A lavish payout to public employees ordered by Saudi Arabia's new King Salman will help to sustain the kingdom's consumer boom and reassure financial markets that the government is not slashing expenditure in the face of low oil prices.
Tags: GDP
Trick or treat? India's strong GDP figures mask economic reality
For Indian business, the government and the central bank, data revisions that have transformed the country's $2.1 trillion economy into one of the world's fastest growing are too good to be true.
U.S. wholesale stocks weak; job openings highest since 2001
U.S. wholesale inventories barely rose in December, the latest suggestion that economic growth in the fourth quarter was even slower than initially thought.
China's exports, imports slump in January, record trade surplus
China's exports fell 3.3 percent in January from a year earlier, while imports slumped by 19.9 percent, both missing expectations by a wide margin, and resulting in a record monthly trade surplus of $60 billion.
Isolated Greece wants no more bailout money with strings
Greece's new leftist-led government, isolated in the euro zone and under pressure from the European Central Bank, said on Friday it wanted no more bailout money with strings attached from the European Union and International Monetary Fund.
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U.S. economic growth slowed sharply in the fourth quarter as weak business spending and a wider trade deficit offset the fastest pace of consumer spending since 2006.
Senior Democrats in the House of Representatives said on Thursday they would insist President Barack Obama provide hard evidence that proposed free trade deals will boost median U.S. incomes, laying out tough terms to support his trade agenda.
Britain's economy recorded its fastest annual growth since 2007 last year despite a bigger-than-expected slowdown in the final three months of 2014, giving a mixed message just 100 days before Britons go to the polls.
After the surprises from central banks which rocked markets at the start of the year, the U.S. Federal Reserve will be watched as closely as ever this week to see that it doesn't stray from its own policy path.
China's economic growth may be as high as 7.3 percent this year, partly due to falling commodity prices, the official Xinhua news agency quoted an academic advisor to the central bank's monetary policy committee as saying on Saturday.
Japan's government will propose a record budget for next fiscal year of more than $800 billion but cut borrowing for a third year, government officials said on Sunday, as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe seeks to maintain growth while curbing the heaviest debt burden in the industrial world.
China's annual consumer inflation hovered at a near five-year low of 1.5 percent in December, signaling persistent weakness in the economy but giving policymakers more room to ease policy to support growth.
China's annual economic growth likely slowed to 7.2 percent in the fourth quarter, the weakest since the depths of the global crisis, a Reuters poll showed, which would keep pressure on policymakers to head off a sharper slowdown this year.
The euro zone economy ended 2014 with its worst quarter for over a year as further price cutting failed to significantly drive up business activity, adding pressure on the European Central Bank to act, surveys showed.
