, SQL Server, and Excel, the most widely used analysis and planning tool in market today!

Want more information?  Take a few minutes and watch this video with Guy Weismantel, Director of Microsoft BI. In it, Guy explains these changes and the future value Microsoft customers will gain from this strategy.