BEIJING | In a rather competitive environment like China, the Spanish CEO Pedro Fajardo managed to be the very first one in his field by identifying a niche with a big market such the Spanish language. With 100% Spanish capital and without relying in external financial sources, he built Chinaempleo.com by using savings, bank lending as well as revenues from their site and advertising. In less than 2 years the site…
NEW YORK | “Cutting alone really doesn’t do it, and that’s why I’m linking the serious budget reductions — real increase to austerity — with a plea to the voters: please increase taxes temporarily on the most affluent and everyone else with a quarter of a cent sales tax,” California governor Jerry Brown said in releasing his $91 billion general fund budget plan this week. These are not easy days for…
Universities in the US have acknowledged that they distort the employment figures of their graduates. Now, some newly graduated lawyers have begun litigation against them because, in spite of official assurances, they have been left jobless. WASHINGTON | Some U.S. lawyers have decided to file lawsuits against their Law schools. The reason? They were promised a job upon graduation but have been given none after four years of studies in addition to…
NEW YORK | One of the keys of the severe financial crisis in the US were “liar loans”, given to people who did not even have a job. Four years later, many worthy homebuyers are paying for that. Banks have become so restrictive in their mortgages that many citizens are frozen out of the housing market, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said on Thursday. Bernanke said home mortgage credit outstanding…
All the way from Afi analysts in Madrid, we got this simple and colourful chart comparing purchasing managers index figures of different countries in September 2011 (because it was the month when global manufacturing activity recorded the latest lowest levels) and March-April 2012, with a third column that brings up the variation between those dates. The fact is that cyclical divergence between the euro zone and the rest of the…
NEW YORK | U.S. investors are looking forward to this Thursday’s jobless claims figures after the pretty lame monthly jobs report last week. Wall Street needs a sweetener, otherwise investors will keep on the sidelines of the stockmarkets. Only a better than expected (366,000 new jobless claims) figure could boost U.S. market and economical confidence. Indeed, last Friday’s report was shocking: America is creating employment almost at the same rate…
MADRID | Employment creation figures in the US disappointed Wall Street expectations for April, with 115,000 versus 165,000 and a fall of the jobless rate of 0.1 percent to 8.1 percent. Afi analysts in Madrid checked deeper into the subject and concluded in an investor’s note that income per working hour and working hours per week have both been flat, so growth recorded in salary costs was the consequence of…
In March 2012 compared with February 2012, the volume of retail trade rose by 0.3% in the euro area and by 0.7% in the EU. In February, retail trade fell by 0.2% and 0.5% respectively. In March 2012, compared with March 2011, the retail sales index dropped by 0.2% in the euro area, but grew by 1.0% in the EU. These first estimates came from Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union. In March…
BEIJING | The question on whether China’s economy is expanding or contracting is like answering whether the glass is half full or half empty. The positive official reading signals that there’s no need to worry. With its PMI index calculated after a sample of more than 800 big (and state-owned) companies, PMI is on the rise and above the 50% for the fifth consecutive month. Conversely, HSBC’s reading doesn’t seem to…
LONDON | The Confederation of British Industry said Thursday that household spending will remain subdued, with weak wage growth and unemployment rising to a peak of 2.86 million in the first quarter of 2013. The CBI published its latest quarterly forecast in a somehow hopeful tone, though, voicing prospects of inflation improving next year with further falls, and disposable incomes beginning to recover. The business association pointed out that recent…