Private Equity Firm Buys Real Money Trade Website

Even in these bad economic times the RMT business is still going strong. Considered a recession proof industry, money is still flowing strong in this market.
Santa Monica, CA (PRWEB) January 29, 2009 -- Web site MyMMOShop.com has been acquired by My MMO Inc. for $10 million. MyMMOShop.com sells in-game currency, for some of the most popular Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs) such as World of Warcraft Gold, Final Fantasy XI Gil and EverQuest II Platinum.

Considered the #3 Real Money Trading (RMT) site in overall sales, MyMMOShop.com is known for its focus on customer service. MyMMOShop.com's Customer Support Department is accessible 24 hours a day, 7 days a week via Live Chat. The company has tenacious privacy and anti-fraud initiatives in place, requiring voice authorization for every new order.

"MyMMOShop.com appealed to us because of its strong reputation for providing optimal customer service," says Hunter Crowell, My MMO Inc.'s Media Relations Agent. "That focus will continue with our purchase."

RMT in online gaming had suspect beginnings. Purchasing virtual currency rather than earning it by playing the games successfully seemed, at first, unfair to those who put in the actual playing time to earn the currency themselves. Beginners could often have unfairly large accounts when compared to veteran gamers. But it caught on. People began spending thousands of dollars to fund and equip their gaming characters. Using real world money to purchase in-game money got a further boost in validity when Sony created its own RMT site, Station Cash in 2008. Now a $2 billion industry in the U.S., RMT is rapidly growing. In fact, gaming may well be a recession proof industry.

"This is a risky time for any kind of traditional investing," says Crowell. "People are staying home more and choosing less expensive forms of entertainment, like playing video games."

Applying money trading basics to virtual economies yields tremendous growth potential, even in a volatile time. In-game currency is a highly desirable product with a pandemic customer base that is increasing at viral rates.

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US President Barack Obama's $825bn (£576bn) economic stimulus package

US House passes economic package

Passed by 244 votes to 188, no Republicans backed the plan, saying it was too expensive and would not work.
The Senate debates the plan next week, and it could face stiff opposition as the Democrats have a slimmer majority.
After the vote, Mr Obama urged members of Congress not to "drag our feet or allow the same partisan differences to get in our way".
The president has said his package, which he hopes to sign into law next month, would help create a favourable climate for American business to thrive.
The bill would cut taxes for people and businesses by $275bn, while pumping more than $540bn into a range of initiatives including road and bridge repair, increased unemployment benefits, investment in new technology and renovations to 10,000 schools.
Heated debate
Mr Obama has pledged to try to end partisan division in Washington, but the debate on how best to kick start the US economy has devolved into a bitter squabble along party lines, says the BBC's Richard Lister in Washington.

In a heated debate, a succession of Republicans in Congress have condemned the stimulus package as a wasteful government spending exercise that will do little to create jobs.
They promoted their own bill, focussing more on tax cuts, which they said would create more jobs for half the investment.
"Fast-acting tax relief will create more jobs in America than a lot of slow-moving government programmes," said the Republicans' House minority leader John Boehner.
But this was a battle they could not win in the House, where Democrats have a large majority.
It is slimmer in the Senate where Republicans could slow the bill's progress, but Democrats are confident they can get the measure through there, and they have set a target for mid-February to have the bill on Mr Obama's desk to be signed into law.
Failing to attract significant Republican support for the bill, our correspondent says, is a blow to Mr Obama's hopes of forging a new consensus in Washington, at this time of economic crisis.
Greater accountability
Mr Obama said earlier workers were looking for "bold and swift" action from leaders, and called on businesses to play their part in economic recovery by creating jobs in a "favourable climate" started by government.

"I am confident that we are going to get it passed," Mr Obama said.
The US "cannot afford inaction or delay", he said after meeting business leaders at the White House.
Laying the blame for the economic crisis partially on a "sense of irresponsibility" on Wall Street and the government in Washington DC, he said corporate America had to take responsibility for its workers, but that Washington needed to provide leadership with the stimulus plan.
The president has said most of the money in his package would be used "immediately", creating as many as 4m jobs - the vast majority in the private sector - and that there would be a greater measure of accountability.
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who was sworn in on Monday, has the task of trying to get the US economy back in shape.
Meanwhile, Mr Obama attended his first Pentagon session with the joint chiefs of staff on Wednesday, telling them the military had carried out its missions under enormous pressure, and pledging his support to the troops.
Mr Obama, who campaigned on a promise to end the war in Iraq responsibly and withdraw troops next year, said his administration faces tough decisions on Iraq and Afghanistan.

dear readers

Are you in the United States? Do you agree with President Obama's proposals? leave your comments and experiences ..

