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Intel’s earnings signaled a strong holiday sales season for the computer industry Tuesday, with Q-3 earnings way ahead of Wall Street expectations. The world’s biggest chip maker showed that its business is recovering quickly from the recession, with revenues down only 8% from the previous year, compared to 15% and 26% declines in Q’s 1 & 2, Y 2009. The results make it abundantly clear that computing is essential to people’s lives, proving the importance of technology innovation in leading an economic recovery,” said Paul Otellini, Intel chief executive, in a statement. The company’s results, at the start of the earnings season, boost investor hopes of strong Q-3 performances from technology companies the leaders in this market recovery. Google and IBM report their results on Thursday and are covered in Stock Talk today. Read more

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US Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said Tuesday that the country’s economic recession is very likely over at this point. More and more data showed that the world largest economy is pulling out of the worst recession since the 1930s. Bernanke admitted that in responding to questions at the Washington based think-tank Brookings Institution. The central bank chief also expressed his confidence that the Congress will enact a revamp of the nation’s financial rule book to prevent future crisis from happening. “I feel quite confident that a comprehensive reform will be forthcoming,” Bernanke said. In a speech delivered Monday in New York to rethink the one year anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, President Barack Obama urged the Congress to enact legislation this year. US Treasury Secretary Tim Geither also said recently that it is essential that the financial overhaul should be implemented to avoid future crisis.

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A US$300M US energy department rebate scheme on energy-efficient appliances could be operating by Christmas. The UK’s main retail trade body meanwhile wants the government to drop value-added tax on eco-friendly white goods with a temporary car industry style scraping to kick start the demand. Clunkers schemes have certainly blown away expectations in the US and elsewhere; Germany’s helped pull the country out of recession this spring, and boosted car-making countries in central Europe. Even the UK’s stingier scheme stimulated sales. So why not try it with fridges? Like cars, sales of big-ticket white goods are suffering badly; US sales fell 15% in the seven months to July. And even offsetting the energy cost of destroying older products and building new ones, there are long-term benefits to the environment and consumers’ pockets. Read more

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Dell Inc.’s Q-2 Y 2009 results reinforce what other tech giants have shown recently about the health of the personal computer industry: it was wounded by the recession, but is getting back on its feet, thanks to consumers, bargain prices and little “netbook” laptops for surfing the Internet. Dell’s message was similar to those offered by rival Hewlett-Packard Co., the world’s No. 1 PC seller, and supplier Intel Corp., the world’s biggest computer chip maker, in their latest quarterly reports: consumers are coming back to the stores to buy PCs, but corporations are still being stingy. Read more

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Japan’s gross domestic product (GDP) achieved the first growth in five quarters in the Q-2, indicating that the world’s second largest economy has climbed out of recession. According to a preliminary report released by the cabinet office Monday, the Japanese economy grew by an annualized 3.7% in real terms in the April-June period, the first rise since the Q-3 Y 2008 when Japan, along with the 15-nation Euro-zone, sank into its first recession in seven years as the global financial crisis took a heavy toll on the world’s second largest economy and curbed demand for its exports.. The expansion in GDP, which was lifted by consumer and government spending, came following a revised annualized 11.7% plunge in the previous quarter and a revised 13.1% dive in the October-December quarter of 2008. On a quarter-on-quarter basis, the economy rose 0.9% in the Q-2, said the office in a preliminary report. Meanwhile, consumer spending was up 0.8%quarter-on-quarter in real terms while corporate capital spending dipped 4.3 percent, according to the report. Public investment jumped 8.1% , pushed by the government’s fiscal stimulus packages to fight the recession, compared with a 9.5% fall in housing investment.

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Leading indicators now suggest that the global recession is coming to an end and the world economy is on the road to a policy-induced recovery. “The OECD’s composite leading indicators signal that the worst is over,” Tu Packard said in the global outlook report released Friday by Moody’s Economy.com, the research unit of Moody’s Corporation, which is independent of Moody’s Investors Service. The OECD refers to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Packard said he saw significant improvement in the world economic map in July, as compared with that in January. Ample liquidity provided by central banks has helped stabilize the financial markets and credit conditions and bank liquidity has been improving, he said. In Asia, China and India are again picking up growth momentum and are the first to recover from the impacts of the global financial turmoil and economic slowdown. Indonesia and Bangladesh are still members of the expanding growth club. Turkey and South Korea, which enjoyed broad-based growth in the second quarter, are projected to have an early recovery. South Korea and other industrialized Asian economies are also benefiting from a strong recovery in the electronics industry. But Japan remains in the slowdown phase, still troubled with high unemployment and massive overcapacity in manufacturing. Read more

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