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- Canada: A most un-Canadian caper
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Canada’s prime minister clings on to office, for the momentTHERE are no tanks in the streets or protesters occupying the airport, but Canada is in the midst of political turmoil the like of which this normally placid country has rarely seen. Only seven weeks ago Stephen Harper, the prime minister, won a second term for his Conservative government, but once again without winning a parliamentary majority. Now the three disparate opposition parties—the centrist Liberals, the socialist New Democrats (NDP) and the separatist Bloc Quebecois—have ganged up in order to oust the Conservatives and replace them with a centre-left coalition. That left Mr Harper scrabbling for survival. …
Original Source: feedproxy.google.com
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4 December, 2008| massmedia |
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- Stephen Harper, Canada’s prime minister, has dodged a vote of no confidence
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Canada’s prime minister clings on to office, for the momentTHERE are no tanks in the streets or protesters occupying the airport, but Canada is in the midst of political turmoil the like of which this normally placid country has rarely seen. Only seven weeks ago Stephen Harper, the prime minister, won a second term for his Conservative government, but once again without winning a parliamentary majority. Now the three disparate opposition parties—the centrist Liberals, the socialist New Democrats (NDP) and the separatist Bloc Quebecois—have ganged up in order to oust the Conservatives and replace them with a centre-left coalition. That left Mr Harper scrabbling for survival. …
Original Source: feedproxy.google.com
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4 December, 2008| massmedia |
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- Bank cuts interest rates to 2 percent
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LONDON (Reuters) - The Bank of England slashed interest rates by a full percentage point on Thursday to shore up a crumbling economy and head off the threat of deflation.
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Original Source: feeds.reuters.com
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4 December, 2008| massmedia |
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- Bank cuts interest rates to 2%
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The Bank of England has cut interest rates by one percentage point to 2%, the lowest level in half a century….
Original Source: news.bbc.co.uk
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4 December, 2008| massmedia |
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- Nokia: Ovi go again
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The world’s biggest handset-maker makes a new push into mobile servicesAT FIRST glance, Nokia, the world’s biggest handset-maker, seems to be lurching about. On November 27th it announced that it would withdraw from the Japanese market because of lack of demand. Five days later the Finnish firm said it would make a big push into two other markets: maps and e-mail on mobile phones. Both moves, although not directly related, show where the firm is heading: it is no longer pursuing growth just in handsets, but also in services delivered on them….
Original Source: www.economist.com
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4 December, 2008| massmedia |
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- Japanese trading companies: Captive and content
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Does a traditional Japanese business model make sense in tough times?JAPANESE trading companies have long been reviled by Western businessmen as inefficient middlemen and huge, monolithic entities that strangle the Japanese economy. But as the credit crunch causes firms in America and Europe to flounder for lack of funds, throwing supply-chains into disarray, Japan’s trading-company model seems to have some merit. This is because the sogo shosha, or trading houses, have always done far more than make a living from arbitrage and commissions: they also provide credit to the companies within their folds. Private firms in Japan receive more than YEN180 trillion (about $2 trillion) in trade credit and loans from outside the banking sector, with trading companies being most active. That is around two-thirds of the amount they receive from banks, notes Iichiro Uesugi, an economist at Hitotsubashi University. ……
Original Source: www.economist.com
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4 December, 2008| massmedia |
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- Pharmaceuticals: Patently absurd
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The European Commission thinks Europe’s drugs markets need fixingCAUGHT in a squeeze between the health needs of ageing populations on one hand and the financial crisis on the other, governments everywhere are looking for ways to slow the growth in health-care spending. Increasingly, they are looking to the generic-drugs industry as a saviour. In November Japan’s finance ministry issued a report complaining that the country’s use of generics was less than a third of that in America or Britain. In the same month Canada’s competition watchdog criticised the country’s pharmacies for failing to pass on the savings made possible by the use of generic drugs. That greed, it reckoned, costs taxpayers nearly C$1 billion ($800m) a year. …
Original Source: www.economist.com
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4 December, 2008| massmedia |
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- Face value: Feeling the Pinch
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Arthur Sulzberger has come to embody the troubles of America’s newspaper industryTHIS has been Rupert Murdoch week in New York, which has only added to the many difficulties of Arthur Sulzberger junior. Ordinarily, given that he has just slashed the dividend paid by the increasingly troubled New York Times Company, which he has run since 1997, Mr Sulzberger might have been grateful that everyone’s attention has been on another media mogul. But “The Man Who Owns the News”, a new biography that has made Mr Murdoch the talk of the town, contains a savage critique of Mr Sulzberger and describes in convincing detail Mr Murdoch’s ever-stronger desire to acquire the New York Times. …
Original Source: www.economist.com
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4 December, 2008| massmedia |
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- Champagne: Losing its fizz
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Sales of champagne decline along with the economyCHAMPAGNE has long been associated with luxury, success and extravagance, thanks to a constrained supply, clever marketing, literary associations (James Bond was fond of Taittinger in the books and Bollinger in the films) and powerful customers, from the Russian imperial court, for whom Roederer’s Cristal was invented, to Sir Winston Churchill, who downed copious amounts of Pol Roger. Over the past two decades champagne shipments went up by an average of 2.2% a year. Recently some markets have grown even faster: America’s consumption rose by 3.5% a year, Britain’s by 4.2% and Japan’s by a foaming 18.1% between 2002 and 2007….
