Israel may be 1st developed state to exit recession-PM

JERUSALEM, Oct 12 (Reuters) - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday Israel could be the first developed country to emerge from the recession caused by the global financial crisis.
Netanyahu -- the architect of free-market and other economic reforms when he was finance minister from 2003-3005 -- praised the passage of a dual-year budget for 2009 and 2010 and said Israel was set to meet fiscal targets this year.
"As a result it is possible that Israel will exit the global financial crisis faster than most developed countries in the world," the prime minister said at the opening of the fall session of parliament.
The export-dependent Israeli economy was hard-hit by the global financial meltdown but it started showing signs of recovery earlier this year. The economy grew at an annual rate of 1 percent in the second quarter after contractions in the prior two periods.
The Bank of Israel last month raised its forecast for 2009 to zero growth in 2009 from a previous prediction of a 1.5 percent contraction, and its 2010 estimate to 2.5 percent growth from a previous estimate of 1 percent.
Minutes of the central bank's Sept. 24 policy meeting published earlier on Monday showed that Bank of Israel Governor Stanley Fischer remained cautiously optimistic over the state of the economy as as a result opted to hold short-term interest rates steady a month after raising them a quarter-point.
"The continued recovery in economic activity and the expectation of faster growth in Israel and worldwide suggest that the current environment is one of recovery from the recession," the minutes said.
"That said, there is uncertainty regarding the strength of the recovery in Israel, in part because of the uncertainty about the recovery in the global economy.".

http://www.iii.co.uk/news/?type=afxnews&articleid=7569436&subject=economic&action=article

I'm pretty sure Australia avoided a recession

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/Economics/GDP-Growth.aspx?Symbol=AUD

Recovery is when you're back up to pre-recession levels of economic growth. Israel is apparently the first developed nation to be getting close to that (but don't quote me on it).

Our PM said so. I think it's an official recession if there's two consecutive quarters of decline. But if we were ever in recession, then Nutty's wrong, because our economy's been growing for a fair while now and like the page you linked to said, is now one of the strongest economies in the world. I'm willing to bet that the Australian economy is already back past any pre-recession levels. I suspect that Nutty wasn't particularly interested in how factual what he said was, more that it sounded good and reassuring to his target audience, which of course is the Israeli public...

Anyway, enough boring economy talk. I'm heading off now to keep an eye on our currency and waiting for that predicted moment when AU$1 = US$1 and then I'm going to hit ebay and do some impulse buying of a whole lot of crap from America with my newly powerful dollar! ;)

rather than growth figures per quarter, so its a bit confusing.

It should be noted that Israel is the fastest growing country in the OECD in terms of population - roughly 2% growth per annum (Australia is not far behind). In real per capita terms, Australia suffered a fall of 1.5% in GDP, and Israel about the same. So for those people who say that it still feels like a recession, they're basically correct.

Certainly the Jews are not doing it all by themselves. On the other hand, maybe this information is not true.

Also lessening of restrictions in the west bank has seen their economy start to markedly Improve aswell, hopefully the trend continues.

Israel's "unusual" economic structure means that it has a cushion of public revenue that is not subject to a down turn in tax revenue.

The aid transfer payments may seem like a modest part of the economy, but when you apply the macro-economic multiplier, it has a bigger impact.

The OP article is sort of like saying people on social security in the US have not been hit by the unemployment crisis.

CNN video report.

I don't think you can "blame" aid transfer payments to Israel for the Israeli economic recovery. After all the US give aid in huge amounts to many different countries, for example Egypt. Watch the CNN report and you'll understand more.