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Manufacturing in the New York region expanded in January at the fastest pace in nine months, reflecting improving orders, sales and employment.
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York
Consumer confidence in the U.S. rose last week to the highest level in more than five months and the pace of firings declined, showing an improving job market is bolstering the biggest part of the economy.
The Bloomberg Consumer Comfort Index (COMFCOMF) climbed to minus 44.8 in the period ended Dec. 31, the best reading since mid-July, from minus 47.5 the prior week. Applications for jobless benefits (INJCJC) decreased by 15,000 during the same time to 372,000, according to Labor Department figures.
A pickup in hiring will further lift Americans
Greece’s prime minister says his debt-crippled country faces a disorderly default in March if it fails to secure a continued flow of international rescue loans.
Prime Minister Lucas Papademos says decisions made in the next few weeks, ahead of a new visit by international debt inspectors, will determine whether Greece will remain in the 17-nation eurozone or revert to its pre-2002 currency, the drachma.
According to a transcript from his office, Papademos told union leaders and employer representatives Wednesday that Greece’s international creditors have called for a re-examination of labor costs to boost lagging competitiveness and fight high unemployment.
He warned that, unless significant reforms are made, Greece will not receive its next installment of rescue funds.
Asian stocks markets were mostly lower Wednesday, with trading thinned by year-end holidays and mixed economic news out of the U.S.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index fell 0.4 percent to 18,556.53. South Korea’s Kospi lost 0.9 percent to 1,825.94 and Australia’s S&P ASX 200 lost 0.9 percent to 4,103.90. Benchmarks in mainland China and the Philippines were also lower.
Bucking the trend was Japan’s Nikkei 225 index, which rose 0.1 percent to 8,449.54. While Japan’s industrial output dropped last month, government forecasters expect manufacturing and production to rebound this month and next.
Industrial output dropped a seasonally adjusted 2.6 percent in November, the government said. It was the first decline in two months paydayloan.
Trading, falling between the Christmas holiday and New Year’s, was generally light.
On Wall Street on Tuesday, the Dow Jones lost less than 0.1 percent to close at 12,291.35. The S&P 500 was up marginally to 1,265.43. The Nasdaq composite rose 0.3 percent to 2,625.20.
Consumer confidence surged to an eight-month high, but home prices fell in 19 of the 20 cities tracked by the Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller index. That report dampened investors’ enthusiasm about a jump in consumer confidence to the highest level since April.
India’s central bank held key interest rates steady Friday as it struggles to foster growth amid high inflation, disappointing businesses who were looking for more drastic action.
The Reserve Bank of India kept the short-term lending rate, or repo rate, at 8.5 percent and the reverse repo rate _ the rate it pays to banks for deposits, at 7.5 percent. The bank also kept the cash reserve ratio for commercial lenders unchanged.
“Downside risks to growth have clearly increased,” the bank said in a statement. “However, it must be emphasized that inflation risks remain high.”
The bank’s 13 rate hikes since March 2010 are starting to choke growth in Asia’s third largest economy. Growth slipped to a two year low of 6.9 percent in the September quarter and industrial production fell 5.1 percent in October, its first contraction since June 2009. But inflation remains above 9 percent.
“I would like to see RBI do a major rate cut now,” B. Muthuraman, president of the Confederation of Indian Industry and vice chairman of Tata Steel, told CNBC-TV18 before the policy decision.
He said he would have liked the bank to cut rates by half a percentage point and reduce the cash reserve ratio to boost lending. That would help small and medium sized businesses _ which are crucial to jobs and output in India’s manufacturing sector _ get more affordable financing to grow.
“Government inaction is a big cause of concern for industry,” Muthuraman said, citing coal shortages, land acquisition difficulties and slow decision making. “We can have a growth rate in excess of 8 percent, if only we’d had reforms. It’s a very sad story.”
The rupee, which has been trading at record lows, strengthened Friday, after the central bank took to steps to curb speculation.
