Wall Street Journal – The Australian share market succumbed to profit taking in quiet trading Friday, with healthcare, energy, telco, consumer staples and materials pushing the market into negative territory after an early rise to a four-week high. The benchmark S&P/ASX 200 closed down 21.9 points, or 0.5% at 4560.3 after rising to 4598.5, its highest level since Aug. 9. Trading was damped by holidays in many Asian countries. On the charts, the index failed to stay above the 4588 level which marks neckline resistance from an inverse head and shoulders pattern, according to Dow Jones Newswires technical analysis. Read Article
Reuters – A set of U.N. goals aimed at drastically reducing poverty and hunger worldwide by 2015 are achievable, despite setbacks caused by the global financial and economic crises, a draft document said. The 27-page draft declaration on the U.N. Millennium Development Goals is expected to be formally adopted at a September 20-22 summit meeting at the United Nations which U.S. President Barack Obama and other world leaders are expected to attend. “The Millennium Development Goals can be achieved, including in the poorest countries, with renewed commitment, effective implementation, and intensified collective action by all (U.N.) member states and other relevant stakeholders,” said the draft, which was obtained by Reuters Thursday. Read Article
Reuters – Projected U.S. economic growth for the rest of this year and next was revised down for a third month in a row by a panel of about 50 economists. The latest Blue Chip Economic Indicators report on Thursday said the weaker outlook for second-half 2010 growth stemmed from lower expectations for consumer spending, business investment and private construction. Read Article
Reuters – Switzerland remains the world’s most competitive economy, while the United States has fallen from second to fourth after losing the top spot last year, according to the World Economic Forum’s annual rankings issued on Thursday. Sweden, in second spot, and Singapore in third leapfrogged the United States in the WEF’s Global Competitiveness Report 2010/2011. Last year the Asian city-state ranked third and Sweden fourth. There were no newcomers in the WEF’s top 10, although Germany climbed to fifth from seventh. Read Article
Daily Mail – A fifth of Britons live in households where nobody works, according to official figures. They reveal that almost four million households contain no one who has a job – meaning more than seven million under-65s live without any experience of employment. In some parts of the country almost a quarter of households are workless. In the past year alone a further 148,000 have been added to the grim statistic. Employment Minister Chris Grayling said last night the ‘shocking’ figures were an indictment of the last government’s failure to tackle welfare reform. Read Article
Bloomberg – Gold futures rose, closing at a record $1,259.30 an ounce, as a slump in equities spurred demand for the precious metal as an alternative investment. The price reached an intraday high of $1,261.60 as stocks in Asia, Europe and the U.S. fell on heightened concern that the global economy will struggle. The record was $1,266.50 on June 21. The euro dropped as much as 1.4 percent against the dollar as an industry group said Germany’s 10 largest banks may need fresh capital to meet new regulations. Read Article
Financial Times – The appointment of Bob Diamond, one of the world’s best-paid investment bankers, as chief executive of Barclays has been met with outrage in British government circles, stoking the political row about whether the country’s big banks should be broken up. The American-born head of Barclays Capital, who will take over from John Varley at the end of March, has long attracted criticism in the UK over the size of his pay package, which last year topped £40m including his sale of a stake in BGI, the bank’s asset management arm. Read Article
Reuters – Afghanistan has frozen the assets of leading shareholders and borrowers at the country’s top private bank, officials said on Tuesday, causing long queues of anxious depositors to throng its branches. Signs of trouble at politically powerful Kabulbank threaten to add a financial crisis to the country’s other woes. Tens of thousands of soldiers, police and other state employees receive their salaries — funded by the United States and other Western donors — through accounts at the bank, which has 250,000 state employees as customers. Read Article
AFP – The earthquake that devastated Christchurch may help, rather than hinder, economic growth by triggering a construction spree as New Zealand tries to shake off the effects of recession, analysts say. While no one died in Saturday’s 7.0-magnitude quake, economic activity in the city has ground to a halt as authorities enforce a no-go zone in parts considered unsafe to enter due to danger from falling debris. The quake damaged an estimated 100,000 homes, tore up roads and smashed infrastructure such as water and sewage pipes, creating a repair bill officials estimate will reach four billion New Zealand dollars (2.7 billion US). Read Article
Wall Street Journal – European stocks fell Tuesday, with banks leading the way after a Wall Street Journal article on European stress tests raised fears about lenders’ exposure to sovereign debt. The Stoxx Europe 600 Index was down 0.5% at 259.58. London’s FTSE 100 Index was down 0.8% at 5396.48, Paris’s CAC-40 fell 1.1% to 3644.93 and Frankfurt’s DAX slipped 0.6% to 6115.39. Analysis by The Wall Street Journal found the stress tests understated some banks’ holdings of “potentially risky government debt.” Read Article
Associated Press – Oil prices fell to near $74 a barrel Tuesday in Asia as investors mull the strength of the U.S. economy and demand for crude. Benchmark oil for October delivery was down 83 cents at $73.77 a barrel at late afternoon Singapore time in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract last settled on Friday at $74.60, down 42 cents. Markets in the U.S. were closed Monday for the Labor Day holiday. Analysts are still digesting Friday’s U.S. jobs report for August. Private employers added 67,000 jobs last month, more than analysts expected. However, the jobless rate rose in August to 9.6 percent from 9.5 percent in July. Read Article
BBC – President Barack Obama has called for a new comprehensive infrastructure plan as part of efforts to jump-start the spluttering US economy. The plan will invest about $50bn (£32.5bn) in roads, railways and airports as well as high-speed rail and the creation of an infrastructure bank. US infrastructure has long been considered underfunded and receives poor grades from government agencies. Read Article
