Germany triggers triple-dip fears; India inflation at five-year low; The 'soft containment' of Russia

1 Germany triggers triple-dip fears (Phillip Inman in The Guardian) Germany has slashed its growth forecasts for this year and 2015, sparking calls for a public spending boost to prevent the eurozone falling into a triple-dip recession. Berlin now expects growth of just 1.2% this year and the same in 2015, down from 1.8% and 2%, in the face of slowing export growth.

It came as official Eurostat figures showed that industrial production across the eurozone slumped in August by an alarming 1.8% month-on-month, meaning it was 1.9% lower than a year ago.

The economy minister, Sigmar Gabriel, blamed geopolitical tensions and global economic problems overseas. An October survey showed a big fall in investor sentiment in Germany, mirroring reports through the summer months of stumbling business confidence following the erosion of previously buoyant demand for German goods.

But amid signs that the German economy is also stalling, the anti-austerity movement is gaining confidence. Last week France’s new economy minister, Emmanuel Macron, called for a eurozone-wide €300bn spending boost, while the Italian prime minister, Matteo Renzi, has stepped up pressure on Brussels to adopt looser spending rules to spur investment and growth.

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/oct/15/triple-dip-recession-eurozone-fears-germany-cuts-growth-forecasts

2 India inflation at five-year low (BBC) India's inflation rate fell to a five-year low in September because of lower food and fuel prices. The Wholesale Price Index (WPI), India's main gauge of inflation, rose 2.38% in September from a year earlier. That is the smallest increase since October 2009. India's WPI rose by 3.74% in August.

Despite the moderation, analysts caution that the central bank is unlikely to lower the cost of borrowing in the near future. That is because of poor monsoon rains that could affect future crops and drive food prices back up. In addition, continuing geopolitical tensions could also see oil prices spiking up again.

Data also showed that falling global crude oil prices helped drive down India's fuel inflation to 1.3% in September from 4.5% in August. Asia's third-largest economy has been plagued by chronically high inflation. But if price increases can be curbed in the long term, it could pave the way for the central bank to cut interest rates next year to help boost growth. The Indian economy expanded by 5.7% in the April-to-June quarter as compared with the previous year.

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-29609939

3 The ‘soft containment’ of Russia (Jonathan Eyal in Straits Times) Notwithstanding the bravado of President Vladimir Putin, his aides are deeply worried. They know that the Russian economy is already hurting badly as a result of the sanctions imposed by the West. They worry that, unless Moscow manages to have these sanctions lifted soon, Russia will be condemning itself to many years of confrontation; the integration of their country into the global economy could be reversed, with catastrophic effects on its people.

The fate of the rouble, the country's currency, says it all. Its value has dropped by a quarter this year, and it is now in freefall: "The dollar is 40 rouble, the euro is 50 rouble, and Putin is 62", as the joke now making the rounds in Moscow succinctly puts it. At least $100 billion worth of investment capital has fled Russia since March, when the West imposed sanctions in the wake of Russia's involvement in the Ukraine crisis.

Officials in Moscow claim that, if they cannot borrow the money they need from Western banks, they will turn to Asia for cash. But that's just bluster. For, even if significant Asian banks are willing to risk US or European punitive measures by doing business with Russia, they may not have the volume of cash that the Russians need to borrow, nor are they likely to offer this at competitive rates.

But the most ominous development for Russia is the drop in energy prices on which its economy largely relies. The US shale revolution made possible by advances in production techniques is likely to result in flooding the gas market. The Russians have done their sums: They know that they cannot afford a lengthy showdown with the West. As Finance Minister Siluanov openly admitted last week, his entire economic forecasting is now predicated on the assumption that sanctions will be lifted by the end of this year.

