Best financial sourse

European stock markets rallied Tuesday on hopes that eurozone nations are planning to strengthen and broaden their measures to fight the debt crisis.

An influential German survey also gave the markets a boost with news that investor confidence has risen sharply amid hopes that global economic growth will remain robust. Greece, meanwhile, passed another bond market test, raising euro650 million ($865 million) in a heavily oversubscribed auction.

Still, analyst Ben Potter at IG Markets cautioned that “lingering uncertainty over Eurozone debt could well deliver something of a hangover.”

Ministers from the 17 euro nations meeting in Brussels discussed boosting the size and powers of the region’s bailout fund. Support for stronger action is growing and the bloc is clearly trying to come up with a more comprehensive solution to its crisis, with a final decision expected over the coming months.

The crisis has already forced Greece and Ireland to implement painful budget cuts in exchange for multibillion dollar bailouts. Harsh remedies prescribed by governments have provoked protests and strikes in Portugal, Greece and elsewhere.

The outlook was good in Germany, however, with the ZEW survey noting positive U.S. data has raised hopes of continued worldwide growth. Its confidence index rose to 15.4 points for January, from 4.3 in December.

Britain’s FTSE 100 rose 1.0 percent to 6,047.93 while Germany’s DAX rose 1.0 percent to 7,146.48 and the CAC-40 in Paris gained 0.9 percent to 4,009.28.

Oil futures hovered below $92 a barrel, largely shrugging off higher demand forecasts from OPEC and the IEA, the oil cartel and the energy agency. In currencies, the dollar was up against the euro at euro1.3385 and lower than the yen, at 82.5.

Wall Street appeared headed for a muted opening after being closed Monday for a holiday. Dow futures were up 0.3 percent to 11,758 and broader S&P 500 futures were up 0.5 percent at 1,289.59.

The market close in Asia was not as bright. Japan’s Nikkei 225 stock average closed up 0.2 percent at 10,518.98. Elpida Memory Inc., Japan’s biggest semiconductor maker, rose 1.1 percent after the Nikkei financial daily reported company plans to raise prices of chips used in personal computers.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index fell slightly, less than 3 points, to 24,153.98 while South Korea’s Kospi was 0.2 percent lower at 2,096.48.

Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 closed 0.8 percent higher at 4,801.80 and Chinese shares edged up as investors awaited Thursday’s release of key economic data for the fourth quarter of 2010.

The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index added 0.1 percent to 2,708.98. The Shenzhen Composite Index of China’s smaller, second exchange rose 0.3 percent to 1,183.48.

“For now, investors would rather wait until they can clearly see the current economic situation,” said Peng Yunliang, an analyst at Shanghai Securities.

Meanwhile, investors across the world were waiting to see how Wall Street reacts to Apple’s announcement that CEO Steve Jobs would be taking a medical leave of absence.

The news could hammer the company’s shares and overall sentiment when trading opens for the week. The company made the announcement a day before its quarterly earnings report.

In Europe on Monday, investors reacted sharply. Apple shares closed in Frankfurt 6.6 percent lower at 243 euros ($323.02).

But some analysts believe the company can still function successfully without Jobs in the corner office full-time _ even with Apple at the forefront of a new revolution in personal computing.

Source

Singapore’s bankruptcy applications last year fell to the lowest level since 1996 as the city- state’s economy rebounded, posting the world’s fastest growth after Qatar.

The number of bankruptcy filings dropped 20 percent to 2,202 in 2010 from a year earlier, according to data on the Ministry of Law’s website. Bankruptcy applications last year were less than half of the 5,404 cases at the peak in 2003.

“It’s another bright sign of economy recovering strongly from the downturn,” said David Cohen, head of Asian forecasting at Action Economics in Singapore. “It should be fairly solid this year, which should be supportive of the financial situation,” he said, forecasting the economy will expand 5 percent in 2011.

Singapore’s economic growth reached 14 best flat iron.7 percent last year as manufacturing surged, capping the biggest annual increase in output since independence in 1965. The growth rate trails only Qatar globally, according to International Monetary Fund estimates.

