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It was pretty clear from the start that this week’s news that Saudi Arabia is buying 84 new F-15 fighters from The Boeing Co. would have a big impact on the St. Louis region.

Today, the Regional Chamber and Growth Association took a stab at counting just how big.

While the $30 billion deal is not expected to create any new jobs, it will prolong production of the F-15, which is largely built at Boeing’s plant in north county, by about five years, through 2020.

That production supports about 1,000 manufacturing jobs at Boeing, and contribute to nearly 4,000 more through local suppliers and spinoff activity, according to RCGA economist Ruth Sergenian. Those direct jobs generate $1.1 billion a year in wages and other economic activity, and the indirect impact is another roughly $1.8 billion.

It’s worth noting that these sort of estimates are notoriously rough, and that something else might well fill the void were Boeing’s F-15 production to go away. But, for now, it’s not, and 2.9 billion more dollars flowing through the region’s economy every year is a pretty good thing.

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The Obama administration will ask Congress to raise the nation’s borrowing limit by $1.2 trillion this week, marking the third and final increase from a deal negotiated over summer.

Treasury officials said Tuesday that the increase is necessary because the government will be within $100 billion of its current limit by Friday.

The debt limit is the amount the government can borrow to finance its operations. The latest increase will boost that limit to $16.4 trillion. Officials say that should be enough to allow the government to keep borrowing until the end of 2012 _ just after the presidential election.

Congress can reject the request, although Obama can veto their objection. If Congress doesn’t act by Jan. 14, the increase will take place automatically.

The national debt has soared because the government has run record deficits over the past decade. The borrowed money has helped pay for two wars, stimulate the nation’s economy after the worst recession since the Great Depression and finance broad tax cuts initiated during the Bush administration.

The enormity of the debt has also stoked intense partisan debate in Congress over spending and taxes. Polls show growing voter anger with the inability of both parties to reach solutions to the country’s budget problems fast cash now.

In August, Congress and the administration agreed to raise the borrowing limit by $2.1 trillion in three steps. The deal was reached hours before a potential default on the nation’s debt and only after the parties also agreed to cut more than $2 trillion from the deficit over the next 10 years.

Still, the parties are at odds over how to reduce the deficit. In November, a bipartisan panel failed to meet a deadline to agree on $1.2 trillion of the cuts. That means automatic cuts of that amount will begin in January 2013 _ a condition included in last summer’s deal.

Republicans want to modify the timetable for the automatic cuts, largely because it includes steep cuts to the nation’s defense budget.

Congress agreed to raise the debt limit by $400 billion in August and by another $500 billion in September.

House Republicans voted against the second increase. But they failed to block it because the Senate approved it. The increases are scheduled to take effect unless both chambers vote against them.

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British tour operator Thomas Cook said Wednesday it will close 200 stores after tourism to Tunisia and Egypt dried up in the wake of the protests earlier this year.

Europe’s second largest tour operator said it will cut 661 jobs and close 115 of its stores immediately, with the remainder going over the next two years.

The group also reported its final year results Wednesday, after postponing their release as it sought new agreements with its creditors. It said its operating profit fell 16 percent to 303.6 million pounds ($471 million).

The company said it has already begun selling off 200 million pounds worth of assets and will suspend dividend payments until the balance sheet improves.

Thomas Cook said it had been hit by several external shocks in the last few years. It suffered badly when the volcanic ash cloud from Iceland shut off European airspace in April 2010.

It also said that the Arab Spring had resulted in a dramatic fall in travel to Middle East and North African destinations and that its operations in Britain and France had underperformed as its traditional customer base of families with young children who holiday in its all-inclusive beach resorts decided to stay home instead.

Thomas Cook shares were down 7 percent to 13.75 pence in morning trading.

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Australia’s central bank cut its benchmark interest rate by a quarter percentage point on Tuesday, the second such move in as many months as concern mounts over the fragile global economy.

The Reserve Bank of Australia said its decision to lower the rate to 4.25 percent comes amid uncertainty over the European debt crisis, and concern that global economic conditions could worsen.

“Financial markets have experienced considerable turbulence, and financing conditions have become much more difficult, especially in Europe,” Reserve Bank Governor Glenn Stevens said in a statement. “This, together with precautionary behavior by firms and households, means that the likelihood of a further material slowing in global growth has increased.”

Economists were split on what the bank would do, after it cut the cash rate by a quarter percentage point in November. Tuesday’s decision marked the first time the bank has cut rates in consecutive months since Dec. 2008, the height of the global financial crisis.

The move will provide a savings of an extra 50 Australian dollars ($51) a month on a AU$300,000 mortgage, Treasurer Wayne Swan said.

“Christmas is a time when family budgets are stretched, so I’m certain it will be welcome,” Swan told reporters.

The treasurer said the country’s economy remained strong, but said there are “serious risks” arising from Europe’s debt woes. European Union leaders will hold a summit later this week to discuss a plan to resolve the crisis.

“There is a lot riding on what is happening in Europe as we go through the rest of this week,” Swan said. “All of us hope and pray that the Europeans get their act together.”

