What I hate about blogging.

The eurozone should also put in place a permanent crisis resolution mechanism that would force nations to carry out reforms to get aid, the OECD said, an issue European leaders are expected to tackle at a summit later this week.

In its latest survey of the 16 nations which share the euro, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development said a “gradual and sustained recovery” is underway in the but that “the pace of recovery is likely to be muted…”

New York-based Moody’s Investors Service said it was maintaining a negative view for the next 12-18 months because it expected Spanish banks’ capital, profits and access to finance to remain weak.

The verdict comes as Spain battles to convince nervous markets that its finances are solid and there is no reason to fear it will need an Irish-style economic and banking rescue.

Sanofi’s original offer of 69 dollars per share, launched October 4 after months of fruitless talks with Genzyme, expired at midnight New York time on Friday.

As the deadline ran out, the offer had attracted only 0.9 percent of Genzyme’s total ordinary shares in circulation.

Treasurer Wayne Swan said the reforms aimed to empower consumers, bolster smaller lenders and secure credit flows to both consumers and business, pledging a “fair go in the banking system”.

Targeting Australia’s “big four” banks, the reforms ban exit fees on new home loans and allow the competition regulator to prosecute lenders for colluding on rates, after large hikes sparked an angry consumer backlash.

Spurred by market fears of a Greek-style debt crisis, Spain’s Socialist government has embarked on reforms to make it easier to hire and fire workers, and it plans to raise the retirement age.

“It is extremely important to deepen the reform of the labour market, to have deep reforms of the pensions” system, Trichet told a news conference in Madrid.

The central bank’s $600 billion stimulus plan was supposed to lower interest rates. But President Barack Obama’s tax deal with Republicans, by rekindling fears of budget deficits in the bond market, has pushed them higher.

As the Fed meets this coming week, the surprise shot in the arm from the fiscal authorities might strengthen the case of hawks at the central bank, who think the economy is already growing of its own momentum. They could argue to scale down the $600 billion in bond purchases announced in November.

Once the largest U.S. grocer, the owner of about 400 stores under brands such as A&P, Waldbaum’s and Super Fresh filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in New York with more than $1 billion in assets and more than $1 billion in debt, according to court documents.

As of September 11, A&P had total debt of more than $3.2 billion, but it is unclear how much the company is currently carrying.

Only 0.9 percent of shares were tendered by a Friday deadline for the $69-a-share bid, which Genzyme has rejected as too low, and Sanofi has said it won’t raise unless Genzyme’s board is willing to talk.

“This gives time to pursue discussions behind the scenes,” Raymond James analyst Eric Le Berrigaud said. “They will try to determine at what price Genzyme will decide to partially open the door.”

The $3.9 billion Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, owned by Germany’s Deutsche Bank after it foreclosed on the original developer in 2008, will open 2,000 of its 3,000 hotel rooms on Wednesday.

Television commercials — featuring pantless bellboys and plenty of white rabbits — are on heavy rotation in markets like nearby Southern California, but industry experts are wary about the new venue’s ability to attract new business to the Strip.

Investors appear to have grown complacent as the CBOE Volatility Index, or VIX (.VIX), has fallen to levels not seen since April. Stocks have made new highs on almost a daily basis. The S&P 500 (.SPX) closed on Friday at its highest level since September 2008 and the Nasdaq (.IXIC) scored its best finish since late December 2007, with many expecting gains to run through the end of the year.

But Cleveland Rueckert, an analyst at Birinyi Associates in Stamford, Connecticut, believes the year-end rally may be largely done.

ECB policymakers have become increasingly vocal in urging governments to take action to tackle the current debt crisis, which has forced a near 200 billion euro bailout of Greece and Ireland, and put pressure on countries like Portugal and Spain.

They fear that if the problems escalated further they would be forced to ramp up the bank’s controversial purchases of sovereign bonds, something they are eager to avoid.

Lagarde told a meeting of some of France’s top economic policymakers and thinkers that the 2008-09 crisis had shown the need to rethink a monetary framework based on 40-year-old ideas that are increasingly outdated.

France wants to focus on ways to control the huge and erratic shifts in capital that buffet emerging economies and on moving away from the dollar as a reserve currency to a diversified system that would reduce imbalances.

A number of the traders and analysts drawing scrutiny in the more than two-year-old probe into improper trading in mainly technology stocks either work in Boston, or have long-standing ties to New England’s largest city.

