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China announced more help Wednesday for its struggling private business sector, unveiling a $2.5 billion fund to finance new small businesses and promising tax breaks and more lending for entrepreneurs.

The Cabinet announcement was one of the first concrete measures announced by the government following repeated pledges to help entrepreneurs who have been squeezed by a slump in U.S. and European demand and curbs on bank lending.

Entrepreneurs generate most of China’s new jobs and wealth, but thousands have been driven out of business. The survivors have slashed payrolls, raising concern among China’s communist leaders about possible unrest.

A Cabinet statement issued after a meeting led by Premier Wen Jiabao, the country’s top economic official, said small companies were essential to helping China keep growth fast and stable despite the global downturn.

The government will create a 15 billion yuan ($2.5 billion) fund “primarily to support the start-up of small and micro-enterprises,” it said.

It gave no details but also promised a cut in taxes and fees and said small businesses will be guaranteed a portion of government purchases of goods and services.

Beijing ordered the state-owned banking industry to lend freely to help China’s economy rebound from the 2008 global crisis. But it clamped down on credit to preventing overheating after annual economic growth soared above 10 percent in 2010.

Economic growth fell to a 2 1/2-year low of 8.9 percent in the final quarter of 2011.

Two surveys released Wednesday gave mixed signals on manufacturing activity in January but both showed it largely unchanged.

The state-affiliated China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing said its purchasing managers index rose 0.2 points to 50.5 from December’s 50.3 on a 100-point scale on which numbers above 50 indicate growth.

HSBC Corp. said its HSBC China Manufacturing PMI was little changed at 48.8 from December’s 48.7, suggesting a “moderate deterioration.”

The credit clampdown battered entrepreneurs as banks channeled their limited lending to politically favored government companies. Entrepreneurs turned to high-interest underground lenders. Thousands went bankrupt, leaving employees and suppliers unpaid.

The government responded in October by ordering banks to step up lending to small businesses, though it is unclear whether credit has increased.

Wednesday’s statement promised to create more small-scale financial institutions to serve entrepreneurs and rural companies.

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An independent political committee supportive of Newt Gingrich is planning to release a film critical of Mitt Romney’s tenure at a private-equity firm, just days after a Las Vegas billionaire contributed $5 million to the group to bolster the former House speaker’s White House run.

The Gingrich-leaning Winning Our Future PAC said Sunday that the 28-minute video _ which assails Romney for “reaping massive awards” while head of Bain Capital _ will be posted online soon and could show up on TV ahead of this month’s primary elections.

Meanwhile, a person familiar with the development said Sheldon Adelson, a casino mogul and longtime donor to Republican candidates, made the contribution Friday to Winning Our Future, which is run by Gingrich allies. The person, who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly, said Adelson is expected to contribute to groups backing the Republican nominee, be it Gingrich or one of his rivals.

Both the film and the large contribution highlight the growing role that new “super” political action committees are playing this election. Just weeks ago, a Romney-leaning super PAC called Restore Our Future hammered Gingrich with $3 million in negative ads that largely contributed to his eroding support before the Iowa caucuses. Gingrich finished in fourth place.

Now, the tables have turned: Winning Our Future’s case marks the first time Gingrich and his allies have targeted Romney’s time at Bain. They have said Romney’s record is fair game, but up until now have restricted attacks to his time in government.

The film, called “When Mitt Romney Came To Town,” assails Romney for “reaping massive awards” for himself and his investors. Bain has been credited with turning around dozens of companies, including well-known brands like Domino’s Pizza, but its record has been criticized _ notably by the Democratic National Committee _ for slashing jobs in the process.

Rick Tyler, a former Gingrich aide who is now working for Winning Our Future, said the full video would be posted online “soon.” Some segments could be used in shorter TV ads, he said, although there were no immediate plans to run the full piece on television.

Super PACs have sprouted up from a series of federal court rulings, including the Supreme Court’s Citizens United case in 2010 that stripped away restrictions on corporate and union spending in elections. The groups can’t coordinate directly with campaigns but many of them active in this election are staffed by longtime supporters of the candidates.

