How would I describe the week that was?

Quite simply in two words; "very" and "frustrating"!

I would like to expand on this and explain just 'why' I am finding the whole global financial conundrum 'very frustrating' - just in case anyone reading my weekly 'blurb' seems to think that recently, I never have a good thing to say.

This week has seen Chrysler file for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy and as such, people are hopping around in the American Car sector saying that GM's Thursday-announced 34% decline in car sales was, yes you guessed it, 'better than expected' and the Auto sector climbed heavily.

Please allow me to explain two things about Chrysler. The first being that for Fiat to rescue Chrysler, we are going to need three amazing changes to happen simultaneously;

First, Americans have to embrace small cars - they never have and in my opinion, never will.

Secondly, neither have they bought Italian small cars in any volume.

Thirdly - and this is a 'killer'- never have small cars been profitable for any auto company in North America that wasn't Japanese.

So the actual 'merge' of Chrysler and Fiat is not a good thing in my opinion, other than to stop a host of workers losing their jobs in the short-term - and in turn giving the Government more breathing space.

Chrysler began its stint in bankruptcy court on Friday with a plea for haste and a doomsday warning that, if it could not execute its proposed restructuring within two months, hundreds of thousands of jobs could be lost.

And shortly after 1 June - the date by which GM has to announce major cost-cutting initiatives (other than reducing management bonuses) - we will see General Motors in the same court filing for the same Chapter 11.

Yet perversely, markets in the US see this as a 'positive'. Extraordinary.

Now let's jump across sectors to the Banking Sector and those long-awaited 'Bank Stress Test' results. Guess what, their release on Monday has been .... delayed.

The delay in the release of the test results comes after some troubled banks, including Citigroup and Bank of America, contested the governments' findings that they needed billions of Dollars in extra capital.

The authorities' decision to let the original timetable slip also reflects the widespread belief that, after months of speculation since the tests were first announced in February, their outcome has the potential to disturb the markets.

Government sources said regulators were likely to release both aggregate and individual data for each of the 19 banks, detailing their losses and capital needs under adverse economic scenarios.

Some of the banks will then supplement those data with regulatory filings and analysts' calls. Bankers said a number of lenders had pleaded with regulators for more time to lay out plans to plug any capital shortfall identified in the stress tests, by raising equity from either the government or from the stock market.

People familiar with the situation said that, despite their objections, Citi and BofA - and at least four more lenders - were almost certain to need more equity capital.

Citi could boost its equity by expanding a planned conversion of preferred shares into common stock, or taking a further capital injection from the government.

The latter move could increase the government stake in Citi beyond the 36% it has already agreed to buy and could then, in turn, lead to the removal of chief executive Vikram Pandit.

If BofA is found to need more equity, the most likely way to obtain it would be to convert the $25bn (€18.9bn, Ł16.8bn) in preferred shares the government bought in the bank into common equity.

Ladies and Gentlemen, as I have been saying for months now - the banking sector is not out of woods by any stretch of imagination; this is government 'firefighting' of the highest order so that Citi and B of A can be 'preserved' - but I ask you, at what cost?

Global stock markets rallied this week as investors set aside warnings that the swine flu outbreak was likely to turn into a global pandemic and focused instead on emerging signs of economic recovery.

The FTSE World index rose 11.5% in April, the strongest monthly gain for global equities since January 1987, while emerging markets rallied 16.3%, their best monthly showing since December 1993. Tighter spreads in credit markets, falling government bond prices and weakness for gold this week added to the evidence that risk appetite was improving.

The key question for investors is whether the latest recovery of equity markets represents the beginning of a sustained appreciation or whether the rally will exhaust itself.

From their peak in early 2008, global equity earnings have fallen for just over one year so the adjustment appears incomplete. Friday's rapid market recovery ought to give way to consolidation - but it just isn't happening!

Yes, I mentioned 4 weeks ago that there was light at the end of the tunnel and I expect economic newsflow to continue to improve slightly, but I do not believe this marks the start of a more prolonged and sustainable economic recovery.

On top of continued rising unemployment, the structural impediments of too much household and sovereign debt, increasing government interference and a weak financial system should ultimately prevent markets going further, until we have that drop I have been mentioning.

Another bank bit the dust this week; banking regulators have seized Silverton Bank of Atlanta, a bank that provided services to other banks, and the biggest bank failure so far this year.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp said on Friday it had created a bridge bank to take over Silverton, saying this would allow its client banks to maintain their relationship with the least amount of disruption.

Silverton, with about $4.1 billion in assets and $3.3 billion deposits, was the largest failure since Downey Savings and Loans was seized in November with about $12.8 billion in assets.

Syncora, the US Bond Insurer, also bit the dust this week.

But perversely, as the same time, Mastercard became the second leading credit card company in two days to beat analysts' estimates with its results. It saw some gains on Thursday after better-than- expected results at Visa lifted the sector as a whole.

Another one of my 'go figure' questions for the week!

It's not just the US either.

Germany's economy will shrink by 6% this year, making it one of the worst-performing large economies, the government said on Wednesday after slashing its official growth forecast.

