Good morning New York,
FT ALPHAVILLE
We ponder the rise of government guarantees in the UK mortgage market.
NEWS
Shutdown has begun in the US government. Some 800,000 federal employees will be placed on unpaid leave on Tuesday and numerous agencies will begin to close after the Senate rejected a House bill to link funding of the government to a delay of President Barack Obama's healthcare law (Financial Times, Bloomberg, WSJ).
Japan's prime minister unveiled the country's first sales-tax increase since 1997. The rise in the tax rate from 5 per cent to 8 per cent will be accompanied by stimulus measures worth around $50bn to assuage its effects on the economy (Bloomberg).
Google is close to a settlement with the European Union over antitrust concerns. "Google has now improved the commitments it has offered. I can tell you the new proposal more proportionately addresses the needs for commitments," Joaquín Almunia, competition commissioner, said on Tuesday. The company has faced a three-year EU probe into its search practices (Wall Street Journal).
Nokia said that a freeze on its assets in India over a tax dispute would not impede the sale of operations to Microsoft. "We are in a dialogue with the government, and we have more than enough assets to settle our liabilities relating to this issue . . . So we expect our deal [with Microsoft] to be completed on schedule by the first quarter of 2014," a Nokia spokesperson said (Financial Times).