While some super PACs have to disclose their contributors’ names later this month, many will never be known. Some super PACs have established nonprofit arms that are permitted to shield contributors’ identities as long as they spend no more than 50 percent of their money on electoral politics low fee payday loans. Crossroads, the giant conservative outfit tied to former George W. Bush political adviser Karl Rove, operates both a super PAC, Crossroads GPS, and a nonprofit, American Crossroads.

Crossroads GPS and other Republican-leaning super PACs played a significant role in the 2010 midterm elections, helping deliver the House to the GOP and boost the number of Republicans in the Senate. The 2012 contest is the first to test the influence of such groups in presidential politics.

But no candidate has seen his fortunes affected by the emergence of super PACs more than Gingrich.

Riding high in polls just a month ago, he became the target of a $3 million advertising barrage sponsored by Restore Our Future, a super PAC supporting Mitt Romney run by several of the former Massachusetts governor’s allies. The ads, which pounded Gingrich for his ties to federal housing giant Freddie Mac and his reversal on issues such as climate change, sent his political fortunes plunging in Iowa.

Romney and Gingrich tangled over the role of super PACs in a nationally televised debate Sunday. Romney said he had not seen Restore Our Future’s ads but defended their content.

“Governor, I wish you would calmly and directly state it is your former staff running the PAC,” Gingrich said to Romney, warning his own allies would be on the air soon.

Gingrich has pledged to carry on and is hoping to resuscitate his campaign in South Carolina, which holds its primary Jan. 21. With Romney heavily favored to win the New Hampshire primary Tuesday, his rivals are looking to slow his momentum when the contest moves to the South.

Several super PACs have already played a role in the Republican campaign. They include Make Us Great Again, a super PAC backing Texas Gov. Rick Perry; Our Destiny, supporting former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman; and the Red White and Blue Fund, which helped revive Santorum’s campaign in Iowa and is running ads in South Carolina.

Priorities USA Action, a super PAC backing President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign, has spent modestly during the Republican nominating contest and is expected to step up its role in the general election.

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Gillum reported from Washington. Associated Press Writer Shannon McCaffrey in Atlanta contributed to this report.

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- Despite an upswing in hiring during 2011, the jobs crisis could last many more years as millions of Americans struggle to find work.

In Orlando, Florida, Brenda Solomon lost her retail job last May at a department store and was unable to find even temporary work during the holiday season.

“I’ve tried and tried and tried,” Solomon, 58, said on Friday while visiting a job center.

Earlier, the U.S. Labor department said employers added 200,000 jobs during December, many more than expected by Wall Street. In 2011 as a whole, 1.64 million jobs were created, well above the 940,000 in 2010 and the best showing since 2006.

But the amount of jobs in the economy is still about 6.1 million lower than before the brutal 2007-2009 recession. At December’s pace of gains, it would take about 2 1/2 years just to get back to pre-recession levels of employment.

That means many people will be in for an agonizing wait.

In December, 5.6 million of the nation’s unemployed had been out of work for at least six months, the Labor Department data showed, only slightly lower than the previous month.

Laquanda Carmichael has been without work for just over a year and has seen no improvement in the labor market.

“It’s been the same to me. I have a lot of discouraging days,” the 39 year-old former science teacher and hospital worker said.

“I’m looking for anything right now. Warehouse processing, hospitality, anything.”

While jobs creation certainly picked up in the United States during the end of the year, economists point out that even a gain of 200,000 underwhelms considering constant growth in the population and the still-high 8.5 percent unemployment rate.

Princeton University economist Paul Krugman said that at December’s pace it could take a decade for the labor market to recover from the recession.

In a back-of-the-envelope calculation, Krugman was considering that the country’s growing population adds at least 100,000 people to the workforce every month.

“We need much faster job growth,” he wrote on his blog. “It says something about how beaten down we are that this (jobs report for December) is considered good news.”

The unemployment numbers reflect a persistent difference between those with a higher education and those without - especially in certain sectors like engineering.

Nearly 90 percent of 2011 graduates from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts got jobs or attended graduate school - almost the same level as before 2008.

