World crises are deepening

Somber figures from Japan,the US and other parts indicate World crisis are deepening. While Japan sank deeper into recession with industrial output tumbling and inflation slipping to almost zero, key U.S. data later on Friday is also expected to mirror the worsening global financial crisis.Here are news excerpts from Forexpros.com.

Japanese economy worsening:
Japan's industrial production fell a record 9.6 percent in December, while annual core inflation slowed to a mere 0.2 percent. Rising unemployment, slowing household spending and no improvement in the industrial outlook added to fears that Japan was flirting with deflation and would post a horror GDP figure in February if exports do not bail it out. Wider Asian stocks were down 1.1 percent, the first daily drop in a week. Those falls followed similar declines on Wall Street after record monthly U.S. unemployment figures.Japanese companies including the Toyota Motor Corp, Sony Corp along with rival Nintendo Co, Ford Motor Co and Eastman Kodak Co, provided daily evidence of how deeply the global crisis was biting, costing governments trillions of dollars and threatening millions of jobs in the company.

More bad news is expected in the United States on Friday:
Economists think the U.S. Commerce Department will say gross domestic product, the broadest measure of U.S. economic activity, shrank at an annualized 5.4 percent in the fourth quarter even as the recession in the US is getting hold. As more jobs and company wealth were lost, Obama railed against "shameful" Wall St bonuses paid to executives at a time when taxpayer money was being used to shore up the crumbling financial system. Four U.S. airlines, led by Continental Airlines Inc, also posted losses, while Boeing Co shares fell 5.9 percent after it said it planned 10,000 job cuts

The picture in Europe is hardly any sunnier:
German unemployment rose almost twice as much as expected in January, euro zone economic sentiment hit a new low, while hundreds of thousands of French workers staged a nationwide strike demanding more was done to protect jobs and wages.

Little appetite:
Australian private sector credit shrank in December for the first time since 1992 as foreign banks cut lending to local companies.
Reserve Bank of Australia figures showed that total credit fell 0.3 percent in December, well below a forecast 0.5 percent rise, fuelling expectations the RBA would announce another hefty interest rate cut next week. Across the Tasman Sea, the once-favored New Zealand dollar fell to another six-year low after the central bank said interest rates would likely have to be cut further, a day after the benchmark rate was slashed by 150 basis points.