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South Sudan’s military spokesman says Sudanese aircraft dropped 10 bombs in an oil-rich region near a military base south of the shared border.
Col. Philip Aguer said Friday that the bombs were dropped late Thursday afternoon. He said two civilians were wounded in the bombings, which took place on the town of Laloba, about 50 kilometers (30 miles) north of the Unity State capital of Bentiu in South Sudan.
The attacks came one day after Sudan announced it had accepted an agreement put forward by the African Union to return to talks with South Sudan Same day payday loans. The agreement demands both sides adhere to a cease-fire.
Major violence between the two sides has flared in recent weeks, pushing the region to the edge of all-out war.
Investors are steering away from French bonds as they cast a wary eye on election frontrunner Francois Hollande
Spanish stocks are the only developed market suffering losses this year as Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy fails to rein in the budget deficit fast enough to assure investors.
Wait _ haven’t we seen this movie before?
Companies are generating waves of jobs, and unemployment is down.
The same thing happened last year around this time. Then everything faded to black starting with the earthquake in Japan, which struck a year ago Sunday.
Does a happier ending await the job market this time? Economists seem to think so.
For reasons ranging from progress on Europe’s debt crisis to a slowly improving housing market to slightly less gridlock in Congress, the economy and the job market appear better able to withstand setbacks than they were in 2011.
“The internal dynamics of the U.S. economy look pretty good right now,” says Bill Cheney, chief economist at John Hancock Asset Management.
U.S. employers added 227,000 jobs in February, the third straight month of 200,000-plus job growth. The unemployment rate remained 8.3 percent, but it was 9 percent as recently as September. By all measures, the job market is strengthening by the month.
Then again, the numbers can conjure an unsettling sense of deja vu. Last year, the job market had a similar three-month run. From February through April, the economy added an average 239,000 jobs each month.
Helping drive that growth was a new Social Security tax cut that put more money in paychecks for 160 million Americans. The tax cut gives $1,000 a year, or nearly $20 a week, to someone making $50,000. It gives up to $4,272 or roughly $82 a week, to a household with two high-paid workers.
The Social Security tax cut was supposed to expire at the end of 2011. But under election-year pressure, Congress has extended it through 2012.
On top of that, a bond-buying program by the Federal Reserve drove interest rates on mortgages and other consumer loans to historic lows.
Yet just as things were perking up, a freeze descended on the economy and job market.
The March 11 earthquake and tsunami cut off supplies from Japanese factories to U.S. and other manufacturers. The Arab Spring protests escalated oil prices. And gasoline prices followed them up, to a painful $3.98 a gallon by mid-May.
A clash in Washington over the federal debt limit brought the nation to the verge of default and sapped consumer and business confidence. Europe’s debt crisis panicked investors and further shook confidence.
From May through August last year, job growth averaged less than 80,000 a month before regaining strength in the fall.
Economists expect the 2012 sequel to improve on the 2011 original. Here are seven reasons the job market appears on surer footing this time:
_ COMPANIES CAN’T SQUEEZE MORE OUTPUT FROM WORKERS
During and right after the Great Recession, companies shrank their work forces because demand plunged and fewer workers were needed.
Once demand started growing again, companies were reluctant to hire immediately. They managed to produce more with the employees they had. But now many companies are finding they can’t continue to do more with less. As demand grows, they’re finding they have to hire.
_ CONSUMERS ARE STURDIER
Since the recession, households have cut their debts and rebuilt savings. One key measure of household debt burdens _ debt payments as a percentage of after-tax income _ is at its lowest point since 1994, according to the Federal Reserve.
“Consumer finances are fundamentally healthier than they were,” says Stuart Hoffman, chief economist at PNC Financial Services Group.
As the labor market has healed, Americans have worried less about losing their jobs. As a result, they’re less likely to curtail spending _ even in the face of shocks such as a 29-cent jump in gasoline prices in the past month to an average $3.78 a gallon.
_ TENSIONS EASE IN WASHINGTON
The debt-limit showdown waged last summer between the Obama administration and congressional Republicans rattled confidence in America’s leadership. It looked as if the United States might default on its debts for the first time in history because leaders couldn’t reach a deal.
Since then, thanks in part to election-year pressures, tensions have eased. Republicans dropped threats to let the payroll tax expire. And in an unusual show of cooperation, House lawmakers from both parties backed a bill last week to make it easier for small businesses to obtain financing they need to hire and expand.
_ HOUSING IS INCHING BACK
The collapse of real estate lies at the heart of America’s economic problems. House prices have plunged 30 percent since 2006. The drop has wiped out $7 trillion in homeowners’ equity. Millions of construction workers have lost jobs.
Now, there are tentative signs of recovery. Apartment construction is growing. Construction jobs are slowly returning. Home builders are seeing more foot traffic and gaining confidence that sales will pick up in the spring buying season.
No one expects another boom. But real estate is no longer subtracting from U.S. employment. And there’s hope among economists that higher sales could stop prices from falling further by spring.
Once home prices stabilize, more people will likely decide it’s time to buy. And consumers who worry less about a loss of home equity _ the main source of wealth for most people _ are more likely to keep spending.
_ STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT CUTS SLOWING
The Great Recession and the housing collapse dried up tax revenue for state and local governments. Many were forced to lay off teachers and other public workers. Since December 2008, state and local governments have slashed 613,000 jobs, offsetting some of the hiring by private companies.
But the cuts appear to be easing. State governments have added 10,000 jobs so far this year. Local governments last month added 2,000 _ a modest total but only the third increase in two years.