Where to secrete your cash now

You're not going to find eye-popping interest rates, but there are lots of ways to earn modest returns -- with the priceless assurance that your balance won't drop.

You (and your savings) may have been bruised and bloodied by the stock market, but that's no reason to seek comfort by tucking your money under a mattress. Although Treasury bills are paying next to nothing, banks and brokerages are still offering safe alternatives that pay at least a little bit more -- nearly 4% -- are insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., and are backed by the full faith and credit of Uncle Sam.
Banks are particularly eager to cut you a deal. "They need deposits to boost capital and to have funds available to lend when markets loosen up," says Tom Brogan, director of retail banking practices at TowerGroup, a consulting firm.
You'll generally find the best terms at online banks, many of which are offshoots of traditional institutions. And take a good look at interest rates at community banks, which often offer incentives designed to retain current depositors as well as entice new ones. Your bank may have tiered rates -- the higher your balance, the more you earn -- which is a boon if you're moving a chunk of cash from the sale of stocks or mutual funds.
Certificates of deposit CD fans, rejoice. Interest rates are guaranteed, and the feds have temporarily increased insurance protection on bank deposits.
The FDIC raised its ceiling on deposits from $100,000 to $250,000 per depositor per bank in October. (The ceiling reverts to $100,000 on Jan. 1, 2010, so if you're thinking about depositing more than $100,000 in a CD that matures after Dec. 31, 2009, consider dividing the money among two or more banks instead.) CD maturities range from six months to five years. Some have no minimum-deposit requirement, and others require as much as $10,000 (a higher minimum does not ensure a better rate).

Despite the many recent mergers, there are still thousands of banks, so you want to be comfortable as a customer. Aaron Fine, a partner at Oliver Wyman, a financial-services strategy consulting firm, says you should find out how customer-friendly the bank's procedures are -- and, of course, make sure it is FDIC-insured. "If the Web site is cumbersome and it's difficult to make deposits, I wonder how hard it will be to take money out," says Fine. "If the process is fluid, transparent and easy to use, then I'm comfortable with it."
That said, the rate's the thing, and it pays to shop around. Yields on the highest-paying CDs range from 3.21% to 3.88%, depending on maturity (from one year to five years).

Parcel out your savings. Let's say you bailed out of the stock market, and now you're sitting on a pile of cash that exceeds the FDIC's expanded limits. To be fully covered, you could divide your money among a number of banks, but it takes a lot of time and effort to research banks and open accounts.
As an alternative, you could place as much as $50 million (honest!) through the Certificate of Deposit Account Registry Service program, and all of it would be FDIC-insured. This is how it works: You deposit your cash in one of 2,700 participating banks. The bank then parcels out the money to other banks in $100,000 chunks. The FDIC has issued an opinion that CDARS is a deposit-placement service, which means that all the money in the program is eligible for insurance. The original bank sets the interest rate and takes care of the paperwork, so you receive one consolidated statement. If you're investing $1 million or more, you should be able to negotiate a slightly higher rate than the ones that are advertised.

Build a CD ladder. Interest rates are generally low because the economy is weak and because people are flocking to safe investments, pushing down yields. But rates are likely to rise when the economy recovers. Two or three years from now, 3.88% might seem like an even-less-than-adequate return.
You can protect yourself by building a CD ladder -- that is, staggering the maturities of your CDs. If rates fall, you've locked in today's higher yields for some time; if short-term rates start to rise, you can take advantage of higher yields as your CDs mature.

Laddering your emergency fund

FYI: Banks with the highest rates in one category -- say, six-month CDs -- often show up as leaders in other CD maturities as well. Just be sure not to exceed the insurance limit at any one institution. (See "What if your bank fails?)
Or, as with the CDARS program, you could get help in selecting top-paying certificates. Some investment firms, such as T. Rowe Price and TD Ameritrade, will invest your money for you, although you may sacrifice some yield in return for the convenience.
To enroll in T. Rowe Price's Smart Ladder CDs, you fill out one application and deposit a minimum of $25,000, which is equally distributed among five CDs, with maturities from one to five years. Current rates are 1.35% to 2.7%; higher rates are available for larger deposits. When a CD matures, it is automatically reinvested in a five-year CD to rebuild the ladder.
One big advantage: CDs bought from brokerages may be redeemed without penalty before the term expires, although their values may fluctuate.

Economists: slump getting inferior

Analysis at private-sector companies forecasts greater job losses and deterioration economic conditions in the months to come.

