Japan is the latest country to have come out of recession with reports of the economy growing by 0.9 % in the April to June quarter. It follows news from France and Germany last week each witnessing a growth of 0.3 % of their economy in the April to June quarter.
All is not good news though, the UK’s economy has actually contracted by 0.8 % in the same quarter and the job market continues to slump. With little prospects for any job seekers or for those who lost their jobs.
In this article James C Cooper says that “even though GDPs (gross domestic product) can rise It won’t feel much like a recovery, because the job markets are sure to remain weak until businesses gain confidence .”
This blogger argues that “While the money supply is usually what precipitates a recession, the face of a recession, are job losses” and that remains an issue.
Are you happy with the way your country is handling the recession. If you live in France, Germany or Japan, do you feel your country is out of recession?
RSS feed
BBC World Have Your Say 
The recsssion and it’s length and depth was as usual blown up to be a doomsday, by the ever sensationalizing and exaggerating media…that we now see it wasn’t.
German and France, the two mega-Euro economies have come out of recession as has Japan-the 2nd biggest economy in the world.
China and India the 2 Asian giants and growing econonomic pwoers never went inot recession that many dooms-day pundits had predicted….and continued with their mid single digit growths.
The media created and exaggerated melt-down that never was is over…and the world handled the passing phase of recession well
I am pretty happy with the way that my country’s government is handling the recession.
On paper, it looks pretty rough with the economy contracting and all, but at ground level, the people here are hardly behaving like there was any recession.
Bankers were retrenched with huge severance packages and simply moved on to another bank that pays them even better.
3 shopping malls have opened in the last 2 months in our main shopping district.
People here are still going out to shop, wine, dine, party and travel.
In a way all major countries handled economic meltdown in the best possible way. The achievement of the US so far is to halt the collapse of its economy by pumping out staggering sums of money. One of the rare ocassions americans depended on a foreigner’s advice. Hats off to Gordon Brown. I still feel sorry for Lehman Brothers and blame Henry Paulson for its disappearance.
India was lucky to have most of its banks in public sector that helped the public not to panick and withdraw their deposits. Besides, Indian financial institutions did not have any exposure to US sub-prime markets. The meltdown also helped in relieving india from the pain of $150 crude price.
The government isn’t doing to badly. The government is trying to come out of the recession Obama style by increasing spending, but the results for the last quarter of 2008 and first quarter of 2009 shows a drop in GDP so officially we are in a recession. Those losing jobs are in the manufacturing, housing and tourism sectors.
The Prime Minister has advised citizens to loosen their belts and spend because we will be out of the recession shortly(which he denies exist by the way). The economists are saying keep the belts tight because the worse is still to come.
Deryck, both are right, I suppose. If you loosen your belts, recovery will come soon. If you tighten your belts, worse will surely come!!:-))
in Sierra leone the government does not even behave as if there is a recession going on. after coming to power by all mans they are busy consolidating their grip on power leaving the poor and needy to fend for themselves. prices have increased by over 80 percent. the exchange rate of the dollar is just crazy. i recieved $500 two weeks ago and changed for le1,600,000. went to the bank last week to buy $500 and i had to pay Le1,900,000. things are going out of hands everyday. but thats what we get for electing a tribalistic, illetrate, and egocentric government. may god have mercy on us.
Yes.Its indeed a good news for the affected people that the world economic giants are slightly coming out of recessions but as i understood,these growth are just a muds` building because of their fragility, so we shouldnt be over excitted when we here zero.#### growth nor should we be surprise either when our structure collapse yet again.
As being from the United States, I am not happy how the Administration has been on the handling of the recession….
=Dennis Junior=
I never felt a whole lot of the recession, I didn’t have much to lose, and I’m in a good field of work that was not hit by financial troubles, except that there is a freeze on raises. The job market is what concerns me the most, it’s what I’m seeing more than anything, a lot of people having a hard time finding a job. Do I like the way the US handled it? So far I guess so, it could have been worse without the measures taken.
Yes.
Australia started from a position of strength (many successive years of budget surpluses) which must have made it easier but…the “stimulus packages” down here were substantial enough to actually make a difference. Instead of a few dollars a month off income tax, most families got several thousand dollars all at once, one of them timed for Christmas last year. This lead to continuous retail growth…and that growth has helped make sure the economic crises was shallow and short-lived.
NO!
Membership of The European Union means we have thousands of Eastern Europeans claiming unemployment as they find they are better off here than in their own countries. Much of the money they claim goes “home” so does not benefit us. The European Union continues to take vast sums from us though for what purpose I’ve yet to see.
A friend of mine is replacing her very ancient car with a Hyundai using the £2000 given by the government. How does that benefit our economy?
NO!
P.S.
What recession? Our news outlets are saying the recession is over.
Bailing out morons like AIG, and subsequently their idiotic customers, GM and worst of all Chrysler, perpetuates the viability of their bad practices. These are companies that should have been allowed to breakup and let the bad parts die. Financial Darwinism. Now we have a dramatically bigger debt load to cripple us in the near future.
Now we need to see a new focus on personal and business practices that are more fiscally responsible and sustainable with regards to resources. Government financial nudging, both in tax breaks and increases can do a lot to guide and accelerate this.
The stock market ( for me at least ) recovered/adjusted about six months ago, the primary offending businesses have failed. We will see secondary business failures for at least six months and this will show in unemployment rates. Employment recovery will be slow as new businesses develop. This will take at least two years.
Hello,
I am a Liberian studying at the Ritsumeikan University in Beppu, Japan. Upon reading the new on the BBC web page that Japan has finally come out recession, I rejoiced a lot in little room here in Beppu. Before I came to Japan, I really did not know what recession was like, but this time not only did I know about it, but I also felt it seriously. As an international student, I used to do part-time jobs like others in order to meet up with living expensive. Due to the recession in Japan, many smaller businesses and factories closed down and so I lost my part-time job. As the result of this, I went short of almost every basic need and I really suffered. I was forced to make many changes in the way I go about daily life here. All the same, I just hope now that there will come an opportunity for me to regain a part-time job so as to coop with the living standard here.
No. How’s that for being to the point, WHYS?
Ironic that Europe didn’t have a stimulus/spending program and the France and Germany are out of the recession, and the US, with its stimulus, is still in deep recession. The messiah apparently was mistaken! It’s sad, but I was taking a look at the classifieds today in the washington post today. There were no jobs listed, and 90% of the section was devoted to foreclosure sales. Things are bad, and are not improving, and no hoping for change is apparently changing anything.
In my earlier remarks: I forgot to comment about one thing, I am glad that the United States government did the stimulus packages to repair the damages from the ongoing recession…
=Dennis Junior=
The Recession or the economic meltdown are being handled cleverly, but not genuinely in many parts of the world. In the name of public confidence-building measures, after fooling the public and their money for so long, they are projecting the wrong or manipulated statistics about the present and true economic facts or scenarios.; In fact, they are at their wits’ end to bring around the angry and disenchanted public investors and/or the tax-payers.
I totally agree with India, they have prepared themselves for this situation and what effective things they did is that they have strengthen their business and banking system locally. That is also why in this global crisis they are not affected much.
Also, what is important is to strengthen educational system which should not only be for those that can afford but instead developed a school that can accomodate common or average families.
This is also the reason why most filipinos work abroad in order to be successful because the country is corrupt.