Sterling plunged to a five-and-a-half year low against the US dollar on Tuesday, as the UK's manufacturing sector shrank unexpectedly. Manufacturing production dropped by 0.4pc in November according to Office for National Statistics (ONS) data, compared to a 0.7pc fall in the wider industrial sector. The fall in industrial output was worse than any of the 30 analysts polled by Reuters had anticipated. There figures were described by Michael Hewson, chief market analyst at CMC Markets, as "unambiguously rubbish". No surprise at all....What do you expect with an overvalued currency, a global recession, rigged competition from the slave labor Chinese manufacturing system and a UK government hell bent on jobs at any price in the bloated service sector? There is no industrial strategy, vocational training is a mess and unlike Corporatist Germany, government leaves manufacturing industry to sink or swim on its own. We are headed for a full blown Sterling crisis and all those two million new jobs of phone sanitizers, Cab drivers, hairdressers and delivering online shopping will disappear overnight...Figures and statistics are always fiddled...in reality British people have been mislead by the politicians just as people are mislead in nearly all countries on the planet. When lying and morally corrupt politicians are the captains one never knows where the journey will take us. Britain's feel good factors are essentially due to nearly a decades printing of money and of course the false sense of security generated by a.......massively overheated property market...Britain is in effect a nation which doesn't produce very much any more, its a nation of supermarkets and banking and insurance.  Dear Mr. Cameron please lets have a breakdown of how Britain earns its money .Britain has possibly lived above its means since before the second world war.......with a few rare intervals.in between. Billions have been frittered away and yet we do not have a few pounds more for the junior doctors who keep our decrepit NHS afloat. Something seriously wrong here. The markets always know the truth though and the pound is likely to get whacked even more.  Wait till the euro recovers !!

The Belgian "fiscal incentive" scheme - which had been in force since 2005 - allowed companies to reduce the tax bill on their profits by as much as 90pc, said the Commission. The ruling is the first high-profile sweep of European, rather than US companies, and comes after the EU ruled against similar tax deals for Starbucks and Fiat in the Netherlands and Luxembourg. Brussels has also launched an investigation into McDonald's tax arrangements and is due to deliver verdicts on Apple and Amazon's deals with Ireland and Luxembourg this year.  Around €500m of the €700m will be paid by companies within the EU, said the Commission. Belgium" - afforded international corporates an unfair advantage by only taxing the "hypothetical" profits they they would have made if they did not enjoy economies of scale. "National tax authorities cannot give any company, however large, however powerful, an unfair competitive advantage compared to others," said Ms. Vestager. "If a country gives certain multinationals illegal tax benefits that allow them to avoid paying taxes on the majority of their actual profits, it seriously harms fair competition in the EU, ultimately at the expense of EU citizens."  The Belgian government said it had expected the ruling and had suspended the excess profits scheme in February last year.

"People are  quite nervous about the Chinese economic outlook. China is certainly slowing on a very gradual path down. A lot of people are fearing a hard landing is in play."  Craig Erlam, of online currency broker OANDA, said: "The fact that we’ve still seen significant declines in equity markets suggests that sentiment remains very weak despite this stabilization in the yuan and more may need to be done to bring about a similar response. "The removal of the circuit breakers – which were ironically installed to shield against rapid market sell-offs but instead encouraged them – does appear to have brought some calm back but as we’ve seen over night, investors still clearly have no confidence in the markets and remain bearish." On Saturday official figures showed Chinese consumer prices picked up slightly in December but inflation remained about half the government's target. Prices paid at the factory gate, a guide to future inflation, also sank for a 46th consecutive month. The figures are the latest highlighting the weakness in China, which is expected to have grown in 2015 at its slowest rate in a quarter of a century. Investors extended losses from last week, which was one of the worst starts to a year on record with dealers rattled after trade was suspended twice in four days in Chinese markets. Shanghai ended the week about 10pc lower, in echoes of a sell-off that fuelled global turmoil in the summer. London lost 5.3pc over the week, Paris shed 6.5pc and Frankfurt dropped 8.3pc. And on Wall Street, the Dow and S&P 500 lost about 6pc, marking the worst opening week of a year in the history of either index. A series of cuts in the yuan currency's value to a five-year low against the dollar added to the sense of nervousness as Beijing stood accused of bungling its handling of the crisis. On Friday the central People's Bank of China sought to soothe nerves by pledging to carry out "prudent" monetary policy and work to ensure "reasonably abundant liquidity" in the banking system this year. Chinese equities have had a tough start to the year. This has flowed around the globe, kneecapping equities, where valuations were already deemed to be stretched," Mark Smith, a senior economist in Auckland at ANZ Bank New Zealand, said.

