The U.S. Federal Reserve kept interest rates unchanged on Thursday in a bow to the rather worrying state of the economy, turbulent financial market and sluggish interest rates at home. The US economy however, continues to be strong on the whole. We ask the question what effect this decision will have on markets and the currency?
Supermarkets vs Independent retailers
Morrisons has reported huge losses again. Morrisons CEO David Potts gave his support to the struggling supermarket by nearly doubling his stake in the business, spendin almost half a million pounds of his own cash to snap up 314,881 shares in the grocer on September 17, increasing the total stockholding to 822,881. They are plan to cut 900 jobs and 11 stores. Morrisons is one of Britain’s big four supermarket chains alongside Tesco, Asda and Sainsbury’s. All are suffering from falling sales as shoppers turn away from supermarkets in favour of buying more of their groceries either from local convenience stores, online or at the discount chains such as Aldi and Lidl.
We ask the question – is the above a result of changing consumer patterns, and can we expect from the future of supermarkets? This follows up on our ‘field to work’ themed debate in previous episodes of Freeworld News.