Week March 4 2011 – Weekly Recap & The Week Ahead
“I never buy at the bottom and I always sell too soon” — Barron Rothschild
1. China lowers growth target — China plans to lower its growth targets, as Premier Wen Jiabao says the country wants to avoid “unsustainable growth featuring industrial overcapacity and intensive resource consumption.” The official target for average GDP growth over the next five years will be 7%, down from the previous target of 7.5%.
2. Moody’s: €50 billion shortfall for Spain’s banks — Moody’s Investors Service on Monday said Spain’s banks could need up to €50 billion in recapitalization funds. That’s higher than the government’s own estimate that a maximum of €20 billion in recapitalization funds is needed and Moody’s prior estimate of €17 billion that it calculated at end-2010.
3. India’s economic growth slows to 8.2% — India’s economic growth slowed to 8.2% in the last three months of 2010 from the year-earlier period, as the manufacturing sector was held back in the wake of multiple interest-rate increases by the central bank amid rising prices.
4. U.K. freezes Gadhafi assets — The U.K. government said Sunday that it has frozen the assets of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi along with five of his children and people acting on their behalf, in line with a United Nations Security Council resolution.
5. Libyan rebels allow oil shipments to resume — Libyan rebels took control of a key city near Tripoli on Sunday, declared a provisional government and allowed oil shipments to resume in areas under their territory. There have been no oil shipments from the eastern territory in more than a week.
6. SEC probes bank lending — the SEC has asked for information from an unknown number of community and regional banks with large concentrations of commercial real estate loans. Regulators are reportedly trying to determine whether the banks restructured troubled loans in order to make them appear healthier than they really are, using a practice known as ‘extend and pretend’ or ‘amend and pretend.’
7. Beige Book: Continued expansion, climbing costs — in the latest Beige Book, all 12 Federal Reserve Districts reported overall economic activity continued to expand at a modest to moderate pace in January and early February, and 11 of 12 saw ‘solid growth in manufacturing production.’ Labor market conditions continued to ‘strengthen modestly’ in all districts.
8. European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet warned Thursday that the bank could move as early as next month to hike interest rates in order to keep rising food and raw-material prices from stoking inflation.
The week ahead — Economic data from Econoday.com:
