THE NUMBERS: 36,498The number of people who joined the dole queues in January, the highest monthly surge since records began.
£160 millionTotal spending by 20 Premier League clubs on newplayers in the January transfer window, with the all-time high suggesting that top-end football is somewhat recession-proof.
$300 millionThe sum that billionaire investor Warren Buffett has poured into iconic motorcycle firm Harley-Davidson. Impulse purchase?
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
"People really hate you. And they're starting to hate us because we've been hanging out with you. You've got to help us deal with that."
- Barney Frank, chairman of theUSHouse of Congress finance committee, isn't too happy about being tainted by association with America's bankers.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK II
"I'm sure that Philip Green is dancing a war dance in his living room, because now he will become a large owner of our companies for virtually nothing."
- Jón Ásgeir Jóhannesson, the chairman of debt-stricken Icelandic group Baugur, attacks Landsbanki for calling in its debts, saying the bank has delivered the company into the hands of "British vultures".
GOOD WEEK
Trade protectionists
The "Buy American" provisions in Barack Obama's trade stimulus plan have been received about as warmly as a bank executive at a party of civil servants this week, with EU, Canada and Japan all complaining that, contrary to Obama's assurances that it should not send a "protectionist message", countries will now be lining up to follow the US example of pursuing trade policies that restrict imports.
Australia
Prime minister Kevin Rudd asserted that his government would "never haul up the white flag on the inevitability of recession", which of course is not quite the samething as saying his country won't go into recession of course, but his AUS$42 billion fiscal boost is probably still enough to convince the thousands of Irish graduates who can't get jobs at homethat Australia remains one of the better bets for sitting out the slump in the sun.
BAD WEEK
GlaxoSmithKline
As patents on several of its drugs expire, the pharmaceutical giant's revenues are set to be slashed by the onset of cheaper generic drugs - good news for sick consumers who are dependent on drugs such as migraine medication Imitrex and epilepsy drug Lamictal, perhaps, but not so great for the thousands of Glaxo workers who are set to lose their jobs.
Snow-bound businesses
It was a “Snow Show”, declared the Irish Daily Mirror on Tuesday morning, predicting absenteeism on amass scale as commuters took the advice of Garda spokesmen all too readily and decided against all unessential travel. Meanwhile, the worst storms in 18 years hit Britain, generating wonderfully unprovable statistics like how the weather had cost the British economy anything from £1 billion to £3.5 billion in lost output.