Original Source: www.economist.com
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4 December, 2008| massmedia |
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- Online social networks: Socialising all over the web?
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Websites can now let visitors bring along their friendsA NEW button is appearing on some websites. It says “Facebook Connect” and saves visitors from having to fill out yet another tedious registration form, upload another profile picture and memorise another username and password. Instead, visitors can now sign into other sites using their existing identity on Facebook, the world’s biggest online social network. After a soft launch this summer, Facebook Connect was due to make its formal debut on December 4th….
Original Source: www.economist.com
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4 December, 2008| massmedia |
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- Nuclear energy: Power struggle
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Will France continue to lead the global revival of nuclear power?“WE THOUGHT there was a future in nuclear power when no one else believed in it,” says Anne Lauvergeon, chief executive of Areva. The French, government-owned company is building the first nuclear reactors to be constructed in western Europe for nearly 20 years. With “no oil, no gas, no coal and no choice”, France decided to go nuclear in 1974, and today about 80% of its electricity is generated by 59 nuclear plants across the country. But even France became pessimistic about nuclear power: it stopped building new reactors at the end of the 1980s and in 2002 a government report called the industry a “monster without a future”. …
Original Source: www.economist.com
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4 December, 2008| massmedia |
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- The Economist poll of forecasters, December averages
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Original Source: www.economist.com
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4 December, 2008| massmedia |
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- Buttonwood: Star struck
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A cautionary tale from within the fund-management industry“THE dullard’s envy of brilliant men is always assuaged by the suspicion that they will come to a bad end.” That line from Max Beerbohm, an Edwardian novelist, could almost have been dedicated to New Star Asset Management, a British investment group that tempted fate with its brand name and this week arranged a crisis deal with its creditors.New Star represents the idea of active management writ large. Rather like the fantasy sports teams devised by armchair fans, its founder, John Duffield, recruited people he believed to be the best fund managers in the business. He rewarded them well for outperformance and fired them when they failed. Shrewd salesmanship encouraged investors to hand their money over to this team of titans. ……
Original Source: www.economist.com
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4 December, 2008| massmedia |
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- Oil: Plumbing the depths
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OPEC has its work cut out to stop the oil price from sinking furtherENERGY analysts spent the first half of the year debating how expensive oil could get. Now they are asking the opposite question. On December 2nd the price of a barrel slipped below $47, the lowest level since May 2005 and less than a third of the peak reached in July. The main reason for the slump is the darkening outlook for the world economy. Demand for oil continues to grow in a few spots, such as China. But in most places it is falling. America’s appetite for oil, for example, had been more or less stagnant for the past few years, but has recently dropped dramatically (see chart). Many now expect global oil demand to fall next year, and perhaps even this year—which would be the first decline since 1993. Meanwhile, several new oilfields and refineries, which were set in motion when the price seemed likely only to rise, are due to start up in the coming months, increasing supply just as demand atrophies. ……
Original Source: www.economist.com
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4 December, 2008| massmedia |
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- Global house prices: Popping sounds
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House prices are falling just about everywhere“WHAT happens here, stays here” is a slogan used to attract tourists to Las Vegas. Sadly, it is not true of the state of the city’s housing market. In September, they were 31.3% lower than a year ago, according to an S&P/Case-Shiller index of American house prices, and Vegas’s problems are now spreading all over the world. According to our house-price indicators (see chart), America’s housing market is leading the way down for the 20 countries covered. But the situation is even worse than it appears. Compared with the second quarter, prices fell in 11 of the 16 countries for which third-quarter data are available. Research suggests that a long, global slump lies ahead. …