Jeanette Doyle, director of the school’s Career Development Center, said there was a 7 percent uptick in late 2011 in the number of companies at the school’s fall recruiting event, and 17 companies were on a wait list to get in.

For lower-paid Americans, the picture is very different.

Construction worker Richard White, also at the job center in Orlando, has not had steady work in the last three years, and gets by on occasional stints doing electrical work or carpentry.

In December, the construction industry added 17,000 jobs. But that sector, devastated by a burst housing bubble that helped trigger the last recession, has even farther to go than the rest of the economy before it can recover.

There were still almost a third fewer construction jobs in December than at the industry’s pre-recession peak in August 2006.

As for the December’s advance, White said: “I’m not seeing it.”

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Aubrey Dan is a Tony award-winning producer and president of the Dancap Group of Companies. In our series on the financial habits of notable Canadians Dan told the Toronto Star’s Emily Mathieu about his wise investment in water, his strategic approach to selling popcorn at his first job and how he convinced his dad to let him buy a motorcycle at 13.

How did your family influence your attitude toward money?

My family had a huge influence on my attitude toward money. They taught me I had to work very hard to earn every dollar, while at the same time to donate money as well. The more we make, the more we can afford to give away.

What is the best financial advice you ever received?

My grandfather told me to not waste my time investing in penny stocks as they are very speculative. Instead, I should invest my money into companies that people need, versus want they want. Companies that have a solid foundation where the demand (for their product or service) increases over time, therefore increasing the value.

Describe your first job, what did it teach you?

My first job was at the Exhibition Stadium with the Toronto Blue Jays. I became the No. 1 popcorn salesman because I had limited competition from the other sellers, and I would target customers between 1st and 3rd base, sitting near the home plate, as they were the most expensive seats and presumably had the most disposable income. I would shout out at the top of my lungs a sales message that created the demand for popcorn and encouraged people to buy from me.

What was the first item you purchased with your own money?

I bought a Yamaha 60cc motorcycle that cost me $200 when I was 13 years old. I had to do a real sales job to convince my dad that I should own one. Since I had my own money that I had earned from working, and he rode one when he was young, it was hard for him to disagree.

What has been your savviest investment?

Investing in a small water power generation business in Ontario. There were long-term supply agreements that guaranteed the revenue so all I had to do was focus on managing the operations efficiently and eventually I sold it for a handsome profit.

What is your best money-saving advice?

It’s very important to understand your own risk tolerance when investing in a company, while trying to control your downside protection. Don’t get greedy. Take money off the table once you have reached your targeted ROI expectation, even if there is further upside.

What is your worst spending habit?

I like going to the occasional Toronto Raptors game with my son, sitting in the press box beside the team bench as there is no better seat to see the game. I pay an insane amount for this luxury, but I value the premium location.

What hard financial lessons did you learn throughout your career?

I could write a book on the lessons that I’ve learned, but the one that sticks out the most is knowing when to stop investing in a company and calling it quits if it has stopped making money after a period of time. This is emotionally hard to do as one can look at it as a failure, but in fact it can be a very smart move.

What advice would you give to young people about to enter the business of entertainment?

Make sure that you can afford to lose the money that you invest; the entertainment business is one of the riskiest businesses. It takes more than hard work and good luck to be successful.

How do you prefer to pay, cash, card or debit?

I prefer to pay by credit card as I collect all the points that I use for my FREE travel, but I always pay off the balance at the end of the month, as I hate to be in debt.

Do you bank online?

Yes, I use online banking extensively so I can manage my funds effectively anywhere in the world.

What is your retirement plan?

Retirement is a word that is not in my vocabulary. I don’t ever see myself not working in some capacity. My Dad is 83 years old and he’s still a going concern who has yet to really slow down. Since I come from the same gene pool, I don’t see anything different for my future.

Are money and success the same thing?

Money is a tool that can be used to achieve your goals and dreams, but it’s not the end game. It’s what you do with money that makes you successful. To me the definition of success is how you can help the world by giving back as much money as possible, while building for the next generation.

