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Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: StanX Long who wrote (61739)	3/8/2002 1:57:51 AM
From: StanX Long	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

Japan's contraction continues Friday, 8 March, 2002, 06:02 GMT news.bbc.co.uk The markets are shrugging off the bad news as the US economy strengthens Any lingering doubts about the depth of Japan's economic troubles were washed away on Friday with news that the economy shrank throughout the last nine months of 2001. Only once in two decades, in 1993, has that happened, the government said. New figures released by the Ministry of Finance showed that between October and December, Japan's output fell by 1.2%, a rate that - if carried through a full year - would result in a 4.5% annual contraction. For 2001 as a whole, growth in the first three months meant that the fall was 0.5%. Markets unruffled The quarterly contraction is even worse than many economist had been predicting. But it did not hit the markets, which are well inured to this kind of news. With traders recalling that these figures apply to the end of last year and hoping that January to March - the final quarter of Japan's financial year - will be slightly better, both the Nikkei 225 equity index and the value of the yen continued to rise.