Business news for Mon, 24 Dec 2007 & with words drop+fall. 2 news.

UK house prices fell the most in three years in December and the threat of more declines may cause the property market to seize up in 2008, Hometrack Ltd said. The average cost of a home in England and Wales slipped for a third month, dropping 0.3 percent to 175,200 pounds ($347,877), the London-based research group said yesterday. The number of property transactions will fall 17 percent and prices will rise just one percent next year, Hometrack forecast. Bank of England policy makers said this month that a drop in house prices seemed "more pronounced" than expected as they cut their benchmark interest rate for the first time in two years. Record debt, higher mortgage costs and the property market's worst performance since 1995 have discouraged homebuyers. "The second half of the year has seen a major reversal in confidence," Richard Donnell, director of research at Hometrack, said in a statement. "Just as the financial markets have faced a liquidity

The sharp decline of the U.S. dollar since 2000 is affecting a broad swath of the world's population, with its drop on global markets being blamed at least in part for misfortunes as diverse as labor strikes in the Middle East, lost jobs in Europe and the end of an era of globe-trotting rich...