OECD: Positive Global Growth

Today the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) has published its release showing that its 30 members have emerged from the recession; this is the first time that the OECD economies have expanded since the first quarter of 2008. As I have stated in my last post, the Britain economy is the only country in Europe still contracting his economy, another confirmation of this bad trend come from the OECD stating that UK was the only G7 country not to grow in the quarter. The Eurozone grew 0.4%, while the US expanded by 0.9%. I have taken in consideration various newspapers in order to analyze how they communicate the news and with which kind of emphasis.

The first article is from BBC news that it use its typical structure to communicate the news. The first part is providing an overview, stating facts and figures: “Japan delivered the strongest growth, expanding by 1.2%, while the UK posted the weakest, contracting by 0.4%”. This strategy enable the readers to have a wider idea of what it is explaining and moreover to give them the chance of a better understanding of the second part that usually is based on a specific issues regarding the argument. In this case the second part is discussing about the effect of the unemployment from this “actual” recovery, the outcome is not positive at all: “however, it predicted that even with the return to growth, unemployment rates will continue to rise until the end of next year”. It is really clever in my opinion writing about this kind of consequences because due to its ambiguous and strange outcome could generate curiosity and therefore attracting more readers. At the end I always appreciate their clear and objective style of writing that provides the reader with a good generalist overview of the news with a brief article.

After this, I have analyzed an article from the Wall Street Journal. For the first since I am reading this newspaper, I did not appreciate the way is written and explained the article. Usually the WSJ is a specific financial newspaper that is providing detailed information with technical and deep analysis; in this case this article is really similar to the previous one or even worst. It is absolutely too short and not with a level of accuracy that characterized this newspaper, it is just giving a brief idea of the figures released by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and nothing else. If I wanted to read a brief article I would have preferred Reuters or a simple daily newspaper.

The last article is from the Times and it has to be considered the most accurate and detailed out of the all three newspapers. It is noticeable from the title “UK economy is the 'sick man' as rivals recover” that is empathizing the bad economic results of Britain and could be interpreted as a critic to the strategies adopted by the government. It is a well structured article, beginning with fact and figures: “the 30 countries in the OECD had shown no economic growth in the second quarter, but recorded growth of 0.8 per cent in the third quarter”. Then analyzing in details the argument: “The eurozone’s dominant service sector grew at its fastest pace in two years in November, with Markit’s Index of activity rising to 53.2 in November, from 52.6 in October, to reach its highest since November 2007”. Concluding with future forecast from economists “However, analysts remained cautious about the outlook for the eurozone.”. The best and complete article taken into consideration in my analysis.

In conclusion I would like to state that this kind of figures does not give us the real situation of the economy because are not taking in consideration a vast variety of variable aspects that could bring us back into the crisis. These variable aspects could be: high level of unemployment or high level of debt of companies. Therefore they are positive signs that have be considered as a starting point and not as an arrival.

BBC News:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8374042.stm

Wall Street Journal

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125897414003560355.html

Times:

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/economics/article6928233.ece