The worlds largest economy tumbled in the last quarter, by far the worst decline in at least 7 years.
Gross Domestic Product fell some .5% in the three months ending September, figures show. That compares to GDP growth of 3% the previous quarter. The US economy is indeed in a very bad recession.
The third quarter drop was the biggest for the economy since a 1.4% decline in the third quarter of 2001, the last full quarter that the U.S. economy was judged to be in a recession, money.com reported.
A UK economist specialising in China says that the economic stimulus package implemented by the Chinese government earlier this year could have positive impacts on world growth and save the global economy from a deep recession.
"I do think we are starting to see the green shoots of recovery and also confidence coming back with regards to people's outlook for the Chinese economy," BlackRock portfolio manager Evy Hambro said during a teleconference
Mr Hambro said industrialisation of the world's emerging nations was still taking place and would continue to be a "significant" driver of commodity demand over the next 10 to 15 years. "We believe we're going through a short-term dip in what is at the end of the day a very long-term trend," Mr Hambro said.
"Demand at the end of the day will recover. "These are not luxury goods these are essential goods people need to run their lives and you can't live without oil, you can't live without energy and many metals."
Christina D. Romer, seen in 1994. President-elect Barack Obama chief economic advisor.
Barack Obama has chosen Christina Romer, an economics professor at University of Califonia, Berkele to be his chief of the all important White House Council of Economic Advisers.
Christina Romer seems to be an excellent choice for the post. Her biography says that she is an expert in "the effects of fiscal policy; identification of monetary shocks; the determinants of American macroeconomic policy; changes in short-run fluctuations over the 20th century; causes of the Great Depression."
Romer seems ideally suited to the challanged the US economy and global economic system faces in the midst of one of the worst financial and economic challenges of the modern era.
Christina Romer is the Class of 1957-Garff B. Wilson Professor of Economics. She joined the Berkeley faculty in 1988 and was promoted to full professor in 1993. Professor Romer is co-director of the Program in Monetary Economics at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and is a member of the NBER Business Cycle Dating Committee.
She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and recipient of the Distinguished Teaching Award at the University of California, Berkeley. She has received a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, the National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award, and an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship.
She has served as vice president and a member of the executive committee of the American Economic Association. Prior to her appointment at Berkeley, she was an assistant professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton University from 1985-1988. She received her Ph.D. from M.I.T. in 1985.
Romer's most recent economics paper at UCLA focuses on governments tax policies and their macroeconomic effects in fiscal shocks. She will no doubt be vital in creating the new Obama tax plan that will see tax increases for the top 5% of earners and tax cuts for the majority of US workers.
President-elect Barack Obama first ever weekly internet-radio address to the American people.
US President-elect Barack Obama has outlined his plans for America in an unprecedented address using YouTube, outside of the traditional use of the radio waves for a weekly Democratic party address to the nation.
In the video uploaded to YouTube late on Friday the 22nd of November, Obama outlined his plans for the creation of 2.5 million jobs by January 2011, exactly two years after he is expected to take office as President.
We'll be working out the details in the weeks ahead, but it will be a two-year, nationwide effort to jump start job creation in America and lay the foundation for a strong and growing economy," Obama said in his weekly Internet/radio address.
His announcement came two days after government data showed that new jobless claims had surged to a 16-year high, in a new sign that the world's largest economy appeared to be sliding into a deep recession, press reported.
Current New York Federal Reserve Bank President Timothy Geithner is set to be named US Treasury Secretary Monday, giving markets a much needed boost of confidence.
As we predicted earlier this month, Timothy Geithner will almost certainly become the all important Treasury Secretary in a Obama Whitehouse this January, reports say.
Despite the media focusing much of its attention on other likely candidates, it seemed very likely indeed that Tim Geithner was going to be selected for Treasury given his inside knowledge and experience with managing financial and economic crisis, and his Obama like affinity with international issues, pragmatism, age, family and general world view.
NBC news reported sources Friday afternoon New York Time that Timothy Geithner (pronounced GITE-ner) would be tapped by Obama for the position. Stocks on the NYSE soured with the news and gave a boost of confidence to an otherwise depressed financial market.
