Global Financial News Sep/25/2009

The Group of 20 nations is close to an agreement that would require members to subject their economic policies to a type of "peer review," according to several senior G-20 officials, in a shift that would expose the U.S. and China to broad scrutiny of the way they run their economies. Also, the G-20 heads of state will announce on Friday that the G-20 will become the permanent council for international economic cooperation, eclipsing the Group of Eight
Global stock markets dropped Friday as leaders of the world's 20 largest economies assembled in the U.S. to find ways to foster a healthy economic recovery. European shares were modestly lower after Asian markets closed down, while the dollar fell against major currencies and oil prices gained slightly after a two-day plunge.
Twitter appears set to raise $100 million, valuing it at $1 billion; For context, that is almost double the market capitalization of Domino’s Pizza, which has 10,500 employees and had $1.4 billion in sales last year. Twitter has some 60 employees, and although it is experimenting with running advertisements on its Web site, Biz Stone, a Twitter founder, said this week at an industry confer-ence that the company had no plans to begin widely running ads until 2010.
The economic outlook for Central and Eastern Europe is improving, but important challenges remain, including ensuring that the supply of credit is sufficient to support the recovery, the European Commission said Friday.
Spain's efforts to rein in its budget shortfall by a 2012 deadline set by the European Union are being stymied because the central government in Madrid has relatively little sway over public-sector spending. Spain is to swing from a surplus of 2% of gross domes-tic product to a deficit that is forecast to top 10% this year. Under that forecast, it would be Europe's third-largest deficit in per-centage terms, behind those of the U.K. and Ireland.
In another sign the global economy is emerging from its downturn, data released Friday showed world trade volumes rose at the fastest rate in over five years in July. Trade volumes increased by 3.5% from June, the largest increase in a single month since December 2003; July trade volumes were 15.9% down on their peak in April 2008.