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World economy 23rd July 2012

The bursting of the war bubble looms over the defence industry

An unwritten rule seems to warrant that US defence spending is kept immune to the ups and downs of the nation's GDP. The extraordinary dimensions of the current economic downturn, nevertheless, is testing its past resilience to any sort of moderation. Public investment in military affairs has largely been the result of foreign policy and global strategy, government cabinets since 2001 would surely protest from Washington. But a federal deficit…

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World economy 20th July 2012

Goodbye to the American Golden retirement?

NEW YORK | Times are tough for pensions. Retirement plans are not golden anymore. After the crisis, U.S. companies started to get rid of many pension funds or are allocating less money for them. And while the market has substantially recovered from the 2009 low, pension funds portfolios as well as supplemental savings and retirement accounts for individuals remain significantly smaller than they were at their peak. Last year, Standard…

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World economy 19th July 2012

Bernanke’s speech on Europe: reading the tea leaves

NEW YORK | Federal Reserve’s chairman Ben Bernanke attended his semi-annual monetary policy report to Congress on Tuesday and Wednesday, insisting that the Fed remains in close contact with European authorities but the alarms of spillover are still on. “I don’t think they [Europe leaders] are close to having a long-term solution that will solve the problem and until they find those long-term solutions, we’re going to continue to see…

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World economy 17th July 2012

British inflation draws a faltering economy

LONDON | Since the consumer price index began to record UK’s month on month inflation back in 1996, the downturn experienced in the clothing and footwear section from May to June this year has doubled the next largest decrease. The data, released Tuesday by the Office for National Statistics, brought inflation from 2.8 percent to 2.4 percent, while the retail price index fell, too, from 3.1 percent to 2.8 percent….

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World economy 12th July 2012

How hard would killing off the euro be?

Depicted more often than not these days as the number 1 enemy of the global economic recovery, even we at The Corner cannot help but wonder the big what-if question: couldn't the European Monetary Union just manage to orderly dismantle itself before it causes further damages? After checking the figures from the Review of the International Role of the Euro paper by the European Central Bank, the answer is that…

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World economy 12th July 2012

Koala Capital’s Marc Garrigasait: “industrial activity is in full contraction”

By valenciaplaza.com | How long will it take for the euro zone to finally set its mechanisms and tackle its imbalances? The euro country members only started to do some serious work in the last summit, said Marc Garrigasait, president of Koala Capital Sicav, in a conversation with VP. What feelings do you go through while watching your stock market monitors? I've never lived through a period in which not only…

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World economy 5th July 2012

British Eastern Airways agrees to refinancing from Santander

Humberside-based air transport business Eastern Airways Europe said Thursday its future expansion plans are now backed up after securing refinancing from Santander Corporate Banking. Eastern Airways Europe is a regional air transport business operating in the UK and across Europe. The business was founded in 1997 as a service for oil and gas workers living in the UK and working offshore. Since then, Eastern Airways has evolved to provide transport operations…

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World economy 5th July 2012

Japan’s recovery needs sustainability

By CaixaBank research team, in Barcelona | The upswing exceeded expectations with a first quarter GDP that grew by 1.0% quarter-on-quarter and 2.6% year-on-year. This momentarily places Japan at the head of advanced economies in terms of growth. However, the forecast for the whole of 2012 hardly reaches 2.5%, as the composition of the national accounts raises doubts regarding the sustainability of the upswing. Unusually, the growth of the first…

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World economy 4th July 2012

Brazil: fruitless stimuli

By CaixaBank research team, in Barcelona | Of the events occurring recently on the world economic scene, three have significantly affected the current fate of Brazil's economy. On the one hand, the confirmation of China's economic slowdown in the first quarter; on the other, the progress made in correcting commodities markets and, lastly, more intense tensions in the euro area's debt markets are causing a marked upswing in global aversion…

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World economy 3rd July 2012

In China the mountains might not be that high anymore

BEIJING | The option that Chinese economy is in a more severe slowdown than the one officially acknowledged has always been in the international community's subconscious. Economists and experts have been aware of a well known, but not so evident, truth where the usually optimistic official data might not be completely reliable. The debate is open, making it difficult to identify the actual reach of the economic consequences born out…