Asian stocks climbed Monday, buoyed by a robust start to the U.S. holiday shopping season and reports that European leaders are considering legal means to force debt-ridden euro countries into fiscal discipline.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 index jumped 1.9 percent to 8,314.45. South Korea’s Kospi gained 2 percent to 1,811.99 and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index rose 1.8 percent to 18,012.29. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 added 2 percent to 4,067.
Benchmarks in mainland China, Singapore, Indonesia and Taiwan were also higher.
German media reported over the weekend that German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy were studying legal changes _ possibly amendments to the European Union growth and stability pact _ to force nations using the euro common currency to comply with strict rules for budget discipline and tough sanctions for violators.
Traders were awaiting more details on such a possible plan, as well as the results of a key meeting Tuesday of finance ministers from the 17 euro nations.
Worries about Europe’s debt crisis flared anew Friday after Italy had to pay 7.8 percent to borrow for two years at a debt auction. It’s another sign that investors are increasingly hesitant to lend to European countries.
Higher interest rates on government debt of Italy, Spain and other European countries have rattled stock markets in recent weeks. Greece, Ireland and Portugal had to seek financial lifelines when their interest rates crossed the 7 percent mark.
Meanwhile, a record 226 million shoppers visited stores and websites during the four-day U.S. holiday weekend starting on Thanksgiving Day, up from 212 million last year, according to early estimates by The National Retail Federation.
The results for the first holiday shopping weekend show that retailers’ efforts to lure shoppers during the weak economy are working. The question remains whether retailers’ will be able to hold shopper attention throughout the remainder of the season, which can account for 25 to 40 percent of a merchant’s annual revenue.
During a shortened post-holiday trading session on Friday, the Dow Jones industrial average fell 0.2 percent to close at 11,231.78. The S&P 500 lost 0.3 percent to 1,158.67. The Nasdaq composite dropped 0.8 percent to close at 2,441.51.
India is opening its $400 billion retail industry to global chains such as Wal-Mart in a move that could improve decrepit infrastructure that causes massive food waste in a country plagued by malnutrition and high inflation.
Top retailers have lobbied for years for a chance to build stores in the nation of 1.2 billion people and political deadlock on long-promised reforms in retail and other areas has helped cool foreign investor interest in India. Foreign retailers have Indian partners in wholesale operations, but no retail stores.
“Multibrand” stores such as supermarkets could be built with up to 51 percent foreign ownership under the change the Cabinet approved Thursday. The Cabinet also allowed 100 percent foreign ownership of single-brand retail operations, up from 51 percent.
Advocates see the move as a way to strengthen India’s creaking food distribution system.
The country suffers chronically high malnutrition and soaring inflation, but it’s not for lack of food. It is the world’s second largest grower of fresh produce, yet loses an estimated 40 percent of its fruit and vegetables to rot because of a lack of refrigerated trucking and warehouses, poor roads, inclement weather and corruption. That translates into lower incomes for farmers and higher prices for consumers.
If companies such as Wal-Mart and Tesco can open shops of their own, they may invest billions in improving farming techniques and getting produce into stores more efficiently, bringing down food inflation _ which has averaged 10.5 percent over the last year _ and possibly improving rural incomes.
Wal-Mart, British-based Tesco PLC and French-based retailer Carrefour welcomed the decision.
“This legal evolution should contribute to modernize the Indian food supply chain and to fight against food inflation for the benefit of Indian customers,” Carrefour said in a statement. It said the decision would help India’s farmers and the nation’s general economic development.
Opposition parties and some allies of the government resisted the move. The country has struggled to find consensus because of concerns that competition from the foreign retail giants could hurt millions of small shopkeepers, as well as the poor best payday advance.
Speaking on the NDTV news channel, ruling Congress party spokesman Abhishek Manu Singhvi called the decision “centrist and reasonable.”
The main opposition, the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party, decried the move.
“The government has clearly bowed to international pressure,” spokesman Chandan Mitra told the same TV channel.
