This post is a guest con­tri­bu­tion by Rebecca Wilder*, author of the of the News N Eco­nom­ics blog.

Here in the US, mar­kets are look­ing for the actual turn­ing point, hav­ing priced in the “falling less quickly”, or the “sec­ond deriv­a­tive”, story. Unfor­tu­nately, the turn­ing points have yet to mate­ri­al­ize in much of the domes­tic reports: indus­trial pro­duc­tion remains in descent; hous­ing moves lat­er­ally on the bot­tom; and trade is (maybe) show­ing some life.

How­ever, glob­ally the first deriv­a­tive action (actual monthly growth) is more obvi­ous: build­ing per­mits in Canada were way up in May; auto sales in China con­tinue to sur­prise, up almost 50% over the year; exports in South Korea are seri­ously less neg­a­tive since 2008; and indus­trial pro­duc­tion in Ger­many got a big May bump (almost back to 2005 lev­els of pro­duc­tion). But it pretty much ends there this week: Euro­zone retail sales con­tin­ued to slide, –3.3% over the year in May.

Here are the global charts of the week

Find­ing a bot­tom: loss in goods export rev­enue is taper­ing off at –20% to –35% over the year

The unem­ploy­ment rate con­tin­ues its relent­less surge in Aus­tralia and Switzer­land (The chart illus­trates the annual change in the unem­ploy­ment rate.)

And some good(ish) news: the first deriv­a­tive action

Auto sales in China are Red HOT: notice the columns are the color of the Chi­nese flag

China’s auto sales are up 47.7% over the year, its third con­sec­u­tive increase in the annual growth rate.

Builders in Canada are plan­ning ahead: res­i­den­tial and non-residential build­ing autho­riza­tion per­mits surged 15% and 14%, respec­tively, in May. Much of the res­i­den­tial growth was in the volatile multi-family space (single-family autho­riza­tions grew 1.4%); but new hous­ing stock con­tributes to pos­i­tive GDP growth.

And Indus­trial Pro­duc­tion (IP) in Ger­many surged 3.7% in May, while UK IP fell 0.57%. But don’t get too excited: Ger­man index shows that IP lev­els are almost back to those seen in 2005 (four years ago).

Finally, the bad news: Euro­zone retail sales strug­gling to make headway….

Over­all, this week’s global eco­nomic reports show that the global econ­omy is (likely) at the sta­bi­liza­tion phase of the busi­ness cycle. Going for­ward, this col­umn will be look­ing for global turn­ing points in the data.

Source: Rebecca Wilder, News N Eco­nom­ics, July 10, 2009.

* Rebecca Wilder is an econ­o­mist in the finan­cial indus­try. She was pre­vi­ously an assis­tant pro­fes­sor and holds a doc­tor­ate in economics.

Dr. Prieur du Plessis is an investment professional with 26 years' experience in investment research and portfolio management. More than 1,200 of his articles on investment-related topics have been published in various regular newspaper, journal and Internet columns, including his blog, Investment Postcards from Cape Town. He has also published a book, Financial Basics: Investment. Prieur is Chairman and principal shareholder of South African-based Plexus Asset Management, which he founded in 1995. The group conducts investment management, investment consulting, private equity and real estate activities in South Africa and a number of foreign countries. He also serves as Honorary Consul of Slovenia for South Africa, actively developing economic, cultural and scientific relations between Slovenia and South Africa. Prieur is 54 years old and live with his wife, television producer and presenter Isabel Verwey, and two children in Cape Town, South Africa. His leisure activities include long-distance running, traveling, reading, motor-cycling and scripophily. Read more from the author/contributor here.

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