Singapore’s jobless rate fell to 2.1 percent at the end of September, the smallest in Asia after Thailand. The city’s average wages before adjusting for inflation rose 5.4 percent in the third quarter from a year earlier.

The bankruptcy filings last year were the lowest since 2,089 applications were filed in 1996, one year before the start of the Asian financial crisis.

Source

The Obama administration on Thursday unveiled a proposed new framework for protecting consumers’ privacy online.

The plan centers around a "Privacy Bill of Rights" that would encourage better transparency about data collection online, according to the Commerce Department’s report on its policy recommendations. It would promote "informed consent" for consumers through simple notices that clearly state what personal information will be collected and what will be done with it.

The Commerce Department’s proposal would be voluntary — companies would be able to choose whether or not they want to participate. But for those that do, their commitment would be enforceable by the Federal Trade Commission.

That agency came out with its own, more drastic proposal earlier this month, calling for a "do not track" option that would let Web surfers opt out of all data collection.

The Commerce Department was quick to point out in its report that global online transactions generate roughly $10 trillion of sales every year, and U.S. information technology jobs are growing at a pace that’s four times faster than all other domestic jobs.

Reluctant to upset the apple cart, the Obama administration decided against creating a set of "disfavoring prescriptive rules." Translation: It doesn’t want to issue mandates.

Instead, it proposed that the government "enlist the expertise and knowledge of the private sector" to create "voluntary codes of conduct that promote informed consent and safeguard personal information no fax pay day loan."

The report said that the agency would try not to create procedural hurdles, or "impose undue burdens on commerce and on commercial actors."

Still, the Commerce Department sees a role for the government in steering online privacy practices. It proposed the creation of a Privacy Policy Office within the Commerce Department, which would coordinate privacy initiatives with Internet companies.

The new office would work with the Federal Trade Commission in developing a Privacy Bill of Rights and enforcing compliance with it among companies that volunteer to adopt it.

There is a clear demand for enhanced privacy controls online, the department noted: Nearly two-thirds of American adults have changed their privacy settings on their social network profiles in order to limit what they share online.

"America needs a robust privacy framework that preserves consumer trust in the evolving Internet economy while ensuring the Web remains a platform for innovation, jobs, and economic growth," Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said in a prepared statement. "Consumers must trust the Internet in order for businesses to succeed online."

The Commerce Department considers the report a "road map for considering a new framework that is good for consumers and businesses." It would likely need congressional approval to be enacted. 

Source

Bank of England Chief Economist Spencer Dale said that the central bank is determined to sustain trust in its framework and the institution itself.

“The challenges facing the central banking community are continually evolving and we cannot know all that tomorrow might bring,” Dale wrote in the foreword to the bank’s quarterly bulletin released today in London. “The bank will remain committed, however, to ensuring that trust is maintained in both the policy framework and the bank itself.”

Dale’s comments follow weeks of focus on Governor Mervyn King’s relationship with the government and his backing of its deficit-reduction policy. King has also reiterated the bank’s commitment to price stability as it keeps up stimulus for the economy at time when inflation has exceeded the government’s upper limit for eight months.

“Inflation is likely to remain above the target throughout 2011, boosted by the increase in VAT effective in January, elevated import-price inflation and by some businesses continuing to rebuild profit margins,” Sally Hills and Ryland Thomas, both economists at the bank, wrote in an article in the bulletin with Nicholas Dimsdale of Oxford’s Queen’s College. “Further ahead, CPI inflation is likely to fall back to around the target” of 2 percent.

Investors’ expectations of further asset purchases by the bank after it bought 200 billion pounds ($316 billion) in bonds to stimulate the economy receded since the Bank of England’s inflation report in November and news of faster-than-forecast economic growth in the third quarter, the bulletin said.

‘Stress’ Signs

Still, “some indicators of stress were beginning to rise towards the end of the review period,” the bank said in a review of market developments in the past quarter, and since then, “concerns over sovereign risk in the euro area became more widespread.”

In another article, bank officials noted that “constrained credit supply continues to be one of the main factors holding back the economic recovery.”

