Spain’s central bank says the country is now in a technical recession as the economy contracted 0.4 percent in the first quarter of the year.
The drop, published in a Bank of Spain report Monday, follows a 0.3 percent quarterly decline in the fourth quarter. A technical recession is commonly defined as two consecutive quarters of economic contraction.
The Bank of Spain figure comes as no surprise, however. The government has said the economy is shrinking and forecasts it will contract 1.7 percent this year.
Payday loan online - Quick application results in seconds.
Here are two words to guide you financially through the rest of 2012
Instant payday loan is not the one that requires you to pass the stringent credit check or any other cumbersome paperwork, so you are handed your loan amount within 24 hours of the submission of your application.
U.S. stocks drifted lower but rebounded in later trading Thursday to end at nearly breakeven.
A string of weak economic reports — including jobless claims that fell below expectations — failed to inspire investors to move off the sidelines.
Both the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq closed in the red for the third straight day, while the Dow broke a two-day losing streak.
The Dow Jones industrial average () added 20 points, or 0.2%. The S&P 500 () dropped 2 points, or 0.2%. The Nasdaq () was down 10 points, or 0.3%.
Even with a few days of losses, all three indexes are up more than 10% in 2012. But investors are continuing to seek economic reports that beat expectations in order to justify that run up.
On Thursday the number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits only narrowly missed economists’ forecasts, but that still pushed stocks mostly lower.
U.S. economy to outpace Europe
"There’s a general sense in the market that we’re at lofty levels, so investors get worried when disappointments pop up," said Bruce McCain, chief investment strategist at Key Private Bank.
The week has been filled with a string of disappointing economic numbers on durable goods orders, consumer confidence and home prices. Ongoing concerns about a growth slowdown in China have added pressure on world markets.
"I think, overall, the market has had a good run, and investors are trimming some exposure," said Paul Powers, head of U.S. equity trading at Raymond James.
Most large financial stocks dropped more than 1% Thursday, including Bank of America (, Fortune 500), JPMorgan Chase (, Fortune 500), Citigroup (, Fortune 500), Morgan Stanley (, Fortune 500) and Goldman Sachs (, Fortune 500).
While stocks are suffering, the initial public offering market has been buoyant and is on track for a record week with 10 companies set to debut.
Still, it was a mixed bags for the three companies that started trading Thursday. Millennial Media’s () shares nearly doubled, but T-shirt maker Cafe Press () ended the day roughly flat after an initial surge. Both companies priced above their initial trading range. Merrimack Pharmaceuticals () ended the day down roughly 14% after it started trading.
Stocks closed in the red Wednesday amid worries about slowing growth overseas and in the U.S.
Economy: First-time claims for unemployment benefits in the week ended March 24 fell to 359,000 — a four-year low — from 364,000 the previous week. But that was still higher than the 350,000 forecasted.
U.S. gross domestic product — the broadest reading of economic growth –increased at an annual rate of 3% in the fourth quarter, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. That was the third revision, and was in line with analysts’ estimates.
Companies: Best Buy’s (, Fortune 500) stock dropped after the company narrowly missed expectations and said it would close 50 stores.
Sears Holdings’ (, Fortune 500) stock rose but closed lower on reports that the retailer was shopping its Lands’ End brand for $2 billion.
Like a bear in a China shop
Red Hat’s () stock jumped after the software maker reported quarterly earnings that beat expectations and a stock buyback of $133 million.
Research in Motion () shares dropped after hours as the BlackBerry maker missed expectations on revenues and earnings. The company said it’s considering strategic alternatives, and one director left its board.
World markets: European stocks closed down. Britain’s FTSE 100 () was off 1.2%, the DAX () in Germany lost 1.8% and France’s CAC 40 () was down 1.4%.
Asian markets ended lower. The Shanghai Composite () declined 1.4%, the Hang Seng () in Hong Kong dropped 1.3% and Japan’s Nikkei () lost 0.7%.
Currencies and commodities: The dollar lost ground against the Japanese yen, but strengthened against the euro and the British pound.
Oil for May delivery slipped $2.63 to $102.78 a barrel.
Gold futures for April delivery rose $2.20 to $1,660.40 an ounce.
Bonds: The price on the benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury rose, sending yields down to 2.16% from 2.20% late Wednesday.
South Korea
Sotheby’s auction house says News Corp. executive James Murdoch is stepping down from its board.
In a filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday, the auctioneer said Murdoch had decided not to stand for re-election at Sotheby’s May 8 annual meeting in order to focus on his role as News Corp.’s deputy chief operating officer.
Murdoch, he younger son of media mogul Rupert Murdoch, has been shedding posts to concentrate on his role in his father’s television business.