“There’s only so many teachers you can cut, so many police officers, so many firemen,” says Mark Vitner, senior economist at Wells Fargo Economics.
_ EUROPE’S THREAT HAS SUBSIDED
Investors panicked last year over the prospect that Greece and some other European countries would default on their debts, stick banks with huge losses and trigger a global credit crunch. Such fears sent stocks tumbling and helped diminish U.S. consumer confidence in the second half of 2012.
But confidence is rebounding. Greece has received a $172 billion bailout, pushing back the threat of a destructive default. And the European Central Bank has made more than $1.3 trillion in low-rate three-year loans to banks since December, making clear it won’t let the European banking system fail.
_ U.S. BANKS LENDING MORE TO BUSINESSES
After the September 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers shook the financial system, U.S. banks cut loans to businesses in 2009 and 2010. The credit crunch fed the economy’s misery by starving many companies of financing needed to grow and hire.
But banks are healthier now. So are the prospects for their business customers. Bank lending to businesses rose nearly 14 percent last year to $1.35 trillion, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Loans to small businesses grew at the end of last year for the first time since the FDIC started tracking them nearly two years ago.
William Dunkelberg, chief economist of the National Federal of Independent Business, says the outlook for hiring by small businesses offers “a better picture than we have seen for years.”
Economists are still cautious. A shock like the Japanese quake or further Middle East turmoil could always reverse the gains. Ever-higher oil prices would hurt. And even with the improvements, the recovery from the 2007-2009 remains weaker than past recoveries.
But economists say the job market has likely gained enough momentum to avoid a repeat of mid-2011’s gut-churning drop.
“This year will not be the same,” PNC’s Hoffman says. “We won’t be sitting here in six months saying, `Uh-oh, it was another false dawn.’”
Gasoline prices have finally dropped after 27 days.
The nationwide average for regular unleaded slipped less than a penny to $3.764 per gallon on Tuesday. That ended a streak of price hikes that began on Feb. 8. Pump prices rose by more than 28 cents per gallon in that period, making gasoline the most expensive ever for this time of year.
Gasoline already tops $4 per gallon in California, Alaska and Hawaii. It’s near the $4 mark in several other states, including Connecticut, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Oregon and Washington.
Despite the one-day drop, experts predict that gasoline will continue to rise over the next several weeks. The Oil Price Information Service predicts the nationwide average could peak at $4.25 per gallon in late April.
Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda reiterated yesterday the need to trim the scale of government to win public support for doubling the nation
European stock markets and the euro gave up some earlier gains Wednesday after the European Central Bank revealed that it lent slightly more than anticipated in its super-cheap three-year loan offering to banks.
The ECB said it made euro529.5 billion ($712.4 billion) in low-interest loans to banks in the second round of its long-term credit infusion, which has been widely credited with easing the eurozone debt crisis.
The uptake of the long-term refinancing operation, or LTRO, was modestly higher than the euro489 billion ($657.9 billion) handed out to 523 banks at a first offering on Dec. 21, and was slightly higher than market expectations. The offer of credit for three years was taken up by 800 banks, again more than anticipated.
After the details of the offering, the euro and stocks dropped slightly as investors worried that the higher take-up may be a sign of continued stress in Europe’s banking system.
“While this will ease the crisis in the short term, an LTRO of this size is disturbing in what it reveals about the depth of banking problems in the EU,” said Sony Kapoor, managing director of economic think-tank Re-Define.
The euro was trading 0.2 percent lower at $1.3440, having traded flat before the results were announced.
In stock markets, Europe’s main indexes fell too but remained up on the day. Germany’s DAX was up 0.5 percent at 6,294 while the CAC-40 in France was 0.4 percent higher at 3,468. The FTSE 100 index of leading British shares was 0.1 percent higher at 5,933.
Most of the world’s leading indexes are back at levels they were trading at before last summer’s massive sell-off. Stronger-than-anticipated U.S. consumer confidence figures on Tuesday also helped push the Dow to close at 13,005.12 on Tuesday. The last time the benchmark closed above 13,000 was in May 2008, four months before the fall of the Lehman Brothers investment bank and the worst of the financial crisis.
The ECB’s first round of three-year loans last December is often cited as one of the reasons why markets been so buoyant this year as they eased concerns of an imminent credit crunch in Europe.
Banks used some of the money from the first round of loans to buy government bonds. That lowered borrowing costs for hard-pressed governments struggling to maintain large amounts of debt, and eased fears of a market meltdown from Europe’s troubles with too much government debt.
“The ECB will certainly be hoping that the even stronger take up of its second unlimited three-year refinancing operation will help to ease credit conditions significantly,” said Howard Archer, chief European economist at IHS Global Insight.
Wall Street was poised to open slightly higher later _ both Dow futures and the broader S&P 500 futures were 0.1 percent higher.
Earlier in Asia, Japan’s Nikkei 225 index edged up slightly to close at 9,723.24 after the government released a report that showed factory production rising for a second straight month in January.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng gained 0.5 percent to 21,680.08 and South Korea’s Kospi gained 1.3 percent to 2,030.25.
But on mainland China, the benchmark Shanghai Composite Index lost 1 percent to 2,428.49 while the Shenzhen Composite Index fell 1.3 percent to 956.99.
Mainland Chinese shares fell after Shanghai announced that _ contrary to recent reports _ it would not ease restrictions on
Investors are also anticipating the Federal Reserve’s so-called Beige Book report on economic activity, due later Wednesday. The report is expected to reflect a slowly improving U.S. economy.
Oil prices ticked higher alongside equities _ benchmark oil for April delivery was up 49 cents at $107.40 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
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