Mini Muffins

The Chinese economy is on a roll, and it has seen a doubling of the trade surplus in October 2009, to 24 billion from the previous month. This was due to crash in imports and a marginal improvement in exports.
Also the country saw a healthy 16% rise in industrial production indicating a healthy economy. The year on year increase is also due to the low base effect. The retail sector has also shown a healthy 16% rise in sales indicating increasing consumer confidence, and a robust domestic market.

The inflation has once again decided to haunt the monetary authorities in India. The inflation has shot up to 1.51% last week, as per data released by the Central Bank today. The central bank has already raised the statutory liquidity ratio by a whopping 100 basis points few days back, and now it is expecting further rise in the inflation rate.
And to control inflation, the Central bank is expected to raise the interest rates further. That is bad news for the corporate sector as economic recovery would take back seat.

The 10% first time home buyers credit scheme is scheduled to end on November 30, 2009, and the scheme has been fairly successful in helping the US housing industry to slowly limp back to some sanity. The housing prices are still down by over 10% from a year ago, and over 25% lower from the peak achieved in 2006-2007 period.
The US government is now in the final stages of approving the extension of the scheme for a further period of six months or one year. The government is also said to be having the idea of working with the idea of providing a structured scheme for genuine second home buyers up to 6500 dollars.

The Chinese growth engine is going at great pace once again. The GDP figure for the third quarter ended September 2009 has been pegged at 8.9%, which is far higher than the targeted 8% by the Chinese authorities.
Now the government is going to focus on the inflation issue so that the growth can be sustained right through 2010.
A slight global economic recovery would only help China get back to the two digit growth rate.

The election results of Afghanistan announced few months back is likely to be called off and Hamid Karzai might be forced to head to electioneering in the coming weeks.
The independent panel of the UN back electoral complaints commission has found large scale fraud in many constituencies and hence has recommended re-election in Afghanistan. Karzai and his team is yet to react to the report. Given the real influence of the US over Karzai government, it is only a question of time for Karzai to accept the UN findings and call for re-election.

There are at least half a million American who are now sleeping in their cars and sedans, not because they wanted to try it out, but because their house went out of their hands. Yes these people belong to the unlucky lot of people whose homes have been seized by the mortgage lenders for payment defaults.
Most of these people start their lives in their cars and after struggling it out for few weeks or may be months, they end up in some shelter home for the homeless. There are cases of some rich people who were once running shelters for homeless people, landing up in one such shelter due to the economic crisis.

The Asian stock markets have been reaching 52 week high levels in the last few weeks, and China, India and Australia have been the leaders. Now Dow Jones is also fast catching up, with the index reaching the coveted 10000 mark today.
The six fold jump in profits reported by JP Morgan has been the key reason behind the 120 points rise in the Dow Jones index today. The positive results sent the weak hands running for cover and that pushed up the share prices across the board. Experts are advising caution to retail investors and asking them to stay away from the markets till all the major results are out from the banking and other sectors.

The week that just ended yesterday has been a remarkable one for the Dow Jones index. The Dow has finished at year high of 9865 due to increasing signs of the end of recession in US. There were also indications that the US FED might start tightening the screws in the coming months, which improved the confidence of investors on the financial condition of the banks and mortgage firms.

The global analysts were expecting Australia to raise the interest rates only from the end of 2009, but the Australian central bank had different plans. All of a sudden, it has announced a hike in the interest rates by 25 basis points few days back.
That is due to increasing signs of strong domestic economic recovery for Australia. Australia depends on export of minerals like thermal coal, coking coal and iron ore. The price of all these commodities have been shooting up in the last four months, and the demand also has been steadily growing.
China , India and few other mid sized countries have been importing large quantities of these commodities from Australia at higher rates in the last few months. Hence Australia is confident of achieving higher GDP growth in the coming months.