What we may witness is what the European Council on Foreign Relations, a think-tank, calls the "soft containment" of Russia, perhaps for as long as Mr Putin remains in power. It will be soft in political and military terms, but very painful for ordinary Russians. The story of Russia carries a warning for other nations, for it acts as a reminder that economic interdependence cannot be taken for granted, that it can be unwound and, once it begins unwinding, it develops a dangerous dynamic all of its own.

http://www.straitstimes.com/news/opinion/eye-the-world/story/the-soft-containment-russia-20141015

Global oil takes a tumble; UK shopping levels lowest since 2008; Big salaries as ammo in startup talent war

1 Global oil takes a tumble (BBC) Global oil prices have fallen again amid worries about slow global growth and reports that key oil producers want to maintain current output levels. Brent crude fell to a near four-year low of $87.74 a barrel earlier, before recovering some ground to $88.46. US light crude oil was down $0.93 at $84.76, close to a two-year low.

Weak economic growth will cut demand for oil. Saudi Arabia has indicated it could cope with lower prices. Last week, the International Monetary Fund shaved its forecast for global growth for this year from 3.4% to 3.3%. It said overall global growth would be held back by weakness in Japan, Latin America and Europe, with any recovery in the advanced economies "weak and uneven".

Although some members of the Opec oil producers' cartel are pushing for production cuts to take the oil price back to the $100-a-barrel level, Reuters reported that Saudi Arabia had let it be known informally that it would be unlikely to push for a cut in production to boost prices even if they fell to $80 a barrel. Oil prices have fallen 20% since June.

The other more dramatic development has been the growing extraction of shale oil in the US, which has increased the country's production of oil significantly. The International Energy Agency has forecast that the US will soon overtake Saudi Arabia and Russia to become the world's biggest oil producer.

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-29594761

2 UK shopping levels lowest since 2008 (Larry Elliott in The Guardian) The weakest underlying performance by high street and online stores since the depth of the 2008-09 recession provided fresh evidence on Tuesday of a slowdown in the economy. An unusually warm September, the continued weakness of spending in supermarkets and a dip in the rapid growth of internet sales meant spending dropped sharply last month, the British Retail Consortium said.

In its monthly health check conducted jointly with KPMG, the BRC said total sales were 0.8% lower in September 2014 than in the same month a year earlier. The year-on-year drop in consumer spending was the most pronounced since December 2008, apart from months affected by the timing of Easter.

The chancellor, George Osborne, said last week that the problems of the eurozone were already having an impact on the UK economy, and the Bank of England is also detecting signs that the rapid pace of growth seen since the spring of 2013 will not be maintained. Mark Carney, the Bank’s governor, said that stalling growth in the eurozone would be only one of the factors that would affect the timing of an increase in interest rates but accepted that slower global growth would bear down on inflation.

Helen Dickinson, the director general of the British Retail Consortium, said: “In September, we saw the lowest retail sales figures since December 2008, excluding Easter distortions. This can be attributed to a number of factors including the continuing decline in food sales. Furthermore, there was exceptionally low demand for items such as boots and coats, resulting in the lowest fashion sales performance since April 2012. However, demand for big-ticket items continues to be strong, with furniture outperforming all other categories.”

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/oct/14/shopping-levels-fall-british-retail-consortium

3 Big salaries as ammo in startup talent war (Kristen V Brown in San Francisco Chronicle) In Silicon Valley, talent is everything. Some companies hand out lavish, $20,000 bonuses or all-expenses-paid vacations to anyone who can point them to the next coding genius. Others hang out at tech company shuttle bus stops, hoping to snag talent from Facebook or Google as engineers line up for their morning commute.

Weeby.co in Mountain View, however, is wooing workers not with stock or perks but with higher salaries. The company is offering potential employees a chance to pull in $250,000 a year (plus equity, of course). That’s well above the going rate at startups, where software engineers make an average of $100,000 to $150,000 a year, according to financial management company Wealthfront.

“There is a philosophical approach in startups that you’re changing the world, but if you want to work here you’re going to have to take a pay cut,” said Michael Carter, 29, Weeby’s CEO. By asking people to forgo higher salaries in favor of equity, startups fail to attract a broader variety of talent — say, people with kids who can’t afford the financial risk, Carter said. Instead those employees decide to work for bigger companies.

