Evilaid

Hotels in London (History)

2009-06-26T12:29:00.000-07:00

History

Before the 19th century there were few if any large hotels in London.
British country landowners often lived in London for part of the year,
but they usually rented a house if they did not own one, rather than
staying in a hotel. The numbers of business visitors and foreign
visitors were very small by modern standards. The accommodation
available to them included lodging houses and coaching inns.
Lodging houses were more like private homes with rooms to let
than commercial hotels, and were often run by widows. Coaching
inns served passengers from the stage coaches which were the
main means of long distance passenger transport before the
railway network began to develop in the 1830s. The last surviving
galleried coaching inn in London is the George Inn which now
belongs to the National Trust.

A few hotels on a more modern model existed by the early 19th
century. For example Mivart's, the precursor of Claridge's,
opened its doors in 1812, but up to the mid 19th century
London hotels were generally small. In his travel book
North America (1862) the novelist Anthony Trollope remarked
on how much larger American hotels were than British ones.
But by this time the railways had already begun to bring far
more short term visitors to London, and the railway companies
themselves took the lead in accommodating them by building a
series of "railway hotels" near to their London termini.
These buildings were seen as status symbols by the railway companies,
which were the largest businesses in the country at the time,
and some of them were very grand. They included:
Midland Grand Hotel at St. Pancras

* The Midland Grand Hotel at St. Pancras (closed 1935; due to reopen as a Renaissance hotel in 2009/10)
* The Great Western Hotel at Paddington (now the Hilton London Paddington and the first of Britain's railway hotels)
* The Great Northern Hotel at King's Cross (closed for High Speed 1 works and scheduled for demolition and renovation. Will then be used for offices.)
* The Great Eastern Hotel at Liverpool Street (Now the Andaz Liverpool Street)
* The Charing Cross Hotel at Charing Cross station
* The Great Central Hotel at Marylebone (now The Landmark London)
* The Grosvenor Hotel at Victoria

Home equity loan

2009-06-26T12:17:00.000-07:00

A home equity loan (sometimes abbreviated HEL) is a type of loan
in which the borrower uses the equity in their home as collateral.
These lloans are sometimes useful to help finance major home repairs,
medical bills or college education. A home equity loan creates a lien
against the borrower's house, and reduces actual home equity.

Home equity loans are most commonly second position liens
(second trust deed), although they can be held in first or,
less commonly, third position. Most home equity loans require
good to excellent credit history, and reasonable loan-to-value
and combined loan-to-value ratios. Home equity loans come in
two types, closed end and open end.

Both are usually referred to as second mortgages, because they
are secured against the value of the property, just like a
traditional mortgage. Home equity loans and lines of credit
are usually, but not always, for a shorter term than first
mortgages. In the United States, it is sometimes possible to
deduct home equity loan interest on one's personal income taxes.

There is a specific difference between a home equity loan and
a Home Equity Line of Credit. A HELOC is a line of revolving
credit with an adjustable interest rate whereas a home equity
loan is a one time lump-sum loan, often with a fixed interest
rate.

When considering a loan, the borrower should be familiar with
the terms recourse and nonrecourse loan, secured and unsecured
debt, and dischargeable and non-dischargeable debt.

US traditional mortgages are usually non recourse loans.
"Nonrecourse debt or a nonrecourse loan is a secured loan
(debt) that is secured by a pledge of collateral, typically
real property, but for which the borrower is not personally
liable." A US home equity loan may be a recourse loan for
which the borrower is personally liable. This distinction
becomes important in foreclosure since the borrower may
remain personally liable for a recourse debt on a foreclosed
property.

Home equity loans are secured loans. "The debt is thus secured
against the collateral — in the event that the borrower defaults,
the creditor takes possession of the asset used as collateral
and may sell it to satisfy the debt by regaining the amount
originally lent to the borrower." Credit card debt is an
unsecured debt such that no asset has been pledged as
collateral for the loan. Using a home equity loan to pay
off credit card debt essentially converts an unsecured
debt to a secured debt.

