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comScore, a leader in measuring the digital world, reported holiday season retail e-commerce spending for the first 27 days of the November – December 2009 holiday season. For the holiday season-to-date, $10.57 billion has been spent online, marking a 3-percent increase versus the corresponding days last year. Black Friday (November 27) saw $595 million in online sales, making it the second heaviest online spending day to date in 2009 and representing an 11-percent increase versus Black Friday 2008.

The Conference Board Leading Economic Index™ (LEI) for the Euro Area increased 0.9 percent in October to 101.4 (2004 = 100), following a 1.0 percent increase in September and a 1.9 percent increase in August. Five of the eight components contributed positively to the index this month. However, its six-month growth rate slowed slightly in October.

Global growth will resume in 2010, driven largely by the world’s emerging economies, The Conference Board reported.

Latin America as a whole is showing signs of recovery and stabilization. Economic activity is helped by improving conditions in global financial and commodity markets, as well as recovering exports. It is also underpinned by the stronger policy frameworks developed during the past decade, which have promoted resilience and allowed the implementation of timely responses to counter the crisis. Yet several medium-term features of the Latin America region still cast a shadow over the strength of the coming recovery. Combating poverty and reducing inequality remains a top priority. Many countries continue to struggle with scarce investment, low productivity, dependence on volatile commodity prices and slowing migrant remittances.

Retail Decisions (ReD), a world leader in card fraud prevention, payments processing and card issuing, reports that US online retail spend reached a staggering peak between 12:00 and 13:00 on Black Friday, with a massive $183 million being spent in just one hour, an increase of 61%, on a like for like basis, versus last year. According to ReD, the busiest minute happened at 12:59, when online sales reached $5.6 million, up 131% on the year before.

In 2008, EU27 external trade in services recorded a surplus of 78.4 billion euro, compared with a surplus of 86.9 bn in 2007 and a surplus of 71.4 bn in 2006.

In November, the Economic Sentiment Indicator (ESI) rose to 87.9 (+1.9 points) in the EU and to 88.8 (+2.7) in the euro area. The indicator has improved in both areas for eight consecutive months since its trough in March 2009, though it still remains significantly below the long-term average.

In the first half of 2009 the value of EU27 exports to China fell to 37 bn euro, compared with 39 bn in the first half of 2008, and imports decreased to 103 bn from 112 bn. As a result, the EU27 trade deficit with China dropped from 73 bn in the first half of 2008 to 65 bn in the same period of 2009.

ShopLocal(TM), the leader in multi-channel marketing services, is reporting a record breaking 27 percent rise in traffic to top retailers' online circular sites as consumers prepared for their Black Friday shopping expeditions. Sale offers increased by 13 percent over last year and consumers responded in larger numbers and also increased their page views per visit by 12 percent. Retailers facilitated all of this as they not only offered a higher volume of promotions but an unprecedented number of major retailers also announced sales early.

Retail Decisions (ReD) predicts that 2009 will be a lucrative Thanksgiving for retailers as online retail sales could hit $51 billion over the holiday season, up 23% on last year's $41.4 billion. ReD, a world leader in card fraud prevention, payment processing and a card issuer, screens some sixteen billion card transactions annually for fraud, and has seen actual online retail sales surpass 2008 by 23% since November 1 2009.