The CEO Game

In the European Union an all time negative record was broken in November: 10% rate of unemployment. Just like the United States and president Obama, the European Union too is battling with high rates of unemployment. The unemployment rate has risen in all European Union countries and has reached the highest peak since the beginning of the millennium. Spain is leading the charts, and the Netherlands enjoy the lowest rate.

Like Obama, the European Union is stuck with a high unemployment rate.

For the first time since the Euro currency was launched in 1999, the unemployment rate among the 16 countries which are members of the EU and use the common currency has reached 10%. EuroStat, the Statistical Office of the European Union, had published last week the data which shows that the unemployment rate had risen in 0.1% from October, and is now standing on the highest level since August 1998, an 8% increase compared to 2008 at the time.

As mentioned above, Spain is suffering from the highest rate of unemployment at 19.4%, while Holland is proud to have only 3.9%, the lowest rate. This inequality re-raised the claims that the common Euro currency is of more beneficent to some countries than to others.

The unemployment rate of 27 EU members which don’t use the Euro like Britain and Sweden had also risen in November by 0.1% to 9.5%. Through out the entire Euro bloc you can find countries who are suffering from the recession such as Spain, Greece, Cyprus. In addition, many economies are rapidly shrinking for instance in Estonia, Latvia, Hungary, Romania and even in the United Kingdom.

Altogether in November, 22.9 million of people where unemployed in the European Union, 15.7 million out of them are from the Euro bloc. The EuroStat had also published data showing on a 0.4% growth in the Euro bloc’s economy in the third quarter of 2008, due to Germany and a 0.3% growth in the entire European Union. A reason to be optimistic? We aren’t so sure…

Omer Shachnai

The CEO Game.

Time to withdraw; what was an absolute last week became mere signs and indicators today.

Still Got a Long Way

Only a couple of days after US administration publicly announced that the “recession is over“, Barak Obama seems to be lowering expectations and claims there are indicators of improvement but America still “got a long way to go”. On his speech today (Monday) at the White House Obama was joined by members of his Economic Recovery Advisory Board and by Paul Volcker, one of his chief financial advisers and former chairman of the Federal Reserve. Obama said that the US has came a long way since January, when he stepped into office, when at that time US was “losing 700,000 jobs per month” and “there was fear of another Great Depression”. “We have pulled the economy back from the brink” said Obama.

Obama referred to last week’s out of the blue announcement and said it was “good news” to hear about the US GDP growing once again. He also said that there are signs starting (and starting only) of “stabilization and, indeed, some improvement” in US and Global economy. Nevertheless, he carefully added that the administration is obligated to take on further steps to support the job market and decrease the national debt. “Actions that we took swiftly through the Recovery Act helped to stem what could have been a disastrous situation for the economy” he commented gladly and added that the actions have produced some positive improvement, all while comparing the situation today to what was at the time Bush closed up shop.

“But the reason we’re here today is because we just are not where we need to be yet” he then changed direction. “We are still seeing production levels that are significantly below peak levels and most distressing is the fact that job growth continues to lag” he added. Obama continued by saying there is no reason why the administration should not be able to create more workplaces as needed and even create the continuous economic growth everybody is expecting. Yet, probably again with the lessons of the sudden weird-like announcement last week by the Ministry of Commerce, he backed himself up by saying that many job losses are expected within the upcoming weeks and months.

In conclusion, President Obama put it best in his speech- “We’ve got a long way to go“. Given the severity of the job losses, more than 7 million jobs since the start of the recession in December 2007 and the unemployment rate which had risen to 9.8% last month, even with the 787 billion dollars worth financial bailout package, he is absolutely correct, and it’s going to require him to lead some innovative action to overcome this deficit and maybe finally prove his administration.

Omer Shachnai

The CEO Game.