United Kingdom’s Prime Minister David Cameron urged the European Union to take a “bold and decisive action” to curb the economic crisis hovering over the Euro Zone and also described the plan for a financial transaction tax as “simply madness”.
Billionaire investor George Soros said that German-driven austerity plans in Europe risk creating tensions that could splinter the region as it struggles with a debt crisis entering its third year.
Britain's economy may have entered a mild recession in the last three months of 2011, hampering the government's core policy aim of spurring growth and raising the chances that the Bank of England will inject more cash soon.
Japan has announced its first annual trade deficit in more than 30 years, a setback for a country known for its exports including cars and electronics. The deficit came in at 2.49 trillion yen (32bn dollars) for 2011, the finance ministry said.
Argentina’s Economy Minister Hernán Lorenzino admitted on Thursday that the global economic crisis has had an impact on the country but nevertheless we are going to have a good year.
Venezuela’s government officially requested this week to leave the World Bank’s arbitration court as demands pile up from abroad for compensation following a decade of nationalizations under President Hugo Chavez.
Fully recovered from the thyroidectomy and with her irony sharp as ever, Argentine President Cristina Fernandez, CFK, resumed office on Wednesday and in an hour plus colloquial speech in Casa Rosada spent a good twenty minutes talking about Malvinas, colonialism and promised more rigour in the campaign to have the UK sit and discuss Falklands sovereignty.
The Federal Reserve has said it does not now expect to raise interest rates in the US until late 2014. The surprise move announced Wednesday sent the dollar sharply lower in markets, and caused US government borrowing costs to fall.
Chile has emerged as the most globalized economy in Latin America and moved up to 25th place in the world, according to global consulting firm Ernst & Young. Chile is among the countries to improve their position despite global economic uncertainty, the firm’s annual Globalization Index found.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel appealed to business leaders at the World Economic Forum to give policy makers the space they need to tackle the debt crisis, pledging that Europe will pull together and restore confidence.