A survey of U.K. households conducted for the bank in late September showed that almost half of them were “either somewhat or very concerned” about their debts, bank officials wrote in an article on consumer finances.

“The burden of unsecured debt has risen this year, most likely reflecting a combination of weak earnings growth and the interest rates on unsecured debt remaining high over the past two years despite falls in bank rate,” the officials said.

The bank also said it’s inclined to revert to the money- market system it had in place before the financial crisis because it prefers to separate activities to provide liquidity insurance from those to implement monetary policy. The old arrangements, known as a “corridor” system, required firms to set a monthly target for aggregate reserves and set lending and deposit rates for central bank facilities by establishing a band above and below the key interest rate.

Source

Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said weak U.S. growth, not his country’s strengthening currency, is the biggest threat to Canada’s economic recovery.

Flaherty, the dean of Group of Seven finance ministers, oversees an economy that Pacific Investment Management Co. calls a battleground between the “old normal” and “new normal” forces of the global economy. While Canada’s resources are fueling an investment boom, slumping exports to the U.S. hinder its recovery. Canada’s growth slowed to a 1 percent pace in the third quarter.

“The biggest risk to the Canadian economy now is the risk rising out of the state of the economy in the U.S.,” Flaherty said in an interview with Bloomberg Television in New York. “The fact that we’re seeing a sharp increase in the acquisition of machinery and equipment because of, in part, the strength of the dollar and tax policy is a good sign in the longer term.”

Canada has registered six straight trade deficits, including the record C$2.51 billion in July. The U.S. bought 70 percent of Canada’s exports in October, down from 75 percent in June, and a record of about 85 percent in 2001.

“America is our best customer, and I hope will always be our best customer,” Flaherty, 61, said in the interview today.

The Canadian currency rose 0.2 percent to C$1.0089 per U.S. dollar at 3:38 p.m. in Toronto, compared with C$1.0106 yesterday. The loonie closed at C$1.0039 on Dec. 3, when it reached C$1.0003, the strongest level since Nov. 11. One Canadian dollar buys 99.12 U.S. cents.

‘Long-Term’ Benefits

The weak U.S. recovery has prompted Canadian officials including Flaherty and Prime Minister Stephen Harper to defend efforts by the U.S. Federal Reserve to stimulate its economy with asset purchases, even as other Group of 20 countries have expressed concern about the effects those measures could have on the U.S. dollar and global inflation.

Flaherty said he was encouraged by an agreement between the White House and congressional Republicans to extend tax cuts through 2012, adding that the reductions for wealthier taxpayers will have less of a benefit for the economy than those for lower-income earners.

Canada’s government will use regulation, if needed, to thwart any asset bubbles that may emerge if the Bank of Canada is forced to maintain interest rates low, he said.

Housing Market

“We watch the housing market carefully,” Flaherty said, adding he’s already tightened mortgage rules twice. “Interest rates are low and lots of people are buying properties.”

Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney left his main interest rate at 1 percent Dec. 7 and said policy makers will remain careful about future increases as trade and Europe’s debt crisis hinder growth. In a Sept. 24 interview on CNBC, Carney said that “there are limits to the divergence that there can be between Canada and the United States.”

Flaherty said the European sovereign-debt crisis is a “serious risk” to the global economy and has the potential to hurt credit markets if the European Union doesn’t “get ahead” of investors with a large enough rescue package.

“We can run into another credit challenge around the world,” Flaherty said, adding that debt restructuring is “one of the options” European governments can consider. “It’s important to get ahead of the issue.”

Debt and Deficits

In a separate interview on “Bloomberg Surveillance” with Tom Keene, Flaherty said the European debt crisis showed the importance of restoring budget balance and the need to supervise financial institutions.

“Debts and deficits matter, we’re seeing that in Europe now,” Flaherty said. “We’re seeing markets go after countries that have let deficits, debts and banking situations get out of control.”

European finance ministers this week ruled out immediate aid for Portugal and Spain or an increase in the 750 billion- euro ($988 billion) crisis fund, counting on European Central Bank bond purchases to calm markets a week after handing Ireland an 85 billion-euro lifeline.

