Stock futures are rising ahead of economic data focusing on consumers and businesses.
Dow Jones industrial average futures are up 57 points to 12,712. Standard & Poor’s 500 futures are up 7.9 points to 1,342. Nasdaq composite futures are up 19.25 points to 2,604.25.
The Commerce Department is expected to report Tuesday that consumer spending growth slowed to 0.2 percent in April after a very strong start to the year.
And economists expect the Labor Department will report that spending cooled even though prices likely increased only modestly last month. Consensus estimates are for a consumer price index increase of only 0.1 percent in April.
The government also releases business inventory data from March. Predictions are that companies likely restocked at a slower pace.
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U.K high street lender Lloyds Banking Group on Tuesday reported a modest net profit of 2 million pounds ($3.2 million) in the first quarter when its performance beat market expectations.
The company, 40 percent owned by U.K. taxpayers, also recorded a pretax profit of 288 million pounds ($467 million) in the first quarter, which included a 375 million provision to compensate customers for missold insurance.
In the previous quarter, it made a 316 million pounds net profit and a loss of 3.5 billion pounds in the same period last year. Its 2 million pound net profit compares with a 2.4 billion pound net loss last year and a 37 million pound profit in the previous quarter.
Lloyds has taken a total provision of 3.575 billion pounds, by far the biggest of any British bank, to compensate customers who were sold payment protection insurance which they didn’t need.
Total income net of insurance claims was down 6 percent to 4.49 billion pounds.
Lloyds shares were up 1.6 percent at 31.5 pence in early trading.
The U.K. government injected much needed capital into Lloyds at the height of the financial crisis in 2008. It is now looking to sell off its shares, but only when their price has reached a certain level.
“The likelihood of reaching the government’s 70 pence-plus break-even point seems a long way off, even if Lloyds is making slow and steady progress, whilst the absence of a dividend is another drag on enticing potential buyers,” said Richard Hunter, head of equities, Hargreaves Lansdown Stockbrokers payday loans in one hour.
Total impairments improved from 2.6 billion pounds a year ago to 1.66 billion pounds. Within that total, the charge in the first quarter in the bank’s wealth and international division was 705 million pounds compared to 1.5 billion pounds a year earlier, primarily because of lower charges in its Irish and Australasian businesses.
Nonetheless, with two-thirds of the Irish portfolio classed as impaired, the bank warned that “further vulnerability exists.”
Customer deposits were up 6 percent year-on-year to 412 billion pounds. The core tier 1 capital ratio_ a key gauge of underlying financial strength _ was up from 10 percent last year to 11 percent in the first quarter.
Lloyds is still seeking to clinch a deal to sell 632 branches to meet the European Commission’s conditions for receiving state aid. While continuing to talk to the Co-operative Group, the bank’s preferred bidder, Lloyds said last week it was open to other offers.
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Stocks fell Thursday for the third day in a row after reminders that Europe has not solved its debt crisis and the U.S. economy is far from healed, despite progress on both fronts.
The Dow Jones industrial average fell 58 points in early trading to 13,069. The broader Standard & Poor’s 500 fell nine points to 1,397. The Nasdaq composite index fell 15 to 3,090.
The declines came despite incrementally good news about the U.S. economy. The government said that the number of people seeking unemployment benefits last week dropped by 5,000 to about 359,000, the lowest since April 2008
The government also said that the U.S. economy grew at an annual rate of 3 percent in the fourth quarter, which met analysts’ expectations and was the fastest pace since spring 2010.
But there was reason for concern, too: The government also said that many more people than it originally estimated filed unemployment claims in recent months. And economists believe the country’s growth has slowed to about 1.5 percent.
European markets fell across the board, despite a report from Germany that its unemployment rate fell slightly over the month. The benchmark stock index was down 1.9 percent in Germany and 1.3 percent apiece in France and Britain.
Though Greece is no longer on the brink of default, deep problems remain for the continent, where stronger countries are arguing that they shouldn’t have to bail out weaker ones paydayloan.
In Spain, workers took to the streets to protest government spending cuts, underscoring the difficulty that governments will have in reining in overblown spending.
