German official cautions over more ECB stimulus

FRANKFURT, Germany — Germany's top central banker said it's too soon for the European Central Bank to talk about a further shot of stimulus for the struggling eurozone economy.

Jens Weidmann said the ECB only this month loosened monetary policy with an interest rate cut to a record low of only 0.25 percent.

"I don't think it's a good idea to announce the next round right away," he said in an interview with Die Zeit newspaper made available Wednesday.

Weidmann's warning follows remarks by ECB executive board member Peter Praet last week that the ECB could take the additional step of purchasing financial assets such as bonds — if the bank thought the economy was threatened by deflation, a corrosive, chronic fall in prices. Deflation undermines growth and investment as people hold off on purchases as goods become cheaper. It also makes debts harder to pay.

Deflation concerns have ratcheted up in recent weeks after inflation in the 17-country eurozone fell to 0.7 percent in the year to October, well below the ECB's target of keeping prices increases just below 2 percent.

In theory, pumping money into the eurozone economy could help ease those deflation concerns and help the eurozone recovery from recession. Other central banks including the U.S. Federal Reserve and the Bank of England have made such purchases with newly created money to lower interest rates and spur growth.

The ECB, the chief monetary authority for the eurozone, had until recently said little about using the bond-purchase stimulus tool, or "quantitative easing" in economic jargon.

Last week, the Wall Street Journal quoted Praet as saying the bank could purchase assets if its mandate to maintain price stability was threatened.

If the price stability mandate is at risk, Praet said, then "we are going to take all the measures that we think we should take to fulfill that mandate." That includes "outright purchases that any central bank can do."

The idea of quantitative easing faces resistance in Germany, Europe's largest economy. Many in Germany are skeptical of central bank measures seen as potentially inflationary, or as bailing out troubled euro member governments that won't take steps themselves to improve growth.

Weidmann is only one vote however on the 23-member ECB rate-setting council, a post he holds as head of Germany's national central bank, the Bundesbank.

Weidmann said that Europe's troubles over slow growth, uncompetitive eurozone member economies and too much debt "certainly cannot be solved through the money printing press."

22.27 | 0 komentar | Read More

US consumer prices drop 0.1 pct. on cheaper gas

WASHINGTON — Cheaper gasoline lowered overall U.S. consumer prices slightly in October. But outside the steep drop at the pump, inflation stayed mild.

The consumer price index fell 0.1 percent last month, down from a 0.2 percent increase in September, the Labor Department said Wednesday. The October decline was due mainly to a 2.9 percent drop in gasoline costs, the largest since April. Over the past 12 months, overall prices have risen 1 percent, well below the Federal Reserve's inflation target of 2 percent.

PNC Bank chief economist Stuart Hoffman said the low inflation reading ensures that the Fed will continue its extraordinary measures to spur growth.

"From the Federal Reserve's perspective, inflation is too low, one reason why the central bank continues to provide massive stimulus to the economy," Hoffman said in a note to clients.

Excluding volatile energy and food costs, so-called core prices rose 0.1 percent in October from September and have risen just 1.7 percent over the past 12 months. The prices for new vehicles, clothing and medical care declined last month. But airfares rose a whopping 3.6 percent.

U.S. gasoline prices began falling in the spring and reached two-year lows earlier this month. The average price of a gallon of gas was $3.21, according to AAA's Daily Fuel Gauge Report.

The drop in fuel prices may be offset somewhat by slight increases in the cost of food, which rose 0.1 percent. That increase was driven by a 0.6 percent rise in the prices of meats, poultry, fish and eggs, the largest advance for any of the food categories.

Inflation has been modest over the past four years, with prices held down by the weak recovery from the Great Recession. High unemployment and modest wage hikes have made it difficult for Americans to spend more and retailers to charge more.

Low inflation gives the Fed more latitude to pursue its extraordinary stimulus to help drive economic growth. The Fed has been buying $85 billion a month in bonds to keep long-term interest rates low and encourage more borrowing and spending. It has also kept its key short-term interest rate near zero since late 2008.

Critics of the bond-buying program fear it will spark higher inflation in the future.

But a number of Fed officials have objected to slowing the program because inflation remains below 2 percent.

A small amount of inflation can be good for the economy, because it encourages consumers and businesses to spend and invest before prices rise further.

The Fed will release on Wednesday the minutes of its policymaker meeting that ended on Oct. 30. Economists expect the minutes to provide little insight into what steps the central bank will take next in terms of its bond buying and plans to keep the short-term interest rate it controls at nearly zero.