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Workers at Chrysler’s largest United Auto Workers local have voted in favor of a new four-year contract, a sign that the deal will be approved when voting ends next week.

If Chrysler’s 26,000 union workers ratify their contract, they will join workers at Ford and General Motors in approving deals that give up annual pay raises for most workers but replace them with profit sharing and signing bonuses. The deals also promise at least 13,000 new union jobs at all three companies.

Wednesday’s announcement of the vote by union workers at three Chrysler facilities in Indiana comes on the same day that the United Auto Workers said union members had approved a new contract at Ford Motor Co., with 63 percent of those casting ballots in favor. General Motors Co. workers ratified their deal last month.

The contracts set the wages and benefits for 112,000 auto workers nationwide, and also influence the pay at auto plants owned by foreign companies, auto parts supply companies and other industries.

United Auto Workers Local 685, which represents about 3,500 workers at three Chrysler transmission factories in Kokomo, Ind., approved the contract in voting on Tuesday, said Jerry Price, vice president of the local.

He said that 58 percent of production workers voted in favor of the contract, while skilled trades workers such as electricians and pipe fitters split 50-50. Since most of the local’s 3,500 members are production workers, Price said the vote is a good sign that the contract will be ratified by the time voting ends next week.

He conceded that the contract isn’t the best of the Detroit Three automakers and said those who opposed it were unhappy that GM and Ford workers got better signing bonuses.

“Chrysler’s still not financially as good as Ford or General Motors,” Price said. “We live to fight another day.”

The Kokomo local was among the first in the company to count ballots. Voting is expected to end next Tuesday.

The Chrysler deal includes a $3,500 signing bonus and profit-sharing, but it’s not as rich as the contracts at Ford and GM. Ford’s signing bonus, for instance, is $6,000, while GM’s is $5,000. Chrysler Group LLC has yet to make a full-year profit since it emerged from bankruptcy protection in 2009, while GM and Ford have each made billions.

Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne, who also runs Italy’s Fiat SpA, said Wednesday in Turin, Italy, that he is confident the deal will be approved by the UAW even though it doesn’t give workers as much as the company’s Detroit competitors.

“I think the UAW and ourselves hammered out the best possible deal that we could. We know the limitations,” Marchionne told reporters.

If the deal is rejected, it would go to an arbitrator, who would hold a hearing and decide what the workers will get. Workers at Chrysler cannot strike over wages under the terms of the company’s 2009 government bailout.

Chrysler hasn’t made an annual profit since 2005. The company earned $116 million in the first quarter, its first quarterly net profit in five years. But it lost $370 million in the second quarter, mostly because of charges for refinancing debt.

Chrysler expects to earn $200 million to $500 million this year, excluding the debt charges. But the profit is tiny compared with its Detroit rivals. Ford reported a profit of $6.6 billion last year, while GM earned $4.7 billion.

The Chrysler deal promises up to 2,100 new jobs and investment of $4.5 billion in U.S. factories.

At Ford, workers overcame early opposition and overwhelmingly approved their contract in voting that lasted two weeks.

More than 22,000 workers, or 63 percent of those who cast ballots, voted in favor of the pact, while almost 13,000, or 37 percent, opposed it, the union said in a statement Wednesday.

Ford promised $4.8 billion in new investments in its U.S. plants and 5,750 new jobs. Both sides reached agreement on Oct. 4, but like the other two companies, workers had to ratify it with a majority vote.

Most workers won’t get annual raises, but they will get profit-sharing checks, inflation adjustment payments and other bonuses worth at least $16,700 through 2015. The deal at GM was similar.

The vote ends the threat of a strike at Ford, the only company where the union could stage a walkout. Strikes over wages also were banned at GM as part of its government bailout. Ford borrowed billions from private sources and didn’t take government money.

UAW Vice President Jimmy Settles, the union’s top Ford negotiator, said in a statement that workers at Ford were frustrated with the economy, a lack of pay increases and what he called “outrageous” executive pay packages, yet they still approved the pact. Eighty-five percent of the union’s 41,000 members at Ford voted, he said.

