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By Gabriel Elizondo in Business on November 19th, 2009

What do Apple, Hewlett-Packard and Google all have in common?

Answer: All three companies had lower profits in the third quarter of 2009 than Petrobras and Vale.

Petrobras is Brazil’s massive energy company; you might have heard of it. But unless you live in Brazil or track big companies, you likely have never heard of Vale – the Brazilian mining company.

Photo courtesy of AP

But both companies quietly are shoveling in huge profits. A representation of sort of Brazil’s quick exit from the global economic meltdown.  

By John Terrett in Business on November 16th, 2009
Photo by AFP

Protesters gathered outside the Washington DC headquarters of Goldman Sachs on Monday.

They were there to protest the giant bank's plans to pay out more than $20bn in bonuses to executives in 2009.

They were also angry Goldman's spending millions of dollars lobbying Congress against so called "too big to fail" legislation that would give authorities power to break up complicated companies if they show signs of getting into trouble.

"Goldman Sachs is at the cutting edge of the most abusive practices that are taking place on Wall Street and in Washington DC," Robert Weissman, president of the Public Citizen consumer advocacy group, told Al Jazeera.

"This year alone they're planning to pay themselves more than $20bn in bonuses and executive compensation payments, the same year that Wall Street has received trillions of dollars in public support just to stay in business."

By Teymoor Nabili in Business on November 13th, 2009

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By Teymoor Nabili in Business on November 10th, 2009
Photo by Getty Images

The Guardian reports:

[A] senior [International Energy Agency] official claims the US has played an influential role in encouraging the watchdog to underplay the rate of decline from existing oil fields while overplaying the chances of finding new reserves.

Washington's motive, apparently, is to prevent panic in the markets when traders realise the world has much less oil than we've been told.

The accusation may appear dramatic, but the Guardian's piece is not actually saying anything that wasn't already in the public domain.

Warnings about declining supply and the theory of Peak Oil, have been around for decades, and the IEA's estimates have long been regarded with scepticism.

By Samah El-Shahat in Business on November 9th, 2009
Photo by Getty Images

America is in a depression, and so is the UK.

I hate to say it, but those words spilled from the lips of my lunching companion, the brilliant Stephen Lewis from Monument securities, and frankly I agree. This is what he had to say:

“Depression is a prolonged period of sub-optimal economic activity in which policy measures are ineffective in improving performance on a substantial basis and based on this, then the USA is in depression”

Well in the light of the awful double-digit US unemployment figure that came recently, this idea is not so inconceivable.

So what does this mean for America?

Well it would mean that for the next year or two, it will not feel like much for a recovery but more of a recession.  Moreover, there is no doubting that unemployment still has a long way to go before peaking. I am guessing that it might hit 12%. 

By Teymoor Nabili in Business on November 8th, 2009
Photo by Reuters

Now that some of the most respected institutions in corporate banking have been implicated in - and some destroyed by - dubious ethical and financial practices, it should come as no surprise that the same foul odour of corruption is now being detected lingering in the corridors of smaller companies on Wall Street.

Thus, the emergence of the biggest case of insider dealing ever uncovered, now spreading to implicate more and more people.

The Guardian's Will Hutton likens it to a poisonous melange of the worst characters in popular fiction, engaged in

a seedy world of secret tips, kickbacks and disposable, pre-paid mobile phones.

The Los Angeles Times writes of

By Teymoor Nabili in Business on November 7th, 2009

"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics."

No one really knows who first uttered this timeless observation, but politicians have long realised how useful statistics can be when trying to convince the population that all is well in the economy.

Nowhere is this more true than in the reporting of unemployment.

The latest jobless numbers from the US are grim enough on the surface, but the depressing aspect is that there's a lot more bad news underneath. 

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By Teymoor Nabili in Business on November 5th, 2009
Photo by Getty Images

"Fears of a New Bubble as Cash Pours In" declares the front page of the Wall Street Journal Asia  (print copy) today.

"Concerns are mounting that efforts by governments and central banks to stoke a recovery will create a nasty side effect: asset bubbles in real-estate, stock and currency markets, especially in Asia."

The article quotes a World Bank report warning:

By Abid Ali in Business on November 4th, 2009
Photo by AFP

General Motors' decision to abandon the sale of its European business Opel should come as no surprise. As the company plunged into bankruptcy, there was talk that the board would keep hold of loss-making Opel.

GM was never keen on the deal with Canadian car-parts maker Magna and Russia’s Sberbank – it was forced into the decision by the Germans with the promise of $6.58 billion in state aid. GM was also reluctant to give away its technology to Russian automakers through Sberbank’s investment.

It would appear that GM and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are the winners in this chess game, while Opel’s 50,000 workers have been left out to dry.

GM bought time to clear up its mess – becoming the world’s largest industrial company to file for bankruptcy in the process.

By John Terrett in Business on October 30th, 2009

There's no getting away from it.

Growth at an annualised clip of 3.5% in the U.S. economy during the three months to the end of September is a remarkable achievement.

President Obama was quick to say so on Thursday, albeit well aware there's still a long way to go.

"While this report represents real progress the benchmark I use to measure the strength of our real economy is not just whether our GDP is growing ... but whether we're creating jobs, whether families are having an easier time paying bills, whether our businesses are hiring and doing well."

But the growth figure's been achieved with hardly a single new job being created in the private sector.

Indeed reports suggest the White House may have exaggerated the number of jobs created by the stimulus package by up to ten times.

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