22.27 | 0 komentar | Read More

Frederick Sanger, double Nobel winner, dies at 95

LONDON — British biochemist Frederick Sanger, who twice won the Nobel Prize in chemistry and was a pioneer of genome sequencing, has died at the age of 95.

His death was confirmed Wednesday by the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology — which Sanger helped found in 1962.

The laboratory praised Sanger, who died in his sleep Tuesday at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge, as an "extremely modest and self-effacing man whose contributions have made an extraordinary impact on molecular biology."

Sanger was one of just four individuals to have been awarded two Nobel Prizes; the others being Marie Curie, Linus Pauling and John Bardeen.

Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust, called Sanger "the father of the genomic era."

Sanger first won the Nobel Prize in 1958 at the age of 40 for his work on the structure of proteins. He had determined the sequence of the amino acids in insulin and showed how they are linked together.

He later turned his attention to the sequencing of nucleic acids and developing techniques to determine the exact sequence of the building blocks in DNA.

That work led to Sanger's second Nobel Prize, awarded jointly in 1980 with Stanford University's Paul Berg and Harvard University's Walter Gilbert, for their work determining base sequences in nucleic acids.

Venki Ramakrishnan, deputy director of the MRC Laboratory, said it would be "impossible to overestimate the impact" Sanger had on modern genetics and molecular biology.

Sanger was born on Aug. 13, 1918, in Gloucestershire, southwestern England. While he initially planned to study medicine like his father, he switched fields and earned a degree in natural sciences from Cambridge University 1939. A conscientious objector in World War II, he went on to earn a PhD working on protein metabolism from the same university.

In addition to the Nobel Prizes, Sanger was made a fellow of the Royal Society in 1954, Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1963 and the Order of Merit in 1986.

Sanger declined a knighthood, however, because he preferred not to be called "sir," according to the laboratory he helped found.

According to The Sanger Institute, when he was asked if he would mind an institute being named after him, Sanger agreed — but said "It had better be good."

Sanger is survived by three children — Robin, Peter and Sally.

___

Follow Cassandra Vinograd at http://twitter.com/CassVinograd

22.27 | 0 komentar | Read More

Markets remain lackluster in run up to Fed minutes

AMSTERDAM — Markets got a modest lift Wednesday after tame U.S. inflation figures eased investor fears that the U.S. Federal Reserve will feel pressure to reduce its monetary stimulus soon.

U.S. consumer prices fell slightly in October, due to lower energy and housing prices, according to a Labor Department report Wednesday. Over the past 12 months, inflation has been just 1 percent, the smallest increase since late 2009.

"With limited inflation pressure and even perhaps a whiff of deflation, the Fed isn't likely to feel any urgency to pull in the reins on policy," said Jim Baird, chief investment officer at Plante Moran Financial Advisors.

Following the inflation figures, stocks in Europe recovered some lost ground while the U.S. opened steadily.

In Europe, the FTSE 100 index of leading British shares was down 0.2 percent at 6,688 while Germany's DAX was a tad lower at 9,190. The CAC-40 in France was 0.3 percent lower at 4,260.

In the U.S., the Dow Jones industrial average was flat at 15,967 while the broader S&P 500 index rose 0.1 percent to 1,790.

The main focus later will be the publication of the minutes to the Fed's last policy meeting are published later in the U.S. trading session.

"Investors remain hesitant to enter the markets before tonight's minutes," said Max Cohen, a trader at Spreadex.

Earlier, Asian markets generally fell, though Hong Kong's Hang Seng added 0.2 percent to 23,700.86 and China's Shanghai Composite reversed losses to gain 0.6 percent to 2,206.61 after the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development made positive remarks about the Chinese economy.

Seoul's Kospi was down 0.7 percent to 2,017.24. Australia's S&P/ASX 200 ceded 0.8 percent to 5,307.70. Japan's Nikkei 225 stock average shed 0.3 percent to 15,076.08, hurt by a rise in the yen.

Other markets drifted. Among currencies the euro was 0.1 percent lower at $1.3539 while the dollar fell 0.3 percent to 99.87 yen.

In the oil markets, the benchmark New York crude rate was up 45 cents at $93.34 a barrel.

22.27 | 0 komentar | Read More

US creates economic advisory team for Puerto Rico

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — The U.S. is sending a team of federal officials to help Puerto Rico manage an economic crisis as the island braces for its eighth year of recession.

A U.S. administration official said Wednesday that the team will be composed of officials from the departments of Education, Health and Human Services, and Housing and Urban Development, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency.

