Exports plummeted amid global contraction and a rising yen, and the ripple effects affected domestic demand as well.
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Although the surge in bank lending may temporarily cushion the impact of the global contraction on China's economy and employment, it will almost certainly lead to another surge in nonperforming loans.
The global contraction in demand is now forcing the Kazakh government, which has long been criticised for its over-reliance on oil and other commodities, to seek ways of diversifying its economy.
The demise of the investment banks, with their far higher gearing, as well as deleveraging among hedge funds and others in the shadow-banking system will add to a global credit contraction of many trillions of dollars.
There is only one chance for reversing this global cycle of contraction: a significant change in U.S. economic and governmental policies.
This is partly because the European handset market already shows some warnings signs of repeating the 2008 summer slump, which later metastasized into a sharp global phone volume contraction by Q4 2008 and Q1 2009.
And this week the IMF's chief economist said that the contraction in global demand could exceed anything we've seen since the Great Depression itself.
There are also signs that the rate of contraction in the global economy has slowed in recent months, while conditions in global financial markets have also improved.
Now that the Lubrizol deal is closed, perhaps Buffett wants to slow his takeover machine until he can get a better grasp of how severe the contraction in the global economy will be.
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Most enterprises have already significantly cut discretionary IT spending growth over the past several years and, barring a global economic catastrophe and significant contraction of operations, they have little room to reduce IT spending further over the long run.
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"Anything above 50 indicates expanding activity and anything below indicates contraction, " said Global Insight economist Howard Archer.
The job cut announcement comes as global banks struggle with a number of challenges including revenue contraction, the growing European debt crisis and an overall slowdown in the global economy.
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The reasons are obvious: to combat the super-high yen, to counteract 3.11 disaster-related contraction, to respond to global, particularly European, financial market instability.
In a surprising sign of global economic recovery, office markets are transitioning from contraction to growth, but most of the recovery is happening outside of the U.S. and Europe.
New orders, a proxy for global demand for Chinese goods, reversed a 48.3-contraction reading from August, jumping to 50.9 in September.
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Deteriorating global sentiment may have been a factor in Vietnam's manufacturing contraction in February, as HSBC's Vietnam PMI slipped to 48.3 from January's 50.1 reading.
The OBR said much of the contraction in the UK economy could be blamed on the rise in global energy and commodity prices.
Essentially matching the moves in the global equity markets the common currency fell slightly after German factory orders posted a 0.5% contraction for the month of May.
For over a year, Silvio Berlusconi has been claiming that the Italian economy was not as badly affected by the global crisis as others (even though GDP shrank by 3.0%in 2009, a bigger contraction than in France, Spain and Britain).
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