"A weaker inflation outlook and heightened market volatility has also swung the pendulum back to more policy support." The Chinese stock market is essentially valueless. If the Chinese Government wasn't propping it up behind the scenes the people who'd lost all their money would be out on the streets burning down CCP offices and lynching party members.

“The markets have drawn comfort” from the Fed, said Mr Lewis after officials at the central bank said they believed economic developments would “warrant only gradual increases in the federal funds rate”.  However, Mr Lewis said further rises presented “a major uncertainty” hanging over both the Fed and markets.  “All territory is now uncharted”, he argued, as the US central bank attempts to raise rates from historically low levels, while the banking system is flush with cash.

He added: “The Fed and other major central banks have maintained emergency policy-settings for so long that the global economy cannot be presumed to react in standard fashion to a rise in interest rates, however small that might be.”  The central bank, led by chairman Janet Yellen, plans to keep increasing rates by quarter-point increments after raising rates by a quarter of a percentage point from their 0pc to 0.25pc range last month. Stephen Lewis, chief economist at ADM ISI, said that Fed policymakers would regard “the mildness of the response to their action as a tribute to their success”. While the main US index, the S&P 500, closed lower in 2015 as a whole – its first annual loss since the financial crisis – economists have not attributed this to the Fed’s move. Annual wage growth is expected to have picked up from 2.3pc to 2.8pc in December, generating inflationary pressures. Central bank watchers will also pay close attention to the minutes of the Fed’s December meeting, being released on Wednesday. These will show how confident policymakers are in returning inflation to target. The Fed has a mandate to promote full employment and to steer inflation towards 2pc. The inflation measure tracked by US policymakers stood at just 0.4pc in the year to November. Analysts at Barclays said that they expected to see “disparate views on the current state of inflation” and they would “be attentive” to how this impacts on “different views on the most likely path of monetary policy in 2016”.

Explosive job growth in the oil and gas sector propped up the U.S. economy for several years in the wake of the recession, as the fracking revolution put American energy workers back to work.