The series of Boston connections that keep cropping up in the probe is no mere coincidence, said people familiar with the inquiry.

The meeting of the U.S.-China Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade on Tuesday and Wednesday in Washington comes as Beijing faces rising congressional pressure over its swollen trade surplus. The U.S. House of Representatives has approved a measure to allow Washington to punish currency manipulation and the Senate is considering it.

Both sides are likely hoping for a “successful meeting with some deliverables” ahead of Hu’s arrival in Washington in January, said Christian Murck, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in China.

The $3.9 billion Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, built by a German investment bank after its original developer defaulted, may have the hippest-ever TV commercials: Over a garage rock soundtrack with a jazzy interlude, guests with crafty smiles stray across a landscape of shiny dance floors, soothing guest rooms and tables laden with food and drink.

But the 2,995-room Cosmopolitan is entering a market that’s struggling. And analysts say that just to cover its debt, it will need to do better than even the top-performing Bellagio, its neighbor to the north with 3,933 rooms and the same amount of casino space as Cosmopolitan.

But what if there’s nothing worth watching?

Just as the online video market is starting to take shape, federal regulators have a rare opportunity to help protect its future as they scrutinize Comcast Corp.’s proposal to take over NBC Universal.

The plan is part of a package of tax cuts and extended unemployment benefits that Obama negotiated with Senate Republican leaders. It would cut workers’ share of Social Security taxes by nearly one-third for 2011. Workers making $50,000 in wages would get a $1,000 tax cut; those making $100,000 would get a $2,000 tax cut.

The government would borrow about $112 billion to make Social Security whole. Advocates and some lawmakers worry that relying on borrowed money to fund Social Security could eventually force it to compete with other federal programs for scarce dollars, leading to cuts.

That would be the U.S. Republican Party, and nobody at the Cancun meetings wanted to talk about the impending Republican takeover of the U.S. House of Representatives. It essentially rules out any new, legally binding pact requiring the U.S. and other major emitters of global warming gases to reduce their emissions.

In endless hours of speeches at the annual U.N. climate conference, the U.S. political situation was hardly mentioned, despite its crucial role in how the world will confront what the Cancun final documents called “one of the greatest challenges of our time.”

The 12-member cartel said after an unusually short meeting that it based its decision on projections showing demand for crude would grow more slowly in 2011 than this year.

It’s statement also cited the “challenging risks to the fragile global economic recovery” including “fears of a second banking crisis in Europe.”

The pipeline, which would terminate in India, would bring huge amounts of gas to underdeveloped regions and could earn impoverished Afghanistan hundreds of millions of dollars in transit fees. But it would cross both Taliban-intensive stretches of Afghanistan and parts of Pakistan’s unruly tribal areas.

The leaders, along with Turkmenistan’s president and India’s oil minister are expected to sign a document expressing support for the project. The next step would likely be to seek proposals and bids from energy companies.

Critics say the law, which also nationalizes the pension system and generously extends coverage to the poor, is overly ambitious and unsustainable.

Leftist President Evo Morales signed the bill surrounded by members of the powerful Bolivian workers federation, which helped draft the law.

This is Wisconsin’s gun deer season, a tradition as engrained in this rugged state’s identity as beer, brats and cheese. But as the years slide by, fewer people seem to care.

Hunting’s popularity has waned across much of the country as housing tracts replace forests, aging hunters hang up their guns and kids plop down in front of Facebook rather than venture outside.

But the luxury 21-unit project just north of downtown Phoenix was halted in mid-development, chained and padlocked, marred by a suicide, its rear units partially without roofs and exposed to the elements. And so it sat, month after month, years passing, the only sign of life the occasional sweep of a police spotlight as officers checked for vagrants.

Now, more than five years after construction began, a new investor is putting the townhomes on the market for $1.4 million to $2.46 million – half the original price – and optimists hope it shows that big residential projects are poised to sell after being shuttered by failed lenders or plummeting prices.

“Right now, we should start seeing that the roots are catching, and they’re not,” said Haygood, who was supervising planting of Vidalia onions on his fields. “The main reason is because we have not had the rain on them.”

Farmers across the South are contending with abnormally dry weather and a drought that began this spring. Crops in dry fields then baked during stretches of record-setting summer heat that scorched peanut fields, stressed cotton plants and stunted citrus fruit.