Planet Business

Compiled by Laura Slattery

Quote of the Week. . .

"To say that the backdrop is 'recession-like' is akin to an obstetrician telling a woman that she is 'sort of pregnant'."

A report by Merrill Lynch gives an "in denial" Wall Street the not-so-happy news that the US economy has already given birth to a recession. But the National Bureau of Economic Research - the body that officially decides whether the "R" word can be used - is still keeping mum.

The Numbers

€4 billionSum wiped off the value of companies listed on the Iseq index between the start of 2008 and lunchtime yesterday, with the Irish market falling 4.8 per cent so far this year.

$200Price per barrel that speculators are betting oil will reach by the end of 2008, after prices tipped the $100 mark last week. The number of options purchased to buy oil at $200 at the New York Mercantile Exchange has soared tenfold in the past two months.

Good Week . . .

SonyIt backed notorious loser Betamax in the 1980s video format battle and followed up this mistake by creating Minidisc, the music format swiftly abandoned by a generation weaning itself on to MP3s.

But in a week of doom and gloom, there is no doubting Sony's triumph as Warner Brothers became the last of the major studios to announce that it would release high-definition films only in its prized Blu-ray format, thus killing off Toshiba's rival HD DVD and providing some relief to "format-fatigued" viewers who want to be able to enjoy nostril-hair clarity.

Bad Week . . .

Jeremy ClarksonThe Top Gearpresenter has admitted he was wrong to treat the data privacy scandal with as little respect as he does speed cameras, after the sharing of his own bank account details in a newspaper backfired. Instead of proving that the loss of the personal data of 25 million people was a "palaver about nothing", Clarkson lost £500 after a reader kindly set up a direct debit from his account to the British Diabetic Association.

Marks & SpencerNot even the hiring of universally loved "man band" Take That to advertise their menswear could prevent the retailer from suffering a 2.2 per cent fall in its sales and ruffling a UK economy that is more polarised than ever, according to M&S chief executive Stuart Rose. While "the West End can't get enough diamonds", the poor are getting poorer, hitting M&S sales in the north of England and Scotland.

FacebookThe strategy du jour for mobilising the youth vote failed to work to the advantage of Democratic candidate Barack Obama in the US presidential New Hampshire primary. Despite having 220,500 Facebook supporters (compared to Hillary Clinton's 66,666), Obama lost out to the Clinton Comeback - a setback to both his campaign and the claim by one support group that Facebook is "how we find leaders".

HollywoodFilm industry aficionados won't be able to relieve the January blues with a spot of red carpet watching this weekend, as the traditional Oscars precursor that is the Golden Globes bash has been axed. The Screen Actors' Guild said it would not cross picket lines set up by the striking Writers' Guild of America, so the winners will now be revealed without ceremony (or pre-scripted jokes) at a sober news conference, thus depriving audiences of their right to hysterical thank-you speeches, gracious loser faces and fashion faux pas.