TPT January 2009

From the AmericaS

• An interesting slant on the Obama accession was contributed by Red Cavaney, a Washington-based executive with ConocoPhillips (Houston), who suggests that the new president has a ‘Nixon-to-China’ opportunity on energy. The Chronicle recalled that President Richard M Nixon’s credentials as a fervent anti-communist “gave him political cover for making historic overtures in 1972 that warmed US relations with communist China.” Mr Cavaney, a former head of the American Petroleum Institute, took note of perceptions that Mr Obama shares the jaundiced attitude of fellow Democrats toward the oil industry. This might enable him to forge the kind of consensus on energy issues that has eluded policymakers, notably his predecessor George W Bush who began his career in the oil business in Midland, Texas, in 1975.

The IMF, in its World Economic Outlook released 8 October, also forecast world economic growth to slow to 3.9 per cent in 2008 and to decelerate further to 3 per cent in 2009, marking the worst showing since 2002. An independent organization based in Washington, the IMF is comprised of 185 countries pledged to work together promote global monetary cooperation. “The world economy is now entering a major downturn in the face of the most dangerous shock in mature financial markets since the 1930’s,” said the report, which was released just prior to a pair of top-level gatherings in Washington: the IMF-World Bank annual meetings, and a meeting of the finance ministers of the Group of Seven industrialized nations (G-7). The IMF also offered these projections of slowed year-on-year economic growth: Germany: 1.8 per cent in 2008, down from 2.5 per cent in 2007 France: 0.8 per cent, down from 2.2 per cent Britain: 1 per cent, down from 3 per cent In marked contrast to these estimates, the IMF said it looked for global powerhouses China and India to see growth in 2008 of 9.7 per cent and 7.9 per cent, respectively. While impressive in the East-West context, these rates would still mark regression from the blistering performances of 2007. The IMF expects Russia’s economy to be another such success story: growth of 7 per cent in 2008, down from 8.1 per cent in 2007. Canada: 0.7 per cent, down from 2.7 per cent Japan: 0.7 per cent, down from 2.1 per cent

The economy IMF: the United States is leading the world into recession

Together with many private economists, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) believes that the US economy will probably contract in the last quarter of 2008 and the first quarter of 2009, meeting the traditional criterion for a recession: a growth rate of 3 per cent or below for two successive quarters. The last recession in the US was in 2001.

   

83

www.read-tpt.com

J anuary 2009

›