European Debt Crisis Rages On, US Stocks Nosedives and Other News

Here’s a weekly look at the top business, finance and world economy news.

World Economy

With the US debt ceiling crisis dominating the headlines this week, little attention has been paid to the crisis that still continues to engulf Europe.

Here’s a weekly look at the top business, finance and world economy news.

World Economy

With the US debt ceiling crisis dominating the headlines this week, little attention has been paid to the crisis that still continues to engulf Europe.

In Europe, the focus is no longer on Greece, but on Italy. According to The Street, The cost of insuring against an Italian default reached a new high of 360 basis points Wednesday after yields on the country’s benchmark 10-year bonds hit euro-era highs of 6.1 percent Tuesday.

In his address to the Italian parliament on Wednesday, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi blamed “speculators, global economic weakness and general problems in the eurozone,” for Italy’s woes.

[quote]Berlusconi insisted that, “as often happens in a crisis of confidence, the markets are not correctly valuing the merit of our credit…our economy is healthy. The country is economically and financially solid.”[/quote]

However, fear remains that the country may default on its massive debt, which has in turn pushed up the cost of government borrowing.

Related: Europocalypse – Are The Days of The Eurozone Numbered?: Nouriel Roubini

Related: The European Union’s Catalogue of Failures: George Soros

Industries & Businesses

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has developed a tool that will be able to measure the amount of energy used and carbon dioxide emissions created by offices and businesses.

According to the UN News Centre, the Common Carbon Metric (CCM) could soon become a uniform system of standardisation that will define the environmental impact made by industries and businesses.

[quote]“Buildings are currently the single largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, with an estimated one third of global energy use taking place in offices and homes. Carbon dioxide emissions from buildings are set to rise from the 2004 level of 8.6 billion tons to 11.1 billion tons in 2020.”[/quote]

The CCM will gather information based on two approaches – a “top-down” model, which takes measurements from a collection of buildings, and a “bottom-up” model, which is applied to an individual building.

Companies and Investment

The popular social media platform Twitter announced on Monday that it had received a “significant” new round of funding, which has now valued the company at US$8 billion.

Much of the funding came from venture firm Digital Sky Technologies Global, who also have big shares in Facebook, Groupon and Zygna.

DST Global founder Yuri Milner told the Daily Mail that, “Twitter is one of the few companies that has truly changed the world.”

Related: Silicon Valley Bubble Warning: From the Bubble-Blower-in-Chief

[quote]”Twitter’s astonishing growth is a testament to how important it is becoming to more people every day, and why we couldn’t pass up the chance to be a bigger part of its future.”[/quote]

Representatives from Twitter also confirmed in a blog post that the company had experienced massive growth over the last year, with further room for expansion.

[quote]”One year ago, there were approximately 150,000 registered Twitter apps. Now, there are more than one million that connect to Twitter. And our team has grown from 250 people to more than 600 in the past 12 months.”[/quote]

Personal Finance

Still, our weekly roundup would not be complete without mentioning the US debt crisis.

With most analysts agreeing that the agreed upon debt deal is unlikely to solve the majority of America’s economic woes, the financial instability and uncertainty has spread to the stock markets as US stocks plunged on Thursday to its worst one-day drop since the beginning of the financial crisis in 2008.

Related: Debt Deal Ok’ed – US Debt Ceiling Now $14.29 Trillion

Related: Economic Policy Institute: US Debt Deal Will Cost 1.8 Million Jobs

Related: Doomed for Disaster: America’s Dangerous Debt Deal: Michael Mandelbaum

The Dow closed down 512.76 points to 11,383.68. The broader S&P 500 lost 4.8 percent to 1,200.07, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite plunged 5.1 percent to 2,556.39.

[quote]”We’re seeing the erosion and now the loss of confidence, confidence in the economy, confidence in the market, confidence in the policy makers. It’s all showing up,” said Hugh Johnson, of Hugh Johnson Advisors to AFP.[/quote]

Since the beginning of the week, EconomyWatch.com’s own real-time Worldwide Consumer Confidence Index has also fallen by 10 points as the threat from the two towers – the crises in Europe and US – continue to raise fears across the globe.

Check out our Real-Time Consumer Confidence Index for up-to-the-minute data.