Markets news on stocks, currencies and oil; Annual production for Irish Manufacturing Industries in January 2010 was 2.3% higher than in January 2009.
The Taoiseach, Brian Cowen today launched the report of the Innovation Ireland Taskforce in the Science Gallery, Dublin. The Government said the report will be an important part of the marketing message the Taoiseach and other Ministers will be taking abroad over St. Patrick’s Day.
The US trade deficit narrowed to .29 billion in January, the Commerce Department said today. A 1.7% drop in imports outpaced a 0.3% drop in exports as the volume of oil imports hit its lowest level in more than a decade. The 2009 trade gap was 8.6 billion.
Markets news on stocks, currencies and commodities; Food and agri-business group Origin Enterprises reported today that pre-tax profits of €11.3m for the six months to the end of January, dipped from €17.1m a year earlier.
Irish deflation eased in February as consumer prices fell at an annual rate of 3.2%, compared with 3.9% in January.
Deutsche Bank says in 2009, the German housing market sector fell to its lowest level in at least 50 years — at least with regard to housing completions. Frequently cited concerns about another housing shortage are highly exaggerated, however; only in a few urban areas is a severe housing shortage likely to materialise.
China’s consumer price index (CPI), a main gauge of inflation, rose 2.7 per cent year on year in February, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) announced Thursday. The statistics agency also reported that China’s industrial output rose 20.7 per cent in the first two months of 2010 compared with the same period in 2008.
Japan today announced a downward revision in its fourth quarter 2009 GDP (gross domestic product) and the economy actually contracted in the third quarter.
Principal news stories from the Irish Independent, Irish Times, Irish Examiner, Financial Times and New York Times.
Standard & Poor’s the credit ratings agency, says in its latest Global Economic Outlook that the global economy seems to have turned a corner, and so-called green shoots are sprouting around the world. Governments’ coordinated monetary and fiscal efforts largely help explain the apparently simultaneous — if slow–recoveries that many countries began to enjoy late last year, but the primary cause of the recovery is that world financial markets are getting back to normal, again in large part because of heavy intervention by central banks and government agencies.
