Economic News Articles – Archive for Week of 01-01-2012

The new year started off mildly as people digested their New Year’s Day meals along with the economic news. People are watching and waiting to see what the year 2012 will bring. For the U.S., signs of thaw appeared in the foreground, but on the European horizon hovers a foreboding storm — a sort of dry electrical storm that, as of yet, brings no rain … just rumblings each day throughout the darkening sky.

Economic indicators tracked in this week’s headlines:

Euro crisis updates in the economic news this week:


  • Euro, Introduced With Flourish, Gets Little Celebration at Its 10-Year Mark Instead of celebrating the 10-year anniversary, policy makers are staying as quiet as possible, as if hoping not to upset the brief calm brought by the holiday season after central bankers injected nearly $640 billion into the banking system in December.
  • Eurozone unemployment stays at record high Unemployment in the eurozone stayed at a record high of 10.3% in November as the impact of the sovereign debt crisis rumbled on, according to official figures.
  • Germany’s unemployment rate at record low in December 6.8% marked a new record low since figures for unified Germany were first published. Leading economists expect Germany’s economic growth to slow in 2012, however, in line with other major eurozone economies
  • Greece warns on euro exit if bailout not signed â€œThe bailout agreement needs to be signed otherwise we will be out of the markets, out of the euro,” spokesman Pantelis Kapsis told Skai TV. Some expect Greece’s 2011 deficit may be wider than thought.
  • How Bad Ideas Worsen Europe’s Debt Meltdown Europe is as full of bad ideas as it is of bad debts. By artful application of bad ideas, Europe has taken a plain-vanilla sovereign restructuring and turned it into a banking crisis, a currency crisis, a fiscal crisis.
  • Soros says EU break-up would be catastrophic The euro zone crisis is “more serious and more threatening than the crash of 2008. Unfortunately, they haven’t yet solved the acute financial crisis and that is causing the situation to deteriorate…and (it) is not at all clear it will have a solution.”

Housing crisis articles:

  • Construction spending rose in November The increase was the third in four months and the largest since a 2.2 percent rise in August, yet barely half the $1.5 trillion that economists consider healthy. This year will likely end as the worst for new-home sales in history.

Solutions proposed for the Great Recession in the economic news:

  • Labour calls for ‘responsible and better’ capitalism Brits suggest free-market path to less income disparity. Labour was not against people being rewarded for risks and creating jobs. But there is a problem when pay appeared to “bear no relation to performance,” which “undermines trust in the whole system.”

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