Telegraph – The United States, Japan and large parts of Europe have exhausted their policy arsenal, leaving them defenceless against a double-dip recession as recovery slows to ‘stall speed’. “The US has run out of bullets,” said Nouriel Roubini, professor at New York University, and one of a caste of luminaries with grim forecasts at the annual Ambrosetti conference on Lake Como. “More quantitative easing (bond purchases) by the Federal Reserve is not going to make any difference. Treasury yields are already down to 2.5pc yet credit spreads are widening again. Monetary policy can boost liquidity but it can’t deal with solvency problems,” he told Europe’s policy elite. Read Article
Guardian – Officials in Afghanistan are resisting US pressure for a wide-ranging clean-up of Kabul Bank, which is mired in allegations of corruption that have engulfed some of the wealthiest and most powerful people in the country. The stand-off came as the bank’s third-biggest shareholder, Mahmoud Karzai – the elder brother of President Hamid Karzai – called for a US bailout of the stricken bank. Read Article
Telegraph – “This tragedy does not have a solution,” said Hans-Werner Sinn, head of the prestigious IFO Institute in Munich. “The policy of forced ‘internal devaluation’, deflation, and depression could risk driving Greece to the edge of a civil war. It is impossible to cut wages and prices by 30pc without major riots,” he said, speaking at the elite European House Ambrosetti forum at Lake Como. “Greece would have been bankrupt without the rescue measures. All the alternatives are terrible but the least terrible is for the country to get out of the eurozone, even if this kills the Greek banks,” he said. Read Article
BBC – Nearly six million people in the UK have paid the wrong amount of tax. About £2bn was underpaid via the Pay as You Earn (PAYE) system in the past two years, with about 1.4 million people owing an average of £1,500 each. But £1.8bn has also been overpaid and some 4.3 million people will get a rebate because they have paid too much. Treasury minister David Gauke said that in the current financial climate, the government was not in a position to “just wave goodbye” to the money owed. Read Article
The Age – Greece’s austerity measures cannot prevent default and will lead to a breakdown of political order if continued for long, a leading German economist has warned. ”This tragedy does not have a solution,” said Hans-Werner Sinn, head of the prestigious IFO Institute in Munich. ”The policy of forced ‘internal devaluation’, deflation, and depression could risk driving Greece to the edge of a civil war. It is impossible to cut wages and prices by 30 per cent without major riots,” he told the elite European House Ambrosetti forum at Lake Como. Read Article
CNBC – Even if the US and European economies manage to avoid a double dip, it will still feel like a recession, while more than half of the 800-plus US banks on the “critical list” are likely to go bust, according to renowned economist Nouriel Roubini of Roubini Global Economics. The second half of the year will remain weak as tailwinds become headwinds, Roubini told CNBC on the shores of Lake Como, Italy at the Ambrosetti Forum economics conference. Read Article
Daily Mail – The U.S. unemployment rate rose to 9.6 per cent in August, official figures released today have shown. The data from the U.S. Labor Department showed the economy lost 54,000 jobs last month as the United States continues to struggle to recover from the recent global recession. Economists had predicted even worse figures and despite the fact unemployment rose for the first time in four months, a number of experts described the news as ‘positive’. Read Article
Bloomberg – European stocks climbed, extending the Stoxx Europe 600 Index’s biggest weekly gain in almost two months, after U.S. companies added more jobs than forecast in August, easing concern the economic recovery is faltering. Credit Suisse Group AG and BNP Paribas SA led banks higher and Rio Tinto Group paced a rally in raw-material producers after the U.S. payrolls data. Aggreko Plc surged 5.5 percent as it said it has not received any takeover bids. Neopost SA, the French mailroom equipment maker, climbed 2 percent after reporting increased revenue. Read Article
ABC – The poorest people in Burma are paying more than half their income in taxes. The Network for Human Rights Documentation-Burma says junta members and their cronies spend more than 50 percent of the national budget on the military but less than 1.3 percent on health and education. The report says Burma’s tax system lacks transparency and accountability with payments often arbitrary and made to local military and officials in cash or by forced labour. Read Article
Business Line – The world is facing major challenges in creating enough quality jobs to sustain growth and development in the wake of the global financial crisis, according to a joint paper by International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Labour Organisation (ILO). The paper, which will be the discussion document for a conference on the ‘Challenges of Growth, Employment and Social Cohesion’ being jointly organised by IMF and ILO in Oslo, Norway, on September 13, says that unemployment remains at record levels in many countries two years after the onset of the global economic crisis. Read Article
Daily Trust – Nigeria needs to create about 25 million jobs over the next 10 years if it is to offer work to new entrants and cut halve the current unemployment rate in the country, according to a report presented yesterday. The Next Generation report, which was put together by the British council, said by 2030 Nigeria will be one of the few countries in the world that has young workers in plentiful supply. Read Article
Reuters – The U.S. government is likely to take a loss on General Motors Co in the first offering of the automaker’s stock, six people familiar with preparations for the landmark IPO said. Subsequent offerings of the government’s holdings may be profitable depending on how investors trade the newly listed stock, the sources said. But the question of whether taxpayers are ultimately made whole on GM’s $50 billion bailout could be left open for years, the people said. Read Article
Financial Times – Wheat prices rose further on Friday morning in the wake of Russia’s decision to extend its grain export ban by 12 month, raising fears about a return to the food shortages and riots of 2007-08. In Mozambique, where a 30 per cent rise in bread prices triggered riots on Wednesday and Thursday, the government said seven people had been killed along with 288 wounded. The announcement by Vladimir Putin on Thursday extended an export ban first announced last month until late December 2011, sending wheat and other cereals prices to near a two-year high. Read Article
