Economics 101

That puts the Federal Reserve in a bit of a policy pickle. If the economy were clearly backsliding, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has made it clear he would not hesitate to provide further support. But what about an economy that is moving forward, albeit painfully slowly?

Minutes of the central bank’s August 10 policy meeting said several officials felt the outlook would have to deteriorate “appreciably” to trigger more action, which might include additional purchases of government debt or a promise to keep interest rates near zero for an even longer stretch.

Existing rules failed to ensure that banks held enough capital and liquidity to withstand the crisis, forcing governments to bail out lenders with taxpayer money.

Regulators have been moving to put banks on a shorter leash — a set of rules called “Basel III” — with decisions likely to be made by November.

Wang replaces Li Rongrong as chairman of China’s State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC), an agency created in 2003 with the aim of “growing the value” of state-owned firms, the government said on its website on Monday (www.gov.cn), confirming earlier reports in local media.

On that count, SASAC has been a remarkable success story.

Chinese insurers are allowed to invest up to 5 percent of their total assets in private equity and related financial products and 10 percent in real estate, according to rules published on the website of the China Insurance Regulatory Commission (CSRC) over the weekend.

A broader investment pipeline for China’s 4.5 trillion yuan ($661 billion) insurance industry could boost long-term investment returns for insurers including China Life and Ping An, benefit cash-strapped private companies, and enable private equity firms such as TPG, and the Carlyle Group to raise money more easily in China.

Thilo Sarrazin’s book “is not convincing, but it has convinced many people,” said the influential Spiegel magazine, which this week has the Bundesbank executive on its cover, calling him a “people’s hero.”

His publisher is rushing to print more copies of “Germany Does Itself In” to meet demand. Online retailer Amazon.de has a massive 207 reader reviews on its website, with the average score 4.4 stars out of a possible five.

Branches of Kabul Bank across the country were crowded as anxious depositors joined hundreds of thousands of government employees queuing to collect their salaries, which were being paid through the bank on Saturday.

The privately-owned bank has been the subject of reports alleging large-scale corruption by executives, though the government and central bank have said it is solvent and there is no need for customers to panic.

The decision came after 12 hours of talks between senior politicians and means that some of the 17 plants will now be operational until the 2030s.

The lives of older plants will be extended by eight years and those of newer ones by 14 years, Environment Minister Norbert Roettgen said.

Robotic submarines recorded the delicate operation as engineers raised a failed blowout preventer from the ruptured well and began lifting it to the surface in order to hand it over to the US Justice Department.

The US government is conducting what could be a criminal investigation into the April 20 explosion and subsequent oil spill and BP is hoping to shift some of the responsibility to its contractors.

The transaction could be expanded to 74 billion dollars if there was heavy demand, the state-run company said.

The cash serves as the core of an ambitious plan Petrobras has already outlined to boost capital expenditure over the next five years to 224 billion dollars as it seeks to tap potentially vast oil reserves discovered recently off the coast of Rio de Janeiro.

On Saturday the first non-Russian vessel to make an intercontinental commercial voyage through the Arctic Northeast passage will set sail from Norway for China.

The route is thousands of kilometres (miles) shorter than traditional passages, promising to reduce travel time dramatically, along with fuel consumption and carbon dioxide emissions.

The agreement between Azerbaijan state energy company SOCAR and Russia’s Gazprom was signed during Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s visit to Baku as both Moscow and the West vie for access to the energy-rich ex-Soviet state.

Medvedev and his host Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev praised growing economic ties and said the new accord was not directed at any rival project.

The world’s second-largest retailer hopes the wholesale outlet in New Delhi will pave the way for a string of hypermarkets to serve consumers in the fast-growing economy.

“We plan to open a cash-and-carry store by November,” Carrefour spokesman Franck Kenner told AFP in Teekli village in northern Haryana state.

Obama will outline the $100 billion proposal during a speech on the economy Wednesday in Cleveland, the official said. The announcement is expected to be the first in a series of new measures Obama will propose this fall as the administration looks to jump-start an economy that the president himself has said isn’t growing fast enough.

In addition to making the research credits permanent, Obama will also ask Congress to extend one of the credit options available to businesses from 14 to 17 percent, according to the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the proposal has not been formally announced.

Nowadays, it’s U.S. officials going to Canada, Japan and parts of Western Europe to see the latest advances.

The Long Beach plant, for all its promise when it began operations roughly 20 years ago, still churns out megawatts. But it is a relic, a symbol of how California, one of America’s greenest states, fell behind other countries in the development of trash-to-energy technology.

Nervous depositors continued to make withdrawals, but Central Bank Governor Abdul Qadir Fitrat said the Kabul Bank was on sound footing. He said no decision had been made about whether the central bank would use money in its coffers to shore up Kabul Bank, partly owned by President Hamid Karzai’s brother.

“It’s stabilized. The bank is already stabilized and hopefully in the next few days it will become 100 percent normal,” Fitrat told The Associated Press. “It is almost 60 percent to 70 percent returned to normal. Most of the branches are now empty (of customers). People have taken their money and gone home. It’s very good today. The operation is becoming very normal.”

The brothers were convicted of shipping 44 laborers from Thailand and forcing them to work on their farm, part of a pipeline to the United States that allegedly cornered foreign field hands into low-paying jobs with few rights.

Aloun Farms may be too important to fail in an island state that once relied on pineapples and sugar cane but grows less than 15 percent of the food it consumes, according to supporters of defendants Alec and Mike Sou.