The largest U.S. banks, including JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS), told the Federal Reserve that a limit on their credit exposure is unnecessary and
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The Federal Reserve has not yet decided whether to embark on a third round of quantitative easing, or QE3, though it remains an option, an influential Fed official said on Monday.
New York Fed President William Dudley, a close ally of Chairman Ben Bernanke, painted a mixed picture of the economy, tempering recent signs the recovery is gaining speed with warnings that it could just as easily stall out.
“Nothing has been decided,” he said of QE3, in which the Fed would make large-scale asset purchases in an attempt to lower rates and give the economy another controversial shot of adrenaline.
“It all depends on how the economy evolves,” Dudley added. “It’s about costs and benefits, and if we get to a point where we think the benefits of another program of QE outweighs the costs, then we’ll certainly do so.”
Dudley, like Bernanke in recent testimony to Congress, defended the central bank’s ultra-easy policy stance but seemed to temper any talk of exactly what more it was prepared to do to help along the recovery and ratchet down the unemployment rate, which remains high 8.3 percent.
After a meeting in Washington last week, the Fed’s policy-setting committee made no policy change and gave few clues how it interpreted some recent jobs growth, coupled as it has been with worries over GDP growth and oil price-driven inflation.
Dudley said U.S. economic activity is not yet strong or sustained enough to put a dent in the economy’s “slack,” which is keeping many Americans out of work some three years after the deep recession ended.
“The incoming data on the U.S. economy has been a bit more upbeat of late, suggesting that the recovery may be finally establishing a somewhat firmer footing,” Dudley said, citing expanding GDP late last year, payrolls, sales of motor vehicles, and somewhat firmer housing starts.
“While these developments are certainly encouraging, it is far too soon to conclude that we are out of the woods,” Dudley, a policy dove with a permanent vote on the Fed’s policy-setting committee, told a gathering of the Long Island Association no fax payday loan.
GASOLINE AND OTHER HEADWINDS
The U.S. central bank has kept interest rates near zero since late 2008 and bought $2.3 trillion in long-term securities to help revive the economy after the 2007-2009 recession.
Upbeat data so far this year has tempted some, including some Fed policymakers, to say the recovery is well underway and that the Fed will take no further steps.
Yet Bernanke and others have said more bond purchases remain an option. Last year, Dudley was among the most vocal about the efficacy of buying mortgage-based securities to help revive that sector of the economy.
Dudley warned that higher gasoline prices are “definitely” a risk to the world’s largest economy, which is heavily dependent on consumption.
“The upward pressure on prices caused by rising gasoline are offset by downward pressure on prices caused by all the excess slack in the U.S. economy,” he said. “It’s very hard to have an inflation problem when compensation costs are rising quite slowly.”
The annual rate of core inflation, Dudley argued, “has peaked and we expect it to begin to decline later this year.” He added that inflation expectations “remain well anchored.”
Besides gas, other headwinds include impediments to the housing sector, fiscal drags at the federal and state levels, and risks that foreign growth is weaker than expected, Dudley said.
Asked about a Fed expectation to keep rates low through late 2014, Dudley said: “We view this as the best path to an early-as-possible economic recovery … and the earliest normalization in short term rates.”
Bernanke, who along with Dudley spear headed the Fed’s unprecedented and easy policy steps, is set to deliver a public lecture on Tuesday.
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Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, set to leave office next year after a decade in power, said his nation must adopt political change to support an economic transformation that has produced rapid development at the cost of a widening wealth gap.
Walt Disney Co. gave a 2011 pay package valued at about $31.4 million to CEO Bob Iger, up 12 percent from a year earlier, according to an Associated Press analysis of data disclosed in a regulatory filing on Friday.
The company said Iger merited the raise, citing Disney’s growth in the face of a challenging economic environment. Burbank-based Disney generated record-breaking profit and revenue for fiscal 2011.
The boost in Iger’s compensation came after Disney’s share price slid 12.5 percent to $29 during the company’s fiscal year, which ended Oct. 3. That was also the same day the stock market reached its low for 2011 after a turbulent summer and early fall that drove the stocks of many companies sharply lower. Disney shares have since recovered and closed Friday at $39.31.
Iger, 60, received a base salary of $2 million, unchanged from the previous fiscal year, according to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
He also received stock awards valued at $8.1 million at the time they were granted, an increase of 10 percent from a year earlier, and option awards valued at about $4.8 million on the day they were granted, up 9 percent from the year before.
Iger’s performance-based cash bonus grew 15 percent from the prior year to about $15.5 million.
