Financial analysts and economists from around the world are baffled by how the euro currency has “mysteriously” remained relatively stable all year round, despite the mounting problems that have threatened to break up the eurozone region and its currency.
The odds of the United States slipping into a double-dip recession are placed at 50 percent, with economists from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco saying the world’s biggest economy might not be able to withstand the rippling effects of Europe’s debt crisis.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said that the eurozone’s financial problems may be worse than previously thought, calling it Europe’s biggest crisis since the World War Two.
LinkedIn Corp’s employees and early backers are said to be ready to sell off more than 6.7 million shares in the social networking firm, so as to benefit from a rapid increase in the company’s market value over the past 6 months.
A coalition of US commercial airline companies have written to the US Export-Import Bank to express their outrage at government subsidies given to foreign purchasers of Boeing aircrafts, reported the Wall Street Journal on Monday.
A quick preview of the key economic events for the upcoming week:
Italy hogged headlines last week, becoming the main player in the EU debt crisis. Greece’s debt woes and problems of finding a replacement to the newly resigned Prime Minister George Papandreou took a backseat as the drama enfolded for Italy.
In a clash of words, US president Barack Obama and Chinese premier Hu Jintao outlined duelling visions for world trade in back-to-back speeches at the APEC Summit, with Obama warning that Americans were growing increasingly frustrated and impatient over what they see as unfair Chinese trade and currency manipulation.
Taking China to task with some of his sharpest words yet, Obama used a CEO-address at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit to threaten punitive economic steps unless China started “playing by the rules.”
The Government of Singapore Investment Corporation Pte. Ltd. (GIC), Singapore’s biggest state investor, has sold off nearly all of its shares in troubled Japanese camera and medical device maker Olympus Corp. – becoming the first major shareholder to have dumped its stake in the company amidst an accounting scandal that has seen Olympus’s market value drop by more than $6.5 billion since mid-October.
Two of the big three global credit rating agencies, Fitch Ratings and Standard and Poor’s, placed Hungary’s credit rating on “negative surveillance” over the weekend, citing the risk of contagion from the eurozone and the nation’s increasingly unpredictable policy decisions as the primary factors behind their decision.
Mexico has raised the stakes, threatening to seek arbitration from the World Trade Organisation, in a long-running dispute over the sale of cheap Chinese products in its markets.
In a letter to his Chinese counterpart on Wednesday, Mexican Economy Minister Bruno Ferrari asked Chinese officials to address trade practices that are distorting and hurting several sectors of Mexico’s manufacturing industry.