Major indices were up more than 6 percent, Reuters-Thompson reported. The Dow Jones industrial average closed above 8,000.
Via Reuters
NBC News said Obama was expected to announce Geithner and other members of his economic team on Monday to try to calm U.S. financial markets that have sunk like a stone all week before Friday's surge.
"A fantastic choice to help lead the financial markets out of the wilderness," said Chris Rupkey, economist at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi in New York. He called Geithner a "crisis manager par excellence" who would hit the ground running.
If confirmed by the Senate, Geithner would be at the helm of efforts to stem the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.
The jobs market in the United States is at its worst point since when George H.W Bush was leaving power.
Reuters Business News: The number of U.S. workers filing new claims for jobless benefits rose by a larger than expected 27,000 last week to their highest level in 16 years, Labor Department data showed on Thursday, as a harsh economic environment forces employers to cut back on hiring. Continuing claims were 4.012 million in the week ended November 8, the latest data available, up from 3.903 million the prior week and the highest since December 1982.
What a mess Barack Obama has left to clean up.....What a mess!
An indexation of global stock markets shows that the value of companies around the world is at the lowest point since the early part of the decade.
Central banks around the world are expected to implement another wave of rate cuts, but the economic tools of manipulation are running thin and far as the world looks like it will slump into a deep recession if things stay the way they are.
Every industry from Asian high technology makers to banks are beginning to fell the pinch as shares continue to take a pounding across the globe.
Like dominoes, Asian markets fell a day after U.S. stocks hit their lowest in more than five years. The MSCI All-Country World Index fell 1.2 percent as of 0330 GMT (10:30 p.m. EST on Wednesday), having hit its lowest level since May 2003. Japan's Nikkei average dropped 5 percent, below the key technical level of 8,000 points for the first time in three weeks. South Korean and Hong Kong shares tumbled more than 5 percent, while markets in Sydney, Singapore and Taiwan fell more than 3 percent each. More broadly, the Asia-Pacific ex-Japan MSCI index was down nearly 5 percent. Expectations for a sharp slowdown sent oil prices down for a fifth consecutive session, and down 83 cents to $52.79.
The Big Three.... Ford, GM and Chrysler. Who's going to save them? And the US Economy?
Car makers from Europe and Asia may be the only hope America has of saving its' "Big-Three" auto companies from almost certain doom in the face of the Global Financial economic meltdown. An article in the New York Times suggests that if one of General Motors, Ford or Chrysler were to go down there would be a huge "dent" put in the side of the US manufacturing industy, but in the long term foreign based firms like Toyota could save the day.
Gradually, the auto industry has already become less American. The smallest of the Big Three, Chrysler, was owned for a while by the German company, Daimler, before it was returned to American ownership in the form of a privately held company in a much slimmer state than its once starring role in Detroit.
Following on from offical reports from the European Union and Hong Kong, Japanese authities and analysts say that Japan's economy has entred a recession after a period of low growth.
Government officials announced Monday that the Worlds second largest economy was indeed in recession, following the rest of the world into slowdown in the aftermath of the Global Financial and Credit Crisis.
Japan's Cabinet Office confirmed that its economy shrank another 0.1 percent in the third quarter, following a 0.9 percent drop in the second quarter. The country's gross domestic product -- second to the United States -- has fallen by 0.4 percent this year, pushing Japan into its first recession since 2001.
During his Predisential campaign Barack Obama said he would sit down without preconditions during the first year of his administration with leaders of several nations whose governments have been at odds with the United States, including North Korea.
The South Korean President, Lee Myung-bak, said in an interview at the G20 financial crisis Summit in Washington DC that he would welcome such a move by the US President-elect.
"Barack Obama and Joe Biden will not take any options off the table, but they will emphasize first and foremost the power of American diplomacy and make clear the substantial benefits to Iran and North Korea of abandoning their dangerous nuclear programs while simultaneously conveying the enormous costs to them should they fail to do so," according to the Web site.