His other compensation jumped 21 percent to $962,932, including $371,439 for personal use of company aircraft and $561,303 for security costs.
Iger’s total compensation in fiscal 2010 was $28 million.
Disney’s net income for fiscal 2011 grew 21 percent to a record $4.8 billion, or $2.52 per share, aided by the success of films such as “The Lion King” in 3-D, and improved revenue from its consumer products, TV and theme park businesses.
Revenue rose 7 percent to a record $40.9 billion.
The Associated Press formula calculates an executive’s total compensation during the last fiscal year by adding salary, bonuses, perks, above-market interest the company pays on deferred compensation and the estimated value of stock and stock options awarded during the year. The AP formula does not count changes in the present value of pension benefits. That makes the AP total slightly different in most cases from the total reported by companies to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The value that a company assigned to an executive’s stock and option awards for 2011 was the present value of what the company expected the awards to be worth to the executive over time. Companies use one of several formulas to calculate that value. However, the number is just an estimate, and what an executive ultimately receives will depend on the performance of the company’s stock in the years after the awards are granted. Most stock compensation programs require an executive to wait a specified amount of time to receive shares or exercise options.
Chinese and Indian manufacturing gauges rose in December, suggesting that Asia
Five months after it opened its doors, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is poised to begin the year without a Senate-confirmed director.
Over these next few weeks, the question will be whether President Obama will sidestep Congress and make a so-called recess appointment to fill the job.
The president made clear earlier this month that he would consider "all our options," including a recess appointment of former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray to run the consumer bureau.
At stake are vast new powers the CFPB can’t wield without a director. For example, the bureau can’t regulate financial products from non-banks, including student loan providers, debt collectors, payday lenders and check cashers.
Without a chief, the bureau also can’t regulate mortgage originators and servicers, which played a big role in the financial crisis by providing subprime mortgages to families who couldn’t afford them.
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Earlier this month, the Senate failed to muster the 60 votes necessary to take up and consider Cordray’s nomination.
Senate Republicans have vowed since May to block confirmation of any director unless they get structural changes to the bureau, which was formed as part of the Wall Street reform law passed last year.
On Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney called Cordray the "perfect example of an abomination in terms of Senate behavior."
"He is exactly the right person for the job to be the consumer watchdog," Carney said.
Since May, Republicans have used a little-known procedure to keep the Senate in session — even as it wasn’t really conducting any business — in order to stop the president from making recess appointments.
The Constitution says neither the House nor the Senate can adjourn for more than three days without the other chamber’s consent. And since May 12, neither chamber has taken a recess.
So far, Obama has not tried to challenge the blocking move electronic check payday advance. But, legal experts say, he has options. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid could gavel down the Senate for less than three days and give the president an opening.
Another scenario: The president could make an appointment when Congress flips from its first session to its second session sometime on or before Jan. 3.
That has rarely been done. In 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt made 160 recess appointments on Dec. 7, when the first session of Congress ended at noon and the second session began soon after, according to the Congressional Research Service.
The Constitution also gives the president the power to adjourn Congress into recess if the chambers can’t agree when exactly to schedule a recess, said David Arkush, an attorney and director of Congress Watch for Public Citizen, an advocacy group.
"I think it’s time for the president to make a recess appointment, it’s time for CFPB to be up and running with its full powers," Arkush said.
Republicans say their objection to Cordray’s nomination has nothing to do with the nominee.
Instead, they want three big changes to how the bureau is overseen. They want to replace the director with a board; make the bureau ask Congress for money each year; and gain more power to overrule the bureau.
If Obama decides to make a recess appointment with Cordray, he’s bound to incur the Republican wrath.
Norman Ornstein, a public policy scholar at the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute, expects Obama to spend his winter vacation analyzing the political costs to sidestepping Congress on a number confirmations that Republicans have blocked.
"Frankly, if I were President Obama, I would do some recess appointments now, because what’s going on is unconscionable," said Ornstein.
Stocks wavered in midday trading Friday as investors balanced signs of future growth in the U.S. economy with a looming deadline for Congress to reach a deal in debt talks.
The Conference Board’s index of leading economic indicators rose more than Wall Street analysts were expecting, a sign that the economy may pick up in the coming months. But many investors remained cautious as a key Congressional committee remained deadlocked on ways to cut the U.S. deficit.
A bipartisan panel must agree on making at least $1.2 trillion in deficit cuts by Thanksgiving. If the committee fails, automatic spending cuts will take effect beginning in 2013. Economists worry that a deadlocked Congress will erode business confidence and slow the already-fragile economy.
