18November2008

Citi to reduce headcount by 50000
Citi that never sleeps, has announced to cut jobs by 50,000 by January of 2009. This will be over job cut of 23,000 from January to September 2008. This will make it largest job cut by Financial company in the current crisis. These job cuts will be across all region and mainly in Investment Banking division. Citi faced losses of $20bn in last quarter. And this move tends to reduce the losses in next quarter, though not enough to get Citi profit!

Job cut in Diamond industry
Latest industry to hit by global recession is Diamond industry. And India is badly hit by it. Indian Diamond industry purchases raw diamonds from African countries and process it to beautiful jeweleries and export it. With exports coming down Indian companies are asking for less raw diamond. This reduces the demand for our skilled workers. Though, these companies have already given leaves to contract workers earlier. Considering the huge size of Indian Diamond industry mainly concentrated in Surat, this will definitely affect Indian Economy which is still much safe than other major economies of the world.

Japan in recession
World's second largest economy (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)) Japan is the latest country to enter recession. The economy has contracted by 0.4%. Note here that a country is said to be in recession if its growth is negative for two consecutive quarters. A technical recession is if a country suffers negative growth including inflation for two consecutive quarters. Japan is suffering because the use of the Japanese products reduced immensely across the globe. France is next to follow Japan with UK on the brink. Economy of China is also slowing down. Is the world heading for a bigger crisis than 1929-1930?