The European Central Bank is likely to refuse to show its hand on how it will help cut Greece
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Americans’ incomes rose last month by the most in nine months, a hopeful sign after a year of weak wage gains.
The Commerce Department says incomes rose 0.5 percent, the strongest increase since a similar gain in March. Consumer spending was unchanged, following weak gains of 0.1 percent in both October and November.
The income increase after paying taxes and adjusting for inflation was 0.3 percent in December. For the year, inflation-adjusted incomes rose 0.9 percent, just half the modest 1.8 percent rise in 2010.
Germany floated the idea of combining Europe
For the first time, Indian prosecutors are taking Google, Yahoo, Facebook and other networking sites to court for refusing to remove material considered insulting to Indian leaders and major religious figures.
Government officials are upset about material insulting to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, ruling Congress party leader Sonia Gandhi and major religious figures. Some illustrations have shown Singh and Gandhi in compromising positions and pigs running through Mecca, Islam’s holiest city.
On Friday, the federal government told a New Delhi court that there was sufficient material to proceed against 21 social networking sites for offenses of “promoting enmity between classes and causing prejudice to national integration,” according to the Press Trust of India news agency.
The cases, which PTI said name companies including Google, Facebook, Yahoo and Microsoft, represent a new risk of doing business in the nation of more than 1 billion people, which is looking to technology to boost its economy and standard of living. The dispute highlights India’s difficulty in balancing the Internet culture of freewheeling discourse with its homegrown religious and political sensitivities.
Convictions could bring fines and up to five years’ imprisonment, through prosecutors have named only the companies involved rather than any executives. Metropolitan Magistrate Sudesh Kumar on Friday asked India’s External Affairs Ministry to serve summons to officials of foreign-based companies for court appearances March 13 my credit score.
In December, Telecommunications Minister Kapil Sibal said he had spoken repeatedly with officials from major Internet companies over the past three months and asked them to come up with a voluntary framework to keep offensive material off the Internet. He said that the companies told him there was nothing they could do.
There was no immediate comment by the networking sites after Friday’s court proceedings.
However, Facebook said last month that it would remove content that “is hateful, threatening, incites violence or contains nudity.”
Google said in a December statement that it removes content that violates local law and its own standards.
“But when content is legal and doesn’t violate our policies, we won’t remove it just because it’s controversial, as we believe that people’s differing views, so long as they’re legal, should be respected and protected,” Google said in a statement in December.
Sibal had shown reporters Web illustrations showing Singh and Gandhi in compromising positions as well as a site showing pigs running through Islam’s holy city of Mecca, a clear insult to Muslims.
Sibal said the Internet companies had told him that they were applying U.S. standards to their sites, and he objected, saying that they needed to be sensitive to Indian sensibilities.
The addition of 200,000 new jobs in December shows that the economy is strengthening, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis said on Friday.
“We have seen a steady firming up of our economy” in recent months with two million jobs created in the private sector of the past year, she told CNBC television.
“Now we are seeing a better trajectory, we are moving in the right direction.”
“In the last few months, on the whole I have seen good incremental increase in the private sector jobs, so on that side of the factor I would say, ‘Hey, that is not a bad thing at all,” she said free business cards.
But she urged the extension of the payroll tax cut and further measures to support continued improvement in the jobs market.
U.K. manufacturing (PMITMUK) shrank less than economists forecast in December as demand increased in Germany and China.
A gauge of factory output based on a survey by Markit Economics and the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply rose to 49.6 from a revised 47.7 in November, the groups said in an e-mailed statement today. The median forecast of 19 economists in a Bloomberg News survey was for a drop to 47.3 from an initially reported 47.6 in November. A level below 50 indicates contraction.
The sovereign debt turmoil in Europe, the U.K.
Gas prices unexpectedly rose more than 30 percent for the new year in Myanmar and sparked fears of other goods costing more as well.
Motorists learned of the increase at the pump Sunday when prices increased from 2,500 kyat (3.15 dollars) to 3,350 kyat (4.2 dollars) per Imperial gallon (4.5 liters).
The government made no announcement. But with the fuel price hike, and a new 40 percent electricity cost increase announced late last year, people are concerned about inflation of consumer goods, too.
Myanmar’s energy production is not enough to meet domestic demand, and it imports petrol and other fuels. The government subsidizes gas prices and rations it to two Imperial gallons (9 liters) a day.
An unannounced price hike in 2007 sparked anti-government protests that led to the “saffron rebellion.” The military government then in power crushed it, leaving at least 15 dead and thousands arrested.
The nominally civilian government that took power early last year has made political changes that have improved its relationship with citizens.
(This version CORRECTS Corrects conversion of Imperial gallon to liter, from 4.2 to 4.5. This story is part of AP’s general news and financial services.)
The holiday shopping season turned out to be two seasons: the Black Friday binge and a last-minute surge.
Together, they added up to decent sales gains for retailers. And the doldrums in between showed how shoppers have learned to wait for the discounts they know will come.
“The days that the American consumer gets excited about 25 percent off are over,” said C. Britt Beemer, chairman of America’s Research Group. “Shoppers are keeping their eye on the ball for the big sales events.”
