WORLD ECONOMIC GROWTH WILL SLOW TO 1 PERCENT IN 2009

DOHA, Dec 1 (Reuters) - World economic growth will slow to 1 percent in 2009 from 2.5 percent this year as the financial crisis bites and the global economy may even contract if stimulus packages prove too little too late, a U.N. report said.
The report on World Economic Situation and Prospects 2009, an advance copy of which was issued at a development conference in Doha on Monday, urged coordinated international stimulus packages to limit the impact of a downturn in Western economies on poorer countries.
Next year's growth forecasts compare to global growth rates of 3.5 to 4 percent from 2004-2007 and the report said the economic environment for developing countries had deteriorated sharply after early complacency.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/feedarticle/8103822

ARGENTINA PROPOSING TO NATIONALIZE PRIVATE PENSION PLANS

President Cristina Kirchner of Argentina is proposing to nationalize private pension funds. She has justified spending the proposed seizure of $30 billion dollars in pension assets. Kirchner is accusing the funds of having instrumental "Policies of Plunder". She said Argentina was setting an example of how to deal with the global financial crisis.

SOME BELIEVE THAT AMERICA HAS FALLEN FROM POWER

John Gray, wrote an article in The Observer, Sunday, September 28, 2008 about America' s position in the world:




The global financial crisis will see the US falter in the same way the Soviet Union did when the Berlin Wall came down. The era of American dominance is over


Our gaze might be on the markets melting down, but the upheaval we are experiencing is more than a financial crisis, however large. Here is a historic geopolitical shift, in which the balance of power in the world is being altered irrevocably. The era of American global leadership, reaching back to the Second World War, is over.