The price of oil fell 65 cents per barrel in New York to $104.73. France’s prime minister said there’s a “good chance” the U.S. and Europe will release oil reserves, which could drive down prices by adding supply.
President Barack Obama was expected later Thursday to call on Congress to end tax breaks for oil companies. The price of oil has doubled since October, and the price of gasoline has risen about 20 percent this year.
Among the stocks making big moves:
_ Illumina, a diagnostics company, rose more than 4 percent to $52.06 after the Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche Group raised its offer for the company to $51 per share.
_ Best Buy fell more than 6 percent after announcing plans for big spending cuts, including closing 50 of its big-box stores.
_ JetBlue fell 8 percent, two days after passengers said a pilot came unhinged and forced a JetBlue flight to make an emergency landing on a flight from New York to Las Vegas.
The number of Americans who bought previously occupied homes likely increased in February to the highest level in two years.
Economists forecast that sales increased to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.6 million last month, according to a FactSet survey. The National Association of Realtors will report on February re-sales at 10 a.m. Eastern time Wednesday.
Home sales have risen nearly 13 percent over the past six months. While they are still below the 6 million that economists equate with a healthy economy, the gains have coincided with other good news in the housing market that suggests slow and steady improvement.
Homebuilders have grown more confident in the past six months after seeing more people express interest in buying a home. In February, they requested the most permits to build homes since October 2008.
Mortgage rates are near record lows. And the supply of homes fell in January to its lowest level in seven years.
A lower supply helps push up prices, which lures more sellers onto the market and generally improves the quality of homes for sale. Rising prices also boost sales because buyers want to invest in homes that are appreciating in value.
For the past few years, the market has been saturated for years with foreclosures. That has put downward pressure on prices and driven away buyers.
A key reason for the brighter housing outlook is the job market has strengthened no faxing payday loans. From December through February, employers added an average of 245,000 jobs a month. The unemployment rate has fallen to 8.3 percent, the lowest in three years.
Still, economists caution that the damage from the housing bust is deep and the industry is years away from fully recovering.
Fewer first-time buyers, who are critical to a housing recovery, are in the market for a home. They made up roughly one-third of sales last year. In healthy markets, the percentage is at least 40 percent.
Many can’t qualify for loans or meet higher down-payment requirements. Even those with excellent credit and stable jobs are holding off because they fear that home prices will keep falling.
Sales are measured when buyers close on homes. Some deals have been scuttled before the closing after banks declined mortgage applications, home inspectors found problems, appraisals showed a home was worth less than the bid, or a buyer lost a job.
The high rate of foreclosures has made resold homes cheaper than new ones. The median price of a new home is roughly 30 percent above the price of one that’s been occupied before _ twice the normal markup. Investors are taking advantage of the discounts.
The Swiss central bank spent 17.8 billion francs ($19.5 billion) in 2011 to stem what it called the currency
Some experts say Boeing
The battle of the bulge has been a big, fat failure for U.S. drugmakers. But that hasn’t stopped them from trying.
For nearly a century, scientists have struggled to make a diet pill that helps people lose weight without side effects that range from embarrassing digestive issues to dangerous heart problems.
But this week, federal health advisers endorsed the weight loss pill Qnexa even though the FDA previously rejected it over concerns that it can cause heart palpitations and birth defects if taken by pregnant women.
The vote of confidence raises hopes that the U.S. could approve its first anti-obesity drug in more than a decade. It also highlights how challenging it is to create a pill that fights fat in a variety of people without negative side effects.
“Having a drug for obesity would be like telling me you had a drug for the fever,” said Dr. Mitchell Roslin, chief of bariatric surgery at Northern Westchester Hospital in New York. “There can be millions of different reasons why someone is obese; it’s really a symptom of various underlying mechanisms.”
An effective and safe diet pill would be an easy sale in the U.S.: With more than 75 million obese adults, the nation’s obesity rate is nearing 35 percent. But the biggest problem in creating a weight-loss drug is that there’s no safe way to turn off one of the human body’s most fundamental directives.
