Finance ministers from the world’s largest developed economies are to meet in Germany this week against a backdrop of faltering global growth, scant inflationary pressures and a bond market in turmoil.
Likely to be high on their agenda — even if unofficially — is Greece and how it can stay in the troubled eurozone.
Figures due on Friday from the US that will almost certainly show that the world’s biggest economy contracted last quarter are also likely to feature prominently.
“With the negotiations between Greece and the rest of the eurozone at an impasse, an impatient German Chancellor Angela Merkel has warned that an agreement must be reached before the end of the month,” Standard Chartered Bank senior economist Thomas Costerg said
Greece will not make an IMF debt repayment due next month, as it does not have the money, a senior government official said on Sunday.
Analysts largely agree that the nation’s cash squeeze is increasingly acute and that fresh aid would be needed sooner or later to avoid bankruptcy.
Merkel and French President Francois Hollande held talks on Thursday with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on the sidelines of an EU summit in Riga, Latvia, hoping to speed the resolution of Athens’ debt crisis.
With business growth slowing in the eurozone and factory activity contracting again in China, market watchers have been looking to the US to drive growth rebounds.
However, a preliminary Reuters survey last week predicted that adjusted first-quarter US GDP numbers due on Friday would be massively revised down and show a 0.7 percent contraction in the first three months of this year.
“The poor Q1 2015 performance follows growth of just 2.2 percent in Q4 2014, so there has been very little growth over the last couple of quarters,” Deutsche Bank chief US economist Joseph LaVorgna said.
“As a result, market participants have started to wonder again whether the US economy might be in an extended period of cyclical stagnation,” he added.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
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],”