Flaherty defended the country’s record on allowing foreign investment, and said the country’s rejection of BHP Billiton Ltd.’s $40 billion bid for Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan Inc. last month was “unique.” Still, Canada doesn’t have any plans to allow foreign ownership of the nation’s banks and insurers, given how the industry has been able to escape the financial crisis, he said.

“With respect to financial institutions, I can tell you the time is not there,” Flaherty said. “It’s a brand for Canada now, we’re going to maintain the brand.”

Source

House Democrats voted Thursday to reject President Barack Obama’s tax deal with Republicans in its current form, but it was unclear how significantly the package might need to be changed.

By voice vote in a closed caucus meeting, Democrats passed a resolution saying the tax package should not come to the House floor for consideration as written, even though no formal House bill has been drafted. Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., introduced the resolution.

Said Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas: “If it’s take it or leave it, we’ll leave it.”

The vote will at least temporarily stall what had seemed to be a grudging Democratic movement toward the tax package.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a statement that House Democrats share Obama’s “commitment to providing the middle class with a tax cut to grow the economy and create jobs.” She noted that a House-passed bill, which Republicans blocked in the Senate, did not include “a bonus tax cut to millionaires and billionaires.”

“We will continue discussions with the president and our Democratic and Republican colleagues in the days ahead to improve the proposal before it comes to the House floor for a vote,” the California Democrat said.

The voice vote in the caucus was quite lopsided. Rep. Shelley Berkley of Nevada told reporters afterward that “one person voted against it. That would be me.”

Asked what happens next, Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina, the No. 3 person in the Democratic leadership, said, “I don’t know.”

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs brushed off the setback, predicting the package “will get passed” before year’s end. He said House members and senators are not going to go back home without taking action, knowing that their constituents would face a tax hike on Jan. 1 if so.

Speaking earlier Thursday at a White House event promoting American exports, Obama said the vote will determine whether the economy “moves forward or backward.” The president again pressed Congress to pass the agreement, saying it has the potential to create millions of jobs. He said if it fails, Americans would see smaller paychecks and fewer jobs.

But Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., said “the jury is still out” on the measure’s enactment because many Democrats are furious over an estate tax provision.

Obama agreed to exempt the first $5 million of a deceased person’s estate, and to tax the rest at 35 percent. Congressional Democrats had expected a 45 percent tax rate on anything above $3.5 million. Without congressional action, the estate tax will revert to an even higher rate: 55 percent on estates valued above $1 million. That should have strengthened Obama’s hand when negotiating with Republicans, Van Hollen said.

Some Democrats have reluctantly embraced the tax package, which would let rich and poor Americans keep Bush-era tax cuts that were scheduled to expire this month. Even so, 54 House Democrats wrote a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi saying they’re opposing the deal.

Led by Rep. Peter Welch of Vermont, they said they were against “acceding to Republican demands to extend the Bush tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires.”

“We’re paying a king’s ransom,” Welch said in an interview. “We didn’t need to and couldn’t afford to.”

The 54 Democrats, by themselves, would not be enough to block the package in the House, depending on how much support it gets from Republicans.

After Obama publicly defended the plan for a third day Wednesday, and Vice President Joe Biden met with Democratic lawmakers in the Capitol for a second day, several Democrats predicted the measure will pass, mainly because of extensive Republican support freecreditscore.

Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., predicted the tax cut compromise “will be passed by virtually all the Republicans and a minority of Democrats.” He said he would vote against it.

Obama said more congressional Democrats would climb aboard as they studied details of the year-end measure.

The package is expected to cost about $900 billion over two years, all added to the federal deficit.

Gibbs said the final cost isn’t known yet, but he offered the first estimate from the White House: a total bill of roughly $750 billion to the upper $800 billion-range over two years.

As the White House lobbies for votes, it is also trying to rally Republican support in the Senate for another priority, the ratification of a nuclear arms treaty with Russia. Gibbs flatly rejected the idea that there was any horsetrading of votes involving those two measures.