Economists expect an already deep recession to get even worse in 2009, according to a survey released Monday.
Companies will lay off more workers and hoard more cash during the next 12 months, according to the National Association for Business Economics survey, a quarterly take from a panel of economists at private-sector companies in various industries. A vast majority of the 105 economists polled believe the country's gross domestic product will continue to sink in 2009.
If business conditions indeed worsen during the year, they will be sinking from already historic lows. The survey's measures of consumer demand, profit margins and capital expenditures all hit their lowest-ever levels in January's edition of the 27-year old survey.
"NABE's January 2009 Industry Survey depicts the worst business conditions since the survey began in 1982, confirming that the U.S. recession deepened in the fourth quarter of 2008," said Sara Johnson, a NABE economist.
Nearly half - 47% - of surveyed economists said overall industry demand was falling, compared with 35% who said so in the October survey. Just 10% of respondents said profit margins were rising, compared with 52% who believe they are falling. And 38% of economists said capital expenses are falling, up from just 15% in October.
Credit conditions hurt businesses, according to the economists, as customers had less leverage to buy discretionary products. 78% of respondents said tightening credit conditions affected customers, and 52% said the credit crunch directly hurt businesses in their industries.
Pessimistic outlook on weak environment
With business conditions souring, the outlook for jobs has grown increasingly negative. 39% of economists believe their industries will lay off employees in the next six months, compared with 32% in October.
The forecast was particularly poor for the goods-producing sector, in which 69% of economists saw layoffs in the future, and no one believed the industry would be adding jobs. Service-sector economists were the most optimistic, with only 9% seeing layoffs and 29% saying their industry would be hiring in the next six months.
Companies will likely curtail spending in the coming months as well, according to the survey. 44% of the economists believed capital spending in their industries would fall off in the coming year, compared with just 16% who believed their businesses would increase spending.
Rising unemployment, tightening credit conditions and a difficult lending environment led economists to give a more pessimistic outlook on growth for 2009.
Just 22% believed the U.S. economy would expand this year, down from 62% who thought so in October. Although 26% now believe the economy will shrink less than 1% this year, 52% now think the economy will shrink by more than 1%, which no one predicted in October.

more....

Global outlook to be slashed - again

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) will cut its 2009 global growth forecast again, this time to between 1% and 1.5%, as economic conditions deteriorate further, an IMF official said on Sunday.
The IMF's latest forecast, made in November, was for growth of 2.2%.
"It will be revised to 1 to 1.5% in 2009, which is huge," Axel Bertuch-Samuels, deputy director of IMF's monetary and capital markets department, told Reuters on the sidelines of a conference in the United Arab Emirates.
"Global economic prospects have deteriorated in recent months, consumer and business confidence have dropped to levels that we have not seen in decades and activity too has dropped sharply," he said.
The 2009 year will be enormously challenging for the world's economy, he said.
In November, the IMF cut projections sharply for world growth in 2009 to 2.2%, down 0.8 percentage points from an October forecast, noting industrialised economies were headed for the first full-year contraction since World War Two.
An official release of updated IMF economic forecasts is expected on Wednesday, he said, and even forecasts for emerging markets like China and India will see downward revisions.

Virtual Worlds Invested $594 Million in 2008

63 virtual world companies benefitted, but spending is down drastically from the $1.4 billion invested in 2007. Where did the money go?
A report released earlier this week from Virtual Worlds Management estimates that roughly $594 Million was invested in various virtual world companies throughout 2008. That's an impressive sum given the oppressive economic climate in the latter half of the year, but the numbers are way down from 2007's spending binge, where investors poured $1.4 billion into this space.
Where is this money going? Interestingly, only a fraction is going toward funding for large, triple-A worlds aimed at mature gamers. If you look at the complete breakdown at the bottom of the report, the majority of investments are aimed at smaller companies producing web-based games for kids and tweens. Investors are obviously hoping to see a lot of upside from a small company, as we've seen in the past with Club Penguin or Webkinz.
That's not to say that some of this money isn't going toward companies aimed at the core gamer. In Q2, Realtime worlds (creator of GameSpy favorite Crackdown) brought in $50 million to help fund its upcoming online game. That same quarter, Turbine (the developer behind The Lord of the Rings Online) finished up a round of financing with $40 million in order to fuel company growth.If you enjoy fan-made game movies, you'd be pleased to see that Machinima.com got a $3.85 million investment in Q4 of 2008, even as the economy was going haywire. Another interesting company to get financing in the turbulent Q4 was Metaplace, Raph Koster's experimental MMO platform where anyone can create their own virtual world.Digging down into where the money went, some unusual projects are uncovered. For instance, Trion Worlds received a $70 million investment in the third quarter. The company is working on a fantasy MMO as well as an unannounced project with the Sci-Fi Channel to simultaneously launch a new TV series and an associated virtual world. Could this be a game based off of the Battlestar Galactica prequel, Caprica, coming out in early 2010? We can only guess.Looking at the numbers, it's interesting to note that in 2007, a single property (Club Penguin) was purchased by Disney for $350 million, with another $350 million promised if the game hit projected growth targets. That single $700 million investment was more than the total of every virtual world investment in 2008!Times may be difficult for virtual world developers (employees of Cheyenne Mountain, developers of the Stargate Worlds game, haven't been paid for 69 days), but some investors still see potential in the marketplace even as the economic climate makes it harder and harder to fund new development.

