Money world

The leaders of Germany and France called Monday for a new European Union treaty to restore confidence in the euro currency and to ensure that the region’s debt crisis never happens again.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said after a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel that they would prefer a treaty agreed by all 27 members of the European Union but would also accept a treaty among just the 17 countries that use the euro.

The new treaty should include automatic sanctions for countries that violate rules meant to keep government deficits in check.

Investors cheered the two leaders’ comments, with the euro and stocks rising and bond yields dropping.

The meeting comes at the start of a crucial week for the eurozone, as it struggles to convince markets that it is able to solve its debt crisis.

Sarkozy said a jointly issued bond by all the countries that use the euro is not the solution to the continent’s debt crisis.

Many analysts have said that only by issuing bonds backed by the whole eurozone will Europe be able to save its shared currency.

Stronger countries, like Germany and France, have resisted those calls, but some thought that as the crisis worsens they might be forced to relent. Sarkozy reiterated Monday, however, that a common bond was “in no way” the solution to the crisis.

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Stock indexes fell in afternoon trading Thursday as spiking bond yields in Spain brought new worries Europe’s debt crisis and overshadowed the latest signs of growth in the U.S. economy.

Technology stocks led the market lower after two companies disappointed investors with weaker earnings predictions. NetApp Inc. plunged 12 percent, the most in the S&P 500 index, after the data storage company forecast earnings that were below Wall Street’s estimates.

Applied Materials Inc. also said its earnings for the current quarter would be weaker than analysts’ forecasts. The company’s income fell 3 percent last quarter on lower demand fell for the semiconductor equipment it makes.

The Dow Jones industrial average dropped 159 points to 11,746 as of 1 p.m. Eastern time. It had wavered between gains and losses earlier in the day. Cisco Systems Inc. had the largest fall of the 30 stocks in the Dow, 2.7 percent. Intel Corp. dropped 2.4 percent.

In Spain, an auction of 10-year government bonds left the country paying interest rates of nearly 7 percent. That’s the highest rate since 1997 and a level that economists see as unsustainable. Greece and Ireland received rescue loans from the European Union after their bond yields jumped above the same level.

Spain has much more debt than either Greece or Ireland, which would make it difficult for other countries to rescue. Like Italy, whose main borrowing rate also spiked above 7 percent in the last week, the country is burdened with high debts and slow growth.

Concerns about Europe’s debt crisis contrasted with better economic reports in the U.S. The number of people seeking unemployment benefits last week fell to the lowest level in 7 months, a sign layoffs are easing.

“The economic data in the U.S. has been improving,” said Michael Sheldon, chief market strategist at RDM Financial in Westport, Conn. “If it weren’t for Europe, I think equity markets would be doing much better right now.”

The Spanish bond auction came a day after Fitch Ratings warned that major U.S. banks could be “greatly affected” if Europe’s debt crisis continues to spread beyond the financially troubled Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Italy and Spain.

Building permits jumped 10.9 percent, much higher than economists expected. That’s another sign that the U.S. may not be headed for another recession.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 index lost 21, or 1.8 percent, to 1,214. The Nasdaq composite slid 57, or 2.1 percent, to 2,582.

In corporate news:

_ Consumer review site Angie’s List soared 21 percent on the company’s first day of trading. Angie’s List Inc., which runs reviews of veterinarians, plumbers and other local services, priced its initial public offering of 8.8 million shares at $13 late Wednesday.

_ Sears Holdings Corp. fell 4.6 percent after its third-quarter results missed Wall Street’s expectations. The retailer’s sales were dragged down by declining consumer electronics sales and softer sales at its Kmart stores.

_ J.M. Smucker Co. lost 2.4 percent after reporting that rising costs for ingredients were cutting into profits.

_ Boeing Co. slipped 1 percent after the market turned lower in the afternoon. The company had traded higher after announcing its largest commercial airplane order. Lion Air, a private carrier in Indonesia, ordered a total of 230 airplanes at a list price of $21.7 billion.

