Countdown hello welcome to hello. Welcome to countdown. At 11 00 a. M. London time, eu ministers will hold an extraordinary meeting in brussels. The deteriorating relationship with russia and the threat posed by islamist militants and iraq. International correspondent hans nichols is in brussels. They have a lot to discuss and just the first day. They have very little hard intelligence about what is happening on the ground in both of the situation. Iraq appears to be improving but on ukraine, theres a great deal of conclusion confusion so there will be an attempt to see clarity. Its unlikely there will be another round of sanctions according to an eu official. They will assess the impact of and thenimport ban they will try and figure out what is actually happening right now in the city of donetsk. Vladimir putin in crimea talking about a worsening crisis. There are reports from local of armored incursions into rebel held territory. We still do not know what will be happening with this
Is. And the aussie markets as well. We saw the aussie dollar falling earlier. The asx giving up some of its earlier declines. Resource shares active today. Crude has been trading sideways. This is what we see so far. Jakarta is now at half of the trading day. It is a quarter one percent higher insole in seoul. Tochinas Economic Growth slow down in the Fourth Quarter. Lets get more from Stephen Engle who is in beijing. Steve, what have we got here . Economic growth, as you said, slowing in the Fourth Quarter in china to 7. 7 from 7. 8 . The median testament from economists was for 7. 6 . So a deep forecast, albeit by disabled albeit by just a little bit. It is still a yearoveryear figure. Authorities are managing down growth expectations though, trying to whittle down the risks in the Financial System due in part to over leverage. There has been a bit of a cash crunch in this economy as lending has been tightened. Already nine provinces have set lower gdp targets for this year from last
Health of these countries and whether some of the concerns we have seen in recent days are limited to individual countries or a broadbased problem affecting emerging markets. We have seen currencies selloff precipitously in this space, and we have seen a flight to safety as investors pile into Precious Metals like gold and silver. It is a very active day in the equity markets and in other Asset Classes across asia. For theowest level overall benchmark in over four months. Talking about falls for some of these equity markets, the biggest falls we have seen in seven months. David has the details on this flight to safety or quality. Moving to the sidelines. Yeah, it is basically the same group of stocks. You have japan, because of the stronger yen. Down 1. 5 . Looking at the currencies, the peso, the rupiah, and the bot. These are the same three which took the brunt of the selling in june, right after ben bernanke used the tword. 45. 42 for the peso, the weakest level since 2010. The rupi
In australia, we see the a six 200 starting the day off with fractionally lower, a bit under. 5305 is your level there. The aussie dollar is weakening at 87 u. S. Cents. Zealand, we are seeing fractional gains, pretty much flat right now. New Zealand Dollar spot is weakening, 82 and a half u. S. Cents. We are also counting down to the open in japan and korea. Now,ss than an hour from futures trading in chicago, it looks like its going to be a fractional gain at the start of the session. The dollar yen is slightly strengthening this morning at 104. 28 yen to the u. S. Dollar. Is being so badly crushed by the playstation and next box from sony and microsoft that nintendo is forecasting a surprise lost. John is here to explain what went wrong. That nintendo is forecasting a surprise my favorite area, gone game consoles. About 240 million u. S. , after forecasting a profit of ¥55 billion. A dramatic shift in that earning story. Shoppers turned out looking for the opposition, sony and xbox
The worst of the slowdown in china may be over, and david inglis is looking at this. Pickup, 50. 8. A it was not a big surprise, because if you look at the range of forecasts from economists, pretty much everyone was expecting we would still see expansion. As high as 51. 5, so i guess you could argue that it is more in line with expectations. This is really a survey, at least for this particular one. A series of questions. How many optimists are there, compared to pessimist . A number above 50 indicates that people are perhaps a little bit more bullish on their own business, so that is what we have for the large enterprises. If you look at the medium sort of companies, mediumsized companies, because that is a critical area right now, we saw a big improvement here. 50. 3 in april, 51. 4, which suggests that some of these measures that beijing put in place over the past several have filtered over. That said, you look at the smallest firms, it is more difficult for these firms, 48 point e