Weeby is also instituting a coding test that all candidates must pass in order to land an interview, a move meant to ensure that the company emphasizes technical chops. Carter is fond of saying that the difference between a startup that booms and one that busts is often the technical talent it manages to attract. Like everyone else, he wants the best.

http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Big-salaries-are-the-latest-ammo-in-the-startup-5778537.php

'Sub-prime autos the next crisis'; France outlook cut to 'negative'; Ebola on the move

1 ‘Sub-prime autos the next crisis’ (Chris Arnade in The Guardian) Many people are buying cars with the help of Wall Street banks, which are lending money to people with bad credit again – just as they did prior to the financial crisis of 2007. In the last crisis, it was houses. The $26bn worth of subprime car loans is far short of the $500bn of subprime real estate securitization in 2006, at the top of the housing bubble, partly because cars are a lot cheaper than houses.

This time, like last time, Wall Street isn’t directly lending poor people money. That part is done by an array of smaller financial companies in strip malls and office parks. The smaller financial companies sell the loans to Wall Street. Wall Street puts them into big piles, sorts them from weakest to strongest credit scores, and then sells the pieces and parts of them to their customers. The customers can be hedge funds in Greenwich, Connecticut, or other banks. No part of the loan goes unsold: from the highest rates to the lowest-rated, buyers are always there.

This process is called subprime securitization, and about $26bn of it will be done this year in auto loans to poor people. Who are these borrowers? To quote Wall Street: “Obligors who do not qualify for conventional motor vehicle financing as a result of, among other things, a lack of or adverse credit history, low income levels and/or the inability to provide adequate down payments.”

Meaning people who usually can’t borrow money. These are loans that charge on average 17% a year, often exceed 20%, and sometimes are as high as 30%. If 20% for a loan isn’t onerous enough, many now come with a technological twist: the newer loans will turn off your car if you fall behind. The $26bn of the financial crisis alone is not enough to cause a financial crisis, but the philosophy behind it is. These are loans to desperate people at desperate rates being facilitated by Wall Street.

http://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/oct/12/buying-cars-subprime-autos-next-financial-crisis

2 France outlook cut to negative (BBC) Credit rating agency Standard and Poor's has cut France's credit outlook to 'negative', due to concerns about the country's struggling economic recovery. However, it affirmed France's AA/A-1+ rating, the third-highest rating.

Official figures from the Bank of France showed that the French economy did not grow at all in the second quarter, and for the third quarter it is forecasting growth of 0.2%. It added that it expected France's budget deficit will average 4.1% of GDP between 2014 and 2017, an increase from earlier projections of 3.2%.

The French government has also said it will reduce its budget deficit to below the EU threshold of 3% of GDP by 2017, two years later than promised. S&P said the negative outlook indicated a one in three chance that certain events would occur which would push it to downgrade France's actual credit rating within the next two years. S&P last downgraded France in November 2013 when it cut its rating to AA.

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-29578406

3 Ebola on the move (Khaleej Times) The contagious disease Ebola is no more Africa-specific. It is now on the move and a couple of cases had been tested positive in regions as far as Britain and the US.  The mandatory screening of passengers from African destinations landing in the US is a case in point, which hints at the level of alert that is underway to fight the virus. This decision has come close on the heels of concerns that US President Barack Obama expressed over the spread of disease, and the slow pace of response from the world governments in containing the infectious bug.

And now with reports that a Texas health worker — who treated an Ebola victim before his death — has been tested positive for the virus, the disease is supposed to be fought on a war footing. Many such suspected patients that are quarantined elsewhere at Western airports and in isolated clinics might prove out to be potential carriers of the virus, impacting the health workers and medical practitioners.

This demands a high-profile research and development index as well as a foolproof environment to contain the virus. As hoped by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon an early discovery of a vaccine can be a source of great relief in preserving the world from going the Ebola way. The symptoms of the dreaded disease are so concealed that any patient with slight fever can get away from the mandatory checks at airports and clinics only to explode later into a carrier of death. This phenomenon has to be scientifically fought and exterminated.

http://khaleejtimes.com/kt-article-display-1.asp?xfile=/data/editorial/2014/October/editorial_October26.xml&section=editorial

Series of bad news, fears hit global stock markets; Nobel prize and a message for India & Pakistan; Microsoft, male culture and gender pay gap

1 Series of bad news, fears hit global stock markets (Nick Fletcher in The Guardian) Global stock markets have come under renewed pressure in a widespread sell-off prompted by fears of a global economic slowdown, tensions in the Middle East and the spread of the Ebola virus. After another volatile week, the FTSE 100 slumped to its worst level since 9 October last year, falling 91.88 points or 1.4% to 6,339.97.

