YouTube will be silencing all audio on music videos from the UK, after Google failed to reach an agreement with the UK Performing Right Society for Music. You said today as part of a statement, “Our previous license from PRS for Music has expired, and we’ve been unable so far to come to an agreement to renew it on terms that are economically sustainable for us,” YouTube also said, “PRS is now asking us to pay many, many times more for our license than before.”

The UK PRS for Music says it is outraged Google has chosen to remove the audio and said Google earns billions and yet refuses to pay a fair amount for the licensing. Music streaming service Pandora also recently pulled out of the UK because of similar problems. A deal seems unlikely now after months of negotiations.

More massive job cuts from the Royal Bank of Scotland are expected this week which could be anywhere between 12,000-20,000. RBS CEO Stephen Hester (paid by a $1.73 million annual salary) is believed to announce new cost cutting measures Thursday, along with the announcement of the job cuts, as the bank is expected to announce a massive $40.4 billion loss for all of 2008.

The new unprecedented cost cutting measures come as UBS tries to avoid full nationalization. More job cuts are also expected in the U.K, where 2,000 of the 80,000 current jobs have already been cut in that country. RBS will also commit to selling Read the full story

European new car sales are down 27% to 958,000 in January YoY according to the European Manufacturers’ Association ACEA, the biggest decline in 20 years. All European countries saw a decline in new car sales, with Iceland experiencing the biggest decline of 88% down. Germany sold the most cars, but sales were also down 14.2% The UK saw a 31% decline, while Spain and Italy saw a 41.6%, and 32.6% fall, respectively.

As people cut back on spending, it seems more of us are staying home and playing video games. According to a report by market research firms NDP Group, Enterbrain, and GfK Chart-Track, video game sales are up 11% in the US, the UK and in Japan. More specifically, video game sales were up 15% in the US, with sales up 26% in the UK. Video game sales were down in Japan by 26% year over year. The drop in Japanese sales can largely be attributed to less games being developed. Japan is a massive market, and a result promoted Nintendo to slash expected earnings by 33% in 2008. Aggregately, video game sales in the US, UK, and Japan totaled 409.9 million units, up from 368 million units in 2007. Console game sales in the US were up 22% from 2007, and general video game software sales were up 36% to 268.4 million units in the US alone. The top video game worldwide in terms of sales was Nintendo’s Mario Kart Wii with 8.94 million sales. The popular video game franchise GTA IV totaled 7.29 million sales.

Luxury clothing maker, Burberry, has announced sales were up 33% to US $296 million in its third-quarter. Revenue was also unexpectedly up 30% in the same quarter to US $457 million, up from US $353 million in the same quarter in 2007. The company attributed deep discounts and strong promotions to help move inventory. Burberry does continue to struggle, as the company has lost over 45% of its value in the last year as seen by its stock price. The company also announced it will cut 290 jobs from its 2,000 headcount in the U.K. to better deal with the financial crisis. Burberry is also going to layoff employees from its Spanish operations, bringing the total layoffs to 540.

Official data released today by the Office for Sational Statistics [PDF] in the UK indicated inflation was 3.1% for December 2008, down from 4.1% in November 2008. Core inflation, which includes energy and food prices, was down to 1.1% in December, down from 2% in November.

A new gloomy report by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) is warning that in excess of 600,000 (even up to 1 million) UK jobs will likely be lost in 2009 alone, the worst job losses in the UK in about 20 years. The first 3 months of 2009 are expected to hit the economy the hardest, and it could take up to one year for the UK economy to start to turn around after 2009.

The European Union has just agreed to a $264 billion stimulus package for Europe. The measures are aimed to reduce the impact of the financial crisis and to stave off a depression. There is no information as to when these funds will become available. About two weeks ago, the UK unveiled its own stimulus package which has been heavily criticised by some European countries including Germany.

Gordon Brown, the British PM, has announced his new stimulus package which may be as high as $22 billion USD as his country has now slipped into a recession for the first time in 17 years. It is believed under the plan that there will be a significant cut in the recent value-added tax, there will also be a tax increase for earners of more than $227,000 annually to help bring down the deficit, and some form of corporate tax cuts are expected. The UK government is borrowing a lot of money which isn’t healthy for the economy and can contribute to inflation. In the first half of 2008 alone, the UK fed issued $205.5 billion in t-bills alone. It is expected the UK will recover by 2012.

Honda has just announced it will shut down its Swindon UK factory for 2 months to reduce its output by 21,000 vehicles at the plant because of declining demand. This cut is on top of recent announcements to reduce output by an additional 10,000 cars. About 5,000 people work at the Swindon plant. They will be laid off during this period without pay. The company also announced plans to reduce output by 40,000 cars at one of its plants in Japan and will also reduce output in Ohio and Alabama in the US. Honda’s sales slipped 4% in Oct 08, while other carmakers performed even worse, such as Toyota who was down more than 12% The jobs at the Swindon UK plant are not expected to be lost entirely, only during the 2 months as the company plans to reduce output. However, clearly, people should be cautious today as all the markets are very volatile. Your own portfolio is probably down thanks to mutual funds you’re invested in and unfortunately, the financial crisis is only expected to get worse before it gets better. So, remember to save your money and cut back on unnecessary spending, including high valued items.