Nothing Left To Steal

Finance ministers who sealed the 85-billion-euro (113-billion-dollar) deal at emergency talks in Brussels Sunday were anxious to reassure Asian markets and head off any moves on Portugal and Spain, which are considered the next most vulnerable economies.

But even as international financial leaders stepped forward to endorse the agreement, currency dealers in Tokyo gave their own verdict.

“The package has been clearly designed by the IMF and the EU and you can rely on the multi-decade experience of the IMF to put in place plans which are totally credible,” he told reporters in Tokyo on the sidelines of a financial forum.

“There is absolutely no doubt that this plan will work,” he said of the 113-billion-dollar bailout, adding that Ireland has launched “extremely tough measures to restructure its financial sector”.

Cowen insisted the 85-billion-euro (113-billion-dollar) bailout was the “best deal available” for Ireland and will help shore up its banks, allowing his government to continue operating without imposing further tax rises or spending cuts.

But the main opposition Fine Gael party called the agreement “appalling”, insisting the 5.8 percent annual interest rate on the loan was unaffordable and condemning plans to raid Ireland’s pension fund reserves to help pay for it.

And as the deal to help Ireland was finalised, attention in Brussels turned on fighting any moves by the market on Portugal and Spain.

Finance ministers sealed the 85-billion-euro (113-billion-dollar) agreement at emergency talks in Brussels timed to reassure the Asian financial markets before they reopened early Monday.

Sunday’s emergency meeting in Brussels is aimed at preventing Ireland’s debt crisis from spreading to other countries in the 16-member eurozone, with experts declaring that Portugal and Spain are also vulnerable.

“We still have a few little details in the composition to rework and to finalise, particularly on the interest rate,” said French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde as she arrived for the meeting.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel may have said this week that she sees “absolutely no case of a eurozone country in … a situation” where it would need to restructure its debt.

But markets are thinking otherwise.

Senior members of Spain’s Socialist government have stressed over past days that the Spanish economy is not the same as that of Ireland, which is being thrown a lifeline worth 85 billion euros (113 billion dollars).

“Of course we are not the same,” said the conservative daily ABC in an ironic commentary.

“We continue to work to diversify our financing sources and broaden the space for participation in the wealth of our economy,” said Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed al-Maktoum, the head of Dubai’s Supreme Fiscal Committee.

“We (continue to) work on opening the door for public subscription in some of our large companies,” he added in a meeting with the media titled “Dubai economic update forum.”

“If there’s no progress, we may as well go back to square one,” said an African Union diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity ahead of talks Monday and Tuesday in the Libyan capital. The gathering will involve 80 EU and African Union nations.

After years of wrangling over Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) between the two continents, the prickly issue was studiously left off the summit agenda.

Bangladesh, the third-biggest producer of clothes worldwide, is one of the cheapest locations for manufacturing in the world and its factories churn out clothing for leading brands from Wal-Mart to H & M and Gap.

After reluctantly agreeing to a sharp rise in the minimum wage, under pressure from the government and violent protests from workers, the industry is now grappling with price and supply issues with its main raw material.

Police said the latest blast ripped through the Pike River pit just before 2:00pm (0100 GMT), causing no injuries but igniting coal in the mine, opened two years ago to meet burgeoning demand from Asia.

“It literally sparked a coal fire in the mine. The fire is visible from the air above the ventilation shaft which was further damaged during the latest explosion,” police inspector Mark Harrison said.

Protesters marched through Dublin waving placards reading “Eire not for sale, not to the IMF” and “there is a better, fairer way”, denouncing the bailout and calling on Prime Minister Brian Cowen to quit.

A spokeswoman for the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU), which organised the march, said about 150,000 people took part. Police put the figure at 50,000.

Zapatero added that he would not “deviate from austerity”, a day after he ruled out an Irish-style rescue for Spain and markets cranked the country’s debt risk premium up to record highs.

“If it is necessary to accelerate the reforms, we will do it,” he told reporters following a meeting with 37 leaders of big business.

The source familiar with the issue said French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde had called for the meeting of her colleagues from eurozone countries, to be joined afterwards by ministers from the rest of the EU.

Originally it had been planned for them to communicate simply by telephone to approve the package worth 85 billion euros (113 billion dollars) and its conditions, the source added.

“A free trade zone is a complex, very complicated issue requiring thorough consideration,” Putin said after a visit to Germany that saw him meet Merkel as well as German business leaders.

A day earlier Putin had suggested in a guest article for a German newspaper a bold idea of a vast free-trade zone from Vladivostok on Russia’s eastern edge to Lisbon in Portugal on Europe’s western extremity.

