Mervyn King, the governor of the Bank of England, has cautioned against further significant government spending to stimulate the economy. Given the high levels of UK debt as a result of recent stimulus packages, Mr King questioned the wisdom of increasing debt by spending more.
International Monetary Fund Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said on Wednesday a discussion over China’s call for a new world currency is “absolutely legitimate” and is likely to take place in the coming months.
Latinamerica’s economy will enter in recession this year as the average of the rest of the world economy IMF director for the Western Hemisphere Nicolas Eyzaguirre said on Wednesday.
United Kingdom Prime Minister Gordon Brown has urged world leaders at next week's G20 summit to take action to reform the global banking system. The London summit must ensure strong growth and recovery, and particularly jobs in the world economy, he said.
Boosted by international and domestic demand Uruguay’s economy expanded for the sixth year running having recorded last year, 8.9%, according Central Bank president Mario Bergara.
As the global economic slowdown begins to bite remittances to Latin America this year will fall for the first time since the Inter-American Development Bank, IDB, began measuring the money flows in 2000, reported the bank.
German president Horst Köhler in the annual Berlin Speech addressed the global financial collapse but also accepted part of the blame for not having been able to introduce major reforms and regulations to financial markets when the was head of the International Monetary Fund (2000/2004).-
Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, taking the controls of a new high-speed train on Tuesday, said Italy was well placed to emerge from the global economic downturn, --which he described as the American influenza--, but urged his countrymen to work harder.
The International Air Transport Association (IATA) announced a revised outlook for the global air transport industry with losses of 4.7 billion USD dollars in 2009. This is significantly worse than IATA’s December forecast for a 2.5 billion loss in 2009, reflecting the rapid deterioration of the global economic conditions.
China's central bank has called for a new global reserve currency run by the International Monetary Fund to replace the US dollar. Central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan did not explicitly mention the dollar, but said the crisis showed the dangers of relying on one currency.