Raising the direst alarm yet, his administration warned fellow Democrats on Wednesday that if they defeat the tax plan, they could jolt the nation back into recession.

Larry Summers, Obama’s chief economic adviser, told reporters that if the measure isn’t passed soon, it will “materially increase the risk the economy would stall out and we would have a double-dip” recession. That put the White House in the unusual position of warning its own party’s lawmakers they could be to blame for calamitous consequences if they go against the president.

With many House and Senate Republicans signaling their approval of the tax cut plan, the White House’s comments were aimed mainly at House Democrats who feel Obama went too far in yielding to Republicans’ demands for continued income tax cuts and lower estate taxes for the wealthy.

Obama says the compromise was necessary because Republicans were prepared to let everyone’s taxes rise and to block the extension of unemployment benefits for jobless Americans if they didn’t get much of what they wanted.

Economists say the recent recession officially ended in June 2009. But with unemployment at 9.8 percent, millions remain out of work or fearful of losing ground economically, and the notion of the nation falling back into a recession would strike many as chilling. It also could rattle markets and investors.

The deal Obama crafted with Senate Republican leaders would prevent the scheduled Dec. 31 expiration of all the Bush administration’s tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003, even though Obama had often promised to end the cuts for the highest earners.

House Democrats, who will lose their majority in January, still hold a 255-179 edge in the current Congress. To pass a big bill with mostly Republican votes would mark a dramatic departure from recent battles, such as the health care overhaul, which was enacted with virtually no GOP support in either chamber.

Passage of Obama’s plan seems more assured in the Senate, where numerous Democrats have agreed that the president had little choice in making the compromises with Republicans. Still, Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said he and colleagues are considering possible changes, and action could come within days.

Source

SAN FRANCISCO

President Barack Obama says lawmakers must reach an agreement to stop taxes from increasing for the middle class, even if the solution isn’t exactly the one he prefers.

Obama says raising taxes on the middle class would not only be detrimental to American families, but would also be a drag on the economy.

Lawmakers are seeking a compromise on the expiring Bush-era tax rates. An outline is emerging that would temporarily extend the cuts for all taxpayers and extend jobless benefits for millions of American.

Obama has said the country can’t afford a permanent extension of taxes for top income earners. He’s speaking at a North Carolina community college that the White House says has demonstrated ways to better prepare workers to compete in a global economy.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (AP) _ President Barack Obama is calling for new investments in education and innovation, a glimpse at a 2011 agenda designed to place the U.S. in a better competitive position in the world.

Obama was scheduled to speak at a community college here where he also planned to press Congress to extend Bush-era tax rates and jobless benefits.

The president’s trip to Winston-Salem on Monday comes as the White House and lawmakers are working on a compromise to extend temporarily the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts for all income brackets. The White House also wants to continue unemployment insurance benefits, which are expiring as well.

A White House official says Obama will renew his opposition Monday to any upper-income tax-cut extension unless unemployment benefits also are extended. The official spoke on condition of anonymity ahead of Obama’s remarks.

Obama’s call for investments in education and innovation to boost America’s competitiveness with other countries is a prelude to specific initiatives the president will unveil in the months to come, White House spokesman Bill Burton said.

“This is a framing speech to talk about what we should be focused on for the next year,” Burton told reporters aboard Air Force One.

He offered no specific examples of the initiatives Obama might promote, but said the president would offer no details in his community college speech.

Source

Just by increasing your mortgage payment you can save enough over time to buy a new car, send a child to university or boost your retirement savings.

How to do it? Take your lunch to work more often, iron your shirts instead of dry cleaning them, or give up a few lattes every week, and put the money into your mortgage.

???It’s $10 a week, easy money. These things are relatively small potatoes, but they add up over a year,??? says Martin Beaudry, vice-president of lending at ING Direct, who irons his own shirts for the week after dinner every Sunday night.

If you changed your mortgage to every two weeks from monthly on a  $250,000 mortgage, at 5 per cent and added $57 to each payment, it is the same as making 13 months of payments a year, not 12, Beaudry says.