The reforms passed earlier this month by parliament are due to come into force on January 1 but the bill still needs to be signed by the president, who on Saturday indicated he might refuse it.

Thousands of Ukrainians have turned out in noisy demonstrations across the country against the reforms, in a nasty surprise for Yanukovych just as he seemed to be asserting his authority after taking power in February.

Under pressure to arrest the threat to the currency before markets opened and prevent contagion engulfing Portugal and Spain, EU finance ministers endorsed an 85 billion-euro ($115 billion) loan package on Sunday to help Dublin cover bad bank debts and bridge a huge budget deficit.

They also approved the outlines of a long-term European Stability Mechanism (ESM), based on a Franco-German proposal, that will create a permanent bailout facility and make the private sector gradually share the burden of any future default.

Even though European authorities agreed to lend Ireland 85 billion euros ($115 billion) on Sunday in the hope it would assure investors that all European nations can repay their debts, markets were skeptical that the deal would stave off further contagion.

Asian stocks struggled most of the day but drew some comfort from a firmer start in Europe, where leading European shares (.FTEU3) rose 0.8 percent in early trade.

Parliament adopted the budget hours after a Financial Times Deutschland report said that most euro zone countries and the European Central Bank (ECB) were pressing Lisbon to seek an international rescue package as Greece and Ireland had done.

But Prime Minister Jose Socrates said the budget’s passage, which concluded many months of political bickering that at one point threatened the government’s survival, removed Portugal from the crosshairs of the euro zone crisis.

But despite investor unease continuing to push up its debt costs, the country would resist pressures to accelerate fiscal reforms, a source at the prime minister’s office said.

“Those who are taking short positions against Spain are going to be mistaken,” Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said in an interview with broadcaster RAC1 radio in which he “absolutely” ruled out the need for a Greek- or Irish-style bailout.

According to documents obtained by Reuters, Kraft has disputed Starbucks’ claims, adding fuel to a fight that is sure to take center stage when Starbucks hosts its biennial investor conference in New York on Wednesday.

The Seattle-based coffee giant charged, among other things, that Kraft mismanaged store displays and marketing and failed to take “commercially reasonable measures to address the erosion of Starbucks market share,” according to an October 5 letter from Starbucks’ attorney Aaron Panner to Deanie Elsner, president of North American beverages at Kraft.

The long-stagnant U.S. labor market is perking up again, and November should register another solid round of job gains. At the same time, Ireland’s plight has all but engulfed financial markets, just as Greece did in March, raising the specter of a regional domino-effect that might eventually imperil the U.S. recovery.

Disruptions in bank lending during the second quarter dented U.S. business confidence, leading to a summer lull in investment and hiring that many feared might send the country into a renewed slump.

The FTSE 100 index of leading British shares was down 3.25 points, or 0.1 percent, at 5,685.45, while Germany’s DAX fell 28.98 points, or 0.4 percent, at 6,820. The CAC-40 index in France was 17.11 points, or 0.5 percent, lower at 3,711.54.

Wall Street was poised to open higher – Dow futures were up 31 points, or 0.3 percent, at 11,061, while the broader Standard & Poor’s 500 futures rose 3.9 points, or 0.3 percent, to 1,187.30.

Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero was responding to heavy market pressure that has put Spain in the spotlight as the country that could plunge the 16-nation euro zone into meltdown if it were to end up needing a bailout like those provided to Ireland and Greece.

Many investors believe Portugal could be next in line to need a bailout, and they fear Spain could then follow.

A company statement announcing the decision did not say whether the company was shutting down permanently in Fiji, where an acquifer deep underground has been the source of one of the world’s most popular bottled water brands.

The company, owned by California entrepreneurs Lynda and Stewart Resnick, said it was closing its facility in Fiji, canceling orders from suppliers and putting on hold several construction contracts in the country.

Both can’t be right. And both are playing number games as the lame-duck Congress prepares to take up one of the most contentious issues of the postelection season: what to do about an array of about-to-expire Bush-era tax cuts? If Congress fails to act, taxes will go up for essentially every American taxpayer on Jan. 1.

Neither party wants that to happen. Hoping to avoid a December train wreck, Obama has hinted at a possible compromise – perhaps extending the tax cuts for everybody for a year or two. But so far, the president and the Republicans, flush from their big midterm election gains, haven’t been able to bridge their differences.

U.S. apple growers say it’s too soon to know whether they’d be interested in the apple: They need to resolve questions about the apple’s quality, the cost of planting and, most importantly, whether people would buy it.

“Genetically modified – that’s a bad word in our industry,” said Todd Fryhover, president of the apple commission in Washington state, which produces more than half the U.S. crop.