For millions of years, humans have been programmed to consume calories and store them as energy, or fat. It’s this biological mechanism that makes it almost impossible to quickly lose weight by not eating. Cutting down on food instead sends stronger signals to the body to store more calories.
“Throughout most of human history calories were scarce and hard to get, so we have numerous natural defenses against starvation,” said Dr. David Katz of Yale University’s Prevention Research Center. “We have no defenses against overeating because we never needed them before.”
The drug industry has been on a nearly 100-year search for a drug that can help the body shed pounds. They’ve mostly failed to come up with an effective one and many of their experiments have proven fatal to patients:
_ Early attempts focused on speeding up metabolism to burn more calories. In the 1930s, doctors prescribed an industrial chemical called dinitrophenol, which accelerated metabolism, but also caused fever, swelling and deadly toxicity in some patients. The 1938 law establishing the Food and Drug Administration was a response to untested drugs like dinitrophenol.
_ In the `50s and `60s, amphetamines became a popular because they boost metabolism and suppress appetite. But the pills proved to be highly addictive, and doctors discovered they increase blood pressure and heart rate. The amphetamine phentermine remains approved for short-term weight loss, usually less than 12 weeks, though it is seldom prescribed because of the potential for addiction.
_ Perhaps the worst diet pill safety debacle came in the 1990s and involved the combination of phentermine and another weight loss drug marketed by Wyeth called fenfluramine. The combination of the two pills, dubbed fen-phen, was never approved by the FDA but more than 18 million prescriptions were written for it by the mid-90s.
But after studies in 1997 suggested that up to a third of patients taking fen-phen experienced heart valve damage, Wyeth was forced to recall two versions of fenfluramine and eventually paid more than $13 billion to settle tens of thousands of personal injury lawsuits.
_ In the last decade, drugmakers have moved toward other weight loss concoctions. Currently, the only drug approved for long-term weight loss in the U.S. is orlistat, which is sold as the prescription drug Xenical and over the counter as alli. The drug works by blocking the absorption of fat.
When launched in 2007, alli received a high-profile marketing push from drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline, complete with TV ads and a celebrity endorsement by country singer Wynonna Judd. But it never took off due to unpleasant side effects, including loose bowel movements. Educational pamphlets for alli even recommend people start the program when they have a few days off work, or bring an extra pair of pants to the office.
_ Most drugmakers now are focusing on medications that block brain signals associated with food craving and appetite. Vivus’ Qnexa is one of a trio of drugs seeking FDA approval. The diet pill, which was initially rejected due to the risks of heart palpitations and other safety issues, is a combination of two older drugs.
It uses amphetamine phentermine, which suppresses appetite. The other drug is topiramate, an anticonvulsant sold by Johnson & Johnson as Topamax. Topiramate is believed to make patients feel more satiated, though it’s unclear exactly how. J&J initially studied Topamax alone as a weight loss treatment but concluded the psychiatric side effects, such as memory loss and difficulty concentrating, were too significant.
Still, on Wednesday, a panel of FDA doctors and other advisers voted 20-2 in favor of approving Vivus’ Qnexa pill, which the drugmaker has resubmitted to the FDA for a second review.
The group touted the drug’s benefits, which include weight loss of nearly 10 percent for most patients taking the drug over a year _ the highest reduction reported with any recent diet pill. But panelists stressed that the drugmaker must be required to conduct a large, follow-up study of the pill’s effects on the heart.
The FDA is expected to issue its decision on Qnexa by mid-April.
“The potential benefits of this medication seem to trump the side effects,” said FDA panel member Dr. Kenneth Burman of the Washington Hospital Center in Washington DC. “But in truth, only time will tell.”
Tammy Wade of McCalla, Ala., is confident that the diet pill works. She lost nearly 40 pounds, dropping down to 167 while in a two-year Qnexa study.
“I never lost that much weight on any of the programs I’ve tried,” said Wade, who’s done everything from Weight Watchers to work out with a personal trainer.
Timothy F. Geithner, who took over the Treasury Department in the midst of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression and oversaw the almost doubling of U.S. public debt, has done better for investors than Robert Rubin while falling short of Henry Paulson.