“As the nation’s economy remains stalled and uncertain and its employment rate stagnates, we were able to win an agreement with Ford that will bring auto manufacturing jobs back to the United States from China, Mexico and Japan,” union President Bob King said.

The company said the deal means it will add shifts at four U.S. factories: Michigan Assembly in Wayne, Mich., near Detroit, where the Focus compact is made; the Chicago Assembly Plant, where Ford makes the Taurus sedan and Explorer SUV; Louisville Assembly in Kentucky, where Ford will make the new Escape small SUV; and the Auto Alliance plant in Flat Rock, Mich., which will get additional production of the Fusion midsize car.

The company also will move production of medium-duty trucks from a joint venture with Navistar International Corp. in General Escobedo, Mexico, to an assembly plant in Avon Lake, Ohio, near Cleveland. That plant now makes E-Series large van.

The fate of the Ford contract was in doubt early when workers in Wayne, Mich., and Chicago voted to reject it. The deal was losing by a narrow margin until Friday, but several factories voted overwhelmingly in favor to tip it toward passage.

“Our agreement is fair to our employees and it improves our competitiveness in the U.S.,” Mark Fields, Ford’s president of The Americas, said in a statement.

Despite the signing bonuses and profit-sharing, analysts expect a minimal impact to Ford’s labor costs, in part because most of the new workers will be hired at lower wage rates than the company’s longtime workers. Brian Johnson, an auto analyst with Barclays Capital, estimates the contract will add around $70 million to Ford’s costs each year. If large numbers of older workers leave under buyout and early retirement offers, Ford will spend less, he said.

Johnson said Ford could see immediate benefits from the union approval with a ratings upgrade, which would help lower its borrowing costs.

Shares of Ford rose 6 cents to $11.84 in afternoon trading Wednesday.

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The conspiracy involved enlisting star-studded bait in an exotic locale for a high-stakes job.

Heidi Fleiss, the infamous “Hollywood Madam,” sat among the fountains at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas, pleading for a woman she didn’t know to help trap a man almost everybody in St. Louis knew.

The target: Ray Vinson, the homespun mortgage salesman whose twangy rendition of the “99-99″ suffix on his American Equity Mortgage phone number made him a staple of St. Louis radio and TV advertising.

The point: Vinson was embroiled in a nasty, high-stakes divorce, with tens of millions of dollars hanging on the decision of a St. Louis County judge.

The plan: To coax Pamela Brensinger, a former exotic dancer, to claim that she had an affair with Vinson and that he was a dangerous, abusive boyfriend.

The problem: Brensinger didn’t remember anyone named Ray Vinson.

The intrigue that September day in 2005 ran deep. Unknown to Fleiss, Brensinger’s husband, a driver for a Las Vegas escort service, sat at a nearby table, surreptitiously listening in. Unknown to Brensinger and her husband, private detectives who hired Fleiss were nearby.

Those detectives were working with Joe Adams, a flamboyant private eye from St. Louis who was the bodyguard of Vinson’s estranged wife, Deanna Daughhetee.

Court records show that Adams enlisted Fleiss after Brensinger refused entreaties from other investigators. They presumed that a dancer couldn’t turn down Fleiss. And Brensinger didn’t.

In 2006, Daughhetee walked out of the courthouse in Clayton with the lion’s share of American Equity Mortgage. Later that year, she married Adams, whose vanity license plates once read “BYE RAY.”

They may have been done with Vinson, but he was not done with them. He filed a lawsuit in Las Vegas, claiming Adams, Brensinger and others had conspired to discredit him with a fabric of lies. The case plodded through the court system for the last few years.

Finally, two months ago, a jury

The eurozone needs a “quantum” leap toward economic integration, the incoming chief of the European Central Bank said Monday, as the bond yields of countries with shaky finances, like Greece and Italy, jumped amid increased investor tensions.

Mario Draghi told a conference in Paris that among the common currency’s problems is a lack of coordinated fiscal policies and that the solution was more integration.