The Dow Jones industrial average was down 3 points, or less than 0.1 percent, to 11,768 as of 12:10 p.m. Eastern.
The Standard and Poor’s 500 index fell 4, or 0.3 percent, to 1,213. The Nasdaq composite slid 18, or 0.7 percent, to 2,569.
The Dow had been up as much as 84 points in early trading after borrowing costs fell for Italy and Spain. That is a signal that bond investors are less fearful of a default by those countries. Spain and Italy have had to pay high interest rates because bondholders fear that that they will default. Holders of Greek bonds were all but forced to take steep losses on that nation’s debt.
Europe’s debt problems are far from settled, however. Comments by German and British leaders Friday suggested that they have divergent views on how to address the debt crisis. German Chancellor Angela Merkel cautioned against expecting too much from the region’s leaders. British Prime Minister David Cameron called for “decisive action” to shore up the struggling currency union.
Positive economic reports this week _ including a drop in unemployment applications and an increase in industrial production _ barely budged markets because a European meltdown would easily drag down the U.S. economy, said Kim Caughey Forrest, equity research analyst at Fort Pitt Capital Group.
“Our economy might be improving, but the fixation is on what’s going to happen with the world banking system if defaults happen in Europe,” she said. She said investors are reluctant to take big positions because no one knows how Europe’s problems will be resolved, or how U.S. companies’ future profits will be affected.
In corporate news, ketchup maker H.J. Heinz Co. fell 2.5 percent after it said its second-quarter net income fell almost 6 percent, although its adjusted results narrowly beat expectations. Sales in emerging markets remained strong, and price hikes in other areas helped offset lower volumes.
Retailer Gap Inc. slid 3.5 percent after its third quarter revenue came in slightly below Wall Street’s forecasts. The company said materials costs are continuing to eat into profit margins. Salesforce.com plunged 9 percent after its quarterly results came in below estimates.
The echo boomers are finally moving out of their parents’ homes and expected to be the biggest rush of renters to hit Toronto’s housing market since the early 1990s, according to projections by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp.
But they’re likely to be renting for quite a while — much longer than their parents, thanks to a job market that remains tentative and offers far less of the stable, full-time employment that made their parents the most affluent generation of all time.
That boom in rental demand is already being felt with bidding wars for prime units and vacancy rates for apartments and rental condos hovering at 1.6 per cent, the lowest vacancy rate in a decade, says Shaun Hildebrand, CMHC’s senior market analyst for the GTA.
That vacancy rate has been declining steadily since 2004 when it stood at 4.3 per cent.
There are currently 325,000 rental apartments across the GTA, says Hildebrand, but just 1,500 new units are being added each year, most of them high-end rentals aimed more at affluent, downsizing baby boomers.
Even the unprecedented condo boom across the GTA, much of it driven by investors, many of whom are putting up their units for rent, is having a hard time keeping up with demand, says Hildebrand.
That is already playing out in bidding wars for brand new and two-bedroom units, with some would-be renters offering to pay more per month or offering up to six months’ rent in advance.
The GTA has seen such an unprecedented building boom the last few years that we now have almost as many condos as rental apartments.
The total number of condos now stands at 300,000 with another 80,000 under development and 60,000 more approved but yet to start, Hildebrand told bankers, developers and housing market watchers Thursday during its annual 2012 Housing Outlook Conference at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre.
But there are now 875,000 echo boomers between the ages of 25 and 35 across the GTA, accounting for about 18 per cent of the population.
With the average price of a GTA home expected to hit $469,700 next year — in Toronto that’s closer to $530,000 — and condos averaging $500 a square foot, echo boomers’ dream of owning a home may be just that.
A dream.
Hildebrand expects to see growing demand for basement apartments, both as an affordable place to live for those heading into their first jobs, and for homeowners struggling to pay high mortgages.
Already the shifting demographics are playing out in increased demand for townhouses and row houses which offer all the amenities of traditional detached homes, but at more affordable prices and often on infill lots closer to the downtown core, he said.
“All eyes are on the (Toronto) condo market,” Hildebrand told the crowd, because of a “healthy level of fear” that this unprecedented boom is on the verge of bust.
Instead, he predicts the condo market — which now accounts for 25 per cent of all MLS sales — will soon start to “self correct.”
New condo prices have escalated to the point where rents can’t keep pace with costs, and that should ease demand among investors to more realistic levels, he said.
British lawmakers investigating the country’s tabloid phone hacking scandal say James Murdoch will gives evidence before their committee for a second time next month.
The House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport committee said Monday that the son and heir-apparent of media mogul Rupert Murdoch will appear Nov. 10.