Since Geithner assumed office in January 2009, returns on Treasuries have exceeded bonds of other countries by 0.3 percentage point on an annualized rate, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch index data. That
The leaders of the two parties backing Greece’s coalition government called on their deputies Saturday to back legislation that calls for harsh new austerity measures _ essential if Greece is to get a new bailout deal worth euro130 billion ($171.6 billion) and stave off bankruptcy.
Debate on emergency legislation approving the new bailout and a debt-swapping deal with private creditors will begin in committee Saturday afternoon. A plenary session will debate and vote on it Sunday. Further legislation detailing the measures demanded by, and agreed with, Greece’s public creditors, the European Union and the International Monetary Fund, will be up for vote a few days later. The exact time has not yet been set.
Both leaders _ socialist George Papandreou and conservative Antonis Samaras _ told their respective parliamentary groups that there is no real alternative to voting for the legislation, except pushing Greece to bankruptcy.
“If we do not dare today, we will live a catastrophe,” Papandreou said.
“This (bailout) will give the country the opportunity and the time to stand back on its feet,” said Samaras.
Deputies are wary of voting for the measures, which include wage and pension cuts and the prospect of more to come, along with the firing of several thousand civil servants. The demands of the EU and the IMF have caused one of the original coalition parties _ the populist right-wing Popular Orthodox Party _ to quit the government and withdraw its four members from the cabinet. Two more cabinet members _ both socialist deputy ministers _ have also quit, citing their disagreements with parts of the austerity package.
Sensing the unease among their MPs, and trying to prevent a wholesale rebellion, both Papandreou and Samaras have called for a yes vote. But whereas Papandreou was vague about the prospect of sanctions against any rebels, Samaras was clear _ threatening to expel those who did not vote in favor and to exclude them from the next election. “I want to make it absolutely clear … rebels or ‘bravehearts’ have no place in (the party’s) candidate lists,” he said.
Samaras had opposed the initial bailout, worth euro110 billion, that Papandreou, as Prime Minister, had negotiated in May 2010, saying the measures it contained would worsen the crises and result in a deep recession. He now says he feels vindicated, but conditions have worsened so much lately _ due to the bad handling of the crisis by the previous socialist government _ that social cohesion is at stake. He also blamed Greece’s EU partners for lately showing a tendency to punish Greece rather than help it. He added that the turning point for the EU’s hardening stance was Papandreou’s sudden call in late October for a referendum on Greece’s stay in the eurozone.
“The danger now is that Greece’s social unrest will spread as a contagion to Europe,” he said.
In his speech earlier Saturday, Papandreou defended his government’s record, saying that they had inherited a badly damaged economy from the conservatives in October 2009 and that the socialists faced nothing but disruptive criticism throughout their term, through last November.
“We were at war, fighting alone, for two years … whoever talks about the recipe (of the austerity measures) being wrong is a hypocrite.”
Papandreou laid the blame for the worsening crisis in Greece at the doorstep of a “conservative Europe with slow reflexes,” saying the Franco-German meeting in Deauville, France, in October 2010, emboldened the markets to fan the flames of the crisis. He called for “real integration of economic policies,” a Eurobond, a crackdown on tax havens and a tax on financial transactions.
Samaras insisted the country must hold a snap election once the agreement is in place and the debt swap with private creditors is completed. “Then we will demand a dissolution of the parliament, because (an election) will strengthen our bargaining position … I have been a deputy since 1977 and never, in my career, has a parliament been so out of step with the wishes of the people,” he said, adding that he would not agree to the extension of the mandate of the coalition government. Elections are normally due in October 2013.
While the two parties met, union leaders staged a demonstration outside parliament that attracted about 4,000 protesters, according to the police _ while 5-6,000 policemen patrolled the streets of Athens. The protest ended peacefully, but authorities are bracing for a much larger, and possibly violent, one on Sunday evening.
Another 4,000 turned out for a peaceful demonstration in Thessaloniki, Greece’s second city.
Reserve Bank of India Deputy Governor Subir Gokarn said the monetary authority will cut interest rates once it
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