Global Financial Crisis – International

SYDNEY—Australia will cut its annual skilled worker migrant intake by 14 percent in an effort to preserve jobs for Australians after a spike in unemployment, the government announced Monday.

HONG KONG (AFP) — Japan on Wednesday posted a record trade deficit and Hong Kong said its economy would shrink by up to three percent in 2009 as recession woes deepened across Asia.

KUALA LUMPUR (AFP)- Malaysia has slashed its work permit approvals for foreign workers by almost 70 per cent so far this year, faced with the twin threat of layoffs and recession, according to a report Sunday.

London (AFP) – World Bank president Robert Zoellick said Friday that 2009 was turning into “a very dangerous year” for the economy but warned G20 members against protectionist policies to fight the downturn.

HORSHAM, England: G20 finance ministers vowed Saturday to take “whatever action is necessary” on the world economic slowdown, after talks preparing for a key summit on fighting the crisis next month.

THE United Nations (UN), and not the G20, should lead in creating a new financial architecture that would rise out of the current economic crisis, University of the Philippines Prof. Walden Bello said Saturday.

WASHINGTON (AFP): Troubled banking giant Citigroup had its best profit performance in over a year in the first two months of 2009, company CEO Vikram Pandit told employees in an internal memo made public yesterday.

BASEL, Switzerland (AFP) – The global economy is nearing the start of a rebound, top central bankers said yesterday, as Asian stocks reeled from bad news in Japan and amid concern about the future of the world’s banks.Japan, Asia’s biggest economy, announced its first current account deficit for more than a decade and new data…

Financial assets in Asia lost 9.6 trillion dollars in value in 2008, slightly more than a year’s worth of GDP, the Asian Development Bank said on Monday.

The global crisis wiped a staggering $50 trillion off the value of financial assets last year including $9.6 trillion of losses in developing Asia alone, the Asian Development Bank said Monday.

NEW DELHI, India — The American professor nicknamed “Dr. Doom” for forecasting the financial crisis has said the global recession will last all of this year and probably next, India’s Mail Today reported Saturday.

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama said he could not assure Americans the recession-mired U.S. economy would start growing again later this year, The New York Times said on Saturday.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The IMF gave itself a scathing review for its mistakes in spotting the roots of the global crisis and acknowledged it fell short in its job as the world’s global financial overseer.

SINGAPORE (AFP) – Asian governments need to roll out fresh stimulus measures to stop their economies from sinking further as the region reels from collapsing exports, regional analysts said.

WASHINGTON, March 8, 2009 (AFP) – The International Monetary Fund called Friday for governments to take further stimulus measures to counter a severe global economic slump it sees extending into 2010.

WASHINGTON, D.C.: Another calamitous jobs report and other bleak data suggest further pain ahead for the recession-battered US economy, and may push back a recovery from the worst slump in decades, analysts say.

SINGAPORE: Asian governments need to roll out fresh stimulus measures to stop their economies from sinking further as the region reels from collapsing exports, regional analysts said.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. unemployment rate rose to a 25-year high of 8.1 percent in February as employers, buckling under the strain of a severe recession, axed 651,000 jobs, government data showed on Friday.

WHILE some companies in South Korea are replacing Filipinos with local workers to cut labor cost, this is the exception rather than the rule, South Korean Ambassador Choi Joong Kyung said yesterday.

22M women globally face retrenchments–ILO   Local job losses are outpacing the number of laid-off overseas Filipino workers (OFWs)—and causing greater worry for the government—the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) said Friday.

WASHINGTON (AP) – The United States spiraled deeper into recession to start 2009, forcing widespread cutbacks and layoffs among everyone from blue-collar workers that once churned out construction equipment to white-collar professionals like business consultants and accountants.

TAIPEI: Amid a record-high unemployment rate, Taiwan is resisting pressures to shut out new foreign workers from the island—and laying off more of them—a government official told The Manila Times.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Federal Reserve on Tuesday rolled out a much-awaited program aimed at boosting the availability of credit to U.S. consumers and small businesses.

Analysts tell bloc to keep brave face      HUA HIN, Thailand: Southeast Asian leaders called on Sunday for increased cooperation and urgent reform to deal with the global financial crisis. They made the call as they wrapped up a summit here dominated by their economic woes topped by falling exports.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The US economy contracted at a staggering 6.2 percent pace at the end of 2008, the worst showing in a quarter-century, as consumers and businesses ratcheted back spending, plunging the country deeper into recession.

SOUTHEAST Asian leaders pledged to cut tariffs, lift trade barriers and open more service industries as the bloc struggles to overcome a global recession that has eroded export demand and boosted protectionist sentiment.

ASIA’S export-dependent economies have been plunged into their worst crisis in decades as the global recession saps demand for the region’s consumer electronics, cars and semiconductors.

Hua Hin,  Thailand (AFP)  – Southeast Asian foreign ministers called for a planned multi-billion-dollar emergency fund to be boosted as a “matter of urgency” to fight the global downturn, a top official said.

WASHINGTON: US authorities launched a new phase of their bank rescue plan on Wednesday including a requirement for so-called stress tests on the “capital adequacy” of troubled major commercial banks.

MANILA, Philippines – Overseas Filipino workers (OFW) in Taiwan may heave a sigh of relief as Taiwan’s economic stimulus package may reduce the risk of further OFW retrenchments, the Manila Economic and Cultural Office (MECO) said.