Global Economy | featured news

Decision day for the Greek debt crisis is drawing near, and insiders are predicting that if things go awry it could cost the world economy $1 trillion.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao cut his nation's 2012 growth target to an eight-year low of 7.5 percent and made boosting consumer demand the year's first priority as Beijing looks to wean the economy off its reliance on external demand and foreign capital.

In case you haven’t noticed, the economy is actually getting better. Noticeably better. Yes, it’s been painfully slow in coming, as we continue to tack against strong headwinds coming from Europe and the Middle East as well as the strong ebb tide created by the wind-down of fiscal stimulus. And certainly the recovery has been halting and uneven.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration is weighing the circumstances that could warrant tapping the nation's strategic oil reserve, aware that supply disruptions from Iran could harm the global economy, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said on Friday.

World Bank President Robert Zoellick said he plans to step down in June at the end of a five-year term in which he led the institution through a volatile period in the global economy.

Rising wages in developing countries and other factors have made keeping workers in the United States a much more viable option, the Obama administration argues.

Unemployment across the 17 countries that use the euro ended 2011 at a record high of one person in every 10, official figures showed Tuesday, a day after EU leaders acknowledged that they would have to boost economic growth with the same urgency that they had shown in combating their nations' debts....

The World Bank is moving to prop up the European banking system in response to the crisis in the region, echoing the steps it took during the 2008 world crisis and reflecting heightening fear that the euro’s problems are starting to crimp the global economy.

The International Labour Organization sounded the alarm on the global jobs situation in its annual report on Monday and called for more coordination of fiscal policies, repair and regulation of the financial sector and support for the real economy.

The world economy will lose momentum in 2012 but it will keep moving in the right direction, according to Reuters polls of around 600 economists who said crisis-hit Europe would drag on global growth.