Australia’s economy remained strong throughout the global financial crisis thanks to a mining boom largely fueled by China’s demand for iron ore, coal and natural gas.

Craig James, chief economist with the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, said the Reserve Bank will probably cut the rate by another quarter percentage point when it meets again in February. Should the European crisis worsen dramatically, he said, the bank may issue an even steeper cut of half a percentage point.

“In the global financial crisis, they were quite aggressive with cutting interest rates,” James said. “This time around, they’re not taking any chances.”

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Global markets rose on Friday as investors welcomed German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s call to enforce tighter government spending rules and a surprise drop in the U.S. unemployment rate.

In a closely scrutinized speech to Germany’s parliament, Merkel said the 17 nations that use the euro currency must move quickly to restore market confidence, changing EU treaties to make financial controls stricter and more binding.

She reiterated her objection to so-called eurobonds _ debt jointly backed by eurozone countries _ and warned that the debt crisis will take years, not months, to fix. But her call for long-term changes suggested a commitment to strengthen financial union between countries in the euro, something analysts have said is necessary to make sure the eurozone doesn’t break up.

Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy are meeting Monday to discuss potential treaty changes. The talks will culminate in a Dec. 9 summit of EU leaders, where the proposals are expected to be debated and detailed.

Investors are hoping if eurozone governments agree to longer-term changes in the way they control their finances, the European Central Bank will agree to step up its interventions in the bond markets. Those interventions keep borrowing rates down for debt-troubled nations like Italy.

Whether the ECB will agree to step up its bond purchases is not clear, although its President Mario Draghi hinted Thursday that it was a possibility.

“Expectations have been growing that a ‘Grand Plan’ will be delivered next week,” said Frederik Ducrozet, analyst at Credit Agricole CIB.

European stocks rose, as did bonds for Italy and Spain. Britain’s FTSE 100 gained 1.1 percent to 5,548.87 while Germany’s DAX added 1.0 percent to 6,094.66. France’s CAC-40 climbed 1.4 percent to 3,172.22.

Italy’s 10-year bond yield was down to 6.52 percent, almost a full percentage lower than Wednesday, an indication investors have high hopes of next week’s talks to save the euro. Spain’s 10-year yield was down to 5.56 percent.

Wall Street also rose on the open _ the Dow Jones industrial average was up 0.8 percent at 12,111 while the Standard & Poor’s 500 rose 0.8 percent to 1,255 after the release of cautiously upbeat U.S. jobs data.

The U.S. government said the unemployment rate fell to 8.6 percent in November, the lowest in 2 1/2 years and better than economists’ expectations for an unchanged rate of 9 percent.

The world’s largest economy also added 120,000 jobs in November, while the previous two months were revised up to show another 72,000 more jobs were created _ the fourth straight month the government revised prior months higher.

Although the drop in the unemployment rate was unexpected, the increase in jobs was roughly as forecast by most analyst.

Earlier in Asia, Japan’s Nikkei 225 index rose 0.5 percent to end at 8,643.75, its highest closing in three weeks. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rose 0.2 percent and Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 added 1.4 percent.

South Korea’s Kospi was marginally down and mainland Chinese shares also lost ground as investors cashed in on earlier gains. The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index lost 1 percent.

Markets continued to enjoy some momentum from Wednesday, when the U.S. Federal Reserve, European Central Bank, Bank of England and the central banks of Canada, Japan and Switzerland jointly made it easier for banks to borrow dollars.

The coordinated effort was meant to prevent Europe’s debt crisis from exploding into a global panic. Should a European bank fail or if a country default on its debt, investors fear it could result in a freeze-up in global lending like the one that occurred in 2008 when Lehman Brothers collapsed.

China’s central bank also acted to release money for lending and to shore up growth by lowering bank reserve levels for the first time in three years. The bank actions caused global stocks to rally Thursday.

Benchmark oil for January delivery was down 5 cents to $100.15 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange on Friday. The contract lost 16 cents to end at $100.20 per barrel on the Nymex on Thursday.

In currency trading, the euro rose to $1.3478 from $1.3460 late Thursday in New York. The dollar rose to 77.93 yen from 77.76 yen.

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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.

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Gilead Sciences says it will spend $11 billion to buy drug developer Pharmasset at a price more than 88 percent over the stock’s latest closing price in a bet on its experimental hepatitis C treatments.

Gilead says it will pay $137 per share in cash for each Pharmasset share. That stock closed at $72.67 on Friday.

Pharmasset said earlier this month it had started late-stage clinical trials of an experimental hepatitis C drug. It also plans two other late-stage trials in 2012.

Hepatitis C is a viral infection that often has no symptoms but which can lead to life-threatening liver damage.

Gilead will pay for the deal with cash on hand, bank debt and senior unsecured notes. It expects the acquisition to close in next year’s first quarter.

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CUPERTINO, CALIF.—Apple Inc. says there is a problem with its latest mobile operating system that is shortening the battery life of iPhones, iPads and iPods that use the software.

