Economic Crisis is Deepening Rapidly

September 29th, 2009 DUBAI, EAU - - Harnessing the Power for Social Media The current economic crisis is raising serious questions about the vitality of the business climate and how it will affect marketing goals, plans and budgets. "Typically, the marketing budget is the first to be cut by companies looking to reduce costs when a recession is anticipated," said Roy Young, President of MarketingProfs.

September 28th, 2009 ZURICH - - Indication: Picture can be downloaded free of charge under: www.presseportal.ch/de/pm/100003893/?langid=2 - On 1 and 2 October 2009, Geneva will be buzzing with energy, when the vanguard of Europe's renewables sector gathers at the 6th European Conference on Green Power Marketing 2009 to tackle the "future of green power". The agenda is ambitious: how continue the market expansion of former years in the "challenging times" of today? Geneva 2009 is set to pinpoint opportunities for growth despite the economic downturn.

September 25th, 2009 LONDON - Unite, the UK's largest aviation union and the largest union representing workers at British Airways, is today (Saturday) accusing BA's management of suffering an identity crisis. It comes as the airline's management announces that it will charge for seat reservations, a move the union believes tarnishes the carrier's image further and is yet another misguided attempt to mimic the low-cost airlines.

July 12th, 2009 MOSCOW - Outside its borders, Russia was always famous for its creative achievements in arts and sciences. Plays of Russian writers still fill up theatres around the world.

June 8th, 2009 BRUSSELS - Hands Up for Education! - Education International is Working Hard to Persuade Governments Around the World of the Need to Invest in Education as a Positive Response to the Global Economic Crisis To that end, EI has launched a new campaign and web site called "Hands up for education: The smart strategy for economic recovery." It aims to assist EI's 400 member organisations in their efforts to ensure that funding for public education is enhanced, not cut, as governments struggle to cope with the impact of the crisis. "The web site will be a vital tool for linking EI's global advocacy with national and local action to encourage reinvestment in strong and stable public education systems to meet the needs of the knowledge society," said Fred van Leeuwen, General Secretary of Education, the global union federation representing 30 million teachers and education workers in 170 countries.

April 26th, 2009 TORONTO, Canada - A casualty of the 2008 economic crisis, unemployed conceptual artist Brian Rushton Phillips, has used his remaining cash as a medium to comment on the downturn and his own financial uncertainty. Entitled 'Financial Security (Blanket)', the project incorporates 208 American dollar bills, sewn together with thread, to form a makeshift security blanket.

March 31st, 2009 AUGUSTUSBURG, Germany - The Society for Global Change 2009 Presents a Finance and Economic Rescue Plan "The ever increasing threat of the global economic and financial crisis could be ended tomorrow," argues Jorg Buschbeck, businessman and president of the Society for Global Change 2009. "In 2009 the world financial system is on the brink of collapse, threatening to take down the global value-added chain with it.

March 30th, 2009 LONDON - Unite warned that the closure today (Tuesday) of the Visteon plants at Belfast, Basildon and Enfield once again pointed up the desperate problems besetting UK manufacturing, and hammered home again the need for strategic governmental support for the sector. The plants were put into administration at midday today, with the loss of approximately 600 jobs across three UK sites.

March 30th, 2009 LONDON - Workers Uniting, the first global union created through the coming together of Unite, the UK's biggest union and the USW, the largest private sector union in the USA and Canada, has today (Tuesday) set out their response to the global crisis ahead of the meeting of G20 world leaders. Workers Uniting, which represents three million working people from every industrial sector in Britain, Ireland, the USA, Canada and the Caribbean, is challenging the G20 global leaders to protect working people as the current financial crisis jeopardises millions of jobs and livelihoods.

March 11th, 2009 PARIS and BARCELONA - "The economic crisis has put transportation at the crossroads: We urgently need to address the prioritisation of investment serving the most productive activities and notably international trade in goods and services", said Jack Short, Secretary General of the International Transport Forum (ITF), at the EIB Forum in Barcelona on Thursday, warning that "in the present crisis, efficiency and profitability of infrastructure investments are crucial for the future of transportation". Public funding is scarce and private investments recently have become more difficult to obtain.

January 30th, 2009 WASHINGTON - US President Barack Obama said Friday that the current economic crisis was a 'continuing disaster' for the US families and urged the Congress to approve the multi-billion dollar stimulus package. 'Today we learned that our economy shrank in the last three months of 2008 by 3.8 percent.

January 7th, 2009 WASHINGTON - US president-elect Barack Obama Thursday unveiled details of his economic stimulus plan aimed at lifting the US economy out of a deepening recession, and urged the Congress to approve the plan as soon as possible.

February 18th, 2009 WASHINGTON - US President Barack Obama said Wednesday he hopes to keep between seven and nine million homeowners out of foreclosure, using $75 billion to stabilize a housing crisis that is at the heart of the country's deepening recession. Obama unveiled plans offering aid to homeowners struggling to pay their mortgages, to relax rules on mortgage refinancing and to help neighbourhoods raise property values by renovating already foreclosed properties.

April 16th, 2009 WASHINGTON - With the financial crises in advanced economies having passed 'through strongly and rapidly' to emerging economies including India, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Thursday called for a coordinated policy response. A coordinated policy response is required, since 'reducing individual country vulnerabilities alone cannot insulate emerging economies from a major financial shock in advanced economies', warned the IMF's latest World Economic Outlook (WEO) published ahead of next week's World Bank-Fund Spring meeting.

December 23rd, 2008 BEIJING - The deepening global economic crisis, weakened investment and difficulties in industrial production have affected the Chinese economy in a manner unseen in many years, according to a Cabinet report presented to the parliament. China's legislature Wednesday heard a sombre report on how the intensifying world financial and economic crisis is reverberating across China.

June 8th, 2009 KUALA LUMPUR - Airline chiefs gathered in Malaysia Monday for an international aviation meeting to focus on strategies to fight off a deepening crisis in global air travel. More than 500 aviation industry leaders will be attending the two-day International Air Transport Association (IATA) annual meeting in the capital, Kuala Lumpur.

July 1st, 2009 GM, Ford suspend Russia productionMOSCOW — U.S. car giants General Motors and Ford suspended operations on their production lines in Russia Wednesday as the deepening economic crisis squeezes Russian consumers' demand for new cars.

January 24th, 2009 AMMAN - The world's air traffic is expected to shrink 'tangibly' in 2009 due to the global financial crisis and the deepening recession, a senior official of the International Air Transport Association (IATA) said Sunday. 'We expect the world's air traffic operations to retreat tangibly this year due to expectations of deepening recession and its impact on both the cargo and passenger branches of air transport,' Majdi Sabri, IATA's vice president for the Mideast and North Africa region, was quoted as saying by Jordan's official Petra news agency.

February 15th, 2009 BANGKOK - More than 11 countries, including India, are expected to participate at a meeting in Manila in Philippines to discuss the responses to the current economic crisis. Ministers of labour and finance, senior UN and government officials, workers and employers' representatives from Asia and the Pacific will meet in Manila from Feb 18-20 for the forum titled 'Responding to the Economic Crisis - Coherent Policies for Growth, Employment and Decent Work in Asia and the Pacific', a press statement issued by the International Labour Organisation said Monday.

January 27th, 2009 BANGKOK/GENEVA - Global unemployment would increase by 18 million to 51 million people this year from 2007 figures, depending on the extent and length of the economic crisis, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) predicted Wednesday. 'We are now facing a global jobs crisis,' the UN organization's director general Juan Somavia said in Geneva.