Stoil Topalov

On Friday, the Athens stock exchange closed with 2053.7 points – the highest value of the general index since November 17^th 2008 and last month, it registered a record growth of 22%. This way, April 2009 became the most successful month on the stock exchange for the last decade. This week in the US, Dow Jones increased with 2.7% and closed with 8212.4 points. The index has been trading at above 8000 points for few days, when since the beginning of the year it was trading at about 7000 points. So now the registered growth since the beginning of March is 25.4%. Back then Dow Jones was trading at about 6500 points. The London FTSE 100 closed the week with 4235.7 points and this way registered a growth of 3.1%. The Japanese Nikkei jumped up with about 3% and closed the week with 8977.3 points.

This week, the worst news was for the university students. This year’s graduates are facing a big challenge – the weakest labor market since some decades. In the US, 44% of employers admit that this year they will hire fewer graduates than last year and 20% say that they will not hire anyone for now. In England, which like Greece is in recession, the government started an initiative to open nearly 3000 intern positions in companies like Microsoft, Marks & Spencer and also in the public sector like the police and the army. In Greece, the problem does not affect only the ones graduating this year. Former student, who have graduated five years ago, complain that they are forced to change their jobs very often, they are working in awful conditions, and they do not have any security when it comes to the upcoming months. The dead-lock of the youth became clear in December, when many of them participated in the protests, caused by the death of the 15 year old boy.

Most likely, the official data about the national debt and the budget deficit will be out tomorrow. The expectations are that national debt will be bigger than 97%, which was the expected one until now, and it might even exceed 100% of the GDP. New surveys show that Greece is the second poorest country in the EU – 20% of the population is under the poverty limit. The Greek National Bank forecasted a collapse of the real estate market prices, because the sale-trade fell to 29.4% for the first trimester of 2009 and generally, the prices have fallen with 7% since last year. The bank also bases its research on data, which shows that the construction activity has registered a fall of 33.5% since last year.