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US stocks: Intel falters and energy costs rise

NZ Herald: NEW YORK - US stocks dropped on Thursday, with the Dow at its lowest close in nearly three weeks, as investors sold shares of blue-chip Intel Corp. before the chipmaker...

US market dips after three-day rally

US stocks have ended lower as a hotter-than-expected report on wholesale inflation and a disappointing outlook from computer maker Dell prompted profit taking from a three-day rally. The Dow Jones...

US stocks: Oil worries linger

NZ Herald: NEW YORK - US stocks fell on Wednesday as financial and home building shares declined amid worries about rising interest rates, while shares of energy companies were d...

NZ Herald: NEW YORK - US stocks edged up on Tuesday after brokerages raised their price targets for shares of Apple Computer Inc. and International Business Machines Corp., which...

GM bankruptcy fears rising on Wall Street

China Daily: An increasing number of investors are betting that General Motors Corp. may be forced to seek bankruptcy protection within the next 12 months as it struggles with slumping...

Japan finally climbing out of mire of deflation

Business Day: TOKYO - Japan was finally rebounding after years of spiralling price falls, the country's top economy official said yesterday amid a flurry of reports showing robust consumer spending and corporate in...

Asian stocks tumble on Wall Street weakness

The News International: HONG KONG: Asian stocks tumbled to a much lower close on Friday, following Wall Street’s path which was led by an ailing General Motors and a possible indictment of Bus...

Euro hits new all-time high against Japanese yen

Taipei Times: Advertising The euro rose to a new all-time high against the yen yesterday in Asia as sentiments continued to weaken on the Japanese currency amid waning hopes that the nation would drop its zero inte...

Wall Street: Stocks post gains despite weak jobs data

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: By Christopher Wang, The Associated Press: NEW YORK A late rally gave Wall Street a modest advance Friday after a lackluster employment ...

Business Headlines ...

The personality politics of the Right

IF a week is a long time in politics, as the late British Prime Minister Harold Wilson famously observed, a year is an eternity. Or so it must feel for many of the developed world's centre-right parties. This time last year they were in the ascendancy, following President Bush's stunning re-election victory. Today, his Republican administration is in near-terminal crisis; indeed 2005 has turned out to be an annus horribilis for centre-right parties around the world. Read

NYSE rings the opening bell to float itself on itself

IN ITS single most important step for 213 years the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) is to evolve from a trading platform to a traded platform. Known as the Big Board, the NYSE is the largest stock market in the world with listed stocks worth $20 trillion (£11.4 trillion, E16.9 trillion) and last week its members voted overwhelmingly to take it public. The week started with business as usual on Monday. The six pits of the exchange in Wall Street were sprinkled with floor-traders wearing their multi-coloured jackets and engaging in the "open-outcry" system that has been used to buy and sell stocks for centuries. Read

Deflation is not about to happen - it's already here

I'M more convinced than ever that deflation is inevitable. This is partly the result of some very interesting conversations I have had recently with colleagues. One highly experienced former broker said he was expecting a recession last year, but it didn't happen. Instead, US third -- quarter GDP has been revised upwards and the US economy is producing unbelievably strong numbers. Read

What China can teach the West

OF all the great insights that Friedrich August von Hayek bequeathed to us in his work, one in particular shines out today. For its truth has never been more evident, its application never more universal. It is that running through the ideological and political divisions of human history are two distinct and different ways of looking at the world. Between them is a deep and irreconcilable divide. One Hayek called constructivist rationalism. The other he called evolutionary rationalism. Read

Paramount pays $1.6bn for Spielberg's empire

PARAMOUNT Pictures, owned by Sumner Red stone's media giant Viacom, has acquired Steven Spielberg’s film studios DreamWorks SGK with a successful last-minute $1.6bn (£930m, E1.4bn) bid. Paramount’s swoop on Friday night saw it beat off rival NBC Universal Studios, the film-making division of General Electric, which had been in talks with DreamWorks for six months. Paramount Pictures had repeatedly publicly denied any interest in acquiring DreamWorks, saying its parent company, Viacom, had balked at the asking price of $1.6bn, including assumption of debt. But Viacom’s board approved a bid last Thursday, provided that outside private-equity investors help finance the deal. More than half the acquisition price will come from private-equity investors. Read

Power vacuum in West

In today's new world order, champagne and canapés with the Chinese finance minister is not something anybody in the West can afford to miss. So Gordon Brown, Britain's Chancellor, and a posse of other finance ministers have flown to Beijing this weekend to attend a gathering of the Group of 20 richest nations. Like all such meetings, it will achieve nothing; but the finance ministers will each be out to impress their Chinese hosts, who are not easily impressed. Being in charge of the public finances of a major European economy does not carry much clout in Beijing these days, or anywhere else in Asia, where weak growth and waning geopolitical influence is not something that is admired. Read

US interest rates look set to rise as inflation soars

THE Federal Reserve is under intense pressure this weekend to put up interest rates further and faster after figures revealed that US inflation hit a 14-year high. Wall Street economists now believe that the Fed will not pause until rates hit at least 4.5%, up from 3.75% today, in a trend that is set to depress US equities. Read

'Locust' Franz puts plague on reform

GERMANY'S economy is set to remain gridlocked after the appointment of a member of the loony left to a senior job in Chancellor-designate Angela Merkel's government, top economists warned at the weekend. Read

Venture Capital Trusts have raised £2.2bn in their first 10 years

VENTURE Capital Trusts (VCTs) are celebrating their 10th birthday. Launched in 1995 under the Conservative government, they were designed to fill the so-called "equity gap" experienced by smaller, unquoted companies looking to rise the extra growth finance that banks would not provide. Read

Time to snap up Wal-Mart at 'everyday low prices'

WAL-Mart's shares look ready to rise after going nowhere for several years. Some bulls think they could surge by more than 40% over the next year, from a recent $44 (£25, E36.52). Read

Resolve EU budget row or face chaos, Blair warned

TONY Blair has been warned by the European Commission that failure by him to broker a budget deal at the Brussels summit next weekend will lead to a “self-destructive scenario”, putting European Union (EU) departments at war with each other. The Prime Minister, who holds the rotating presidency of the European Council, has also been told by the Commission that failure to agree a deal will protect farm subsidy but threaten development funds to eastern Europe. There were signs at the weekend that Blair may compromise. He has prepared a final proposal virtually identical to suggestions two months ago by Jose Manuel Barroso, the Commission president. As diplomats prepared for the final days of talks on the budget for 2007-13, Blair remained deadlocked with French president Jacques Chirac over a mid-term review of the Common Agricultural Policy. Read