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The American economy added 80,000 jobs in October, and job growth in the two previous months was much stronger than first thought, an encouraging sign as the nation searches for a way out of the jobs crisis.

The unemployment rate dropped to 9 percent from 9.1 percent, the first time it has fallen since July and the lowest rate since April, the government said Friday.

“Those are pretty good signs,” said Michael Hanson, senior economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. “We’re hanging in there.”

Economists surveyed by FactSet, a provider of financial data, had expected a gain of 100,000 jobs. It takes a gain of about 125,000 jobs a month to keep up with population growth, more to bring down the unemployment rate.

The private sector added 104,000 jobs for the month.

The overall jobs figure was the smallest in four months. Still, there were smaller, more encouraging signs in the government’s monthly snapshot of unemployment, one of the most closely watched economic reports.

The Labor Department said the economy added 102,000 more jobs in August and September than first thought. And the ranks of the long-term unemployed, people out of a job for at least six months, fell sharply to 5.9 million.

Those signs further ease fears of a new recession, which had loomed over the economy this past summer. Europe is wrestling with a debt crisis, however, and even if it dodges catastrophe, a recession there would be a drag on the U.S. economy.

The job market turned consistently negative in February 2008. The nation lost jobs for 25 months in a row _ almost 8.8 million of them in all. Since then, the economy has only recovered 2.3 million jobs.

The unemployment rate has hovered around 9 percent for more than two years, and the Federal Reserve said this week that it will is not expected to fall significantly through the end of next year.

That means President Barack Obama will almost certainly go before voters next November seeking a second term with the highest unemployment of any sitting president since World War II.

Obama, appearing at the G-20 economic summit in Cannes, France, said the U.S. economy is growing “way too slow.” He repeated his call for Republicans in Congress to pass his $447 billion jobs bill, a mix of tax cuts and spending on roads and rail lines.

“There’s no excuse for inaction,” the president said.

Republicans in the Senate on Thursday defeated the infrastructure portion of Obama’s proposal. GOP lawmakers opposed the bill’s tax surcharge on the wealthy and the additional spending.

Republicans laid blame on Obama and Democrats in Congress.

“At virtually every step of the way, President Obama and Democrats have increased uncertainty,” said Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas. “This has discouraged businesses from making new investments.”

Hiring last month was broad. Professional and business services, which includes the accounting, engineering, and temporary help industries, added 32,000 jobs. Hotels, restaurants, and entertainment companies added 22,000. Health care added 12,000.

The construction sector cut 20,000 jobs for the month, the most since January. That industry is examined closely because a pickup in the housing market could add force to the economic recovery.

Government, meanwhile, cut 24,000 jobs. That’s unusual for an economic recovery, when state, local and federal governments typically hire workers.

The number of discouraged workers _ those who have given up looking for work and are no longer counted as unemployed, fell. And fewer people with part-time jobs were looking for full-time work.

“Overall, while this report is not good enough, several key numbers are now moving in the right direction,” Ian Shepherdson, an economist at High Frequency told clients. “The odds of significantly better employment reports over the next few months seem to be improving.”

The economy grew at an annual rate of 2.5 percent in July, August and September, its best performance in a year. In the first half of this year, the economy expanded at the slowest pace since the Great Recession ended in June 2009.

The stronger economy over the summer was powered by consumer spending, which grew three times as fast as it had this spring. Americans spent more even in the face of fears of a new recession and wild gyrations in the stock market.

Still, companies appear to be waiting for customer demand to pick up even more before they hire again in great numbers. They learned during and after the recession to live with fewer employees.

Worker productivity rose from July through September by the most in a year and a half. More productivity is usually good because companies pay workers more without raising prices. But workers generally are not getting raises this time.

The Federal Reserve this week lowered its forecast from economic growth to 1.7 percent for this year, down from a forecast of 2.7 percent issued over the summer. It also says unemployment will not come down substantially through the end of 2012.

