Few of the Asian markets have zoomed by nearly 60% to 100% in the last eight months, thanks to the resilience of Australia, China and India. All these three countries, especially China and India, have been able to ensure healthy GDP growth even on the back of falling, rather crashing, exports to US and Europe.
Now, Australia has raised the bank rates on signs of strong economic recovery. The other two Asian countries are expected to follow suit in the coming weeks. And all these have lead to foreign funds pouring in billions of dollars into these markets. The foreign fund flow is expected to increase further in the coming months, as bond values will become attractive in these countries.

The Singapore government is really worried about the surge in the real estate demand in the country in the last three months. The cumulative number of houses sold in the first eight months of this year is 120% of the sale happened in the entire 2008.
Also the government does not want to see another real estate price collapse, and hence has proposed to pull out some of the special benefits granted to the sector a year ago, at the height of global economic downturn. These moves are expected to help reduce the volatility in the real estate prices in Singapore, and help pull more investors.

Fujitsu UK is under fire. A union has warned of strike action at Japanese electronics firm Fujitsu over plans to cut pension payments to its UK staff and impose a pay freeze.Fujitsu, which employs 12,500 people in the UK, announced plans this week to cut up to 1,200 jobs and replace its final-salary pension.

The Unite union said 87% of its members taking part in a consultative ballot had voted in favour of strike action. The firm declined to comment on the warning while consultations went on.

The US is still in the grip of recession even while the Europe seems to be making a smart recovery. The US retail sales unexpectedly fell in July, following two months of rises, as job security fears appear to have once again knocked consumer spending. Sales declined 0.1% last month, following a revised 0.8% increase in June, the official figures from the Commerce Department showed.

Excluding sales of car and auto parts, sales were down 0.6% in July. The figures disappointed analysts, who had been expecting on average a rise of 0.7% in overall sales last month.

The rains lashing India have taken yet another toll. At least 15 people are reported to have been killed in a landslide in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand. Several houses were washed away in two villages when heavy rain swept Pithoragarh district, officials quoted by the Press Trust of India (PTI) said.

Reports say many people were trapped in their homes when the landslide happened and dozens are still missing. Pithoragarh is a mountainous region near the border with China and is prone to monsoons after June.

The rescue operation, which also involves local police, has been hampered by poor weather, PTI reported. Uttarakhand Chief Minister Ramesh Pokriyal has gone to the district. He said relief work was under way.

The Chinese government seems to have got it right by spending over 500 billion dollars on stimulating the domestic economy. The Chinese economy has grown at a healthy 7.9% in the June quarter this year, which is way above the 6.% recorded in the first quarter of 2009.
The Chinese government is most likely to cut down on the stimulus spends in the coming months, which might cut down the growth rate in the coming quarters. But it might be more than offset by the likely revival in the exports to US and Europe.
With the 7.9% growth rate, China continues to be the fastest growing economy in the world.

The US economy continues to show bouts of positive and negative data. While few days back , there were reports of increase in industrial goods order, now there are reports of a 0.6% decline in the new home sales in the month of May 2009, when compared to previous month figure of 344000 units.
The figure is a sharp 32% decline over a year ago figure, and is a clear indication that the housing sector could take a very long time for recovery.
And make no mistake, the US economy as a whole cannot recover without a clear cut recovery in the housing sector. And housing sector recovery is linked to reduction in the unemployment rates from 9.4% levels and also on sustenance of the low mortgage rates.

The housing sector in UK is in shambles and the new mortgage lending for the month of May 2009 was at 2.3 billion pounds , which is the lowest since March 2001.
The mortgage rates have gone up marginally in the last few months owing to tight credit conditions, and also due to mounting mortgage losses for the British banks in the last few years.
Also the continuing increase in the job losses across sectors, has lead the prospective investors to delay their home purchase plans. Also the increasing number of seized homes in the market, has lead to fear in the minds of investors that the housing prices are yet to bottom out.

The World Bank has revised downwards its prediction for 2009 global GDP growth. The World bank had predicted in March 2009, that the global economy will contract by 1.7% in the year 2009.
Today, it has revised its prediction to a 2.9% contraction in Global GDP, due to continuing turmoil in US and Europe. The World Bank is expecting an addition of at least 100 million people to the poverty list, across the globe.
The downward revision has to be taken with a pinch of salt by all those optimists who are still hoping for a US recovery by the end of the year. Considering the very bad state of the government finances in US, the World Bank prediction looks realistic.

Emerging nations like India / China / Russia / Brazil and few other Asian and African countries, were the star performers in 2007, with 8.1% collective growth in GDP. Then again in 2008, they outperformed the developed world countries with a superb 5.8% growth.
The International Monetary Fund is now projecting a growth of only 1.8% for the group of emerging nations , with dominant contribution from China and India. The IMF report says that , if China and India were excluded from the group, then they would be posting a 1.6% negative growth rate.
The emerging nations will take a longer time to recover, because the first few quarters of revival in the developed world will benefit only their domestic companies.