Germany’s Dax dropped 2.4% on Friday to 8,788 and France’s Cac closed 1.6% lower at 4,073. After European markets had closed, Finland was stripped of its top-notch triple A rating and France warned it faced the risk of further downgrade to its AA rating. S&P was the first of the major ratings agencies to cut Finland’s prized rating because of its fear the country could suffer “protracted stagnation” and its exposure to Russia and the eurozone. Only Germany and Luxembourg remain triple A rating in the eurozone.

This week’s market declines followed news that the International Monetary Fund had cut its global growth forecasts for 2014 to 3.3% from the 3.7% it was predicting in April. While it expects a pickup to 3.8% in 2015, it warned its predictions could still be too optimistic.

The outlook for China has been preoccupying investors recently, given the country is the driving force for much of the global economy. Recent data raised fears of a slowdown, with a disappointing service sector survey this week adding more evidence. Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank, added to the gloom on Thursday by saying in Washington that the eurozone recovery was running out of steam.

News that the first case of Ebola outside West Africa had been confirmed in Spain added to the market pessimism. On top of that came the current geopolitical tensions, with air strikes on Isis, the Ukraine situation and the repercussions of the recent protests in Hong Kong. The prospect of a global slowdown also hit oil prices. With oversupply and falling demand, Brent crude fell more than 3% over the week, standing at just over $89 a barrel on Friday.

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/oct/10/world-markets-slide-bad-news-slowdown-ebola-eurozone

2 Nobel prize and a message for India & Pakistan (Jawed Naqvi in Dawn) By awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Pakistan’s Malala Yousufzai and India’s Kailash Satyarthi on Friday, at a time when their militaries were locked in a volatile spiral on the borders, the Nobel Committee has shone the torch on a more real enemy the countries jointly confront — jeopardised future for millions of their children, analysts said.

Ms Yousufzai did not lose time to broach the idea of India-Pakistan peace, saying the award had emboldened her to invite the two prime ministers to the prize ceremony in Stockholm in December. Mr Satyarthi and Ms Yousufzai spoke on the phone and decided to persuade their leaders to come to Stockholm where the two would hopefully end their self-imposed aloofness with each other.

At the age of 17, Malala is now the youngest Nobel Prize winner ever. She and Mr Satyarthi will share the $1.11million prize to be awarded in Oslo on Dec 10. Mr Satyarthi would find that children in Pakistan too are engaged in child labour, including in agriculture and in the worst forms of child labour in bonded labour. Ms Yousufzai would find that millions of Indian girls of different religions, castes and regions face problems that are similar to the ones she confronted at home — a patriarchal resistance to their growth.

http://www.dawn.com/news/1137256/a-message-to-militaries-of-both-countries

3 Microsoft, male culture and gender pay gap (Straits Times) A well-known picture in tech circles, taken in 1978, shows the first 11 employees at Microsoft. Two are women. One of them left two years later after a pay dispute. Almost four decades later, the ratio has improved: About a third of Microsoft's 110,000 or so employees are women.

But the company's pay practices and attitude toward women are still open to question and will likely be taken up at the board level, according to one director, Maria Klawe. The issue hit the headlines and social media when new chief executive officer Satya Nadella suggested women in tech shouldn't ask for pay raises but should instead trust the system and rely on "karma" to get what they deserve.

He later said he was wrong, but the damage was done, reinforcing the view that Microsoft - and the tech industry generally - is a boys' club. Klawe, 63, said she has been pressing for hiring and promoting women at Microsoft since she joined the board five years ago, but the issue of pay raises for women had not been discussed by the board. "I suspect it might be now," she said.

