Taiwan trims interest rates quarter-point to 2.75%

HONG KONG -- Taiwan's central bank cut its main interest rate by a quarter-point Sunday at special meeting, marking its fourth rate reduction in less than two months.
The reduction brings the main discount rate to 2.75%, the Central Bank of the Republic of China's (Taiwan) said in a statement published on its Website.
The latest move follows three rate cuts in quick succession beginning Sept. 26.
It also comes after the release of economic data released in the past week showed exports in October fell 8.3% from a year earlier to $20.81 billion. Shipments to China were down 19.9% to $7.47 billion.

PM expects GDP growth to decline to 7-7.5% next fiscal

Muscat: The global financial crisis is expected to hurt the Indian economy more than previously anticipated, with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Sunday projecting gross domestic product (GDP) growth to decline to 7-7.5% next fiscal.
Although the government and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) are battling contraction in credit growth, Singh said the fundamentals of the economy were strong and banks were safe, and promised accelerated efforts to prop up growth.
“Due to the current international economic and financial situation, our growth rate may come down somewhat next year. However, we still hope to achieve a growth rate of 7-7.5% next year,” he said, addressing the Indian expat community here.
RBI had last month said Inida’s $1.2 trillion (Rs57.36 trillion) economy may grow at 7.5% this fiscal as opposed to 9% in 2007-08. The rate in 2008-09 would be the weakest since 2005.

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Market Insider: Economy's Illness Keeps Spreading

Like anxious relatives in a hospital room, investors have been watching the economy get sicker and sicker with new symptoms surfacing daily.
That trend is likely to stick in the week ahead, and the stock market should stay volatile as it reacts to economic news, including Friday's retail sales report. The economic calendar though is fairly light, but there are earnings reports from major retailers. Those numbers should only confirm that the holiday shopping season is shaping up to be one of the weakest in years.Many economists have been expecting the current quarter to show this recession's biggest decline in GDP. A batch of weak data and growing unemployment has made it seem especially bleak.

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Berkshire Hathaway Q3 Operating Earnings Fall 19% To $1335/Share

Berkshire Hathaway's third quarter operating earnings fell 19.3 percent to $1,335 a share from $1,655 a share in the same period the year before.
That's below the average forecast of $1429 from the two analysts following the stock, as tracked by Thomson One Analytics.
Operating earnings for Berkshire's insurance-underwriting activities took a big hit, falling to $81 million from $486 million in the year-ago quarter.
Net earnings plunged 77 percent to $1.06 billion ($682 per share) from $4.55 billion ($2942 per share.) A big factor there are investment and derivative losses of $1.01 billion, compared to gains of $1.99 billion in last year's quarter. That year-ago period got a boost from Berkshire's profitable sale of PetroChina stock.
The derivative portion of the gains and losses are on paper only. Buffett has said the derivative contracts held by Berkshire will eventually be profitable, but right now they're losers.

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AIG Board Nears Approval of Revised Fed Plan: Source

The board of troubled insurer American International Group was nearing approval late on Sunday of a revised U.S. bailout to replace a previous $85 billion rescue, a person familiar with the matter said.
Under the revised rescue plan, the U.S. government is expected to buy $40 billion of AIG preferred shares through Treasury's Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) and greatly ease lending terms, sources said.
The government is also expected to set up two separate vehicles that will buy securities worth billions of dollars underlying the insurer's credit default swaps and backstop a securities lending portfolio, the sources said.
AIG plans to announce the new plan early on Monday, when it reports third-quarter results, sources said.

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Australia's RBA Cuts Economic Growth Forecasts

Australia's central bank on Monday lowered its forecasts for economic growth for the next two years, saying it would be reviewing interest rates in the months ahead with the aim of avoiding an even sharper slowdown in domestic demand.
In its quarterly monetary-policy statement, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) said the intensification of the global financial crisis meant the outlook for world growth was significantly weaker than previously assumed. Its new forecasts were even lower than the government's revised forecasts announced last week.
Falling share prices had also cut into household wealth at home, while a slump in commodity prices would hurt earnings from Australia's resource exports, the bank said.
As a result, the central bank had decided that a significantly more rapid easing in monetary policy was needed and it slashed the key cash rate by 200 basis points between September and November, taking it to a three-year low of 5.25 percent.

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G20 Sees More Action, China Moves to Boost Economy

China launched a huge stimulus plan worth nearly $600 billion, kicking off what could be a round of big spending or interest rate cuts by leading economies to stave off a recession in many countries.
In Brazil, finance ministers and central bank governors representing 90 percent of the world's economy said they would take "all necessary measures" to get financial markets back to normal and counter the backlash of the credit crisis.
Many developed economies are now facing a contraction next year after lending from banks suddenly dried up, and newer powers such as China have been caught up in the domino effect.
World leaders meet next weekend to discuss precisely what measures they need to work out in coming months, and how much more say emerging economies will have over global finance.

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