But 2015 was the year that job gains in the energy sector came to a screeching halt as rock-bottom oil prices triggered layoffs of more than 258,000 workers globally, according to a comprehensive analysis by industry consultant Graves & Co. And the energy business is poised to endure a fresh round of job cuts and bankruptcies in early 2016, analysts say.  The number of active oil and gas rigs in the U.S. fell 61% to 698 as of Dec. 31, compared to a year earlier, according to Baker Hughes Rig Counts....Oil companies in Texas have endured revenue losses of up to 70% over the last year, he says.  Dan Heckman, national investment consultant for U.S. Bank Wealth Management, said he expects to see a fresh round of layoffs, production cuts and bankruptcies in the oil and gas business in early 2016.  The current U.S. unemployment rate for the oil, gas and mining sector is 8.5%, but could top 10% by February, about double the overall jobless rate, Heckman projected.   Oil production leader Saudi Arabia has refused to slash output to bolster prices, and U.S. producers have kept wells flowing to pay off investments ordered in the 2000s when new fracking technology triggered a spike in American energy production.  "Many of these companies are in negative cash flow, and that’s not a sustainable dynamic," Heckman said.  It’s a game of chicken, with energy analysts closely watching to see where production cuts take place in an effort to boost prices.  Projections for a prolonged period of low oil prices provide little hope for a quick rebound. Most analysts believe oil prices will stabilize in 2016, but probably won’t rise much until the second half of the year, barring unexpected geopolitical instability.  It’s a sharp reversal of fortunes for an industry that was celebrated for the economic windfall it provided for oil-rich states such as Texas, North Dakota and Pennsylvania as other areas of the economy remained soft.  The number of jobs at oil and natural gas companies rose 40% from the start of 2007 through the end of 2012, even as total U.S. private-sector employment rose only 1%, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Honda confirmed Thursday that an inflator ruptured in a crash that killed a teenager in July, the ninth fatality linked to air bags made by Japan's Takata.  When an inflator ruptures, it can hurl metal and plastic shrapnel at a car's driver or passengers, causing sometimes fatal injuries.  "American Honda has confirmed that the Takata driver's front air bag inflator ruptured in the crash of a 2001 Honda Accord Coupe on July 22, 2015 near Pittsburgh," the automaker said in a statement. "Injuries related to this air bag inflator rupture likely resulted in the tragic death of the underage driver."  The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which inspected the wreck along with Honda officials, has attributed eight deaths in the U.S. to the air bags. All were in Hondas. In addition, another death occurred outside the U.S.  The Takata recalls now involve at least 23 million ammonium-nitrate inflators in 19 million vehicles involving 11 automakers.  "This young person's death is tragic, and it underscores why we are continuing to work so hard to get these defective inflators off the road," said NHTSA spokesman Gordon Trowbridge when the death was announced earlier this month.

I think that the assumption that through better medicines and care, people will live longer, is incorrect. Life expectancy has started to fall in the West and with the problems of obesity and laziness, it will fall by more in the years to come. The proposition that most people will live into their eighties and many beyond one hundred is laughable. The birth rate is lower in the West as many people prefer increased wealth to screaming toddlers. If the government wants to address this, then they need to subsidize the working population to ensure that having children is less of a financial drain, rather than importing large numbers of people from alien cultures...Euthanasia anyone? The population has increased by ten million since I was a kid - can't imagine they're all pensioners. What I really love about Britain is the lack of planning - scaremongering with atom bombs and climate change on one side, but taking a long term look at the country forgotten. Twenty years ago the Aussies, for one, started superannuation - whereby a percentage of your income went into your pension fund, employers had to add to it too. Thus negating the state pension in the long term. Funds are run by yourself or your Union or private - also helps for business investment. Some countries look ahead... well...There is no need to panic. If advanced countries gradually lower their populations, it will ease pressure on infrastructure, the environment, property prices, it should be seen as a boon not a catastrophe. Indeed lowering birth rates may well be a natural response to a feeling of overcrowding among cold-adapted homo sapiens (whites and asians) who evolved in environments with limited resources and harsh environments. Considering that the same effect is occurring in different cultures- Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox and Asian cultures, that may be the primary variable.  The only "problem" is for those in finance who profit from a form of centralised economic management predicated on expanding money supplies and GDP, which do not matter for everyone else, for whom all that matters to get better off is GDP per capita, which can increase- and may increase more rather than less- with a gently falling population.  The issues regarding elderly care are used to frighten us. In truth, this is a rather trivial administrative matter. Humans are more than capable of organising our societies around a shifting demographic. Added to which we have no idea what the future holds, including improved management of ageing due to new medical and bio- technologies.  A deep underlying reason for fomenting panic over this, though, is to justify mass immigration to supposedly "pay the bills of the future", to which our ruling class are ideologically wedded. If the hypothesis in my first paragraph holds, this will only further suppress native birth rates in those areas where it happens. The reaility is that immigrationism cannot anyway solve the problem, since it then just creates, down the road, even more elderly people to pay for, and thus requires more and more immigration. It's not a good policy on any basis.  Aggregate GDP does not matter. GDP per capita matters. Once you understand that, this "crisis" is not a crisis at all.