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But somewhere, somehow, UBS and Credit Suisse ran up a little leverage. Before the crisis, they were over 40:1. And now they're nearly at a nosebleed-high 70! The chart shows leverage in the Eurozone...
In the past week several leading economists have stated that the recession is over or about to end. The latest data from the nations largest port does not back up their rosie assessments. Both import and exports are falling...
China looks set to hit its full-year growth target of 8% after a surprisingly strong second quarter notable for a surge in investment driven by powerful fiscal and monetary stimulus.
Annual gross domestic product growth accelerated in the second quarter to 7.9 percent from 6.1 percent in the first quarter, making China the best-performing major economy and reinforcing hopes that the world economy is pulling out of its deepest recession in 80 years.
The whole thing is a giant gong show really. When the world unraveled these companies stopped giving guidance and analysts guessed really really low. This was done precisely to guarantee a beat or make an official miss impossible.
They could be out of work for a long time. Japanese industrial production has plummeted almost 40 percent and with it, the demand for robots.
Suzuki, Japan’s fourth-largest carmaker, reported a 78 percent drop in unit sales in June, pushing its first-half decline to 60 percent, the market’s worst. Mitsubishi is down 51 percent this year, and is stuck in a slump that began in 2003.
The government will invest 107 trillion ($84.4 billion dollars), or 2.0 percent of gross domestic product every year, over the next five years in an effort to reduce reliance on fossil fuels, Lee's office said. The scheme will help create up to 1.81 million new jobs and generate about 206 trillion won in economic output, it said. The government will also boost spending on green technology products such as solar-powered batteries and hybrid vehicles, it said.
The Bank of England is today set to announce plans to expand its "money printing" programme by a further 25 billion pounds, taking the total to 150 billion pounds, in an effort to force banks to step up lending to consumers and businesses.
Freight rates for transpacific trade, the amount that shipping lines can charge for a typical 40-foot container for cargo moving between Asia and the West Coast of the U.S., have plummeted to $920 from $1,400 at the beginning of the year...
“Switzerland at war with the rest of the world,” begins an update from colleague, Cecile Chevre, in Paris.
The Swiss usually manage to stay out of wars. They do it by being heavily armed. Even the yodelers have softened up lately, but until recently every able-bodied man was required to serve in the Swiss Army. He had to keep his rifle at home…and each year he had to prove that he knew how to use it.During WWII, the Germans considered invading Switzerland. According to legend, a top German general met with Switzerland’s top military man on the border.
“We have twice as many men on the border as you do,” said the German. “What would you do if we launched an attack?”
“The answer is very obvious,” replied the Swiss general. “I would tell each of my men to shoot twice.”
But now Switzerland is up against even worse odds. Switzerland has long been a haven for people with money. And life is getting tougher for the rich…as well as for those
Some 2,000 families live from fishing in Tyre, a city of 100,000 located near the border with Israel, says Khalil Taha, head of the local fishermen's syndicate. In the city's heyday, a fisherman would easily earn 500 dollars a week, but that figure is now closer to 200 dollars for an entire month, well below the minimum wage of 333 dollars, Taha said.
Asian stocks edged up slightly on Tuesday but struggled after a
slide the previous day, while the yen held gains against
higher-yielding currencies as investors doubt the speed of the global
economy's recovery. A bleak U.S. jobs report last week has prompted portfolio managers
to reassess how quickly economies around the world can return to growth
after the deep recession, spurring a pull-b
We are moving into Phase II of the Great Unwinding. It may be time to put away our texts of Keynes, Friedman, and Fisher, so useful for Phase 1, and start studying what happened to society when global unemployment went haywire in 1932.
[W]without market prices, nobody has the information required to adapt the
allocation of scarce resources to the demand for them. [Command economies] fail
because central planners have an impossible job. The Bank of England
should not get tougher or try harder. It should give up.
Russia is sinking into a swamp of bad loans. The scale of credit rot in the Russian banking system exposed by Fitch Ratings this week is truly staggering. The report is yet another cold douche to those betting that the BRICs (Brazil,Russia,India, and China)
One thing is certain. This is eventually going to blow sky high. Let's hope it does before Bernanke gets the same brilliant idea.
A campaign to boost sales of the Zimbabwean, a newspaper that attacked
Robert Mugabe's regime by using the troubled country's almost worthless
bank notes to make billboard adverts, has won the top award in the
outdoor category at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival.
President Obama
praised the energy bill passed by the House late last week as
an “extraordinary first step,” but he spoke out against a provision
that would impose trade penalties on countries that do not accept
limits on global warming pollution.
An increase in exports is needed for a sustained recovery in the US and this may require an adjustment in the value of the US Dollar, IMF chief economist Olivier Blanchard said on Monday.
Japan’s exports fell at a faster pace in May, extending the nation’s deepest trade slump since World War II.
Last week the US House of Representatives passed a bill which included an expanded credit facility for the IMF and gave US approval for the proposed IMF sale of 400 tons of gold. Is this an attempt to suppress the price of gold
Porsche said it had experienced falling demand across the world, but that the decline was most extensive in the US and Canada.
The properties, including JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s offices at 125 London Wall and 60 Victoria Embankment, are now worth less than the value of the loans that back them...
Exports from China and Japan are down over 38 percent.
A decision by China to reduce its US Treasury holdings suggests concern about the US attitude towards its economic woes, Chinese economists said.
Coming after a modest decline in Chinese investments in US government bonds, were in contrast to an earlier statement in Beijing which had said the recent sell-off was a routine transaction.
The city of Yakaterinburg, Russia's largest east of the Urals, may become known not only as the death place of the tsars but of American hegemony too – and not only where US U-2 pilot Gary Powers was shot down in 1960, but where the US-centered international financial order was brought to ground.
