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...Texans prepare for the holidays, many are thankful that the state has so far dodged the recessionary bullet. With an unemployment rate of 5.6%, well below the 6.7% national rate, the Lone Star State continues to add jobs - 230,000 for the past 12 months as of the end of October. And while sales-tax receipts, a major source of revenue for state and local government, are no longer growing at double-digit rates, they were still up almost 5% in November over the same time last year. Perhaps the best holiday news for Texans, who see long-distance drives...
...Global automotive production is significantly worse than just two months ago," said Johnson Controls chairman and chief executive officer Stephen A. Roell. "Our customers continue to announce production reductions and plant shutdowns on a weekly basis. Every region of the world is down by a double-digit rate," he added...
With the exchange rate hovering just below 90 yen to the dollar, and having risen to 87 on Wednesday after the U.S. cut interest rates, the Bank of Japan decided on Friday to cut its benchmark rate to 0.1%. The move was done on a near unanimous vote among policy makers. However, with its overnight rate already at 0.3%, it is unclear what such a small rate cut could achieve...
...appreciation of the yen slashes Japan's GDP growth rate by 0.3% to 0.4% points, says Masafumi Yamamoto, head of foreign exchange strategy for Japan at Royal Bank of Scotland. "Yen appreciation is also causing the Nikkei [stock index] plunge," he says. And that's affecting the confidence of Japan's businesses. On Monday, figures of the Bank of Japan's tankan survey, a quarterly survey of business sentiment in Japan, fell to a seven-year low. The tankan figure showed the steepest quarter over quarter decline in 34 years. The economy is expected to decline 0.8% for the fiscal...
...until last year was abnormally weak. Now it's coming back to normal," he says. Compared to the mid-1990s, he says, the strong yen's negative impact on the Japanese economy is "not that large." To have the same effect as the postwar peak in 1995, the exchange rate would have to reach 48 yen to the dollar, he says, because the U.S. economy has experienced 40% cumulative inflation while Japan has remained relatively flat. "If we think about the inflation rate differentials, the yen is not that strong right...