Jijo Jacob

The change of guard in Brasilia at the turn of the new decade could also mark a shift in Brazil’s long-entrenched policy to go with China on monetary policy issues.

South Africa is about to join the Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) grouping and will attend the first summit of the leading emerging economies in April this year, but doubts remain over the suitability of the African nation to be in the exclusive club of the fast-growing economies.

The year 2010 saw the metamorphosis of gold from a commodity to a currency, according to analysts. As global currencies weakened in the wake of an influx of unprecedented stimulus and ultra-liberal monetary policies gold extended its bull ride to finish the year with a 30 percent gain.

A boom in German exports drove European manufacturing in December, data released by London-based Markit Economics showed on Monday.

Chinese ambassador to Spain said on Monday China will contribute to efforts to secure Spain's financial stability and economic recovery as the debt-hit nation is trying to shore up investor confidence and avert any sovereign crisis.

The Commerce Department's durable goods report for November showed that, excluding transport, core orders rebounded by 2.4 percent month-on-month last month, more than reversing a 1.9 percent decline in the last month.

New orders for manufactured durable goods in November fell by $2.6 billion or 1.3 percent to $193.7 billion, the U.S. Census Bureau announced on Thursday.

The UK's GMB union has said thousands of public sector workers in the country are getting at risk warning letters, dampening the upcoming holidays, the BBC has reported.

Growth in the eurozone will be weaker than in the US and the UK in 2011 and the euro will fall further, despite positive near-term forecasts for the region and improving global economic prospects, analysts have said.

As the global economy is entering arguably another tumultuous year, spotlight is sharply on the prospects, policies and risks of China's economy, which has all but sailed past Japan's as the world's second largest after the United States.

In what appears to be Sony's success in its efforts to link its hardware with online content-delivery services, the Japanese electronics behemoth said on Wednesday it has launched an online streaming-music service, the Wall Street journal reported.

Contrary to the prevailing view, the U.S. economy will gain growth momentum in the year ahead, while GDP will grow stronger in Europe and Japan, research firm IHS Global Insight has said in its forecast for 2011.

Is North Korea finally, though momentarily perhaps, willing to throw away the mantle of a cranky child angrily throwing toys from the pram?

Gold prices will keep rising over the next two years to hit $1,600 per ounce by the end of 2011 and $2,000 by end of 2012, as fresh shocks to the global financial system are expected, an analyst has said.

China on Tuesday offered support to Europe's efforts to deal with the peripheral debt crisis and said Beijing will not cut down its holdings of European sovereign bonds.

China has assured the European Union its rare earths shipments to the bloc will not be disrupted, EU Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht said in Beijing on Tuesday.

While analysts are almost unanimous that Japan's gross domestic product (GDP) will fall in the current quarter, some economists see the chance of the country slipping into recession in the first quarter of the next year.

South Korea announced on Sunday it will start charging a levy on banks' foreign exchange borrowings, a measure aimed at limiting the chances of capital exiting the economy at a time when military tensions with the North are escalating.

The explosion on BP's Deepwater Horizon drilling platform in Macondo early this year was no less than a cut on the oil industry's artery, out of which gushed millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico - a tragedy that devastated the Gulf Coast ecosystem, paralyzed an oil behemoth and thwarted the Big Oil's prospects by attracting a moratorium on deepwater drilling and a crippling regulatory environment.

European Union leaders said last night differences over amending the EU treaties to make way for a permanent crisis mechanism have been papered over, but the market response to the development was muted as doubts still remained over key features of the deal.

After Google Maps, Google Places and Google Earth, and a host of other ground-breaking products and apps, the Internet giant has now soft-launched the ‘Google Body Browser’, which tech analysts say is the Google Earth of the human body.

The Asia-Pacific region will continue to be the fastest-growing region of the world in 2011, according to a forecast by IHS Global Insight. However, the report says the region faces significant risks in the backdrop of the fragile state of some of the largest economies in the world, the raging sovereign debt crisis in the European Union and 'deep-seated structural problems facing Japan.

Ireland's gross domestic product recorded a marginal rise of 0.5 percent in the third quarter on a sequential basis, but the small improvement in growth will do little to alter analysts' view that the country still faces an uphill task managing its debt.

Euro area annual inflation was 1.9 percent in November, unchanged compared with the last month and within the European Central Bank's target, the European Union's statistics office Eurostat said on Thursday. On a monthly basis, inflation rose 0.1 percent in November.

China has been on a commodity price-control overdrive in the past few months in a bid to tame inflation, allay fears of shortages and crack down on hoarding and price-gouging. However, the Chinese commodity boom may not last forever and the prices could likely fall, an analyst has said.

Roubini Global Economics (RGE) has predicted that global economy's growth next year will be marginally weaker than this year, with eurozone holding the biggest risk to global growth, and that the U.S. will not emerge any time soon from the worst unemployment crisis it has faced in decades.

The Bank of Japan's Tankan business survey showed on Wednesday business confidence among large manufacturers dropped in December, the first decline in seven quarters, and that the prognosis going forward was gloomier.

Despite a robust expansion in output and healthy headline growth figures, the eurozone economic growth will moderate next year, but gain traction again in 2012, the European Commission said in a report released on Tuesday.

China on Tuesday criticized a World Trade Organization (WTO) ruling yesterday that upheld the U.S. decision last year to slap duties on Chinese-made tires and said it will appeal to the global trade body. The Chinese commerce ministry repeated that the safeguard measures adopted by the U.S. on Chinese tire imports were protectionist and counter-productive.