Yet growth would resume next year, ending the worst recession in the Federal Republic's history, said the government, brushing aside calls for a new fiscal stimulus to prop up consumption at home.

The new forecast, down from an expected 2.25% contraction, underlines the impact the global downturn has had on Germany's export-reliant economy. Of the world's largest economies, only Japan is expected to shrink faster.

It is bad news for Angela Merkel, chancellor, and the parties of her "grand coalition", which face a general election in September against a backdrop of increasing hardship.

Although opinion polls show the public has yet to wake up to the crisis, this could change if unemployment begins to rise rapidly.

Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, economics minister, said close to 1.5m workers would lose their jobs this year and next. "We face a confidence crisis," he said as he unveiled the new figures. "We need to reclaim this confidence and this requires a clear, honest analysis of the situation."

I for one am someone that cannot wait for markets to 'bottom out' and get back to having a certain degree of 'clarity'. But I'm not going to join the masses and role over and say that everything in the global 'financial/economic garden' is rosy, when it obviously is not.

I may of course be proven wrong and this may not be a bear-market rally but instead may be a full-blown 'recovery'. If that is indeed the case than it is a very, very sad indictment of Governments that are just delaying the inevitable melt-down.

This was and is the perfect opportunity to clear out the 'rot', allow markets, companies and whole economies to run a 'natural' course and if that course meant failure for a year or two, then so be it.

But Government intervention - barely thought-out intervention - is only going to make things worse in the long-run. By which time of course, said Governments will have changed and someone new will be in the chair to repeat the process!

Oh how I wish to see anything long-term positive and be able to start my weekends on a bright note!

On to the numbers for the week:

Forgive the lack of direct 'financial' news coming out of China this week. As is the norm' on a Bank Holiday weekend, news was very thing on the ground.

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Revenue at both of China's main shipping companies more than halved in the first quarter compared with last year, in a sign of the scale of the challenge facing the country's once fast-growing state-controlled shipping companies.

Both China Cosco, which is a sizeable container line as well as being the world's largest operator of dry bulk ships, and China Shipping, a large container line, made losses for the quarter.

The companies had been among the fastest growing in the field as they sought to carry a significant proportion of China's trade.

According to Paris-based AXS-Alphaliner, Cosco operates the world's fifth-largest container ship fleet, with enough vessels on order to increase its fleet by 86%, while its dry bulk order book would expand that fleet by more than 20%.

China Shipping, the world number eight according to Alphaliner, has 31.5% of its current fleet capacity on order.

The lines' profitability appears to be falling faster than rivals' as they come under pressure to fill their fleets with cargo at low rates.

China Cosco on Thursday said it had made a net loss of Rmb3.35bn ($491m) in the first quarter, against a net profit of Rmb6.14bn last year. Revenues were down 63.8% to Rmb10.8bn.

The losses were a result partly of the company's disastrous speculation in the futures market for shipping contracts, on which it lost Rmb1.05bn during the period. China Cosco gave no revenue figures for its dry bulk business but said container shipping revenue had fallen 55.6% to Rmb4.42bn on volumes down 29.7%.

In results published on Tuesday, China Shipping announced it had made a Rmb1.2bn net loss for the first quarter - against a net profit of Rmb488m for the same quarter last year - on revenue down 58% to Rmb4.5bn.

It said it had reduced operating costs by 40% compared with last year but revenues had fallen more sharply than costs.

While China Shipping gave no precise volume figure, its falls are likely to have been similar to those at Cosco and Singapore's Neptune Orient Lines, which this week said volumes had fallen 27% this year.

However, Nol, which is more conservative than the Chinese lines, has seen revenues fall a more modest 38.6% for the year.

An analysis by UBS, the investment bank, said China Shipping was pursuing volumes at the expense of revenues.

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China raised the spectre of renewed international trade friction over market access for foreign financial information providers as the government said such businesses must not engage in news gathering in China.

The surprise ban on this business area is seen by industry executives as backtracking on an agreement China reached with the US, the EU and Canada in November last year on allowing companies like Bloomberg, Dow Jones and Thomson Reuters to distribute information to financial and corporate clients.

The November deal adopted a loose definition of financial information, including news rather than limiting such information to data such as stock market indices and exchange rates.

It was reached after the US, the EU and Canada lodged a complaint against China at the World Trade Organisation earlier last year over Beijing's move to make Xinhua, its official news agency and a competitor for the foreign providers in the financial information business, its de facto regulator.

In regulations published on the cabinet's website on Thursday, the government said foreign financial information providers would be allowed to set up businesses in China and would be regulated by the State Council Information Office. But the rules also said: "foreign financial information providers set up in China ... must not undertake news gathering activities".

The industry had seen the memorandum of understanding signed late last year as a victory of advocates of opening over protectionism.

But on Thursday, people close to the situation said they had the impression that forces intending to protect Xinhua had intervened in the last minute. "There will have to be communication and clarification," one source said.

Industry executives praised the rules in general as a breakthrough giving foreign players a clear legally-defined role for the first time.

China has required foreign news agencies to distribute to media clients only through Xinhua for more than 50 years. This will not change, and the foreign players do not challenge this arrangement for their news agency business which helps the Chinese government ensure news does not reach the public uncensored.