Last month he quit as chairman of News International, News Corp.’s British newspaper division.
He has repeatedly denied knowing about widespread phone hacking at the now-shuttered News of the World tabloid, though his account has been contradicted by former associates.
Australia needs to find
A suicide bomber detonated his car Sunday as a group of police recruits left their academy in Baghdad, killing 20 in the latest strike on security officials that angry residents blamed on political feuding that is roiling Iraq.
Police said the suicide bomber was waiting on the street outside the fortified academy near the Interior Ministry headquarters in an eastern neighborhood in the Iraqi capital. As the crowd of recruits exited the compound’s security barriers around 1 p.m. and walked into the road, police said the bomber drove toward them and blew up his car.
“We heard a big explosion and the windows of the room shattered,” said Haider Mohammed, 44, an employee in the nearby Police Sports Club, about 100 yards (meters) from the academy’s gate. He described a horrific scene of burning cars, scattered pieces of burned flesh and wounded people flattened on the ground.
“Everybody here knows the time when the recruits come and go from the academy,” Mohammed said. “This is a breach of security.”
Five policemen were among the dead; the rest were recruits. Another 28 recruits and policemen were wounded.
Officials at three nearby hospitals confirmed the casualties.
All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information.
Iraq’s police are generally considered to be the weakest element of the country’s security forces, which are attacked in bombings and drive-by shooting almost every day. The last big assault on police came in October, when 25 people were killed in a string of attacks that included two bombers slamming explosives-packed cars into police stations.
Recruits, too, are a favorite target: Suicide bombers killed scores of young men lined up for security jobs or otherwise at training centers in Baghdad and the northern city of Tikrit in recent years. The public outcry that followed from lawmakers and residents after those attacks spurred the government to bolster training and recruiting centers with better protections.
But, as Sunday’s attacks showed, extremists are easily able to sidestep security measures. At Baghdad’s police academy, recruits generally are escorted out of the compound to ensure their safety. But once they get to the street outside, they are on their own.
It was at that point the bomber struck on Sunday. The group of recruits had left the compound’s barrier gates and were crossing the road to hail a taxi or bus ride home after finishing a two-week training course.
Shiite lawmaker Hakim al-Zamili, who sits on parliament’s security and defense committee, said the academy’s officials should have been more careful about letting the recruits go at the same time every day. He said that was a pattern that insurgents easily noted.
“This was negligence by security officials in charge of the academy security,” al-Zamili said.
Al-Zamili blamed al-Qaida for launching the attack but raised the possibility that it aimed to ramp up bitterness among Iraqis already exasperated with ongoing political fighting that has consumed the government for weeks. “The political feuds are contributing to such security violations because they are demoralizing the security members,” he said.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the bombing, but suicide attacks are a hallmark of al-Qaida.
Al-Qaida’s potency in Iraq has thinned since its heyday five years ago, when the country teetered on the brink of civil war. But last week, Iraqi and U.S. officials acknowledged al-Qaida remains a viable threat, noting fears that local fighters in the Sunni-dominated insurgent network were shifting to Syria to aid forces opposing the regime of President Bashar Assad.
But some of Baghdad’s residents said Sunday’s attack likely was rooted in political turbulence that has shaken Iraq in recent weeks.
In findings that were expected to hike already-simmering sectarian tensions, a judicial panel last week said that at least 150 attacks and assassinations since 2005 were linked to Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi, Iraq’s highest-ranking Sunni official.
The charges against al-Hashemi, who has sought haven from arrest in the autonomous northern Kurdish region, were first brought in December by the Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Al-Hashemi has denied the charges and is expected to give a speech in coming days to defend himself.
“The people were expecting such attacks because of the current tense political atmosphere in the country,” said Ali Rahim, 40, a government employee. “Those poor recruits were looking to send the salary to their families and now they are going to be sent as dead bodies to these families.”
Al-Hashemi is a member of the secular but Sunni-dominated Iraqiya political bloc, which on Sunday accused the government of rehashing the charges on state TV at the risk of inflaming current strains.
Repeating the accusations against al-Hashemi “will provoke the public and create more tension as political blocs are working to defuse the tension and end the crisis,” Iraqiya spokeswoman Maysoun al-Damluji said in a statement.
The judicial panel’s findings against al-Hashemi are not legally binding, and he is entitled to a trial. But it opened the door to let 15 relatives of those killed in the attacks linked to al-Hashemi file lawsuits against him on Sunday.
General Mills Inc. is lowering is fiscal 2012 adjusted earnings forecast, saying it experienced softer volumes in the U.S. during December and January.
Its shares fell $1.43, or 3.6 percent, to $38.35 in premarket trading on Friday.
