World financial news

Governments committed more than $400 billion in fresh money to the International Monetary Fund to help it protect the world economy against deepening debt turmoil in Europe.

That sum is contained in the draft of a statement obtained by Bloomberg News which will be released by Group of 20 finance ministers and central bankers after a meeting now under way in Washington. Specific country contributions will be decided ahead of a Mexican summit of G-20 leaders in June, Brazilian Finance Minister Guido Mantega said.

The near-doubling of the fund

Holland Construction Services Inc. completed building the Center for Orthopedic and Neurosciences at Memorial Hospital in Belleville, which recently opened and is offering medical services.

The 85,000-square-foot building is the third office building and the first free-standing structure on Memorial Hospital’s campus in Belleville. In addition to providing additional office space for doctors, the $24 million building offers pain management, physical, occupational, hand and speech therapy, sports medicine and other services.

ACI/Boland Inc. provided architectural services for the project.

Source

Natural gas prices are falling again as balmy weather stretches across most of the nation and supplies remain plentiful.

Natural gas dropped 5 cents to $2.215 per 1,000 cubic feet in trading in New York. That’s the lowest price in a decade.

The price has dropped about 26 percent this year. Warm winter weather has allowed Americans to use less heat. And booming production is keeping stockpiles well above the five-year average.

Meanwhile, benchmark oil rose 20 cents to $106.54 per barrel. An increase in retail sales provided the latest sign of an improving economy. Brent crude rose 16 cents to $125.50 per barrel in London trading.

At the pump, AAA says the national average for retail gas rose less than a penny to $3.805 per gallon.

Source

The Federal Reserve appears open to the idea of a third round of bond purchases to boost a still-modest recovery. But members remain divided over when or whether to take that step.

Minutes of the Fed’s Jan. 24-25 meeting show that some Fed officials thought such bond purchases should begin soon because unemployment remains high and inflation low.

Others said such a step should be taken only if the economy weakened further or if inflation stayed below the Fed’s target rate of 2 percent.

The debate took place at a meeting in which the Fed decided to hold its benchmark interest rate at record lows until at least late 2014. One Fed official argued that the central bank might need to consider abandoning that plan to keep inflation low.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said at a news conference after the January meeting that the Fed hadn’t ruled out a third round of bond buying to help boost the economy.

Bernanke also said the Fed would provide more information on the central bank’s balance sheet of bond holdings in the future.

Few economists expect the Fed will announce a bond buying program after its next meeting on March 13. That’s because the outlook for hiring _ and the broader economy _ is looking better since the Fed’s meeting.

The economy added 243,000 net jobs in January, the most in nine months. And the unemployment rate fell for the fifth straight month, to 8.3 percent. The government reported the figures one week after the Fed met cash advance no faxing.

Many analysts believe those reports have pushed a possible round of bond buying further into the future. And some believe that unless there is a shock to the U.S. economy, such as a deeper crisis in Europe, the Fed will not go forward with more bond purchases.

Still, Bernanke told a Senate panel last week that the declining unemployment rate doesn’t capture the plight of millions who have stopped looking for work.

His cautious view suggests the Federal Reserve plans to stick with the three-year time line, even if the unemployment rate continues to gradually decline.

At the January meeting, the central bank for the first time released forecasts for where individual Fed officials expected the key interest rate to be in the future. Those forecasts showed that some members foresee super low rates beyond 2014, while six members saw the increases starting in either 2013 or 2014.

The rate forecasts were an effort to provide more explicit clues about the Fed’s plans to give financial markets greater assurances that rates will stay low for some time to come.

The forecasts support a broader Fed effort to make its communications with the public more open.

Source

President Barack Obama feels he has struck just the right budget balance between providing more short-term support for the economy while putting forth a long-term plan to get control of the government’s soaring budget deficits.

Republicans vehemently disagree, attacking his 2013 budget as a replay of the failed economic policies they say have resulted in an economy growing at subpar rates and government debt soaring to record highs.

Both parties would agree that Obama’s latest budget, released Monday, will feature heavily as a debating point in the November elections to determine who will win the White House and whether Democrats or Republicans win control of the House and Senate.

Republican Mitt Romney, who is campaigning for the GOP nomination to challenge Obama in the fall, called the budget Obama released Monday “an insult to the American taxpayer.” GOP candidates Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul are all advocating bigger spending cuts to control the deficits, and all the GOP candidates oppose Obama’s tax increases.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, the administration’s chief economic spokesman, was scheduled to testify before the Senate Finance Committee on Tuesday in what will be the first of four congressional appearances this week by Geithner to explain and defend Obama’s budget plan.

Judging from the GOP reaction Monday, Geithner could be in for some sharp questioning.

“The president’s budget is a gloomy reflection of his failed policies of the past, not a bold plan for America’s future,” House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said. “The president offered a collection of rehashes, gimmicks and tax increases that will make our economy worse.”

Democrats in Congress were for the most part supportive of the president’s proposals. Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, said Republicans forget that Obama inherited an economic mess when he took office, with the economy struggling to emerge from the worst economic downturn since the 1930s.

“The reality is that the president inherited a fiscal and economic disaster,” Conrad said Monday. “The only true way forward is through a comprehensive and balanced deficit-reduction agreement. We need to come together on a plan that modernizes our tax system, reforms our entitlement programs and attacks wasteful spending.”

Republicans are arguing for deeper spending cuts and a frontal assault on the biggest drivers of the deficit, the soaring costs of Medicare and Medicaid, whose already sizable costs are projected to double in future years as baby boomers retire.

Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., chairman of the House Budget Committee, said Monday that he expected the Republican-controlled House would in coming weeks pass an alternative to the Obama budget that would gain control of the deficit, not by raising taxes but by curtailing Medicare and Medicaid.

“President Obama’s irresponsible budget is a recipe for a debt crisis and the decline of America,” Ryan said.

Obama’s cuts in Medicare and Medicaid avoid cuts in benefits and instead make modest trims in payments to health care providers. In contrast, the Republican House last year approved Ryan’s plan, which would essentially transform Medicare into a voucher system in which future seniors would get a fixed amount to buy medical insurance.

The Obama budget proposes spending $3.8 trillion in the 2013 budget year, which begins Oct. 1. It would achieve $4 trillion in deficit cuts in part through restraining the growth of many government programs, adhering to the agreement Congress approved in August for spending caps to achieve $900 billion in deficit reduction over a decade.

Obama’s plan also proposes additional deficit reduction in order to avoid $1.2 trillion in across-the-board cuts scheduled to take effect next January.

But the president relies on $1.5 trillion in tax increases, mainly by allowing the Bush-era tax cuts to expire on families making more than $250,000 per year, imposing additional taxes on those making more than $1 million per year and eliminating various corporate tax breaks.

The tax increases all have been rejected by Republicans.

With both parties holding entrenched positions, it is very likely that no solution will be found before the November elections, with both sides preferring to use the debate to score political points.

If that occurs, Congress will probably be back in Washington after the November elections for a lame-duck session to resolve the battle over taxes and spending cuts.

Lawmakers are facing end-of-the-year deadlines when the Bush-era tax cuts on all taxpayers expire and across-the-board spending cuts will go into effect if lawmakers can’t agree on $1.2 trillion in further deficit reduction over the next decade.

Source

Swiss central bank interim Chairman Thomas Jordan

On a quiet afternoon in Manhattan’s East Village, I’m having lunch inside a monastery while Rasanath Dasa, a banker-turned-monk, tells us about the moment he decided to leave Wall Street.

"My desire to work in Wall Street arose back in 1992, when foreign TV first came to India and I watched Charlie Sheen in the movie Wall Street," he tells the group of five who have traveled to his monastery. "For some reason, the images stuck in my head of ‘man, that’s what I really want to do — that fast-paced life.’"

But the religious life also appealed to Dasa. He joined a monastery while he was still hustling deals on Wall Street for his employer, Bank of America. When he started work on a project for Playboy, the stark contrast between his inner life and his day job became too much.

"At the time that the economy was tanking, I was actually making money selling sex," he says.

He’s a slight man who speaks slowly and carefully, pausing to gather his thoughts as he narrates. He’s sharing his story with us thanks to a startup called SideTour. Almost every week, Dasa hosts a lunch for those who want to chat with him about his journey from Wall Street to the monastery.

Forget daily deals on restaurants and spas, or flash sales on designer clothes. The hot e-commerce trend at the moment is selling one-of-a-kind experiences.

Lunch with Dasa — priced at $20 — is just one offering from SideTour’s lineup. Its roster also includes a race down an ice luge with an Olympic medallist (that’s $150) or a cooking session with the host of NBC’s America’s Next Great Restaurant at his West Village townhouse ($35), among dozens of other options. The company takes a 20% cut when customers pay for an event.

SideTour is far from alone in the market. In the U.S., a key competitor is Zozi, which has raised $11 million from investors and currently operates in more than 60 cities. Germany has a whole pack of startups in the field, including Regiondo, Yasuu and Gidsy, which recently expanded into the San Francisco market.

One notable rival, Vayable, offers up experiences around the globe. Launched in April, the service’s tours range from an exploration of an abandoned Soviet hospital in Berlin to an expert-led wine tasting in Paris.

Vayable founder Jamie Wong attributes the interest in selling experiences in part to the rough job market. More people are finding themselves out of work or in need of a second job.

"I think we’re in an era where both the economy and cultural shifts are really dictating this kind of change, where people are moving more towards a freelance type of lifestyle," Wong says.

SideTour founder Vipin Goyal backs that view. He says his startup gives people the opportunity to make money doing what they love.

"It’s a platform for people to share their expertise and monetize that," he says. "It’s a huge opportunity for folks to supplement their income or to create new sources of income for themselves."

Goyal got the idea for SideTour after he and his spouse left their jobs and bought around-the-world plane tickets for a six-month trip.

"In places that we had local folks to share experiences with, it made all the difference," he says. "In places we didn’t, our own experiences were highly dependent on serendipity."

He came home with the desire to build a platform that would help others connect with those kinds of experiences. Investors flocked to the idea: SideTour landed a spot in incubator TechStars’ first New York cohort this summer, and it recently raised $1.5 million in seed funding. Since launching five months ago, SideTour has hosted 70 experiences, with a 90% sell out rate.

So is this a lasting market or a flashy trend?

Both Wong and Goyal cite studies concluding that experiences, not things, are what make people truly happy.

"People are starting to reevaluate — especially in this economic environment — how they’re spending their money," Goyal says. "I think that’s where you see a lot of this focus on experiences." 

Source

Japan may exempt home purchases from any increase in its sales tax, or reduce the amount of increase, Finance Minister Jun Azumi said.

Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda aims to double the 5 percent sales tax by 2015 to boost revenue and contain a public debt burden twice the size of Japan

Nigeria, Africa