« March 2008 | Ana Sayfa | May 2008 »
Sales of existing homes fell in March, the seventh drop in the past eight months, as the spring sales season got off to a rocky start, Associated Press reports:
The median price of a home was down compared with a year ago, and some economists predicted home prices could keep falling for many more months given all the troubles weighing on housing, from a severe credit crunch to a rising tide of foreclosures.
Housing starts were up for January to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 222,700 units, compared to 184,700 units in December, according to Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation figures, CBC News reports:
A seasonally adjusted annual rate measures monthly figures adjusted to remove normal seasonal variation and multiplied by 12 to reflect annual levels.
"Historically low mortgage rates, solid employment and income growth as well as a high level of consumer confidence continue to underpin the high level of housing starts," chief economist Bob Dugan said in a news release.
A senior official of the Asian Development Bank said that high food prices will be a long-term trend.
"We all have to reconcile with the fact that the era of cheap food is over," ADB Managing Director General Rajat Nag was quoted by Kyodo as telling reporters in Singapore.
The United Arab Emirates backed its Gulf Arab neighbors in a plan to get a single currency on track, saying it would not adjust the peg linking its dirham to the dollar as the region prepared for a monetary union, International Herald Tribune reports:
Investors scaled back bets that some countries in the area, the world's biggest oil-exporting region, would revalue their currencies unilaterally after Gulf central bankers agreed at a meeting to step up efforts to complete a monetary union by 2010.
IN TWO RESPECTS, Poland's economy resembles America's. Consumer prices are rising at about 4% year, while imports trump exports by a margin of around 4% of gross domestic product. The similarities stop there. Poland's economy is expected to grow nearly 6% this year net of inflation, some five percentage points faster than projected U.S. growth. Polish stocks have produced more than four times the gains of American ones over the past five years. One Polish Zloty bought an American quarter five years ago. Today it buys 46 cents, SmartMoney reports:
Eleven months ago, on a trip to Bialystok, I found time to wipe the lager foam from my nose and write up a recommendation of Central European Distribution (CEDC). Based in Warsaw, it's Poland's largest distributor of local and imported beer and spirits. Poland, in turn, is the world's No. 2 vodka drinker and Europe's No. 4 beer drinker.
Federal Reserve policy makers, sensing both renewed inflation dangers and a possible economic boost from government rebate checks, may be nearing a pause in interest-rate cuts after the fastest reductions in two decades, Bloomberg reports.
In remarks this week, Fed Governor Kevin Warsh, San Francisco Fed President Janet Yellen and three other district- bank presidents voiced concerns about rising prices. Harvard University economist Martin Feldstein, who for almost 30 years has headed the group that decides the dates of recessions, called for an end to Fed rate cuts.
This week, Tehran hosts the 22nd meeting of representatives from the five littoral states in the Caspian Sea region - Russia, Iran, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan - working overtime to put together a new "convention for the legal regime of the Caspian Sea", reports Asian Times.
As a followup to last October's summit of leaders of the littoral states in Tehran, the two-day meeting is unlikely to reach any substantial agreement, although it is a good warmer for a related economic summit of Caspian states to be held in Russia this summer.
