Double-dip recession in 17 eurozone nations; How shale gas will reshape US' role; The new Japanese worker is Chinese

1 Double-dip recession in 17eurozone nations (Larry Elliott & Josephine Moulds in The Guardian) The head of the European Central Bank has warned that time is running out to resolve the crisis in the eurozone as the latest figures showed the 17 nations of the single currency have slid into a double-dip recession. With financial markets convinced that even worse data will emerge over the winter, Mario Draghi urged policy makers to take full advantage of the breathing space won by the ECB when it announced in the summer it would buy unlimited amounts of government bonds from troubled euro zone countries.

Brussels announced that the euro zone was officially back in recession after a 0.1% fall in output in the third quarter. The decline followed a 0.2% drop in gross domestic product in the second quarter. Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund announced that she was cutting short a visit to Asia in order to hold more talks with European policy makers about how to end the crisis.

Greece, where the economy shrank at an annual rate of almost 8% in the third quarter, is pressing George Osborne for details of Greek citizens who have moved funds into HSBC accounts in the tax haven of Jersey. Germany and France - the two biggest economies in the eurozone - posted modest growth of 0.2% in the third quarter, but this was more than offset by the recession spreading northwards from the countries on the single currency's southern periphery.

2 How shale gas will reshape US’ role (Julian Borger & Larry Elliott in The Guardian) US reliance on the Gulf for its oil – and its consequent need to maintain a dominant presence in the Middle East to keep the oil flowing – has been one of the constants of the post-1945 status quo. That could be turned on its head.  It's been dubbed "the homecoming". Cheap energy is being seen as the dawn of a new golden age for the world's biggest economy.

The reason is simple. The US is the home to vast shale oil and gas deposits made commercially viable by improvements to a 200-year-old technique called fracking and by the relentlessly high cost of crude. Professor Dieter Helm, an energy expert at Oxford University, said: "In the US, shale gas didn't exist in 2004. Now it represents 30% of the market."

Looming self-sufficiency in energy has several economic benefits to the US. One is the direct impact on production and employment in the sector, with Barack Obama noting in this year's state of the union speech that fracking was likely to support 600,000 jobs by the end of the decade and that the US now had enough gas to keep it supplied for the next 100 years if current consumption patterns were maintained.

3 The new Japanese worker is Chinese (Alexandra Harney in The New York Times) These days Japan’s newsstands are filled with shrill, hyperbolic and sometimes nationalistic titles about China. “The China Risk.” “The End of China.” “China: Withdraw or Stay the Course.” Such headlines reflect the anxiety of a declining nation that fears its rising neighbor.

And yet, without debate or comment, Japan is opening its arms to Chinese immigrants as never before, relying on Chinese workers to fill jobs once reserved for locals, especially in the service sector. No one in Tokyo seems surprised anymore to hear a Chinese accent or see a Chinese name on the name tags of waiters or convenience-store clerks. Among Japan’s small foreign population, there are now more Chinese — 674,879 as of last year — than people from any other country. That’s about 10 times as many Chinese as were here in 1984, according to the Ministry of Justice.

The number of foreign workers in Japan remains small: They account for less than one percent of all workers. But the changing composition of the foreign workforce reveals a subtle evolution in Japan’s labor market and popular attitudes. Most Chinese workers come through the back door, as exchange students or under vocational training programs.

Japanese companies say they are hiring more foreigners, particularly Chinese, to bring their practices closer to international norms and cultivate employees who understand both the Japanese and Chinese markets. Hiring foreigners can help keep down costs, not only for stores and restaurants in cities like Tokyo, but also for manufacturers in the automotive and electronics sectors. If Japanese customers are now willing to accept more foreigners working for retailers and in restaurants, why not in other service roles, like nursing and elderly care?

A Japanese journalist friend argues that Japan has been able to allow more foreigners in because it hasn’t openly debated its immigration policy. A frank discussion would only awaken immigration’s opponents, he says. But it may be time to face the issue squarely. A country where almost one-quarter of the population is over 65 and the workforce has been shrinking since 1998 must do more than open its back door to part-time foreign workers. It should throw open the front door and maybe even a few windows. Japan needs to give more foreign workers more reasons to build their lives here.