Spokeswoman Natalie Harrison said Wednesday that a small number of customers have reported lower-than-expected battery life on devices running on the company’s iOS 5 operating system.

She said Apple has found bugs in the program and will release a software update to address them in a few weeks.

The latest iPhone, the 4S, comes with iOS 5.

Other devices can be upgraded to run the software: The iPhone 3GS or 4, iPads and an iPod Touch released in September 2009 or later.

Apple shares added $1.59 to $399 in aftermarket trading. Shares ended the regular session up 41 cents at $397.41.

In the meantime, if you’re suffering from battery problems on the iPhone 4S, here are a few things you can try (via Wired and Gizmodo):

1 payday loans. Drain the phone’s battery completely and then charge it up to 100 per cent. Doing so can recalibrate the battery and solve the issue.

2. One user in Apple’s forums found that disabling the calendar in their Exchange mail account and then enabling it again dramatically improved battery life.

3. If neither of those fixes seem to be helping, try adjusting your settings. Normal battery-saving techniques like lowering screen brightness or turning off Wi-Fi or switching to Airplane Mode when you don’t mind being off the grid will help

4. Location: turn off location-based services, or just on the apps you don’t need monitoring your whereabouts constantly. You can also switch off push notifications for email, switching to fetch at longer intervals instead.

Here are a few more useful tips in the video below:

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House Democrats are advising Congress’ supercommittee to create jobs, raise revenues and avoid damaging cuts to crucial public works, education and health programs as the panel searches for ways to curb the government’s growing debt.

A day ahead of a deadline for submitting advice to the supercommittee, minority Democrats from 16 House committees released letters they are sending the panel with their recommendations. Some propose specific savings such as boosting government fees on financial firms and defunding old water projects. All emphasize the need to protect programs that keep the economy strong, especially at a time of high unemployment and a faltering economy.

“Democrats strongly believe that economic growth is an integral component of such a proposal, because creating jobs is the most effective way to reduce the deficit,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., wrote in her own letter to the supercommittee.

The fact that House Democrats wrote their own letters _ as opposed to joint letters co-signed by committee Republicans _ underscores the wide partisan divide over how the $14 trillion federal debt should be tamed. Congressional Democrats and President Barack Obama want some tax increases included in any debt-reduction package, an idea that the GOP rejects.

Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee, which controls over $1 trillion in annual agency spending, proposed no specific cuts but emphasized the damage that would be done by across-the-board cuts that would be automatically triggered if the supercommittee doesn’t produce a package of savings that Congress approves.

Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee, which oversees taxes and large health care programs, wrote that the supercommittee must “spur job creation and economic health today.” They urged higher taxes on the wealthy while providing tax incentives for companies that create jobs, and protection for Social Security, unemployment benefits and health care coverage.

Republicans and Senate committees will be sending additional letters to the supercommittee over the next two days. The panel is charged with finding at least $1.2 trillion in savings over the coming decade.

Among letters already sent to the supercommittee, Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, who heads the Senate Health and Education Committee, asked the panel to take “bold and immediate action to create jobs” while embracing deficit reduction that would take effect after the unemployment rate drops.

Harkin suggests raising taxes and saving money by giving brand-name drugmakers fewer years of patent protection against generic competitors and encouraging students to take education loans directly from their colleges _ both policies that have been favored by the Obama administration. Harkin wrote that the supercommittee should avoid cuts to programs including job training, Obama’s health care overhaul and aid to the disabled.

The leaders of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, Chairman Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., combined on a letter asking the supercommittee to “not neglect America’s transportation needs.”

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, encouraged the committee to pare savings from Social Security by gradually raising the future retirement age from 67 to 69 and, in some years, trimming annual inflation adjustments in benefits by 1 percentage point. Hutchison has been offering that proposal for weeks; it’s opposed by the seniors group AARP.

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., said he and the panel’s top Republican, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, hope to write a bipartisan letter that other Armed Services members could support.

The top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said he is trying to unite minority Republicans on that panel behind their own letter.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., who is also on the supercommittee, is considered unlikely to send a recommendation letter, as is another supercommittee member, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp, R-Mich.

The supercommittee has until Nov. 23 to send a package of savings to Congress. Lawmakers will have until Dec. 23 to vote on the measure, with failure meaning $1.2 trillion in cuts in defense and many domestic programs will begin taking effect in 2013.

Warren Buffett has also brought his fight to raise taxes on the super-wealthy to the deficit-reduction panel.

In an exchange of letters between the billionaire investor and a Republican congressman that Buffett sent the committee this week, Buffett is offering to release his federal tax returns _ with a condition.

“If you could get other ultra rich Americans to publish their returns along with mine, that would be very useful to the tax dialogue and intelligent reform,” Buffett wrote.

Buffett’s views have become central to the struggle between Obama and Congress over how to control the federal debt. Obama has used the “Buffett Rule” to describe his fight to clamp taxes on the wealthy that are at least as high as those paid by lower earners, a drive that Republicans oppose.

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