Morning Roundup

The Morning Roundup distills the top financial stories from the region and around the globe into bite-sized chunks for your daily consumption.

International story of the day: "green shoots" still emerging?

The global recession may be far from over, but some organisations around the globe continue to see positive signs. The OECD yesterday said China, Italy, the UK and France (strange grouping, that) are on the road to recovery and aren't plunging deeper into economic turmoil. There are also signs that the German economy is coming back. Even in the downtrodden US, anecdotal evidence suggests a revival, though everyone seems to agree that it's hard to see the end of the slowdown until after 2010. Banks and credit card issuers certainly haven't seen the end of it, despite stress-test results in the US that revealed the system as less at-risk than was widely thought.

Regional story of the day: it's the economy, stupid

With markets across the UAE looking for some sign - anything, people - of a sustained recovery, it hasn't been all that encouraging to be reminded of the IMF's projections of an economic slowdown for the country in 2009. The outlook for Abu Dhabi might be better - one official on Sunday said that a strong recovery in the latter half of this year and beyond was very likely. Still, the economy has been weighed upon massively by the property sector, especially in Dubai, where the Real Estate Regulatory Authority says 27 projects may be cancelled.

The rest:

We have earthquakes? [Arabian Business]
Think the current crisis is in the same league as the Great Depression? Not so fast. [Freakonomics]
David Einhorn of Greenlight Capital in New York reports to shareholders. Turns out he was one of the hedge-funders who got squeezed in that famous VW/Porsche dealie last year. Also, he lost money on Aldar. [Deal Journal]