Budget proposals from leaders in both parties have urged shrinking or eliminating tax breaks that help make employer health insurance the leading source of coverage in the nation and a middle-class mainstay.

The idea isn’t to just raise revenue, economists say, but finally to turn Americans into frugal health care consumers by having them face the full costs of their medical decisions.

After the mine’s previous owners went bankrupt, the workers expected that a new partnership – headed by relatives of Nelson Mandela and President Jacob Zuma – would get operations back on track when it took over last year.

“Unfortunately, it didn’t turn out that way,” Mguli said softly as he sat in his dimly lit room in the mine dormitory. The mine northwest of Johannesburg remains idle and the workers are getting by on food handouts and odd jobs.

It might have, if Memphians hadn’t spent decades watching the company’s planes fly into and out of what has grown into the world’s busiest cargo airport, and seeing its delivery trucks heading out in all directions, and generally spotting its name all over this Mississippi River city.

“Everywhere you look, FedEx is into everything here,” basketball fan Matt Hine said as he stood in the bustling lobby of the $250 million FedExForum, built six years ago to lure the Vancouver Grizzlies in a move that gave Memphis a status-affirming pro sports franchise.

The comments were part of a rare show-and-tell by Dubai’s financial braintrust to claim they have a handle on the debt crunch in the one-time Gulf boomtown.

The aim was to portray a sense of calm and optimism a year after the global economic slowdown slammed the brakes on Dubai’s white-hot growth, triggering fears of a broader default as details of the emirate’s huge debt load became apparent.

Qantas CEO Alan Joyce said he was flying the first leg of the Sydney-Singapore-London flight as a sign of the airline’s conviction that it had completed all modifications and other checks on the Rolls-Royce engines, and the planes were safe to fly.

“We are 100 percent comfortable with it,” Joyce told reporters. “If we weren’t, we wouldn’t be restarting the operations today.”

For swordfish this fall, sellers didn’t turn to an actor, athlete or chef to push their product. Instead, it was the boat captain who caught the fish.

Swordfish sales soared at the Hannaford supermarket chain when the fish was promoted as being caught by Linda Greenlaw, a well-known Maine boat skipper featured on the Discovery Channel reality show “Swords: Life on the Line.”

The candy company launched in 1920 was in bankruptcy. More than 200 of its retail stores were closed. Customers who worried they would never be able to buy the chocolates again stripped display cases and emptied shelves of the confections.

But six years after its 2004 near-meltdown, Fannie May has seen a turnaround and is thriving again thanks to what its executives say has been a mix of the old and the new: a strict adherence to decades-old chocolate recipes and growth and expansion in online and retail sales.

Gas prices on average have risen about 17 cents since Labor Day, following a $12 increase in oil prices. By one analyst’s estimate, that means Americans are spending around $68 million more on gas each day than in early September.

While that sounds like a threat to sales of Barbie Video Girl dolls and even iPods, on an individual basis the increase amounts to $3 or $4 extra to fill up a car, a bit more for an SUV or a pick-up. Many motorists absorb the cost increases by skipping the gourmet coffee or passing on a movie. Or they drive less.

Delegates from 48 nations spent 11 days in Paris haggling over fishing quotas for the Atlantic and Mediterranean, poring over scientific data and pitting the demands of environmentalists against those of the fishing industry.

Conservation groups said delegates took steps in the right direction with moves to protect oceanic whitetip sharks and many hammerheads in the Atlantic, though they had hoped for more. Sharks were once an accidental catch for fishermen but have been increasingly targeted because of the growing market in Asia for their fins, an expensive delicacy used in soup.

The current case is largely an extension of work that led to the arrest of Galleon Group founder Raj Rajaratnam in October 2009. The Galleon investigation marked the first time that federal authorities used wiretaps in an insider trading probe.

Similarly, wiretaps led to the first arrest in the latest case. Don Ching Trang Chu, a consulting firm executive, was arrested Wednesday for allegedly providing private information about a company’s corporate earnings to a hedge fund.

The proposed changes by the International Civil Aviation Organization concentrate on “supply-chain security,” or checking outbound shipments before they even reach the airport. A draft of new guidelines will go out to all 190 member countries in the next few weeks, the agency says.

Governments are increasingly worried about cargo security as the holiday season swells the number of packages moving around the world.

For six decades, the plant has stood over the historic port’s entrance like a smoking sentry, burning the coal and oil that made it a target for environmentalists while paying the millions in taxes that helped it win local loyalty.

But as tough pollution rules approach, the plant looks poised for that predicted exit. Early this month, plant owner Dominion’s chief financial officer, Mark McGettrick, told investors that within five years “we would expect Salem Harbor plant to shut down.”