When deciding upon a type of loan, the borrower should
also consider if the debt is dischargeable in bankruptcy.
For instance, US student loans are "practically non-dischargeable in bankruptcy".

credit card

2009-06-26T07:02:00.001-07:00

A credit card is part of a system of payments named after the
small plastic card issued to users of the system. It is a card
entitling its holder to buy goods and services based on the
holder's promise to pay for these goods and services.[1] The
issuer of the card grants a line of credit to the consumer
(or the user) from which the user can borrow money for payment
to a merchant or as a cash advance to the user.

A credit card is different from a charge card, where a charge
card requires the balance to be paid in full each month.
In contrast, credit cards allow the consumers to 'revolve'
their balance, at the cost of having interest charged. Most
credit cards are issued by local banks or credit unions, and
are the shape and size specified by the ISO/IEC 7810 standard
as ID-1.

loan

2009-06-26T07:01:00.001-07:00

A loan is a type of debt. Like all debt instruments,
a loan entails the redistribution of financial assets
over time, between the lender and the borrower.

In a loan, the borrower initially receives or borrows
an amount of money, called the principal, from the
lender, and is obligated to pay back or repay an equal
amount of money to the lender at a later time. Typically,
the money is paid back in regular installments, or partial
repayments; in an annuity, each installment is the same
amount. The loan is generally provided at a cost, referred
to as interest on the debt, which provides an incentive for
the lender to engage in the loan. In a legal loan, each of
these obligations and restrictions is enforced by contract,
which can also place the borrower under additional
restrictions known as loan covenants. Although this
article focuses on monetary loans, in practice any material
object might be lent.

Acting as a provider of loans is one of the principal tasks
for financial institutions. For other institutions, issuing
of debt contracts such as bonds is a typical source of funding.

Mesothelioma

2009-06-26T06:56:00.000-07:00

Mesothelioma is a form of cancer that is almost always caused by exposure to asbestos.
In this disease, malignant cells develop in the mesothelium, a protective lining that

Most people who develop mesothelioma have worked on jobs where they inhaled asbestos
particles, or they have been exposed to asbestos dust and fiber in other ways.
Washing the clothes of a family member who worked with asbestos can also put a
person at risk for developing mesothelioma.[2] Unlike lung cancer, there is no
association between mesothelioma and smoking, but smoking greatly increases risk
of other asbestos-induced cancer.[3] Compensation via asbestos funds or lawsuits
is an important issue in mesothelioma (see asbestos and the law).

The symptoms of mesothelioma include shortness of breath due to pleural effusion
(fluid between the lung and the chest wall) or chest wall pain, and general
symptoms such as weight loss. The diagnosis may be suspected with chest X-ray
and CT scan, and is confirmed with a biopsy (tissue sample) and microscopic
examination. A thoracoscopy (inserting a tube with a camera into the chest)
can be used to take biopsies. It allows the introduction of substances such
as talc to obliterate the pleural space (called pleurodesis), which prevents
more fluid from accumulating and pressing on the lung. Despite treatment
with chemotherapy, radiation therapy or sometimes surgery, the disease
carries a poor prognosis. Research about screening tests for the early
detection of mesothelioma is ongoing.

Forex

2009-06-26T04:20:00.000-07:00

The foreign exchange market (currency, forex, or FX) is where currency trading takes place. It is where banks and other official institutions facilitate the buying and selling of foreign currencies. FX transactions typically involve one party purchasing a quantity of one currency in exchange for paying a quantity of another. The foreign exchange market that we see today started evolving during the 1970s when worldover countries gradually switched to floating exchange rate from their erstwhile exchange rate regime, which remained fixed as per the Bretton Woods system until 1971.

Presently, the FX market is one of the largest and most liquid financial markets in the world, and includes trading between large banks, central banks, currency speculators, corporations, governments, and other financial institutions. The average daily volume in the global foreign exchange and related markets is continuously growing. Traditional daily turnover was reported to be over US$3.2 trillion in April 2007 by the Bank for International Settlements.[2] Since then, the market has continued to grow. According to Euromoney's annual FX Poll, volumes grew a further 41% between 2007 and 2008.

The purpose of FX market is to facilitate trade and investment. The need for a foreign exchange market arises because of the presence of multifarious international currencies such as US Dollars, Euros, Japanese yen, Pounds Sterling, etc., and the need for trading in such currencies.