Credit and risk rating agencies have admitted errors were made when assessing some of the financial instruments that have been blamed for the credit crunch. Representatives of the three main agencies - Standard & Poor's, Fitch, Moodys - were grilled by the House of Commons Treasury Select Committee
The Brazilian government officially denied Wednesday it had imposed import licences or was reverting to non tariff barriers on hundreds of products, a decision which had caused uproar mainly among Mercosur partners.
The extreme drought conditions which most of Argentina's rich farmland is suffering will have an impact on the soybean crop that is now estimated in the range of 40 million tons, down 16.7% from the previous crop according to the Argentine Association of Agriculture experimentation regional consortia, AACREA.
The Argentine government declared on Monday an agricultural emergency in areas affected by the worst drought to hit the country in four decades and which has extended to most of the country's farmlands.
Brazil announced it has imposed restrictions on 60% of imports to soften the impact of the global crisis in its trade balance which in the first four weeks of January has registered a totally unexpected deficit of 645 million US dollars.
The International Labour Organisation (ILO) says as many as 2.4 million Latin Americans could lose their jobs this year due to the global economic crisis.
Money leaving Argentina trebled in 2008 compared to the previous year and was 23% higher to the great capital flight of the second half of 2001 and first half of 2002 which totalled 18.7 billion US dollars and triggered the collapse of the banking system and melting of the economy, according to a report in La Nacion.
The economist whose recession warnings and calls for interest rate cuts were snubbed by Bank of England colleagues warned in an interview he feared UK unemployment could hit three million in a year's time.
Scotland's biggest airline Flyglobespan, which has contract for the Falklands/UK air link is back on profit course after a successful 2008 which included the restructuring of destinations and limiting operations to services it could provide with its won planes.
Unemployment in Spain during 2008 increased by 1.2 million, a 66.4% jump over 2007 taking the official rate to 13.9% which is the highest in 9 years according to the latest figures released by the country's Statistics Institute, INE.