Japan has officially entered the recession after the Japanese Cabinet’s office confirmed today that the country’s economy has contracted for its second successive quarters.

Japan’s gross domestic product, GDP, has fallen by a further 0.4 percent, slipping the country into the inevitable predicament, as many analysts have predicted before. In a way, the recession announcement is not that all surprising.

The last recession hit the country in 2001. The current recession is expected to last for four miserable quarters.

Japan is the world’s second largest economy after the United States, with the country highly dependent on export industry and business investment. As the export business worldwide is suffering from the financial downfall, major companies are hit hard and instead of recording profits, they are seeing red instead. A number of small and medium companies have begun their going-out-of-business sale. Street business owners are seen on the road with microphones announcing their garage sale.

Worse is yet to be expected as major corporations are expected to announce layoffs and business closure soon.

Japan has been enjoying its longest run of economic expansion until the global credit crunch and subprime mortgage crisis in the US halted its impressive surge and started to sink its export industry.

Other countries worldwide which have entered the recession in the recent run include Singapore, Ireland, Italy and Germany.

“Employees should not waste time in the office as this is akin to stealing. Stealing from your own company is a bad thing.”

This is probably a good advice from a company’s management to their staff.

But certain people go beyond being bad to being criminals, literally robbing cash from the bank they are working with.

Worse still, one of the culprits was the Branch Manager himself.

In an incident happening in California, two bank employees of Wells Fargo – one the Branch Manager, and another a Bank Teller, partnered with two friends to mastermind a fake robbery that would see $100,000 cash money taken away by the robbers.

In the ‘robbery’, the Bank Teller, who was on its way out from the bank, was approached by a robber, who forced him back into the bank and subsequently made him open a safe deposit. All this happened without a single weapon, fight or commotion. Soon after the robbery finished, the Branch Manager called the police to report the incident.

However, upon investigation, the police found inconsistencies on the statements made by witnesses, and began to suspect something amiss. They also discovered that the Bank Manager has ordered a deposit of an extra cash amount a few days before the robbery.

The two employees, together with their friends have been arrested, and are now waiting trial.

Wells Fargo is a California based financial services, offering a wide range of financial related solutions to over 20 million customers worldwide. The bank is presently the fourth largest bank in the United States, and provides employment opportunity to more than 100,000 staff worldwide. It was also recently named as “The World’s Safest US Bank” by Standard and Poor based on long term foreign currency.

As the recession looming, the New York’s Wall Street is slowly losing its reputation as a reputable center of economic and provider of jobs and employment opportunity to local and foreign talents.

Many of the employees are beginning to desert the city to start a new life somewhere else, including both laid off people as well as those who are still working but concerned on their future fate and welfare.

Merger, acquisition and layoff are the orders of the day, with major financial companies drawing their strategy to avoid financial collapse and help them returning to profitability. Whatever means they have chosen, more often than not, the actions will translate into people losing their job and source of income.

Even the biggest financial firms such as Citigroup, JP Morgan, Merrill Lynch and Bank of America are not spared from financial headaches. Lehman Brothers, once a Wall Street’s landmark, suffered the worst fate after declared bankrupt two months ago, leaving more than 15,000 of its employees jobless overnight.

Bankers and investment brokers are looking for ways to escape from the continued financial meltdown in New York and have chosen cities like Chicago, Milwaukee, Florida, Virginia and even in some Asian countries instead to start a new job. Definitely, some of these people are high flying executives in their firms but unfortunately have landed themselves in a wrong place at a very wrong time.

If there is any consolation for them, many smaller firms and companies outside of New York will be more than happy to take them in, but they may have to settle for lower salary and compensation.

Nurses in Malaysia now can get higher salary, especially for those who decide to further their studies in degrees and masters.

The Health Minister, Datuk Dr. Liow Tiong Lai told that nurses with degrees will be able to earn salary with a grade range between U41 to U54.

At the moment, the highest salary grade for nurses is U48. With the new pay scale and grade, the government is hoping to cultivate more interest among the students to choose nursing as their career, and help to reduce the ratio of nurse: no. of people in the country.

The nurse: no. of people ratio in the country today stands at 1:375, which falls short of the World Health Organization (WHO) standard of 1:200.

A fresh graduate who starts their career with U41 grade scale earns close to RM2,000 of monthly basic salary. In addition to the basic salary, he or she is also entitled for a number of allowances and monetary perks, including housing allowance, cost of living (COLA), critical allowance and public service incentives. A nurse at the U48 scale, on the other hand, takes home about RM8,000.

For someone to reach the U54 pay grade, a nurse would need to obtain at least a Masters, and accumulates a minimum experience of 20 years in service. The grade U54 is also usually accorded to those in high level management, such as the department directors, where the recipient would be receiving a salary of RM10,000 per month or more.

Apart from nurses, X-ray technicians, medical assistants (MA) and health inspectors are also subject with the same pay grade.