Darling in new alert on depth of recession

Alistair Darling warned on Tuesday that Britain was “far from through” the recession, in a clear signal that he will have to abandon the government’s forecast that the recovery would start in the second half of this year.
In an interview with the Financial Times, the chancellor repeatedly used the word “difficult” to describe the outlook, after economic data suggested his forecasts last November were over-optimistic and will have to be revised in this spring’s Budget.
Click here to read the whole article.(Financial Times)

Why China is not to blame for the surge in global inflation

MANY people in America and Europe think that the recent surge in inflation, like almost everything else these days, is “made in China”. For a number of years, cheap Chinese goods helped to reduce prices in rich economies, but more recently wages and prices have surged in China. On top of this, the hungry dragon’s insatiable appetite for food, energy and other raw materials has given cartoonists an emotive image for the surge in global commodity prices. As a result, it is claimed, China is no longer exporting deflation to the rich world, but inflation.
Click here to read the article(Economist)

ECB slashes rates to 2.5%

The aggressive move by the ECB, which cut its main policy rate by an unprecedented three-quarters of a percentage point to 2.5 per cent, followed similar moves by central banks in the UK and Sweden.
To read the whole article follow this link(Financial Times)

US elections, Obama campaign blazes to victory

As darkness came, the makeshift open-air stage in the middle of Grant Park became a bowl of light - the campaign which began with the poetry of hope and triumphed through the power of the internet ended at last with the blazing magic of theatre.
Click the links to...:

1)Read more about Obama's campaign

2)Find out why John McCain lost.

3)Read opinions about what kind of president will Obama be.


Info from: BBC news

Sarah Palin Got Pranked

A Quebec comedy duo notorious for prank calls to celebrities and heads of state has reached Sarah Palin, convincing the Republican vice-presidential nominee she was speaking with French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Its not a crisis of confidence

"The real problem with the economy is that long accepted patterns of cross-border technology transfer, trade, and finance are simply unsustainable."

Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve supports that: "at the root of the problem is a loss of confidence by investors and the public in the strength of key financial institutions and markets"
On Oct. 20, Paulson went further, explaining the bank recapitalization program this way: "Our purpose is to increase confidence in our banks and increase the confidence of our banks so that they will deploy, not hoard, their capital. And we expect them to do so, as increased confidence will lead to increased lending."

The implication of the Bernanke-Paulson view is that the underlying economic system is fundamentally sound, so that restoring trust in the financial system will put us back on a growth course. From that perspective, the infusion of massive amounts of capital into banks, which replaces the money lost in bad mortgages, will enable lending to begin again. Once investors see that all is well, then they will cease their irrational behavior, and start putting money back into stock markets and companies around the world.

However, what if the Bernanke view is wrong? What if financial stress is a symptom, not a cause?
Click here to read more

Slower boat from China

PERHAPS it should not be considered surprising.Consensus predictions had been for a more modest decline amid fading hope that China’s economy was fundamentally “decoupled” from the West. It is now becoming necessary, on a near daily basis, to re-evaluate just how much independence its economy enjoys.You can read the article here