General Mills remains one of the most popular food brands in grocery stores. But like most of its peers, it has struggled with higher costs for everything from ingredients to labor and has raised its prices to help alleviate some of the pressure.
The Minneapolis company, which makes foods such as Cheerios cereal, Nature Valley granola bars and Hamburger Helper, said it now expects full-year adjusted earnings of $2 payday lenders.53 to $2.55 per share. Its prior guidance was for earnings between $2.59 and $2.61 per share.
Analysts polled by FactSet forecast earnings of $2.60 per share for the year.
For its fiscal third quarter, General Mills expects earnings of 54 cents to 56 cents per share. In the same period last year it made 56 cents per share.
General Mills plans to report earnings on March 21.
Freddie Mac is in the spotlight of the Republican presidential contest, as Mitt Romney attacks Newt Gingrich for his 2006 work for the mortgage finance firm.
But what the firm did, and the role it and larger rival Fannie Mae played in the housing crisis of the last decade, remain a source of confusion for many Americans.
What do Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae do? The two of them support the housing industry by providing billions in financing to the mortgage market.
They buy mortgage loans from lenders that conformed to their guidelines, typically safer loans with a large down payment, good credit scores for the borrowers and verification of their income.
Because there is an implicit guarantee that the federal government stands behind both firms, which were set up by Congress, they borrow money at the lowest possible rates and get a good return on their investment.
Did the two firms create the housing bubble that caused the financial meltdown? Not really.
The two firms were major players in the mortgage market, and so the rising home values were at least partly funded by their flow of money.
But the bubble really inflated when Wall Street started buying riskier loans made to borrowers who didn’t qualify for a Fannie or Freddie conforming loan. Those loans carried higher interest rates, with relatively little risk for investors while home prices were going up.
Experts say it was the growth of those riskier loans that caused home prices to rise and the bubble to inflate.
"When you bring in 5 million marginal buyers who under normal circumstances would not qualify for a mortgage, that’s what ends up driving home prices," said Barry Ritholtz, CEO of Fusion IQ.
He said the big Wall Street firms that became major players in the mortgage market, such as Citibank (, Fortune 500), Bank of America (, Fortune 500), Goldman Sachs (, Fortune 500), Morgan Stanley (, Fortune 500) and AIG (, Fortune 500), are as or more guilty than Freddie and Fannie.
"If Freddie and Fannie never existed, we would have had the same problem," he said.
What caused problems for Fannie and Freddie? By the middle of the last decade, Freddie and Fannie had lost their dominant position in the home loan market, as the riskier loans became a larger share of the mortgage market.
So they adjusted their underwriting standards in order to participate in the riskier lending as well.
Obama’s housing track record
Even though the riskier loans were a minority of the loans each purchased, because each was so huge, they ended up with a large volume of those loans.
They also were relatively late to the game. That meant they got into riskier loans right before the decline in home prices — which began in 2006 — led to a spike in foreclosures. After that, home buyers started to default on loans that were safer, adding to Freddie and Fannie’s losses.
"What killed Fannie and Freddie is the housing market went to hell and they were 100% exposed to housing," said Jaret Seiberg, analyst with Guggenheim Washington Research Group.
How much money did the collapse cost taxpayers? So far Freddie has received $72.2 billion from Treasury, while Fannie, which is larger, received $111.6 billion. The combined $183.8 billion makes it the most expensive bailout by taxpayers of the financial crisis. But part of that bailout has been repaid to taxpayers in the form of dividends. Freddie has repaid $14.9 billion, while Fannie paid $17.2 billion.
Seiberg said that the bailout might have been avoided, or been relatively minor, if Fannie and Freddie had stayed away from the riskier loans.
"Best-case scenario would have been they were knocked down, but not knocked out," he said.
Why did Freddie and Fannie hire Washington insiders such as Newt Gingrich?Gingrich’s contract with Freddie is short on specifics of the work he performed for $25,000 a month. But even if he did no lobbying, as he says, the contract came at a time when Freddie and Fannie were eager to buy as much Washington influence as possible.
For years, the two firms were among the most powerful companies in terms of Washington muscle, getting free reign from both Congress and their regulator, then known as the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO).
"Fannie and Freddie had Congress wrapped around their fingers," said Guy Cecala, CEO of Inside Mortgage Finance, which publishes trade publications following the mortgage market. "They were untouchable."
Because of the public-private nature of their charters, the firms wanted to make sure Congress and OFHEO allowed them to operate with few restrictions. But they also wanted to keep government’s implicit backing in place so they could borrow money cheaply.
"They were very aggressive lobbying Congress and OFHEO to stay out of their way," said Ritholtz.
Bank of Korea Governor Kim Choong Soo said that South Korea
Powered by WordPress -- XHTML 1.0