half point

Nationwide raised some of its mortgage rates in spite of the Bank of England's half-point interest rate cut last week.

At midday in the US the market appeared to be putting equal odds on a big half-point cut in rates and no rate cut.

Both the Bank of England and the ECB cut rates last month by a half-point.

The chance of a further half-point cut at the Fed's next meeting in March increased in response to the news.

In effect, Mr Paulson engineered the equivalent of a half-point cut in interest rates targeted at the mortgage market.

The Central Bank responded with a half-point cut in its benchmark interest rate.

"And to ice the cake, China announced another half-point increase in its bankers' reserve requirements. "

Two days earlier, India surprised markets with a half-point rate rise after inflation jumped to nearly 9% in March.

Wall Street had been expecting the half-point cut in interest rates.

The Federal Reserve has been desperately cutting rates, and lopped another half point off again yesterday.

The annualised growth rate fell a full half-point short of market expectations.

In November, the People's Bank of China, the central bank, cut the reserve requirement ratio for 20 co-operative banks by a half point.

America's Federal Reserve cut its policy rate by a further half point, to 1%, on October 29th.

Markets expect a half-point cut by year-end.

The writing section is graded on a scale of 0-6, in half-point increments.

The European Central Bank also lowered its key lending rate by a half point to a record low of 1. 5%.