Microsoft has never been a beacon of diversity. Karin Carter, who worked at the company in its heyday from 1983 until 1997 and went on to write a book about the experience, said there were only five or so women programmers at Microsoft when she joined, with the vast majority of women in support positions.

The issue of unequal pay looms large. Numbers from job site Glassdoor show that men tend to earn more doing a similar job than women at Microsoft, though the data is far from complete and based on voluntary disclosure. Microsoft is not alone. Data from the Bureau of Labour Statistics shows that men earn 24 per cent more, on average, than women in the tech sector.

http://www.straitstimes.com/news/business/companies/story/after-chief-executives-gaffe-microsoft-board-look-gender-pay-gap-male-

Eurozone shows symptoms of chronic economic illness; Ebola is 'entrenched and accelerating' in West Africa; The concept of a second Singapore

1 Eurozone shows symptoms of chronic economic illness (Larry Elliott in The Guardian) Christine Lagarde, the head of the International Monetary Fund, has warned that the eurozone is displaying the symptoms of Japan’s longstanding economic problems and needs fresh moves to avert the threat of recession.

With the IMF’s annual meeting in Washington likely to be dominated by the failure of Europe to emerge from the financial crisis of six years ago, Lagarde dropped a broad hint that she wanted Germany to run down its budget surplus to boost growth. She said there was a “serious risk” of a recession in the eurozone if nothing was done to avert a new downturn.

Asked if the eurozone was the new Japan, a country that has never fully recovered from the financial crash at the end of the 1980s, Lagarde said: “We have alerted to the risks of persistently low inflation, which was one of the attributes of Japan.” Speculation is growing that the ECB will adopt quantitative easing – the money-creation programme used by the US Federal Reserve, the Bank of England and the Bank of Japan – over the next few months.

But Lagarde said she wanted to see fiscal policy used to supplement the ECB’s efforts. She said: “We have also alerted to the risk of recession in the eurozone. That has been identified by us at between 35-40%, which is not insignificant. We are not saying that the eurozone is heading towards recession, but we are saying that there is a serious risk of that happening if nothing is done.”

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/09/imf-eurozone-japan-economic-lagarde-recession-germany

2 Ebola ‘entrenched and accelerating’ in West Africa (BBC) The World Health Organization has warned that Ebola is now entrenched in the capital cities of all three worst-affected countries and is accelerating in almost all settings. WHO deputy head Bruce Aylward warned that the world's response was not keeping up with the disease in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

The three countries have appealed for more aid to help fight the disease. The outbreak has killed more than 3,860 people, mainly in West Africa. Mr Aylward said "the disease is entrenched in the capitals, 70% of the people affected are definitely dying from this disease, and it is accelerating in almost all of the settings," he said.

Meanwhile in Spain, seven more people are being monitored in hospital for Ebola. They include two hairdressers who came into contact with Teresa Romero, a Madrid nurse who looked after an Ebola patient who had been repatriated from West Africa.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-29563530

3 The concept of a second Singapore (The Kok Peng in Straits Times) The concept of Singapore as a global city started much earlier than many of us realise. In 1972, Singapore's first foreign minister, Mr S. Rajaratnam, addressed the Singapore Press Club.

"By linking up with international and multinational corporations, Singapore not only becomes a component of the world economy, but is offered a short cut to catch up or at least keep pace with the most advanced industrial and technological societies. By plugging-in in this way, we can achieve in 20 to 30 years what otherwise would have taken a century or more to achieve," he said.

Most of us will agree that this development strategy, put in place so many years ago, has been spectacularly successful. I would like to make the case that while the particular globalisation strategy that Singapore embarked on soon after independence was the right one we may have overstayed in applying this strategy as the dominant one.

As a result, our shortage of land, labour and other capabilities is becoming more obvious and severe. I believe it is timely to have a second strategic pillar, which I would describe in short as "creating a second Singapore outside Singapore" - the economic space of Singapore and Singapore companies should be much bigger than the geographical space of Singapore.

Further expansion overseas by Singapore companies would ease the pressure on our land and labour market. It would ease the inflow of foreign workers since our companies would employ them in their home countries. It would enable our small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to achieve scale more easily.

