Money Daily Brief: Trade walls rising among G20
鈥� Updated 2:33 p.m. EDT (6:33 UTC)
鈥roken promises: The US-China trade spat over tire tariffs is just , according to a new report. G20 countries have broken antiprotectionist pledges since making them last November. Russia has raised tariffs across the board and Japan is revising sanitation rules in ways that will restrict food imports. The trend raises more questions about the effectiveness of the G20 meetings, which next week over separate concerns about bank bonuses.
鈥etter signs for US: Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said the recession is "very likely over," although the economy would feel weak for some time. Separately, retail sales soared 2.7 percent in August, boosted mostly by the "cash for clunkers" program but also by unexpected growth in department and clothing stores. Producer prices rose 1.7 percent, creating .
鈥en falls: Asian stocks were steady and the Japanese currency for a second day, slightly relieving worries about an upward swing hurting recovery efforts. Separately, Nikkei English News reported that Japan's incoming prime minister has Hirohisa Fujii as finance minister, whose although some worried he'd have little clout in the new inexperience government.
鈥�Zune HD launch: Microsoft's new Zune HD, which , may encounter tough competition with the new iPod nano in terms of price, but integration could be its hook. High-definition movies can be downloaded to the device and fed through to TVs.
鈥n my backyard: South Korea's embattled Ssangyong Motor Co to a Seoul court. The carmaker hopes to dig out of piles of debt by offering debt-for-equity to creditors and cutting stakes held by China's SAIC, its chief investor, and other shareholders.
-- Ben Hancock is a Monitor contributor based in Seoul. For a look at the US economy a year after the start of the global financial crisis, click on A year after Lehman collapse, signs US recovery has begun.
