Jumaat, 12 Oktober 2012

NST Online Business Times : latest

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NST Online Business Times : latest

Posted: 12 Oct 2012 06:53 PM PDT

WASHINGTON: US stocks gave up early gains on firm bank earnings and a rise in consumer confidence Friday to end the day broadly lower, with worries about the new earnings season clouding optimism.

Better-than-expected third quarter gains by JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo gave stocks an early boost but profit-taking moved in quickly and only the blue-chip Dow stayed in the black -- just barely.

At the closing bell, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 2.46 points, or 0.02 percent, at 13,328.85.

The broad-based S&P 500 lost 4.25 points (0.30 percent) to 1,428.59, while the tech-rich Nasdaq fell 5.30 points (0.17 percent) to 3,044.11.

The University of Michigan's consumer confidence survey rose unexpectedly sharply over September to its best level in five years, helping early buying.

"However, the exuberance was short-lived as the key indices promptly fell through the unchanged line, to their session lows," said Briefing.com.

With some 230 companies reporting third quarter earnings next week, the mood was pensive, analysts said.

JPMorgan shares finished 1.1 percent lower, at $41.62, despite handily beating forecasts with a $5.7 billion profit, up 34 percent from a year earlier.

Wells Fargo fell 2.6 percent after slightly surpassing expectations with a 22 percent earnings rise to a US$4.9 billion net for the quarter. Investors were disappointed in part by the bank's missing revenue expectations.

Overall, the finance sector pared 0.8 percent, with Bank of America losing 2.4 percent and Citigroup dropping 2.2 percent.

Advanced Micro Devices crashed 14.4 percent after cutting its outlook, but other chipmakers were fairly steady, with Intel shedding 0.9 percent for the day.

The bid by Japan's Softbank to take over Sprint Nextel kept a focus on the US wireless sector. Sprint slipped 0.5 percent as details were sketchy about the deal under discussion.

Market leader Verizon lost 1.3 percent, AT&T fell 1.7 percent and MetroPCS, in talks to be taken over by Deutsche Telekom's T-Mobile, gained 2.1 percent. -- AFP

Kredit: www.nst.com.my

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VP Candidate Ryan Looks “Overseas” to Canada for Tax Lessons - Wall Street Journal (blog)

Posted: 12 Oct 2012 07:44 AM PDT

By Paul Vieira

Canada snatched a minor role in Thursday night's U.S. vice-presidential debate,

when Republican Paul Ryan cited the country's efforts to cut business taxes as evidence that Mitt Romney's tax-cutting economic plan can work.

(He also gave Americans a nice geography lesson—reminding voters that in his home state of Wisconsin, bordering giant Lake Superior, Canada counts as "overseas.")

See Canada's cameo appearance in the WSJ's transcript of the debate.

Indeed, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper's federal Conservative government, back in October 2007, announced a multi-year plan to cut the corporate tax rate from 18.5% to 15%. The Conservatives won two elections with business-tax reductions as a central plank in their platform.

The governing Conservatives shouldn't get all the credit, however. Corporate tax reform started in earnest under the former Liberal government of Jean Chretien in 2000, after the country balanced its books. That fiscal discipline, many economists say, helped Canada weather the global financial and economic crisis better than most of the developed world.

More recently, the Conservatives, under Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, have cut further in an effort to revive business investment. But, you guessed it, the corporate tax story up North is more complicated than Mr. Ryan suggests.

Canadian provinces have their own business-tax rate on corporate earnings. Based on research by the University of Calgary's Jack Mintz, a tax expert, the combined federal/provincial tax rate in Canada–or the "statutory rate"– stands at roughly 26.1%.

But as Mr. Ryan points out, that's still lower than in the U.S. and a chunk of the developed world. According to Mr. Mintz's closely watched annual tax study, published last month, the statutory U.S. corporate tax rate in 2012 was 39.2%; Japan, 36.8%; Germany, 30.2%; In the U.K., it's 24%–or the lowest among Group of Seven countries, based on Mr. Mintz's research. The average statutory rate among members of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development is 25.5%.

Despite Debt Crisis, EU Wins Nobel Peace Prize - ABC News

Posted: 12 Oct 2012 08:48 AM PDT

For fostering peace on a continent ravaged by war, the European Union won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday. The Norwegian prize jury urged all Europeans to remember those efforts as they tackle the debt crisis tearing at the 27-nation bloc.

The award was hailed at EU headquarters in Brussels and by pro-EU government leaders across the continent but derided by "euroskeptics" who consider the EU an elitist superstate that strips citizens of their rights and erodes national identities.

The announcement was met with mixed reactions in debt-ridden countries like Spain and Greece, where many blame Germany and other northern EU neighbors for the painful austerity measures like higher taxes and job cuts they have endured to salvage their floundering economies.

"The peace prize?" said Giorgos Dertilis, who works at an insurance company in Athens. "The way things are going, what will happen in the immediate future? Peace is the one thing we might not have."

The Norwegian Nobel Committee honored the EU for promoting "peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights" in Europe for six decades following the tremendous devastation of World War II.

The EU grew out of the conviction that ever-closer economic ties would make sure that century-old enemies like Germany and France never turned on each other again. The bloc is now made up of 500 million people in 27 nations, with other nations lined up, waiting to join.

FILE - In this Monday, May 9, 2011 file photo, EU flags fly at the European Commission headquarters in Brussels. . The European Union has won the Nobel Peace Prize, it has been announced on Friday, Oct. 12, 2012. (AP Photo/Yves Logghe, File) Close

But European unity is being threatened by the debt crisis that has stirred deep tensions between north and south, caused unemployment to soar and sent hundreds of thousands of its citizens into the streets to protest austerity measures.

The bloc's financial disarray is threatening the euro — the common currency used by 17 of its members — and even the structure of the union itself. The debt crisis is also fueling the rise of extremist movements such as Golden Dawn in Greece, which opponents brand as neo-Nazi.

"We do not have a position on how to solve these problems, but we send a very strong message that we should keep in mind why we got this Europe after World War II," Nobel committee chairman Thorbjoern Jagland told The Associated Press.

He said that Europeans should do everything they can to safeguard their unity, "not let it disintegrate and let the extremism and nationalism grow again, because we know what catastrophes that all this leads to."

"If the euro starts falling apart, then I believe that the internal market will also start falling apart. And then obviously we get new nationalism in Europe. ... This is not a good scenario," he said.

Europe is now stuck in a three-year financial crisis caused by too much government debt. To combat this, governments across the region have imposed harsh tax and spending measures to bring their deficits under control. However a fall in government spending has had a damping effect on Europe's economy — in the second quarter of this year, the EU's gross domestic product shrank 0.2 percent compared to the previous quarter. A wide variety of indicators are pointing to a further slump in the third quarter.

The austerity measures have also hit jobs —the EU's unemployment rate is currently 10.5 percent. But some countries such as Spain and Greece have rates as high as 25 percent. In Spain, every other person under 25 is unemployed.

Kredit: www.nst.com.my

Jumaat, 12 Oktober 2012