The companies' financial information services business had been relatively unrestricted until 2006, when China took the controversial step of ordering distribution through an agent wholly-owned by Xinhua.

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PetroChina, China's largest oil and gas producer, on Tuesday reported a 35.2% drop in net earnings for the first quarter on a drop in crude prices and weak fuel demand.

The problems, which made the company's results its weakest in two years, are also expected to be reflected in the performance of other big oil companies. Sinopec, PetroChina's smaller rival, is scheduled to report later on Tuesday. Among European energy groups, BP on Tuesday reported a 62% fall in first-quarter net profit, while Royal Dutch Shell is due to report results on Wednesday.

PetroChina said its net profit in the March quarter was Rmb18.96bn ($2.8bn), down from Rmb29.31bn during the same period last year.

Crude oil output dropped 5.7% from a year earlier to 205.7m barrels, and PetroChina said it refined 14.6% less crude oil on weakening domestic demand. Domestic sales of refined products decreased 2.8% to 21.3m tonnes, the company said.

Some analysts said the drop in output was surprisingly large and pointed to wider structural problems as the company's oil fields are ageing.

The International Energy Agency has forecast that China's oil demand will drop by 0.8% this year.

However, some analysts believe that the first quarter could have marked the bottom in PetroChina's performance and domestic oil demand could be rebounding.

China's leading refiners held almost 15% less fuel inventories in March than the month before, as sales rose from February.

Analysts said PetroChina could expect slightly stronger earnings for the current quarter if international crude prices continued to hold at their current level and the Chinese government took further steps to raise retail fuel prices. This would support refining margins.

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When Lin RMBjing's husband died of liver cancer in February she was prepared with the wads of cash she knew would be needed to navigate the bureaucracy of death.

The first people she paid were the hospital nurses and orderlies so they would clean her husband's body and treat it with respect when they moved it to a freezer cupboard in the morgue. Then she paid an orderly to help her register the death with the public security bureau and Shanghai government and contact the state-owned funeral parlour.

At the parlour, the grieving widow was confronted by a baffling menu of goods and services intended to smooth her husband's departure - from jade urns costing Rmb40,000 ($6,000, Ł4,000, €4,500) to paper money to be burnt for her husband's use in the afterlife.

With a couple of devastating comments about piety clearly intended to shame Ms Lin into coughing up more for her husband's cremation, the funeral parlour official ran through the long list of options - would she like her husband to be transported in a minivan or a Mercedes-Benz hearse? Would she like him to wait in a VIP room before cremation? Wouldn't that jade urn make the perfect final resting place?

While basic prices for transporting, storing and cremating bodies in China are supposed to be set and regulated by the state, "extras" including coffins, urns, wreaths, funeral processions and graves are all set by "the market".

The funeral industry around the world has long stood accused of exploiting vulnerable customers, but in China the price shock that confronts grieving relatives has an added dimension. In practice, the business of bereavement is monopolised by the Chinese government and state companies owned by local divisions of the ministry of civil affairs, which oversees the industry, and prices are inflated to extortionate levels to provide huge profits.

Public outrage erupted this month in China over profiteering in the funeral industry, and the outcry even spilled into the state-controlled press on the traditional tomb-sweeping festival, when Chinese honour the dead.

According to official state media reports, China's funeral sector would be a business worth Rmb16bn a year, based on an average of 8m deaths a year. But if sales of graves are counted the industry is worth more than Rmb200bn a year.

The mark-up on "extras" such as shrouds, funerary clothes, wooden coffins, wreaths and urns can be up to 1,000%, while graveyard space - even for the tiny cremation plots usually required by the government - can be up to 1,000 times more expensive per square metre than the average Chinese apartment.

"When one is alive he can't afford to buy a house to live in and when he is dead he can't afford a tiny box to rest in," says one outraged Chinese person in an internet posting.

According to the China Funeral Association 80% of funeral homes in China and 50% of graveyards are state-owned.

But because civil affairs authorities are majority owners and chief regulators of the business, operators of private graveyards are often closely related to civil affairs officials, and corruption is rife.

"It's like someone is both the athlete and the referee," says Zhang Mingliang, director of the social affairs department at the ministry of civil affairs, in an interview with the People's Daily, the official mouthpiece of the Communist party. "The local funeral management departments are right there in the funeral homes, sharing staff with and getting salary from those funeral homes. How are they supposed to conduct efficient supervision?"

Before he died Ms Lin's husband insisted that his wife save money and bury his ashes at sea in a modest service subsidised by the government.

On a rainy day recently she gathered at dawn with hundreds of other grieving families on a dock on the outskirts of Shanghai.

While a brass band played a repetitive dirge the throng of strangers carrying paper bags of remains pushed and shoved their way onto the boat, jostling for prime position so they could be first to dump their loved one's remains into the East China Sea.

By avoiding a fancy funeral and most of the trappings, Ms Lin managed to keep total costs down to just Rmb7,000, an amount partly covered by a newly introduced Rmb5,000 government subsidy.

In a country where the deceased are supposed to be respected just as much as the living, it is getting harder for most to afford the luxury of dying.