A strategic shift of this nature would require a change in mindset, institutions and skills. Mistakes will be made, and the risks will be greater in the short to medium term. It seems to me that the greater long-term risk is in staying with a strategy that has been largely unchanged for nearly half a century.

http://www.straitstimes.com/news/opinion/more-opinion-stories/story/economic-sense-second-singapore-20141010

IMF sees no return to economic growth; EU's anti-extremist tech meeting; Maximizers and satisficers

1 IMF sees no return to economic growth (Larry Elliott in The Guardian) The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has cut its global growth forecasts for 2014 and 2015 and warned that the world economy may never return to the pace of expansion seen before the financial crisis.

In its flagship half-yearly world economic outlook (WEO), the IMF said the failure of countries to recover strongly from the worst recession of the postwar era meant there was a risk of stagnation or persistently weak activity.

The IMF said it expected global growth to be 3.3% in 2014, 0.4 points lower than it was predicting in the April WEO and 0.1 points down on interim forecasts made in July. A pick-up in the rate of expansion to 3.8% is forecast for 2015, down from 3.9% in the April WEO and 4% in July. But the IMF highlighted the risk that its predictions would once again be too optimistic.

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/oct/07/imf-economic-growth-forecasts-downgraded-crisis

2 EU’s anti-extremist tech meeting (David Lee on BBC) A "private" dinner has been planned between tech firms and government officials from across the EU. The purpose of the meeting is to discuss ways to tackle online extremism, including better cooperation between the EU and key sites. Twitter, Google, Microsoft and Facebook will all be attending.

Governments are becoming increasingly concerned over how social media is being used as a recruitment tool by radical Islamist groups. The meeting will be attended by ministers from the 28 EU member states, members of the European Commission and representatives from the technology companies.

The European Commission said: "There is strong interest from the European union and the ministers of interior to enhance the dialogue with major companies from the internet industry on issues of mutual concerns related to online radicalisation."

It is learnt that this is the second time since July that the firms have been called in to discuss possible measures. However a notable absence at the meeting will be Ask.fm, a social network believed to have been extensively used as a recruitment tool for radical Islamist groups. The site's new owners said: "Ask.fm has not been invited. If we had known about it, we would have attended for sure."

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-29505103

3 Maximizers and satisficers (Elizabeth Bernstein in The Wall Street Journal) Psychology researchers have studied how people make decisions and concluded there are two basic styles. “Maximizers” like to take their time and weigh a wide range of options—sometimes every possible one—before choosing. “Satisficers” would rather be fast than thorough; they prefer to quickly choose the option that fills the minimum criteria (the word “satisfice” blends “satisfy” and “suffice”).

“Maximizers are people who want the very best. Satisficers are people who want good enough,” says Barry Schwartz, a professor of psychology at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania and author of “The Paradox of Choice.”

In a study published in 2006 in the journal Psychological Science, Dr. Schwartz and colleagues followed 548 job-seeking college seniors at 11 schools from October through their graduation in June. Across the board, they found that the maximizers landed better jobs. Their starting salaries were, on average, 20% higher than those of the satisficers, but they felt worse about their jobs.

“The maximizer is kicking himself because he can’t examine every option and at some point had to just pick something,” Dr. Schwartz says. “Maximizers make good decisions and end up feeling bad about them. Satisficers make good decisions and end up feeling good.” Dr. Schwartz says he found nothing to suggest that either maximizers or satisficers make bad decisions more often.

Satisficers also have high standards, but they are happier than maximizers, he says. Maximizers tend to be more depressed and to report a lower satisfaction with life, his research found. The older you are, the less likely you are to be a maximizer—which helps explain why studies show people get happier as they get older. “One of the things that life teaches you is that ‘good enough’ is almost always good enough,” Dr. Schwartz says. “You learn that you can get satisfaction out of perfectly wonderful but not perfect outcomes.”

http://online.wsj.com/articles/how-you-make-decisions-says-a-lot-about-how-happy-you-are-1412614997?mod=trending_now_2

World Bank cuts China, East Asia forecasts; UK new car sales at 10-year high; Facebook drivers push to unionize

1 World Bank cuts China, East Asia forecasts (Khaleej Times) The World Bank has trimmed its growth forecasts for developing East Asian economies this year and next, as China’s economic expansion loses momentum and policymakers face tighter global monetary conditions. Developing countries in East Asia and the Pacific are likely to see a growth of 6.9 per cent this year and in 2015, slower than the 7.1 per cent the bank had forecast in April.

