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Banks should urgently be relieved of the unnecessary duty to revalue their loan portfolios according to the criteria of which price they could achieve if they sell the credit today.

According to a new report from foodservice consultants Technomic, three out of five consumers (62 percent) who report purchasing more supermarket prepared meals than a year ago, are doing so at the expense of fast-food restaurants. The survey of more than 1,500 consumers found that family-style and casual-dining restaurants also were impacted to a somewhat lesser extent. Convenience was cited by 86 percent as the reason for buying more retailer meal solutions.

While the public financial markets are in crisis, U.S. private equity firms not only continue to stockpile capital but have picked up the pace of their fund-raising. Dow Jones Private Equity Analyst, using statistics from the LP Source database, reports that U.S. private equity firms raised $222.6 billion in 264 funds during the first three quarters of 2008, 11% ahead of the $200.4 billion raised by 298 funds in the same time last year. That is in contrast to the halfway point of this year, when fund- raising slightly lagged last year's pace, and is despite a slow-down in buyout fund-raising. The full-year fund-raising record of $313 billion was set in 2007.

Automotive finance providers that achieve high levels of satisfaction among dealers receive a larger share of business from those dealerships, according to the J.D. Power and Associates 2008 Dealer Financing Satisfaction Study(SM).

The Conference Board Employment Trends Index (ETI)™ continued its decline in September, suggesting even more losses to come in the labor market. The index fell in September to 108.4, down 0.8 percent from the August revised figure of 109.3, and down almost 10 percent from a year ago.

Mortgage rates remained steady over the past week, with rates for 30-year fixed mortgages increasing slightly to 5.97 percent, up from 5.96 percent the week prior, according to the Zillow Mortgage Rate Monitor, compiled by leading real estate Web site Zillow.com(R).

Senior Lending Network(R), a program of World Alliance Financial Corp. and a leader in reverse mortgages, announced that despite the downturn in the overall economy, reverse mortgages remain a safe and valuable tool for seniors even as home prices decline and energy costs rise.

Common principles for levying charges at Community airports are set out in a second-reading report, adopted by the Transport Committee on Tuesday, on a proposed directive to prevent individual airports abusing a dominant position on the market. MEPs want the rules to apply to airports with an annual throughput of over 5 million passengers per year, whereas the Commission had proposed one million.

In a changing market, it remains essential for the roll-out of pay-TV services that conditional-access systems be protected at European level against piracy. This is the verdict of a report published by the European Commission. Such protection is also a vital precondition for the growth of new content distribution services like video on demand, online products and mobile TV. To boost the effectiveness of the European Directive providing this protection, the Commission is setting up a group in which government experts can exchange information and good practice, and proposes that the EU ratify the Council of Europe’s European Convention on the Legal Protection of Services based on, or consisting of, Conditional Access.

The biggest event in a very momentous week was not the roller-coaster ride in stock prices or another big drop in employment. At one point on Monday afternoon, stocks fell in the New York market by 400 points, in just six minutes. This is one of the major underlying problems with mark-to-market values. The value of U.S. business did not change by about 3 percent in just a few minutes. Mistakes in valuation and risk assessment lie at the heart of the continued turmoil in financial markets.