Stoil Topalov

This week a statistic came out about unemployment in Greece and it says that during February 4136 people have lost their jobs and another 774 have gone on mandatory leave. Since November 2008 the unemployment in Greece has increased with 12 012 people. The most problematic sectors are the industrial and textile fields. The newest information shows that the unemployment in Greece has reached 7.8% and it can increase during the second half of the 2009.

Unemployment problems exist also in West Europe and the USA. The statistics agency Eurostat announced that during January, nearly 250 000 workers from the Euro zone have lost their jobs and this way the unemployment has reached 8.2%. The agency also informs that the inflations will fall to 1.1% - far away from the comfortable levels of around 2% of the European Central Bank. Members of the bank’s board of directors mentioned about the opportunity to have new decreases of key interest percentages, when the board meets in March.

On the other hand the States announced shrinkage of the US economy with 6.2% and the export of goods and services has fallen with 23.6%. Also, the US announced that over 5 million people are unemployed – the lowest level of unemployment since 1982. The second largest automobile company in the world General Motors, reported annual losses of $31 billion and most likely it will have to ask for help from the State. This week, the US government had to buy 36% of Citigroup.

As a result of the bad economic news, the global stock exchanges had big drops. Dow Jones started the week with 7431 points and finished it with 7123, or a drop of nearly 5%. In England, the FTSE 100 did pretty well by losing only 75 points, closing with 3822. The Athens stock exchange closed with 1535 points, or a weekly loss of 4.3%.