He dismissed the idea of eurobonds _ debt issued jointly by the eurozone countries. Some have argued this would help weaker countries borrow more easily because they wouldn’t have to pay such high interest rates, which in turn make their debts bigger. But stable countries like Germany would likely see their rates rise.

Instead, Draghi suggested the eurozone should adopt rules that would require more budget discipline. There is already a proposal that would require all eurozone countries to balance their budgets. Profligate spending during boom times funded by cheap debt is one of the root causes of the current crisis.

Market tensions increased on Monday in Europe, both due to worries about some countries debt problems and a global financial sell-off triggered by concerns that the U.S. economy may slip back into recession.

The difference in interest rates between the Greek and benchmark German 10-year bonds, known as the spread, spiraled to new records on Monday, topping 17.3 percentage points. Yields on the Greek bonds were above 18 percent.

High yields means borrowing is more expensive for Greece, making it even harder to reduce its debt load.

In fact, its yields are so high that Greece has been relying since last year on funds from a euro110 billion ($157 billion) package of bailout loans from other European Union countries and the International Monetary Fund. On July 21, European leaders agreed on a second bailout, worth an additional euro109 billion.

Italy’s own 10-year bond yields jumped to 5.45 percent amid signs that the government in Rome is wavering in its commitment to enforce its austerity program.

ECB chief Jean-Claude Trichet in recent days has called on Silvio Berlusconi’s government to push through with the deficit-cutting measures promised in August.

Italy’s stability is of particular concern because it would be too expensive to rescue for the eurozone. In an effort to steady the yields, the ECB has been buying Italian and Spanish bonds in recent weeks, driving down the interest rates.

Draghi indicated that such makeshift measures would continue, including making sure the European Financial Stability Facility _ the eurozone’s bailout fund _ takes over the bond purchases and has enough cash in it.

But, he added, that’s not a permanent solution.

“The crisis starts from the incompleteness of the European construction,” he said, and important reforms need to be made to solve it. “Overall, the aim of this effort should be a quantum step up in European economic integration.”

Draghi’s remarks echoed those made by his predecessor, the current ECB chief, who spoke at the same conference.

Trichet said that the debt crisis had revealed the weaknesses of the eurozone and that one solution would be to eventually create a central finance ministry for the continent.

He noted that one of the hallmarks of the crisis has been that while the eurozone economies are linked by their common currency, each country creates its own budget. That will need to change, he said.

“In the future, we can imagine a confederation … with a minister of finance with responsibilities including the regulation of the solvency of the eurozone,” he said.

In the heyday of the boom, several European countries allowed their budgets to run larger deficits than the rules allowed. Countries like Greece and Portugal eventually came close to bankruptcy and were saved only by international rescue packages.

New legislation that would give budget rules more teeth has been floundering for months as the European Parliament and EU member states have failed to agree on more automatic sanctions.

Trichet called Monday for those rules to be strengthened further. He has said in the past that even the new legislation is not strong enough for the 17 euro countries, since states could still override penalties for overspenders.

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WASHINGTON

Shares of real estate website Zillow have more than doubled in their trading debut Wednesday.

It’s the latest Internet company to climb sharply in its first day of trading following strong openings from jobs networking site LinkedIn, music service Pandora and Russian search engine Yandex _ although Pandora is almost unchanged from its first-day close, and Yandex trades lower than it did on the end of its first day.

Zillow, founded in 2004, provides online listings for more than 100 million homes for sale and rent. The portal’s “Zestimate” helps estimate property values.

Investors are bidding up Zillow Inc. stock, even though the Seattle company has never posted an annual profit.

Zillow priced shares for $20 per share late Tuesday, $2 more than the top of the range it had predicted Friday free credit score online.

In midday trading Wednesday, Zillow had risen to $38.80 after trading as high as $60 earlier in the session. That means that the value of the company has dropped from more than $1.6 billion to about $1 billion since trading began.

Including a private stock sale of 275,000 shares, Zillow raised $74.7 million. It has no specific plans for the funds, saying only that it will use them for general corporate purposes.

The stock is trading under the symbol “Z” on the Nasdaq exchange.

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