The eurozone debt crisis is “killing off” Britain’s fragile economic recovery and European leaders are close to the “moment of truth” after more than two years of uncertainty, British Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne wrote in a newspaper article.
Osborne said that decisions taken by the currency bloc in the coming months could determine the economic future of the whole of Europe for the next decade and beyond.
As eurozone finance ministers agreed to lend Spain up to 100 billion euros to prop up its banks, Osborne said there were “already signs that a solution will be found” to the debt crisis.
“Our recovery — already facing powerful headwinds from high oil prices and the debt burden left behind by the boom years — is being killed off by the crisis on our doorstep,” Osborne wrote in the article published on the Sunday Telegraph’s Web site on Saturday.
Britain has benefited, along with the US and Germany, from investors seeking a safe haven from the eurozone’s troubles, driving down UK borrowing costs, he added.
However, the uncertainty in Europe, Britain’s biggest trading partner, has stifled business investment and choked its recovery, he wrote.
“We are approaching a moment of truth for the eurozone. After more than two years of uncertainty, instability and slow growth, decisions taken over the next few months could determine the economic future of the whole European continent for the next decade and beyond,” Osbourne added.
Britain’s economy has fallen into its second recession since the financial crisis started after a shock contraction at the start of this year, heaping pressure on British Prime Minister David Cameron’s coalition government.
“A resolution of the eurozone crisis would do more than anything else to give our economy a boost,” Osbourne wrote.
The eurozone must follow the “remorseless logic” of moving toward much greater fiscal integration, he added. That would mean stronger economies doing more to help weaker ones and more pooling of resources, possibly through the issue of common euro bonds.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day