China’s economy is forecast to grow 7.4 per cent this year and 7.2 per cent next year, compared with 7.6 per cent and 7.5 per cent projected in April as the government addresses financial vulnerabilities and structural constraints. China’s economy expanded 7.7 per cent in 2013. But the bank’s chief Asia economist Suhdir Shetty said China’s slowdown is unlikely to be “dramatic” enough to have a major impact on the region.

Developing East Asian countries, excluding China, are expected to grow 4.8 per cent this year and 5.3 per cent in 2015 from 5.2 per cent in 2013. Growth in Southeast Asia’s five biggest economies — Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam — is forecast to slow down to 4.5 per cent this year from five per cent in 2013, but is likely to pick up and expand 5 per cent next year as demand for exports grow.

http://khaleejtimes.com/biz/inside.asp?section=internationbusiness&xfile=/data/internationbusiness/2014/October/internationbusiness_October12.xml

2 UK new car sales at 10-year high (The Guardian) Almost 430,000 new cars were sold last month, the biggest September total for a decade, taking the total number of cars sold this year to almost two million. September sales reached 425,861, 5.6% higher than a year ago. It was the 31st consecutive monthly increase, according to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT).

SMMT’s chief executive, Mike Hawes, said: “September’s strong performance underlined the continuing robustness of the UK new car market. In the months since March – which saw an 18% jump in registrations – the growth has shown signs of levelling off as the market starts to find its natural running rate.”

The UK switched to a twice-yearly plate change 15 years ago and number plates now change in March and September, with consumer demand for the latest plate meaning that these months typically account for a third of the entire year’s registrations. Richard Lowe, head of retail and wholesale at Barclays, said: “The heady cocktail of a new plate change, great finance deals and the appeal of increasingly fuel-efficient cars resulted in September being another strong month for new car sales.”

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/oct/06/new-car-sales-september-uk-highest-decade-economy

3 Facebook drivers push to unionize (Kristen V Brown in San Francisco Chronicle) Some bus drivers who ferry Facebook employees to and from Silicon Valley want to unionize, saying they are underpaid, overworked and unfairly compensated for time on the job. The drivers enlisted the Teamsters, a powerful labor union, to pressure their employer, Loop Transportation, to allow them to organize.

The Teamsters are also putting pressure on Facebook, which contracts Loop Transportation to manage its shuttle operations. The top Teamsters official for Northern California has sent a letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg urging him to throw the social network’s support behind a union for the drivers.

“While your employees earn extraordinary wages and are able to live and enjoy life in some of the most exclusive neighborhoods in the Bay Area, these drivers can’t afford to support a family, send their children to school, or, least of all, afford to even dream of buying a house anywhere near where they work,” Rome Aloise, the Teamsters official, said in the letter.

In December 2012, a driver filed a class-action lawsuit alleging Google’s shuttle management contractor, WeDriveU, failed to pay drivers for time between split shifts, provide legally required rest breaks, and compensate them for time spent performing required inspections on vehicles before and after shifts. An August draft of a settlement in that case awarded 89 drivers a combined total of $125,000, amounting to just $730 per driver on average after expenses such as attorney’s fees.

Bus drivers aren’t the only low-wage workers contracted by tech companies, which often hire outside providers for services ranging from security to food preparation. Last week, under pressure to offer better pay and working conditions for such workers, Google announced that it will create its own in-house security force and end its relationship with Security Industry Specialists — a company that contracts security services for many tech companies and has long been a target of union activists.

http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Facebook-bus-drivers-push-to-unionize-5804445.php?cmpid=hp-hc-bustech