Vol. 72/No. 44      November 10, 2008

Brazil’s national currency, the real, has lost 40 percent of its value against the dollar since August. Mexico’s peso sank to an all-time low October 23. The Turkish lira has fallen by more than 30 percent against the dollar in recent weeks. South Africa’s currency, the rand, has sharply depreciated as the price of platinum, a major earner of foreign exchange, plummeted from more than $2,000 an ounce in June to less than $800 in October.

In Argentina, the Cristina Kirchner government announced plans October 21 to take control of nearly $30 billion in private pension funds. This move, said the Wall Street Journal, “would provide it with much of the cash it needs to meet debt payments and avoid a second default this decade.” Argentina is one of the world’s top five exporters of beef, soy, corn, and wheat. For the past five years prices of Argentina’s agricultural commodities were rising, but in recent months they have plunged.

While hundreds of billions of dollars go toward bailing out banks, nearly a billion people worldwide are malnourished, according to official UN figures. The United Kingdom-based relief group Oxfam estimates that the economic crisis over the past year has now placed an additional 119 million people below official government poverty levels.

In China since the beginning of 2008 more than half of the country’s toy exporters have shut factories, throwing thousands out of work. After Smart Union, a supplier to Mattel, closed a plant in Zhangmutou mid-October, hundreds of workers rallied outside the factory and government offices demanding they be paid for the past two months. Thousands of others rallied that week outside other closed toy factories in Guangdong Province. According to Chan Cheung-yau, chairman of the toy and games subcommittee of the Chinese Manufacturers Association of Hong Kong, thousands more factories will close in China next year.

Layoffs in the United States over the past month have begun to spread beyond financial companies to a broad array of industries. These include the airlines, which have announced 36,000 in job cuts, nearly all of them before the end of the year. Chrysler is cutting 1,825 jobs at two plants—6 percent of its hourly workforce. PepsiCo is cutting 3,300 jobs. Plumbing and building materials supplier Wolseley is slashing 3,000 jobs. Whirlpool is cutting 440 jobs at its plant in Amana, Iowa, this month and a total of 5,000 by the end of 2009.

ABN Newswire reports that 19 of the 25 steel blast furnaces in the United States are being shut down or closing for various periods of time because of declining orders, especially from the automobile industry.

Inflation-adjusted pay for hourly workers declined 1.9 percent for the year ending this September, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. The Labor Department also reported that initial filings for state jobless benefits increased by 15,000 to 478,000 for the week ending October 18—a 44 percent increase from last year. The number of people listed as being unemployed for 27 weeks or more reached 2 million in September.

Meanwhile, the Treasury Department is considering a plan to expand its $700 billion bank bailout to include insurance companies. Auto companies and local and state governments are also requesting some of these funds.  
 
 
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