WASHINGTON: The US government registered a record budget deficit in February despite rising revenues, setting a record 17th consecutive month in the red, the Treasury said on Wednesday.
The February budget shortfall was 220.909 billion dollars, a 14 percent rise from a year ago and the biggest monthly gap on record.
The reading, however, was slightly better [...]

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The worst ofGreece’s financial crisis is over and other European nations won’t follow in its path, said former European Commission President Romano Prodi.
“For Greece, the problem is completely over,” said Prodi, who was also Italian prime minister, in an interview in Shanghai today. “I don’t see any other case now in Europe. I don’t think there [...]

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The political consensus may be that President Barack Obama’s handling of the economy has been weak. The judgment of money in all its forms has been overwhelmingly positive, and that may be the more lasting appraisal.
One year after U.S stocks hit their post-financial-crisis low on March 9, 2009, the benchmark Standard & Poor’s 500 Index has risen [...]

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“Who you gonna call?” wasn’t just a catchphrase in the 1984 film “Ghostbusters.” If the worst happens in Greece, Spain or Portugal, we’re going to hear it all over again, and Europe’s taxpayers will want to know the answer.
The European Union? The European Central Bank? Or the International Monetary Fund?
Senior officials, including ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet, [...]

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China’s yuan is facing increasing pressure to appreciate because of a widening interest-rate differential, the country’s top currency regulator said in a statement.
Speculative capital is flowing into China disguised as foreign direct investment and trade accounts through “underground money shops,” Yi Gang, head of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, said at a briefing in Beijing today.
The [...]

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LONDON: Britain, which emerged from recession in the final quarter of 2009, faces a “high” risk of relapse and below-average growth in the next two years, the British Chamber of Commerce warned on Sunday.
“The UK economic outlook will remain highly uncertain for a considerable time,” the BCC said in the group’s latest economic forecast.
“The recovery [...]

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Greece’s pledge to ramp up planned budget-deficit cuts by half failed to yield commitments of financial assistance from Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, to help solve its financial crisis.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said a meeting tomorrow with Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou won’t be “about aid commitments.” Her finance minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble, said the deficit-reduction measures announced in Athens [...]

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Daimler AG’sMercedes-Benz unit, the world’s second-largest maker of luxury cars, will almost double investment on “green” technologies to take on BMW in the race to offer electric vehicles.
Stuttgart, Germany-based Mercedes intends to spend 1 billion euros ($1.4 billion) in each of the next two years to develop batteries and fuel-saving engines, Thomas Weber, Daimler’s development chief, [...]

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Australia’s economy grew last quarter at the fastest pace in almost two years, underscoring the central bank’s decision yesterday to boost borrowing costs for the fourth time in five meetings.
Gross domestic product climbed 0.9 percent from the third quarter, when it gained a revised 0.3 percent, the Bureau of Statistics said in Sydney today. That matched [...]

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TOKYO : Japan’s lower house on Tuesday passed a record trillion-dollar budget for fiscal 2010, adding to the country’s bulging public debt burden as Tokyo tries to stimulate a sluggish economic recovery.
The 92.3 trillion yen (1.0 trillion dollar) budget includes new child-care allowances, free public high school tuition and other measures promised by the centre-left [...]

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