Original Source: www.economist.com
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4 December, 2008| massmedia |
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- Monetary policy: Passive aggression
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The ECB’s biggest-ever cut looks timidWHEN the economy is sinking and inflation fading rapidly, is there any merit in cutting interest rates gradually? On December 4th the Bank of England again opted for boldness. It cut its benchmark rate by a percentage point, to 2%, following a stunning one-and-a-half-point reduction a month earlier. On the same day Sweden’s central bank slashed its rate, from 3.75% to 2%, and said big cuts were needed because monetary policy was less effective than usual. But the European Central Bank (ECB) was stuck somewhere between caution and boldness. Less than an hour after the Bank of England’s decision, the ECB reduced its main rate by three-quarters of a percentage point, to 2.5%. That was the biggest cut in its ten-year history. It may look daring, but in the circumstances seems inadequate….
Original Source: www.economist.com
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4 December, 2008| massmedia |
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- Economics focus: The teetotallers’ hangover
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High saving and low private-sector debt have not shielded Germany and Japan from recession PAUL KRUGMAN, the winner of this year’s Nobel prize in economics, put his finger on something in the 1990s when he identified, and then ridiculed, the notion that a slump is a “necessary punishment” for the excesses of the boom that went before it. The popular idea of recession as purgative—the hangover following an ill-judged binge—has a strong and enduring emotional appeal. It allows distressed consumers in America and Britain, countries with a shared weakness for untrammelled spending and reckless borrowing, to make sense of the unfolding crisis. Recession, they reason, must be a penance for past profligacy. …
Original Source: www.economist.com
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4 December, 2008| massmedia |
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- Year-end funding: Wall Street’s pawnbrokers
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For bankers, it is just as well Christmas comes but once a yearMONEYMEN may be hoping for some rest as an atrocious 2008 draws to a close, but for bank treasurers the “turn” is the most fretful time of year. They are often holed up in the office, frantically trying to balance the books as their colleagues head off to New Year’s Eve parties. This year is likely to be especially nerve-racking.Liquidity always tightens in late December, when markets are closed and banks tidy up their balance-sheets. This year they will be more determined than ever to be well-groomed when the year-end accounting snapshot is taken. ……
Original Source: www.economist.com
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4 December, 2008| massmedia |
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- Interest rates: Scissors and stone
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The banking crisis is blunting the effect of rate cutsTHE Bank of England, established in 1694, has never set the official interest rate below 2%. On December 4th it tumbled to that historic floor, last seen in 1951, as the bank cut the base rate by a full percentage point, from 3% to 2%.The step had been widely expected in the City, but it still marked another extraordinary reduction in the official interest rate, which as recently as early October stood at 5%. Yet though the decision brings hope it also conveys fear. The Bank of England is doing its utmost to cushion the economy from a bumpy downturn. But the scale of its action also shows how worried it is about a pernicious recession stemming from a traumatised banking system. ……
Original Source: www.economist.com
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4 December, 2008| massmedia |
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- Corporate lending: Waiving or drowning?
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Even big firms are finding it tough to secure credit from the banksCONVENTIONAL wisdom says that it is better to be a large company than a small one when credit is tight. Bigger firms have more room for manoeuvre: they have access to more types of funding, they have more fat to cut, and they have greater bargaining power with lenders. Even so, life is getting ever more uncomfortable for the bigger beasts of the corporate jungle.According to the Federal Reserve’s most recent lending survey, American banks are tightening terms more aggressively for bigger firms than for tiddlier ones (see chart). Lenders are more cautious than they have been at least since 1990. The story among European banks is similar. Lenders in emerging markets can be more suspicious of multinational firms than they are of locals. “We just don’t know what they’ve got on their balance-sheets back home,” says one bank boss in Africa. ……
Original Source: www.economist.com
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4 December, 2008| massmedia |
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