Standard Life material about its Pension Sterling Fund was "misleading."

Standard Life facts 'misleading'

A financial services lawyer says Standard Life material about its Pension Sterling Fund was "misleading."
He says the city regulator should be examining the fact sheets to consider if compensation should be paid.
Standard Life has already said it will compensate people who invested after it revalued the fund on 23 December.
But it insists "customer literature [showed] the fund was invested... in a range of short dated money market instruments."
Subprime involvement
However, documents seen by BBC Radio 4's Money Box programme show that in March 2008 a fact sheet issued by Standard Life showed 100% of the fund - sold as a safe harbour for pension money shortly before retirement - was in cash

And Standard Life has admitted that up to 40% of the fund is still held in what are called "mortgage backed securities" - the products which have been involved in the subprime banking crisis which has swept around the world.
Adam Samuel, a lawyer who advises companies on whether their product information conforms to regulations, which say it must be "clear, fair and not misleading" told Money Box the documents failed that test.
"There's a description of the asset type as being 100% in cash, which in the small print says could indicate some short term money market instruments.
"Mortgage backed securities tend to be over quite a long term so that's wrong.
"The documents are not clear, not fair and definitely misleading."
Due compensation?
His comments were made a week after Standard Life told Money Box there were no grounds to compensate its customers.

Three days later it said it would compensate those who invested after it revalued the fund downwards on 23 December, but before it made that information public on 14 January.
Adam Samuel says the documents show there is a case for taking the compensation back much further.
"The Financial Services Authority should be sitting down with Standard Life and going through documentation for each year and deciding whether their descriptions of the fund pass the clear, fair and not misleading test.
"In reality that may mean compensating everybody."
Standard Life response
Standard Life told the programme that the information provided to customers was not misleading and in a statement said:
"It has been detailed in our customer literature that the fund was invested not only in deposits but also in a range of short-dated money market instruments.
"As soon as sufficiently reliable information was available, the securities held in the fund were revalued.
"That led to a reduction in the unit price."
The company would not comment in writing on the suggestion that compensation should be extended.

Obama wants access to remaining bailout money

Barack Obama's economic team is talking with the Bush administration about having Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson ask Congress within the next week for access to the $350 billion remaining in the financial bailout fund, officials on both sides said Friday.

A request by Paulson would allow Obama to begin tapping the fund — the last half of a $700 billion rescue package authorized by Congress in October — promptly after his Jan. 20 inauguration.

Obama's transition team also has asked Neel Kashkari, the head of the rescue program at the Treasury Department, to stay on for "a couple of weeks" under the new Obama administration to ensure a smooth transition, an Obama official said.

Paulson has said for a number of weeks that he has been having talks with the Obama team on when a request should be presented to Congress seeking the second $350 billion. He has said that the decision on timing has been left up to the incoming administration.

Eager to shift the course of the government's financial sector bailout fund, Obama and congressional Democrats want a more defined mission for the beleaguered $700 billion rescue program.

The House could act as early as next week on a new tack for the Troubled Asset Relief Program that would set tougher conditions on recipients of the money, including limits on executive pay, and require the Treasury Department to use some of the money to reduce mortgage foreclosures.

At the same time, Obama's selection for treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, is broadening the program's goals, aiming to unfreeze credit for homeowners, consumers, small businesses and local governments.

Geithner and Obama's economic team are developing a "comprehensive set of investment principles" that would also embrace restrictions on how the money is spent, limits on executive compensation for fund recipients and a plan to address rising foreclosures, an Obama transition official said.

The changes come amid bipartisan criticism that the Bush administration's handling of the first $350 billion of the program has been unfocused, confusing and inconsistent. But the new approach also signals a significantly greater government intrusion into the workings of financial institutions than the Bush administration was willing to undertake.

The money so far has been used to support ailing companies such as insurance giant American International Group Inc. and automakers General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC. It also has pumped billions of dollars into banks in hopes of freeing up credit for loans. But critics have complained that the money has had few strings attached and has not been used effectively to address the nation's housing cris