???You’d save $30,000 in interest and be mortgage-free four years sooner.???

That’s money in the bank.

His example helps makes the point that over a 25-year mortgage, the interest paid can approach the amount borrowed to buy a house or condo, depending on the interest rate.

Think of investing that!

On a $400,000 mortgage, at 2 per cent interest, borrowing costs are $108,141. However, at 6 per cent, that more than triples to $367,766.

Although rates aren’t that high now ??? a five-year mortgage can be found for less than 4 per cent ??? it’s worth noting how much interests costs can vary.

And it’s important to know that the first five years of a mortgage typically see three-quarters of your payments go to interest and just one-quarter to pay down the principal. So any money put down to reduce the debt then has a magnifying effect.

That’s why mortgage broker Romana Bozic, of The Mortgage Group, recommends boosting mortgage payments ever so slightly ??? as long as you can afford it.

???Adding $25 to a mortgage payment doesn’t make much of a difference to your lifestyle, but it will make a difference to your mortgage,??? she says.

???People get that. It’s what they spend at Starbucks or magazines or lunch at work. They say, ???I can take my lunch every other day.’???

She believes it’s important to balance paying down the mortgage with saving for children’s education and for retirement. Extra cash should go to RRSP contributions, which can be used to reduce taxable income and then get a tax refund. This money can then be used to pay down the mortgage, saving interest costs down the road.

???That seems to be the popular solution,??? agrees Beaudry, who adds it’s important for homeowners not to ???overextend??? themselves when getting a mortgage.

Getting too large a mortgage can be a problem, agrees Sandra Foster, an author on personal finance issues and president of Headspring Consulting Inc.

Although the general rule of thumb is that a household spend no more than 33 per cent of its gross income on the mortgage, that can be too high for some families.

???The bank will lend you more money than you can afford. Add your lifestyle costs into your budget before you assume the mortgage,??? Foster cautions. ???I don’t know about your hydro bill, but mine’s going up more than 2 per cent. You’ve got to look at your overall spending.???

The only time to be putting extra money on the mortgage is when families truly have a surplus, Foster adds. ???If there really is extra cash and all your bills are paid and you don’t owe anything on a credit card at 18.9 per cent interest.???

It’s great to pay mortgages off early ??? the average in Canada is about 18 years ??? but the latest they should be paid is at retirement time, Foster says.

That’s because a person’s income goes down when it comes time to live on a pension, so it’s important to have a lower cost of living.

???That means you don’t have to save quite as much.???

Source

Ferrellgas Partners LP posted a drop in earnings but an increase in revenue for its fourth quarter and year.

The Overland Park-based propane retailer posted a loss of 58 cents a share in the fourth quarter, up 51 cents a share from the same quarter in 2009.

Losses are common in the propane industry during the summer months because of the seasonal nature of the product.

Revenue was up 13.2 percent for the fourth quarter, going from $312.7 million in 2009 to $353.8 million in the quarter that ended on July 31.

That was driven in part by the increase in the cost of propane, which jumped 19.4 percent from the same quarter a year ago.

Ferrellgas’ net earnings dropped, posting a loss of $40.8 million, compared with a $35.3 million loss in the same quarter a year ago.

Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) was $15 million for the fourth quarter of this year, up 23 percent from the $12 payday loans guaranteed no fax.2 million it posted in last year’s fourth quarter.

Earnings per share for the year were down 40.5 percent in 2010 at 47 cents a share, compared with 79 cents a share in 2009.

Revenue for the year rose 1.4 percent to $2.1 billion.

Net earnings were down for the year, dropping 37.5 percent to $33.3 million, compared with $53.3 million the prior year. That was due in large part to an increase in interest expenses and also a $20.7 million loss on debt repayment premiums.

Still, adjusted EBITDA was $266.5 million, up 6 percent from the previous high of $251.1 million in 2009.

“The gain in adjusted EBITDA for the full year was driven by a 5.5 percent increase in propane gallon sales to 922.5 million from 874.8 million the year before,” CEO Steve Wambold said in a written statement.

Source