They will travel to Puerto Rico starting in December to work with the island's government on how to best maximize federal funds in those areas to help boost its economy. The officials will work in an advisory capacity and no additional federal funds are planned beyond current allocations.

The team was created by a presidential task force that previously worked with Puerto Rico on political status issues.

22.26 | 0 komentar | Read More

Oxford Dictionaries: 'Selfie' is word of the year

LONDON — Michelle Obama shared one with her "first dog" Bo, Hillary Clinton tweeted one with her daughter Chelsea. Now "selfie" — the smartphone self-portrait — has been declared word of the year for 2013, according to Britain's Oxford University Press.

The publisher of the Oxford dictionaries said Tuesday that "selfie" saw a huge jump in usage in the past year, bursting from the confines of Instagram and Twitter to become mainstream shorthand for any self-taken photograph.

Researchers behind the renowned dictionaries pick a prominent word or expression in the English language each year that best reflects the mood of the times. Previous words of the year have included "unfriend" in 2009, "credit crunch" in 2008, "carbon footprint" in 2007 and "Sudoku" in 2005.

Judy Pearsall, the editorial director for Oxford Dictionaries, said "selfie" appeared to have been first used in 2002 on an Australian online forum, and the hashtag #selfie appeared on the photo-sharing website Flickr in 2004.

"But usage wasn't widespread until around 2012, when 'selfie' was being used commonly in mainstream media," she said.

Australian English sometimes uses the suffix "-ie" — such as barbie for barbeque and tinnie for a can of beer — which helps to explain where "selfie" may have come from, Pearsall added.

Oxford usually assigns a separate word of the year to the U.S. and to the U.K., but it said "selfie" captured the imagination on both sides of the Atlantic this year.

The term beat other buzzwords including "twerk," the sexually provocative dance move that got a huge boost in usage thanks to an attention-grabbing performance by pop star Miley Cyrus; "showrooming," the practice of visiting a shop to look at a product before buying it online at a lower price; and "Bitcoin," the digital currency that gained widespread media attention.

Also making the shortlist was "binge-watch," a verb that describes watching many episodes of a TV show in rapid succession.

The words were chosen by a research program that monitors online content and collects around 150 million words of English in use each month.

"Selfie" was added to the online version of the Oxford dictionary in August and is being considered for future inclusion in the more traditional Oxford English Dictionary.

___

Follow Sylvia Hui on http://www.Twitter.com/sylviahui

22.26 | 0 komentar | Read More

Bangladesh police clash with garment workers

DHAKA, Bangladesh — Police said they fired rubber bullets and tear gas Tuesday to disperse thousands of garment workers who rampaged through industrial towns in Bangladesh to protest the killing of two factory workers during a demonstration for higher wages.

At least 30 people were injured in the violence, said police official Mohammad Nazrul Islam.

The two factory workers died earlier Tuesday, a day after they were seriously wounded by rubber bullets fired by police outside the capital, Dhaka.

Garment workers in Bangladesh have been protesting since last month to press for a wage hike.

In the latest violence, security forces fired rubber bullets and tear gas to stop angry workers from vandalizing factories, Islam said.

The workers also set up roadblocks with burned tires and abandoned vehicles, disrupting traffic in the industrial towns of Gazipur and Ashulia, outside of Dhaka.

A protest leader, Delwar Hossain, said the workers were demonstrating peacefully and were attacked by police "without provocation."

Since the protests began in October, the government has deployed paramilitary border guards to boost security in Gazipur, a hub of several hundred garment factories.

Police said about 50 garment factories shut down for the day Tuesday because of the protests.

Garment workers in Bangladesh are poorly paid and are forced to work under poor and unsafe conditions in an industry that earns up to $20 billion a year — about 70 percent of the country's export earnings.

22.26 | 0 komentar | Read More

OECD cuts global growth forecasts

PARIS — Global growth is expected to lag this year and next, but for the first time in a long time, it's not all Europe's fault.

That's the view of a leading international economic body, which said Tuesday that a slowdown in emerging economies and the potential for another U.S. budget crisis are the main sources of concern for the global economy.

In its half-yearly forecast, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development lowered its forecast for global growth this year to 2.7 percent and 3.6 percent for next. In May, it had predicted 3.1 percent and 4 percent growth, respectively.

"We can't get (the world economy) out of first gear," said Angel Gurria, the secretary-general of the organization, which brings together the world's most developed economies.

Just as the economy of the 17-country eurozone is emerging from its longest-ever recession brought on by a debt crisis, other economies are beginning to slow.

