British Prime Minister Gordon Brown hailed announcement that Switzerland is relaxing key bank secrecy laws as the beginning of the end of tax havens.
Brazilian President Lula da Silva said on Friday that counteracting the global credit crunch and preventing a wave of protectionism will be high on the agenda when he meets US President Barack Obama on Saturday.
Peru is the only Latin American country likely to escape slipping into recession this year, a senior World Bank official said on Wednesday.
Brazil’s Central bank slashed the Selic benchmark interest rate by 150 points to 11.25%, the most in five years. The vote was unanimous and follows a barrage of negative data about South America’s largest economy.
Chinese exports plunged by more than a quarter in February from a year ago as the world's third-largest economy was hit by a drop in demand for its goods. Exports dropped by 25.7% to 64.9 billion US dollars compared with the same month a year earlier, while imports fell by 24.1% to 60.1 billion according to official figures.
Norway’s Government Pension Fund suffered a 633 billion kroner equivalent to 92 billion US dollars loss on its investments in 2008. The loss, which amounts to some 125.000 kroner for every Norwegian, came after a sharp fall in global equity prices, head fund manager Yngve Slyngstad said Wednesday.
The head of the International Monetary Fund says the world economy is likely to shrink this year throwing millions into poverty, in what some are referring to as the Great Recession. IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn told a conference in Tanzania Tuesday that sharp declines in world trade are likely to hurt African economies.
Brazilian president Lula da Silva said that relations with neighbouring Uruguay are at “their best level ever”, following a meeting Tuesday with visiting president Tabare Vazquez.
Brazil's economy suffered the worst decline in more than a decade in the last quarter of 2008, shrinking 3.6% from the previous quarter, official figures show. The fall ends a three year consistent growth, even when output for the whole of 2008 remained strong at 5.1%.
In the last episode of the emblematic television show of The Simpsons aired Sunday in United States, the Springfield family loose their home as have millions of US citizens dramatically dragged by the sub prime mortgage crisis that so much suffering and despair is causing.