The nation's unemployment rate rose to 9.5 per cent from 9.4 per cent, the labor Department said, and most economists now believe it will top 10 per cent before the end of the year. Some 14.7 million people are now looking for work.
However steeped they may be in their tradition of discretion and secrecy, Swiss private bankers are eminently adaptable. “The world thinks Geneva is on its knees, but I think it’s looking to the next level,” says Sebastian Dovey, managing partner of Scorpio Partnership Ltd., a London-based wealth management adviser. “The Swiss private banking industry has a genetic ability to survive, as it has done for centuries.”
Former Chinese Vice Premier Zeng Peiyan urged today more supervision of nations issuing global reserve currencies, including oversight of fiscal and current- account deficits. He said there would be no dramatic change to the international currency system in the short term, so “your currency is likely to become my problem.”
Australia was one of few major economies including China and India to grow in the first quarter as government cash handouts and record interest-rate cuts stoked consumer spending. Gross domestic product expanded 0.4 percent from the previous three months, in contrast to a 3.8 percent decline in Japan and a 1.4 percent contraction in the U.S.
China hopes that the dollar’s exchange rate will “remain stable” as the world’s international reserve currency, Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei told reporters in Beijing.