The bank interest rates are likely to go up in India, the second fastest growing economy of the world today. The Indian government is also likely to impose lot of restrictions on the foreign fund flow to avoid any temporary funds flowing into the economy.
The interest rate hike is necessitated by the spike up in inflation which has touched a year high of 4.78% last week.

The third quarter GDP growth of India has turned out to be far better than most of the analyst expectations. The Indian economy was expected to grow only by 6.3% as per consensus estimates, and even government officials were expecting the growth to be around the 6% levels.
But the actual numbers have been announced at 7.9% owing to massive growth in service sector and also industrial output. The massive stimulus spending by the government seems to be working, but the spike up in the inflation in the last four weeks has started haunting the government. There is likely to be a spike up in the interest rates in the coming months by the central bank.

Till now, the US FED decisions are taken within the four walls of the US FED office and it is just communicated to the entire world. The US congress once in a year or so tries to pull out some data from the US FED officials through formal grilling, but that rarely produces any result.
Now the US government seems to be interested in bringing the US FED monetary policy decisions under the US house monitoring. The government is now moving a proposal for auditing of the US FED decisions by an authorized US house panel. That would curtail the powers of the US FED substantially. This comes on top of the decision by the US government earlier to take away the interest policy decision making from US FED.

The US stock markets have reached a new 2009 year high yesterday, with the Dow Jones going past the 10400 mark with ease. The key trigger for the upsurge in the stock market was the strong 1.4% rise in US retail sales in the month of October 2009.
The US auto sales have been the key contributor for the October 2009 sales since the base in September 2009 was pulled down by the withdrawal of the cash-for-clunkers program.

The US government has formally approved the extension of the 10% cash back scheme for the first time home buyers, by another six months. The scheme was introduced a year back, and was set to expire on November 30th.
There has been no recovery in the US housing market in spite of the scheme, and hence the senate felt the need to keep the scheme open for another six months period, to help the industry get back to health.

The US senate is most likely to extend the 8000 dollars first time home buyer credit scheme by at least another six months, as the negotiations are said to be in final stages. The passage of the bill is likely to be taken up in the coming days. Also the government might enable second home buyers also to get some concession, provided they have been owning and staying in their first home for at least five years out of the last eight years. The provision is meant to exclude all real estate investors from benefiting from the scheme.

The core sector of India, comprising cement, coal, steel, electricity and crude oil production, has seen a sharp drop from 7.8% in August to 4% in September 2009. The sharp drop has been primarily due to the decline in the coal output which dropped from 13% to 6.5%.
Also there was a sharp drop in the cement output from 17% to 6.5%.

The third quarter of 2009 has seen further acceleration in the Chinese economy, with the GDP figure pegged at 8.9%. That is nearly one full percentage point higher than the 8% targeted by the government. The Chinese authorities are now looking confident of achieving the full year target of 8%, and hence are now focusing on controlling the inflation factor.
And any upswing in the US and European economies would only help this export oriented country better the performance in the coming quarters.

The September 2009 quarter happens to a disaster for the UK economy. Against the expectation of a slightly positive GDP growth by most of the analysts, the actual GDP figure of UK has turned out to be a negative 0.4% for the quarter.
The drop is on the back of rising unemployment coupled with crash in exports. The country is expected to show some marginal recovery in the current quarter, as the overall export scenario looks better.

The Hong Kong property prices had crashed by over 40% in the year 2008 and the government many steps to bring some sanity to prices. But the Hong Kong government could not do anything successfully. The economic revival in China since the beginning of 2009 has started having it’s effect on Hong Kong real estate market, and last week the prices were up by a massive 60% from the low levels reached by the end of 2008.
Now the government is looking at measures to curb the runaway rise in prices, as it cannot afford to face another bubble crash. The slow revival of global economic activity is helping back Hong Kong economy substantially.