India’s $400 billion retail sector is the nation’s second-largest employer, after agriculture, according to consulting firm Deloitte.
The Ministry of Commerce says it will cost 76.9 billion rupees ($1.7 billion US) to build the additional 35 million metric tons of food storage India needs. In a July paper, it suggested that loosening restrictions on foreign investment in India’s retail sector could be the best way to get more storage space built.
Ashish Sanyal, managing director of retailing consultancy AMP Retail Services, said small businesses had nothing to fear from the big chains.
“At the end of the day this is like the high tide. All boats will rise. We will learn from the big retailers.”
Long delays in economic reforms in India have made investors increasingly wary of plowing money into the country.
India’s policymakers are now under acute pressure to find ways to attract foreign currency to help strengthen the rupee, which hit an all-time low against the dollar this week.
Traders say the central bank has been buying rupees in recent days but those measures are unlikely to reverse the currency’s plunge absent more farsighted policy reform.
The discussions on opening up India’s retail sector have been going on for 10 years.
“There is a limit to how much time we can spend on a decision,” said Singhvi, the Congress spokesman.
Tens of thousands of Egyptians rallied Friday in Cairo’s Tahrir square with Islamists in the forefront to protest against what they say are attempts by the country’s military rulers to designate themselves as the guardians of a new Egypt. It was one of the largest rallies in Egypt in recent months.
Most rallies in Tahrir have been led by liberal- or left-leaning groups. But Friday’s rally was dominated by the country’s most organized political group, the Muslim Brotherhood, which has rarely come out in full force since the protests that forced President Hosni Mubarak to step down in February.
The Brotherhood had until recently avoided confrontation with the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, but now warns of escalating its protest campaign if plans to give permanent political powers to the military are not scrapped.
“The army has no role in ruling people. Its only job is to protect the country. We want civilian rule chosen through democracy,” said Hani Hegazi, a 28-year old Brotherhood member who traveled by bus to Tahrir from the Delta province of el-Beheira.
Banners read: “Down with military rule. Egypt our country is not a military camp.” Some demonstrators flew the Egyptian flag, while others including ultraconservative Salafis waved a banner declaring Islam’s holy book, the Quran, to be “our constitution.”
The rally was called to protest a document floated by the government which declares the military the guardian of “constitutional legitimacy,” suggesting the armed forces could have the final word on major policies even after a new president is elected. The document, which includes guiding principles for Egypt’s new constitution, also introduces clauses that would shield it from civilian oversight.
Most of Egypt’s pro-democracy groups object to the document, calling it an attempt to perpetuate military rule past the post-Mubarak transitional period which is supposed to end with the election of a new parliament and a new president.
In addition to the Brotherhood, Salafis, left- and liberal-leaning groups such as the April 6 movement and other youth revolutionary alliances joined the rally, demanding a timetable for the end of military rule, which began in February.
They have called for marches from mosques around Egypt to major squares, dubbing it the “Friday of the Single Demand” _ that demand being a clear date for the transfer of power to civilian rule. Many groups have planned to hold an open ended sit-in until a date has been set.
The Brotherhood says the document reinforces “dictatorship.”
“It contains articles that rob the people of their sovereignty and reinforces dictatorship. It constitutes a coup against the principles and goals of the January 25 revolution,” the group said in a statement issued Wednesday. Last-minute negotiations between the government and the Brotherhood failed to stave off their participation in the rally, or scrap the document payday loans lenders.
The show of force comes 10 days before the country’s first parliamentary elections since Mubarak stepped down, when a Brotherhood-affiliated political party is expected to fare well.
Anger against the Supreme Council has been building up over their management of the transition period. Many complain that the generals are recreating the Mubarak regime by cracking down on opponents, by refusing to order a thorough reform of the security services, and by monopolizing decision making. Islamists and liberals alike now express fear that the military council wants to hold on to power, a claim denied by the generals.
