Mini Muffins

A vital installment of aid money was being released by the euro zone as a money to Greece will be announced. The installment is actually a final decision over the second bailout for the debt ridden Greece within the late summer. The finance minister of about 17 different countries had to share the installment and signed a deal worth $12.6 billion. Greece apart from receiving the euro 8.7 billion will be receiving an extra of euro 3.3 billion from the International Monetary fund. The loan from the IMF will be released by the board by the next week and without the total euro 12 billion Greece will be under default.

From the past few days Greece has been facing massive debt and the Parliament in Athens have set up some conditions for getting some loans. The loan installment will be provided under some pre conditions for the earlier this week and has passed some austerity measures. The austerity measures will allow Greece to hit budget targets which has been set to return the final rescue package. The total rescue package of Greece is original is about euro 110 billion and was in last may but still Greece needs further assistance.

In the coming years Greece will need further financial help as the economy of Greece is shrinking in spite of the budget cuts and other steps. Greece is facing the massive debt as most of the investors remain unwilling to lend any more money and so many steps have taken to reduce the cost. Many experts feel that a second loan package will be enough to get Greece into the track and function as normally.

After a day after joint chiefs of stadd Mike Mullen has bought in certain controversies in the hornet’s nest. There has been continues links between two groups that is the ISI and the Haqqani terrorist in Pakistan. The mantra for the network is asking for”Pakistan -must -do-more on Thursday has rejected the propaganda. The rejection of the network has been done the chief of the army staff Ashfaq Parvez Kayani says report.

The army chief Ashaq has called the mantra as a negative propaganda according to the reports released. The present situation has been countered as there has been a hard talk by US said general Kayani. General Kayani said it during a meeting along with Admiral Mullen in General Headquarters according to the Inter services. Kayani has even reiterated over the Pakistan stance so as to drone the attacks and show the strongness of Pakistan.

The effort of the whole nation against forces like the terrorism and has also asked for public support. Public effort is needed for the fight against the terrorism is very needed for the success of the project. During the meeting the ongoing operations for the fight against the terrorism and steps taken were even discussed. An interview with dawn Admiral Mullen spoke about the ISI relationship along with Haqqani network has been unacceptable. The situation at present has still fueled the Afghan insurgency told Admiral Mullen during the interview on Wednesday.

The Japanese economy has been reeling under recessionary conditions for the last few years , and it is now set for more trouble in the coming years. The Tsunami plus the earthquake have demolished over 300 billion dollars worth of properties and businesses in Japan in a matter of few hours and restoring them to normal condition could take years together.

Japan is expected to enter into the international markets to raise finance for the restructuring but that might push up the overall cost of funds not only for Japan but also for US. That is not a good sign, and overall recovery in Japan could take over ten years as per experts.

`The Chinese economy is continuing the recovery with the exports showing a spectacular recovery. The Chinese exports in the month of November 2009 have dropped only by 1.2% , the slowest pace of drop in the last 12 months. The recovery is due to increasing demand for Chinese goods in US, Japan and Europe.
With more recovery likely in US and Japan in the coming months, experts are hoping for faster recovery in Chinese exports henceforth.
That might induce the Chinese authorities to start raising the interest rates and also to allow the Chinese currency to strengthen against the US dollar and European currency.

There were another six bank closures last week in US, taking the cumulative 2009 year to date total to 130. This is a massive five fold increase from the 25 banks closed down in the entire year 2008.
The US banking regulators have found over 500 US banks lower on their statutory liquidity requirements and at least 20% of these banks could be expected to collapse in the next 12 months. So expect another century hit rate in bank closures in the year 2010.

The Dubai crisis has been able to pull down the Crude oil prices from 81 dollars a barrel to 79 dollars last week. Yesterday the price of crude hovered around the 77 dollars due to increase in the US inventory levels. There is also a strong feeling of a further reduction in global crude oil demand due to the continuing global uncertainty.
The inflation has been shooting up across the globe, and there are enough signs of stimulus cut downs by various countries in the coming months. That can only cut down the crude oil consumption in the immediate term.

The Chinese and the US governments have decided to work together on all issues including trade, security and international issues. On its part , US has said that Tibet is an integral part of China, but China need to talk with Tibet leaders to resolve the long pending issue.
Both the countries are badly in need of help from the other, and their inter-dependence has increased substantially in the last five years. China is the largest holder of US treasury bills and US is the largest trading partner for China.

The US retail sales in the month of October was expected to be good anyway. And the overall figure of 1.4% is far higher than the consensus estimate of 1.2%. And no marks for guessing the key contributor, i.e, auto sales.
The automobile sales in October 2009 has gone up by a whopping 7.4% due to the low base in September 2009.
And excluding the auto sales, the October 2009 retail sales is reading at a pathetic 0.2%, which is half of the consensus estimates of 0.4%.
So who says that everything is rosy and recovering in US ?. And tie it up with the US FED comments few days back wherein he said that future shocks are possible. You need to be alert on a daily basis, if you want to secure your future.

The Crude oil prices were hovering around the 82 dollars mark just few days back, but the flow of weak economic data in the last few days has been able to pull down the price to 77 dollars a barrel.
The crude oil prices are key barometer of the global economic situation, and in line with increasing optimism in the last few weeks, the prices have moved from 67 dollars to 80 dollars range.

The billions of dollars of stimulus spending by the Japanese government is yielding the desired results after a gap of nearly a year. The Japanese economy has grown by 1.2% in the July - September 2009 quarter from the previous quarter, pulling it out of recession.
The Japanese economy is the second largest economy in the world with substantial dependence on exports. And most of the exports were to the US and Western countries. All these countries have been forced to cut down on their imports due to the financial meltdown.