In November, spending rose 4.1 percent. And from Dec. 1 to Dec. 24, it rose 4.7 percent compared with the same period last year, according to research firm ShopperTrak. A 4 percent increase is considered a healthy season.
The higher sales are good news for the economy, because they show shoppers were willing to fund a holiday splurge despite high unemployment and other lingering economic woes. Consumer spending, including major items such as health care, accounts for 70 percent of the economy.
Still, plenty of people are pinched for cash in the slow economic recovery, and they were seeking the best deals, which could squeeze stores’ profits for the fourth quarter, says Hana Ben-Shabat, a partner in the retail practice of A.T. Kearney, a management consulting firm.
Stores have trained even shoppers who are primed to spend to look for a discount.
Heading into the season, stores were nervous that shoppers would be tight-fisted. Many officially opened the season with discounts on TVs and toys that started as early as Thanksgiving Day. Consumers came out in droves, resulting in record spending.
Then the frenzy tapered off. A mild winter and the fact that Christmas fell on a Sunday encouraged people to wait until the last minute and accentuated the peaks and valleys of spending.
Stores started to push more discounts to get shoppers to spend in the finale. In fact, retailers’ promotional e-mails from Sunday, Dec. 18, to Thursday, Dec. 22, spiked 34 percent, compared with the same period a year ago, according to Responsys, which tracks e-mail activity from more than 100 merchants.
According to Beemer’s consumer surveys, 60 percent of shoppers polled were looking for discounts of more than 50 percent to get them to buy. That’s up from last year’s 51 percent of shoppers polled.
Tracey Spears of Locust Grove, Ga., who was shopping Wednesday at Atlanta’s Lenox Square Mall, said she got 75 percent of her holiday shopping done on Black Friday or the day after Thanksgiving. She took advantage of deals, including a Keurig coffee pot from Target and clothes from Hollister on sale.
“I had more money because I got a better bonus this year, but sales are important. You always want to buy stuff cheaper,” she said.
Spears and others helped to create pronounced waves in spending.
“The downs and ups were much more accentuated,” said Michael P. Niemira, chief economist at the International Council of Shopping Centers. “It just shows how cautious the consumer is. Consumers are bargain hunters more today than ever before.”
In the week before Christmas, last-minute shoppers gave retailers a 4.5 percent increase in revenue over the same week last year at stores open at least a year, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers-Goldman Sachs Weekly Chain Store Sales Index. The index estimates sales at 24 major chain stores including Macy’s Inc. and Costco Wholesale Corp.
Revenue at stores open at least a year is an important measure of a retailer’s performance because it excludes stores that open or close during the year.
Total retail revenue for the week that ended Saturday reached $44 billion, 14.8 percent higher than a year earlier, ShopperTrak estimates.
For the week that ended Nov. 26, which included the traditional start of holiday shopping on the day after Thanksgiving, stores had the biggest sales surge from the week before since 1993, according to the ICSC-Goldman Sachs index.
The post-Black Friday lull was deeper than usual. The two weeks after Thanksgiving weekend showed the biggest percentage sales decline since 2000.
Then, during the final two weeks before Christmas, sales surged again, by the highest rate since 2005, Niemira said.
The season “was good but uneven,” he said.
Stores are expected to benefit when shoppers come back to spend gift cards, because people often spend more than the cards’ value. In addition, gift card sales are recorded only when shoppers redeem them.
People have more money on their cards to spend. According to an ICSC-Goldman Sachs survey of shoppers conducted Sunday, 18 percent of holiday spending went toward gift cards, up from 14.6 percent last year.
A total sales figure for the whole season won’t be available until after Dec. 31. And a fuller holiday spending picture will come Jan. 5, when stores including Target Corp. and Macy’s release December sales figures. Government retail sales data will be released in mid-January.
ICSC said it expects holiday sales for November and December to rise in line with its forecast of 3.5 percent. The National Retail Federation expects total retail sales for November and December combined to increase by 3.8 percent, up from its earlier forecast of 2.8 percent issued back in October. That’s still below the 5.2 percent holiday sales increase in 2010 from the previous year.
As proof that consumers are timing their spending to seek the best bargains, Black Friday was the biggest sales day, as expected, generating sales of $11.4 billion, up 6.6 percent from a year ago, according to ShopperTrak.
But the day after Christmas ranked fourth, behind Black Friday, Friday, Dec. 23, and Saturday, Dec. 17, according to final figures from ShopperTrak founder Bill Martin. Christmas Eve was strong too.
ShopperTrak measures foot traffic in 25,000 stores in the U.S. and blends those figures with economic data and proprietary sales figures from merchants. The data exclude sales from auto dealers, gas stations, restaurants and grocery stores.
“Shoppers are willing to spend when they know the biggest discounts are available,” Martin said.
Brooks Brothers, the upscale men’s and women’s clothier that doesn’t discount before Christmas, learned that this year. The Monday after Christmas, when the company offered discounts up to 40 percent, was a record spending day at its stores and its website.
“The first three weeks leading up to holiday were soft,” Lou Amendola, chief merchandising officer, wrote in an email. “But customers really partook in the after-Christmas sales.”