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Japan’s economy grew by 1.2 percent in the third quarter as the world’s second largest economy expanded at a faster rate than expected. Government stimulus spending was credited with boosting consumer spending and most economists suggest even though future growth is expected to be lower than the Q3 results, most experts believe there is little chance that Japan’s economy could return to recession.

BBC News

A big jump in construction helped boost the British economy to a better-than-expected quarterly growth rate of 1.1 percent and nearly doubling the expected growth rate of 0.6 percent.

George Buckley, economist at Deutsche Bank, said: “This is a very strong rise. It is good news to the extent that the recovery seems to be gaining traction, the bad news is that it is going to take a long time before we get back to the peak levels we saw at the start of 2008.”

Source: BBC News

Taiwan recorded an annualized growth rate of 18 percent for the final three months of 2009. The level of growth was much greater than expected and can be attributed to a massive increase in demand in China for Taiwan’s high-tech products.

China’s economy also grew in the fourth quarter, expanding at an annualized rate of 10.9 percent and is on target to surpass Japan as the world’s second largest economy.

Source: BBC News

The US Commerce Department said that the US economy grew at an annualized rate of 2 percent during the third quarter of the year. The result follows the 1.7 percent increase in the previous quarter, but less than the 3.7 percent growth registered from January to March.

Source: BBC News

For the first time since the second quarter of 2008, the US economy recorded positive growth, expanding 3.5 percent in the quarter ending in September. Despite the upbeat news, analysts suggest that much of the growth can be traced to government stimulus spending which is expected to wind down over the next few months. For this reason, market watchers remain unconvinced that the US can maintain the same rate of growth over the next quarter.

China’s red-hot economy cooled slightly during the third quarter with growth falling to 9.6 percent compared to 10 percent earlier in the year. It seems that government has had limited success at least to cool the economy through tightening credit and withdrawing stimulus spending.

Source:

The US Commerce Department said today that for the first quarter of the year, the economy grew at an annualized rate of 1.8 percent. The result is less than was predicted and considerably weaker than the 3.1 percent rate of growth recorded in the final quarter of 2010.

Analysts had been expecting positive growth in Ireland’s economy during the second quarter and many were caught off guard when the Central Statistics Office revealed that the economy actually contracted 1.2 percent. The CSO also revised its first quarter estimated downwards to 2.2 percent from 2.7.

Source: BBC News

The Canadian dollar declined against the U.S. dollar this morning after the Bank of Canada announced the benchmark overnight rate would be held at one percent for at least another month. The Bank’s statement set the stage for rate increases later in the year however, noting that the economy is expected to grow over the next six months at a faster clip than originally expected.