The military council had promised to transfer power to an elected civilian government within six months of Mubarak’s ouster. But according to a vague timetable in place, it may not be until early 2013 that a president is elected. Only the dates for the parliamentary elections, which are due to begin in ten days and which will drag into March, are yet known.
Walid Farouk, 32, who wore the heavy beard and traditional robe of the ultraconservative Salafi trend, said that Egypt had seen nothing good from military rule since the army first took power in 1952.
“All of us are scared that the army could try to hold on to power,” he said. “It is time for a civilian government.”
The writing of Egypt’s constitution has been a divisive issue, and details of who will write it and what it contains are at the heart of recent rallies.
Some liberals have supported the idea of writing guiding principles for the constitution, fearing that a parliament controlled by Islamists would insert religious principles into the document.
Even now, some liberals remain opposed to the Friday rally, saying a document is necessary to detail how members of the assembly are to be chosen, and controversial clauses can be negotiated.
But many others have come to distrust the military’s Supreme Council at least as much they distrust the Islamists.
At Friday’s rally, protesters are also expected to celebrate the birthday of one of the most prominent revolutionary to be jailed by the military prosecutor. Alaa Abdel-Fattah, a famous blogger and activist, was detained late last months for refusing to answer to the military prosecution on his alleged role in sectarian violence that left 27, mostly Christians, dead. He turned 30 on Friday.
Many hold the military responsible for the violence, and see Abdel-Fattah’s detention as an attempt to find a scapegoat and discredit activists.
The 17-nation eurozone is considering two forms of leveraging to boost its euro440 billion ($600 billion) bailout fund’s capacity in a bid to contain the debt turmoil that threatens to engulf more European nations.
A document obtained by The Associated Press, which Germany’s government was sharing with key lawmakers Monday, shows the currency zone wants to give the bailout fund the ability to provide investors with a partial insurance against losses from its member states’ government bonds.
The eurozone document also foresees setting up a special investment vehicle that seeks to attract outside investors such as sovereign wealth funds, combining “public and private capital to enlarge the resources available to” the European Financial Stability Fund, or EFSF.
Leading German opposition lawmakers, who were briefed earlier Monday by Chancellor Angela Merkel on the plan, said the fund’s capacity will be boosted “beyond euro1 trillion” ($1.39 trillion) under the new rules.
But the draft document by the eurozone working group did not provide a headline figure for the bailout fund, stressing “a more precise number on the extent of leverage can only be determined after contacts with potential investors” and rating agencies.
Eurozone governments hope that the enhanced EFSF will be able to protect countries such as Italy and Spain from being engulfed in the debt crisis. To do that, however, it needs to be bigger or see its lending powers magnified.
German lawmakers will vote on the bailout funds’ new rules Wednesday, hours before an EU summit in Brussels is set to adopt them.
The draft document stressed that the EFSF would “benefit from the flexibility to deploy both options, which are not mutually exclusive.” The insurance model is designed to increase the demand for newly issued eurozone government bonds, lower the yields “thereby supporting the sustainability of public finances,” the document said.
Lowering the yields for troubled eurozone governments is a key step to counter the widening debt crisis, because spiraling yields on debt issued by Greece, Portugal and Ireland eventually cut them off from market financing, forcing the eurozone to provide those nations which an emergency loan package.
In the event of a default, “the investor could surrender the partial protection certificate” and “receive payment in kind with an EFSF bond,” the document said, referring to the insurance option.
The new investment facility, a so-called special investment purpose investment vehicle, is meant to allow the EFSF “to attract a broad class of international public and private investors.” The investment structure aims at creating “additional liquidity and market capacity to extend loans, for bank recapitalization via a member state and for buying bonds in the primary and secondary market,” the eurozone draft document said.
Beefing up the bailout fund is one part of a three-pronged eurozone plan to solve the crisis.
The other two parts are reducing Greece’s debt burden so the country eventually can stand on its own and forcing banks to raise more money so they can take losses on the Greek debt and ride out the financial storm that will entail.
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