Rupert Murdoch shut down the tabloid News of the World in July after it was accused of illegally hacking into the voice mails of celebrities, politicians and crime victims in search of scoops.
Both Murdochs denied knowing about the scale of the hacking when they appeared before the panel of lawmakers the same month.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.
LONDON (AP) _ Rupert Murdoch’s former right hand man says he authorized a 250,000 pound ($398,000) payout to a tabloid reporter who was jailed for phone hacking, but denies having any knowledge at the time that the illegal snooping was widespread.
Ex-Wall Street Journal publisher Les Hinton on Monday told British lawmakers investigating the hacking scandal that he personally approved the payment to Clive Goodman, the News of the World reporter convicted and jailed in 2007 for eavesdropping on the mobile phone voice mails of royal aides credit score.
Hinton, who was then the executive chairman of Murdoch’s British newspaper division, acknowledged he had seen a letter from Goodman in which the reporter alleged phone hacking was widespread at the paper and common knowledge among executives.
Hinton said he had launched a “pretty thorough” internal investigation into Goodman’s claim, but said “there was no basis found for it.”
He said he fired Goodman for gross misconduct, but decided to pay him the substantial sum, almost three times the reporter’s annual salary, to end an unfair dismissal claim by Goodman.
“I decided at the time that the right thing to do was to settle this and put it behind us,” Hinton said, giving evidence by video link from the United States.
Hinton resigned his post in July.
A three-day rally faded on Wall Street Friday after a mixed jobs report and credit-rating cuts for Italy and Spain.
Indexes drifted between gains and losses in the morning, then turned lower after the Fitch agency cut Spain and Italy’s credit ratings, saying they are more likely to default because of the spreading debt crisis in Europe.
The Dow Jones industrial average fell 34 points, or 0.3 percent, to 11,089 at 12:45 p.m. Eastern time. Financial stocks led the Dow lower.
Broader indexes fell even more. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index lost 10, or 0.9 percent, to 1,155. The Nasdaq composite index fell 32, or 1.3 percent, to 2,474.
U.S. employers added 103,000 jobs last month, about double what economists had expected, the Labor Department said earlier Friday. The government also said more jobs were added in July and August than previously reported. Economists said the report countered short-term fears that the U.S. might be entering another recession. Yet it offered few signs that strong growth will return soon.
Traders bought companies expected to do well even in a slow economy. Utilities, consumer staples and telecommunications rose the most of the S&P’s 10 industry groups.
The gains in hiring weren’t enough to lower the unemployment rate, which remained steady at 9.1 percent for the third straight month. Traders watch the employment report closely because it provides the first significant snapshot of the previous month’s economic performance and clues to the broader outlook for the U.S. economy.
The report led traders to sell ultra-safe investments that earn small returns such as U.S. Treasurys. Minutes after the report came out, the yield on the 10-year Treasury note rose to 2.11 percent from 1.98 percent. It fell back to 2.06 percent after the rating cuts renewed some fears about Europe.
The monthly jobs report is one of the few pieces of data powerful enough to overshadow traders’ fears about Europe’s festering debt crisis Internet Payday loans. Markets gyrated this summer as concerns intensified about a default by Greece. Many analysts now believe a default is unavoidable, and question whether Europe can prevent it from causing financial markets to seize up.
Short-term traders have reacted strongly to minor European developments, rumors and speculation. The Dow has closed up or down more than 100 points for nine straight trading days, the longest such streak since November 2008, in the middle of the financial crisis. The Dow soared 468 points, or 4.4 percent, Tuesday through Thursday.
Makers of high-tech lap equipment skidded after Illumina Inc. withdrew its annual earnings forecast, saying demand from government and academic customers had decreased in the slowing economy. Illumina lost one-third of its value. PerkinElmer Inc. plunged 9 percent; Thermo Fisher Inc. and Agilent Technologies Inc. lost 7 percent.
Sprint Nextel Inc. plunged 8 percent after the company said it needs to borrow money to build out a new high-speed data network. It had risen sharply earlier in the day after the company said its new deal to sell Apple Inc.’s iPhone will add to its revenue in the coming quarters.
Clearwire Corp. plummeted 26 percent after Sprint said it would stop selling phones that work on the company’s network at the end of next year. Sprint is building its own high-speed wireless network.
Bank of America Corp. plunged 5 percent, the most in the Dow, after weeks of sharp movements caused by concerns about legal costs the bank faces over shoddy mortgages that it sold.
J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. lost 3 percent. Financial stocks have been extremely volatile because of fears that Europe’s problems could spill over in the U.S. banking industry.
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