Following a modest 3.9% quarter on quarter (q-o-q) seasonally-adjusted annual rate (saar) rise in Q4 2010, Singapore’s GDP growth accelerated in Q1 2011, recording a 22.5% sequential expansion. While services had recovered more quickly in Q4 last year, the manufacturing sector caught up in Q1 2011, boosted by an improvement in end demand.
Related: Singapore Economy
Will raising the retirement age hold off a pension crisis?
In the US, the pension deficit amounts to $3 billion. Unlike wages, pension promises have been deemed, weirdly, to be permanent and sacrosanct. But as budget pressures bite, politicians are going to have to change laws and constitutions.
10 June 2011. Since the second half of last year, global wheat prices have more than doubled according to the World Bank, and prices of corn, sugar and oil have skyrocketed. The Cereal Price Index soared a shocking 69 percent from May 2010 to May 2011. On average, the Food Price Index averaged 232 points in May 2011, 37 points higher than May 2010.
According to a recent report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Australia was ranked as the best advanced economy in the world to live in.
The 2011 Your Better Life Index saw Australia attain extremely high scores in Housing, Life Satisfaction and the Environment.
9 June 2011.
The first results are in, and they will not be great news for everyone. Simply put, it is not a good time to be an American.
Last week we launched our crowdsourcing economic indicators experiment, the world’s first real-time Consumer Confidence Index from your friendly local global economists at EconomyWatch.com.
As the data fills out, we start to get a sense of what people around the world are feeling.
7 June 2011.
Debt is making us poor.
As a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) and former Member of Congress, I say that every citizen has the right to know the real cost of government.
I want to make the point, loud and clear, that we are living on borrowed money and on borrowed time. U.S. taxpayers collectively owed $4.5 trillion at the end of 1996 and that each taxpayer owed $45,433.
6 June 2011.
Calling the G-8 or the G-20 ‘irrelevant institutions’ is like calling the US economy ‘flawed’.
The whole world knows it – and has been saying it for years. The organisation itself doesn’t openly acknowledge the fact, but may grudgingly admit it in private; and despite countless calls from external parties to change the system, the organisation is resistant to change as it may hurt the interests of individuals within the system.
Spain’s government party gets trounced in local elections, Fitch cuts Greece’s credit rating and S&P’s outlook downgrade of Italian sovereign debt has sent credit markets into a tailspin. Many of Europe’s fringe states lacking the growth they need to escape their debt traps – and now the costs of insuring sovereign debt of eurozone states is rising again, as markets begin to be believe in the inevitability of some sort of restructuring event.
1 June 2011.
A cursory search on google reveals a surplus of accusations against the Rothschilds’ family, including claims that they are running the world through a ‘demonistic cabal’, controlling governments and the most powerful banks.
31 May 2011.
The threat of serving a jail sentence doesn’t seem to deter corrupt officials anymore according to activists in New Delhi. After all, he can enjoy the ill-gotten gains after his sentence. Now, a drafting committee agreed to confiscate and liquidate assets obtained through corruption under the proposed Lokpal bill.
