Today’s session brought indexes in Asia and the Pacific region, the strongest decrease their day for the past eight months, but ended the week with a painful decline in most markets in the region. Stood at the head Japanese, Chinese and South Korean securities market, which lost between 4% and 6% of its market capitalization over the past five trading sessions. Reason for mass sales became the news of the failure of the Dubai government investment holding company Dubai World to meet its obligations to creditors. The Fund has a debt for 59 billion dollars, equivalent to most of Dubai’s foreign debt to 80 billion dollars. Meanwhile, the Japanese yen rose to its highest rate against the dollar since 1995. Financial difficulties of the Dubai World stocks fell on banks and insurers in the region, led by HSBC Holdings, whose shares fell nearly 8 percent. This is due to investor concerns about exposure of large international banks to fund Dubai. Construction companies also suffered because of the activity of the Dubai World in the construction sector. The regional index MSCI Asia Pacific, which brings together companies from stock markets in ten Asian countries plus Australia and New Zealand, slid 3.2 percent to 113.78 points. This is the strongest decrease in the stock measure within one day of 30 March so far. Financial companies in its composition have contributed most to the sharp drop in MSCI Asia Pacific. The good news that unemployment in Japan fell for the third consecutive month in October, while consumer spending increased household failed to stop reductions in the indexes. Thus MSCI Asia Pacific to cut their lead to five-year bottom of 9 March to 61 percent. For the past five trading sessions the index fell by 2,7 percent.
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Lithuania will not adhere to the “painful” scheme for adopting the euro, which will shrink consumption and greatly harm the economy, said Prime Minister of the country Cubilus Andrews. The country probably will fail to meet EU requirements for the deficit within 3 percent of GDP by 2011, so the adoption of the euro can not happen before 2013, said in an interview yesterday, Finance Minister of Lithuania Ingrid Simon. “These are very ambitious and very painful measures, and, of course, there are any limits on what measures can enter,” said Cubilus. The aim is not to kill the entire economy and stability in society by reducing costs, salaries and pensions. Lithuania’s economy contracted by 14,3 per cent in the third quarter after the government took budget cuts, equivalent to 8 percent of GDP this year. Even after these stringent measures, the evaluation of the European Commission Lithuania will have a deficit of 9,7 per cent in 2011 to 9.8 per cent for this. Lithuania, whose currency – liras is tied to the euro should be introduced European single currency “as soon as possible, but the opportunities in turn have practical limits and practical measures should be introduced,” said Cubilus. The government has proposed the 2010 budget cuts of 5 percent of GDP, aimed at social welfare. Lithuania lags behind neighboring Estonia, which plans to join the eurozone from January 1, 2011, after years of using the government budget surplus for the establishment of reserves. This allowed the public finances remain intact even after the crisis hit the country.
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The main stock indexes in the United States did not make an exception and also went to negative territory in early session today after holiday similar to those in Asia and Europe. Among losers ran those companies from the financial, energy and extractive industries. Reason for this were concerns about the inability of the state’s largest investment holding company of Dubai to pay its obligations. The way in which world financial markets reacted to news about the financial difficulties of the emirate of Dubai, showed how market participants remain sensitive to any bad news from the financial sector. Today’s trading will be shortened by half and therefore the liquidity is expected to remain low until the end of the trading session, which will end at 20:00 pm local time. The index of the 30 most liquid companies large and Dow Jones IA decreases by 1.2% to 10 341.6 points an hour and a half after the beginning of the session. On Wednesday, the stock measure reached its highest peak in the last 13 months of good data on the housing market and the labor market. A broader index S & P 500 also lost 1.2 percent to 1 097.3 points, after the very beginning of the session are reduced by 2.5%. The index, which combines all companies in exchange Nasdaq – Nasdaq Composite, retreated 1% to 2 153.5 points.
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