Emerging markets, which have helped shore up global growth in recent years, are beginning to lag, partially over fears that a pickup in the U.S. economy will spell the end of cheap credit.

"The BRIICS (Brazil, Russia, India, Indonesia, China, South Africa) have been big machines of growth, they were pulling the world, and they are decelerating," said Gurria.

Among those economies, Indonesia, for instance, is projected to grow 5.2 percent this year and 5.6 percent next. In May, the OECD was predicting at least 6 percent growth for both years. In India, the growth projection for this year has slid from 5.7 percent to 3.4 percent.

The Federal Reserve has pumped trillions of dollars into the U.S. economy in an attempt to keep interest rates low and get money flowing. The stimulus, which has been going on in various guises for years, has also helped sustain growth in emerging countries. Now businesses there are bracing themselves for the policy's end.

The OECD also cautioned about the impact of another damaging fight over the U.S. budget. A little over a month ago, the U.S. narrowly avoided technically defaulting on some of its debts following a protracted and often dysfunctional battle in Congress over the budget and the raising over the debt ceiling.

"Brinkmanship over fiscal policy in the United States remains a key risk and uncertainty," Pier Carlo Padoan, the OECD's chief economist, wrote in a commentary accompanying the report.

The OECD recommended that the U.S. scrap its policy of capping borrowing with a debt ceiling and instead come up with a more reasoned plan to reduce debt.

But with the risk that the U.S. won't come up with such a plan in mind, the OECD slightly lowered its expectations for U.S. growth, saying GDP would rise 1.7 percent this year and 2.9 percent next.

The eurozone, on the other hand, is beginning to improve, the OECD said, although risks remain. It predicted that, overall, the eurozone will shrink 0.4 percent this year, as compared with the 0.6 percent slide forecast in May.

But the report warned that the recovery is uneven, and unemployment won't begin to fall — from very high levels — until next year.

22.26 | 0 komentar | Read More

United aims for $2B in cost savings

United Airlines says it will cut costs, overhaul its website, and shift flying from Asia to Europe as it aims to keep shareholders happy.

United disclosed the initiatives Tuesday as part of a presentation to investors.

The airline, run by United Continental Holdings Inc., is aiming to cut costs by $2 billion per year. A spokeswoman says the plan announced Tuesday does not include furloughs. The airline is also aiming to burn less fuel, make workers more productive, and improve its maintenance processes.

It plans to overhaul its United.com website in phases next year.

United will drop Seattle-to-Tokyo flights, replacing them with a second daily flight from Houston. United has faced strong competition in Seattle from Delta Air Lines Inc.

United is also shifting some flying from Asia to Europe.

22.26 | 0 komentar | Read More

EU parliament finally approves budget cut

BRUSSELS — The European Union's parliament on Tuesday finally approved the first spending cut in the history of the 28-nation group.

Over two years of haggling ended when the EU legislature approved the budget, which will fall to 960 billion euros ($1.3 trillion budget), from 975 billion euros, for the seven years between 2014 and 2020.

The cut had been sought by several EU countries which wanted to see austerity at the EU level at a time when many were pursuing cutbacks at home.

EU President Herman Van Rompuy called the spending commitments "a realistic budget for Europe" which has been struggling through years of financial crisis.

The budget fell some 40 billion euros short of the first proposals of the EU head office which had wanted more clout to push through investment and employment programs.

Britain had been first in line to hammer home the message that the EU should limit spending, if only to contain its ambitions to encroach on national policies.

"The difficult budgetary situation in the member states has resulted for the first time in a lower budget," said Jean-Luc Dehaene, who negotiated the deal for the parliament. He saw difficult times ahead.

"This is especially problematic as in times of national austerity the EU budget should be higher to compensate for declining investments in the member states."

The Parliament meeting in Strasbourg, France, approved the budget by 537 votes to 126, with 19 abstentions. The member states only need to reconfirm the agreement in the coming weeks, which is not expected to pose any problem.

Also on Tuesday, the EU's highest court ruled that the member states were within their rights to block automatic pay increases for EU officials in 2011 amounting to 1.7 percent.

The European Court of Justice ruled that EU nations were within their rights to consider the economic downturn sufficed to block the increase.

Again, Britain was happy to applaud the ruling.

"When governments and families across Europe are taking difficult decisions to make savings, it would be wrong and irresponsible for the EU to not show similar restraint," said Nicky Morgan, a British Treasury minister.

22.26 | 0 komentar | Read More