In an attempt to achieve economies of scale, the Chinese government has encouraged mergers amongst steelmakers. This is no doubt an attempt to gain greater control in the annual iron ore price negotiations and finally have the wood on the miners.

"BEIJING, Dec. 12 (Xinhua) -- China will encourage mergers in the iron and steel industry, said Minister of Industry and Information Technology Li Yizhong here on Friday, as another move to offset the adverse impact of the global financial turmoil.

"Li also said that China should have a say in iron ore pricing, adding that Chinese steel makers should work together to avoid pushing up iron ore prices in international negotiations." - Source

In other news, there's an interesting article from Joseph Stiglitz floating around where he gives his say on the 'causes' (a.k.a the blame game) of the U.S. financial crisis. Click here to read it.

Think again.

With the recent financial crisis and subsequent layoffs, there is massive oversupply in the finance industry.

"Sydney headhunters are experiencing a wave of new interest as the global financial crisis impacts on the CBD." - Source

Applicants for jobs in the Australian financial industry are streaming in from the US, UK and around Australia thanks to wave after wave of layoffs. I'd also predict that engineers will be in huge oversupply as well - so to all of those commerce/engineering students (of which there are many thanks to the mining boom), I'd consider a different profession, at least until the commodity prices stabilise and we're out of recession. It's not a good industry to be going into during a downturn!

Finally, I'll leave you with this - as Paul Krugman described it, the "...truth about economists and the financial crisis".

Following the previous posts on Macquarie Bank's job cuts I thought it would be a good idea to have a look at the job losses at various companies. Here's a summary:

• Macquarie Bank - 1,000 over the next few months (12% of total workforce), possibly up to 4,000
• Goldman Sachs - 150 (8% of total workforce)
• Ericsson -  300 (6% of total workforce)
• Telstra - 12,000 by 2010
• Air New Zealand - 200+
• British Telecom - 10,000 by the end of the year (15% of total workforce)
• ANZ - 3,000 - 3,500 (10% of total workforce)
• Sun Microsystems - 6,000 (15-18% of total workforce)

While this isn't nearly the complete list it gives some idea of how many unemployed suits there will be running around over the next year. I expect enrolments in University Master's courses to be up in 2009 filled with many former high-flyers looking to reskill themselves or find a niche.