US recession ending: Fed
Friday, 14 August 2009
From Fazle Rashid
NEW YORK, Aug 13: The long awaited announcement has come but with caution. The US Fed Reserve yesterday announced that the recession is ending. Downturn appears to have hit the bottom and that the consumer spending, financial markets and inventory buildings by the corporations all continued to stabilise, the New York Times (NYT) in a front page report said today.
The US central bank, however, hastened to caution that the recovery would be slow and unemployment is likely to remain high in 2010. The Fed Reserve said it would keep its benchmark short-term interest rate at virtually zero for quite some time.
The US's trade gap however widened. The value of US imports rose in June for the first time nearly in a year. The imports rose by $3.5 billion. The growth in the rest of the world is picking up.
The US trade deficit widened by $27 billion, instead of $28.5 billion expected earlier.
America's trade deficit with China grew to $18.4 billion and with members of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to $5.9 billion.
Bank of England (BoE) was not as optimistic as the Fed Reserve about the end of recession. BoE said recovery would take time because the recession appeared deeper than previously thought. Inflation will stick below 2.0 per cent.
The upgrade in the Fed's assessment of the economy follows growing confidence among economists that the recession has reached its end but sluggish economic growth and rising unemployment would continue.
The World Trade Organization (WTO) handed America a victory yesterday in its trade battles with China ruling that Beijing has violated international rules by limiting imports of books, songs and movies. The US and European Union (EU) say China is becoming increasingly nationalistic in its trade policies but expressed confidence that Beijing would soon remove restrictions on intellectual property. The WTO ruling will not alter China's policy of not showing more 20 foreign movies a year.
In another development, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has warned the regulators in the US and UK of risking distorting the world's two largest oil markets if the two do not agree on the same rules for speculators. The IEA using caution against speculators' ability to trade commodities such as crude oil or natural gas, restated its view that the relationship between speculators and oil prices is not significant.
In the USA, the securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has warned Pequot Capital Management that it (SEC) is considering filing fraud charges against the hedge fund and its chairman. The Hedge fund had in May said it was shutting down its business because of the adverse publicity from SEC investigations. The allegation is that Arthur Samberg, chairman of the hedge fund PCM was privy to a privileged information and used it to generate profits amounting to $14 million.
NEW YORK, Aug 13: The long awaited announcement has come but with caution. The US Fed Reserve yesterday announced that the recession is ending. Downturn appears to have hit the bottom and that the consumer spending, financial markets and inventory buildings by the corporations all continued to stabilise, the New York Times (NYT) in a front page report said today.
The US central bank, however, hastened to caution that the recovery would be slow and unemployment is likely to remain high in 2010. The Fed Reserve said it would keep its benchmark short-term interest rate at virtually zero for quite some time.
The US's trade gap however widened. The value of US imports rose in June for the first time nearly in a year. The imports rose by $3.5 billion. The growth in the rest of the world is picking up.
The US trade deficit widened by $27 billion, instead of $28.5 billion expected earlier.
America's trade deficit with China grew to $18.4 billion and with members of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to $5.9 billion.
Bank of England (BoE) was not as optimistic as the Fed Reserve about the end of recession. BoE said recovery would take time because the recession appeared deeper than previously thought. Inflation will stick below 2.0 per cent.
The upgrade in the Fed's assessment of the economy follows growing confidence among economists that the recession has reached its end but sluggish economic growth and rising unemployment would continue.
The World Trade Organization (WTO) handed America a victory yesterday in its trade battles with China ruling that Beijing has violated international rules by limiting imports of books, songs and movies. The US and European Union (EU) say China is becoming increasingly nationalistic in its trade policies but expressed confidence that Beijing would soon remove restrictions on intellectual property. The WTO ruling will not alter China's policy of not showing more 20 foreign movies a year.
In another development, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has warned the regulators in the US and UK of risking distorting the world's two largest oil markets if the two do not agree on the same rules for speculators. The IEA using caution against speculators' ability to trade commodities such as crude oil or natural gas, restated its view that the relationship between speculators and oil prices is not significant.
In the USA, the securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has warned Pequot Capital Management that it (SEC) is considering filing fraud charges against the hedge fund and its chairman. The Hedge fund had in May said it was shutting down its business because of the adverse publicity from SEC investigations. The allegation is that Arthur Samberg, chairman of the hedge fund PCM was privy to a privileged information and used it to generate profits amounting to $14 million.