08/08/2013 World Business Report

Edward Snowden. Those are the latest headlines from

BBC World News. For the latest financial news with Alice.

Result electrify Wall Street. The Greek V8 is now worth more than Fiat

and Peugeot combined. Pay with your face - we will be

hearing about the latest step towards a world without cash.

A warm welcome to you. This is World Business Report. In just a moment, a

deepening crisis, or an economy on the mend? We will be looking forward

to the latest unemployment figures for Greece. Now we start with this.

It is a Tesla model S luxury electric car and it has been getting

Wall Street very excited. Shares in Tesla motors soared as much as 15%

in after-hours trading. That's after the company reported better than

expected results. In fact, Tesla's shares have almost quadrupled,

taking the company's value up to over $18 billion. That is more than

Italy and France's biggest carmakers, Fiat and Peugeot,

combined. This is all very good news for this chap, Tesla's boss and

biggest shareholder. He doesn't need the money, of course. He is the

co-founder of PayPal and he is already a billionaire three times

over. The car may be silent, but this

model S is driving Tesla's current success. It delivers more than 5000

of these cars and has surpassed its target of 4500. It is creating

sparks in the electric car market. This set of wheels to not come

cheap. Despite being an $80,000 luxury electric automobile, it has

outsold both missile and's electric car and GM's hybrid, which uses both

gasoline and electricity -- Nissan. In this largest car market in the

world, interest in these kind of automobiles are stuck in neutral.

Just 0.5% of all cars sold in the USA this year were electric or

hybrid. Given that bumpy road, Tesla has been able to pull out ahead of

other electric car makers. Welcome news for its CEO, the quirky

co-founder of PayPal and space enthusiast, he has his sights on

something even more forward-looking. Next week he will launch a new

high-speed transportation system that will hurtle people from one

place to another using suction tubes.

Lucky him. Now China has just released its trade figures for July.

They have given some reassurance that the economy is stabilising

after its recent slowdown. Let's go straight to Singapore. Some

reassuring numbers here. Reassuring indeed. These numbers

came in a lot better than expected. It is a possible sign that the

world's second largest economy is potentially stabilising, as you

said, following the slowdown. Shipments are rising 5.1% from last

year. This is compared to expectations of anywhere between two

-3% depending on the various surveys. Imports are also rising by

about 11%. Wild swings from June's darter whether numbers had fallen.

Exports were down... All of this meant that for July there was a

trade surplus of almost $18 billion. These improved numbers

follow official manufacturing and service industry indices as well,

which also rose in July. This might boost the Premier's chances of

hitting the year 7.5% target for expansion. We saw Chinese

authorities pledging to stabilise growth while resting on with

economic reform. We have all been watching for this darter in concern

that it might show a slowdown but it defied expectations. We are also

seeing it coming at a time when the Chinese yuan is hitting a record

high against the US dollar. The currency is at its highest level

since China created it. , since they created the foreign currency market

in 1994. There is speculation they may allow it to strengthen even

further. Now to Greece where the latest

unemployment figures for the month of April are due out in a few hours

time. The country's jobless rate has scaled new highs this year. In March

it hit 26.9%. That is more than twice the average rate in the

eurozone with parts of Europe now apparently on the upturn, though,

are there any signs that the years of austerity are paying for Greece?

Is the economy still on course to sink even further? We will talk to

the Professor of economics at the University of Athens. Many thanks

for joining us on the programme. How is it looking in Greece? Is the

economy stabilising? I very much fear that it is not. There is

nothing in the fundamentals for Greece or for Spain, Italy,

Portugal, even in the Eurozone, pointing to change improvement

economically. It would need a genuine reduction in unemployment.

Is this testament to the fact that the austerity programme is not

working? It is not working. We have a triple crisis, the credit crunch,

that is due to crisis which is getting deeper, we have a debt

crisis which is getting deeper because GDP is falling. Debt is not.

We have a dearth of investment. is the answer going forward? What

can be done, particularly on the unemployment front? Particularly at

youth unemployment, those between the ages of 15 and 24 remained the

hardest hit, don't they? Unless we have some rational approach to this

triple crisis, unless we can resolve the problem that we have with the

banks that are getting more and more in solvent by the day, unless we

have some way of managing to get of the eurozone and an investment

programme that will shift idle savings into productive city, there

is nothing you can do to improve the youth unemployment situation. Very

briefly, if the unemployment rate is not better today, it is because the

activity rate has fallen. All we can look forward to, if you are looking

in a cynical fashion, is that the number of people who are actively

seeking jobs is falling, either because they are getting

discouraged, getting sick, or they are migrating to Australia or

Germany. Thank you, Professor Yunus. Many thanks for giving us a

not too optimistic outlook from Athens.

Some other news. JP Morgan Chase says it is facing a criminal

investigation by the US Department of Justice regarding mortgage-backed

securities. Several investigators have already concluded that it broke

securities laws. It says it could lose $6.8 billion more than it has

already put aside to cover legal action.

There could be more evidence that the mining boom is running out of

steam later. Mining giant Rio Tinto is expected to report a drop in

profits of more than 18% for the six months up to June. That is amid

weaker commodity prices there are concerns about global economic

growth. We have all left our wallet or purse

at home, but it no longer stops you shopping. Now, in a first for the

UK's consumers, PayPal, which we were mentioning earlier, has

launched a way of paying by smart phone by using your picture. We have

been giving it a try. You are on the high street enjoying

a bit of shopping. You can pay by cash, by card, and, increasingly,

with one of these. A smart phone to tap and pay. But here in Richmond on

the outskirts of London you can now do something else. You can use your

phone and your face. This is one of the stores that accepts the PayPal

system. Luckily for me, it sells frozen yoghurt. I need to find it on

the app, now I am checking in. Let's order. Hello, can I have salted

caramel with a couple of toppings, please? Strawberry and chocolate

chip. I see you have checked in on PayPal? I will charge you right now.

Thank you very much. Would you like a receipt? Yes, thank you.Enjoy

your yoghurt. We are a small business and the one luxury we have

been a small business is that we can provide a more personal experience

for the customer. Just having a talking point is a good way to

interact with the customer further. We see their profile picture on our

screen we see their first name. We can just talk to them. PayPal

reckons increasing numbers of us would like to leave our wallet at

home when we shop. Is this new technology safe? The man behind the

plan things it is. It's backed up with the same security that PayPal

has today. If we believe there is suspicious activity happening on

someone's mobile phone weevil take steps to ensure that maybe we can

prevent that from happening. Could this be the start of a PayPal

revolution? It's only available in a dozen locations in Richmond for

now. PayPal's challenges are to get its button on thousands of other

outlets. No excuse now for not paying a bill.

That recovery with talking about in China's trade - the numbers have