The economy has absorbed a series of body blows this year.

In the spring, the devastating earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan disrupted supplies of cars and other products. The price of gas rose to a national average of almost $4 a gallon.

Then this summer, Washington was seized by gridlock over whether to raise the borrowing limit for the federal government and how best to tackle the nation’s long-term debt problem.

More recently, economists have fretted over a debt crisis in Europe. That continent buys 20 percent of American exports, so a slowdown there would take a bite out of the U.S. economy, too.

The Greek prime minister this week called for a surprise popular vote on a European plan to bail out the debt-addled Greek economy. He later backed down, but even if Greece is stabilized, other European economies are weighed down by debt.

President Barack Obama’s health care law created a $5 billion fund to shore up coverage for early retirees, and some of that money is flowing to places you might not expect.

Two Texas public employee programs are among the top 25 recipients of the federal subsidy despite Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s opposition to the law Republicans derisively call “Obamacare.”

And records show the Huntsman family business, where GOP presidential candidate Jon Huntsman sharpened his executive skills, received about $1 million.

It highlights the gap between dire Republican rhetoric about the health care overhaul and the pragmatic impulse to cash in on a new government benefit.

Employer-sponsored health insurance for retirees has been shriveling for years, ever since companies were required to report the estimated liability to investors. Democrats who wrote the new law wanted to provide an incentive for employers to keep offering coverage. Only about 6 percent of private companies currently offer such a benefit for early retirees, according to the nonpartisan Employee Benefit Research Institute.

But that still works out to more than 400,000 companies. Add state and local government agencies, as well as union plans, and the number swells. Indeed, the Obama administration’s subsidy program got so many applications it stopped accepting new ones after approving more than 6,000. The program pays 80 percent of the claims amount for early retirees ages 55 to 64 whose care costs between $15,000 and $90,000.

The top beneficiary: the United Auto Workers retiree medical plan, which has collected more than $220 million.

“Some people have described this program as `Cash for Clunkers,’ in the sense that if you want it, you have to get in line first,” said Paul Fronstin, an economist with the research group. “There was a lot of advice given to be first in line.” The original Cash for Clunkers was an Obama administration program that paid people to trade in gas guzzlers for more fuel-efficient transportation. It created a marketing sensation before running out of cash.

Texas, it seems, heeded the advice. So did Huntsman International.

The Teacher Retirement System of Texas, a statewide system for public education employees, received more than $70 million as of Sept. 22, according to the federal Health and Human Services Department. The Employees Retirement System of Texas, which covers state employees, received about $30 million.

Huntsman International, the main operating subsidiary of the family-founded chemical conglomerate, is also collecting subsidies.

As candidates, both Perry and Huntsman have sworn to repeal Obama’s signature health care law, which gradually extends coverage to most of the uninsured and makes numerous other changes, including a ban on insurers denying coverage to people in poor health and an unpopular requirement that most Americans carry coverage quick cash.

Spokesmen for the Perry and Huntsman campaigns said they see no contradictions.

Texas taxpayers also pay federal taxes, said Perry spokesman Ray Sullivan. “State taxpayers have a right to get those federal funds returned to them, in this care in the form of disbursement to the teachers and state employee retirement systems,” said Sullivan. “No Texas law or policy needed to be changed in order for these agencies to be eligible to receive the funds.”

Huntsman spokesman Tim Miller said his candidate, Obama’s first ambassador to China and a former governor of Utah, is opposed to all subsidies.

Jon Huntsman has not been involved in the family business since 2005, said company spokesman Gary Chapman. Huntsman resigned from the company to pursue his political career.

Asked why Huntsman International applied for the early retiree subsidy, Chapman responded: “We’re a commercial organization. We are looking to maximize our shareholders’ value. If there was a legitimate opportunity for us to get help in this respect, we would go for it.”

Republicans have tried to paint the early retiree subsidy program as a political reward to unions, among the staunchest Democratic loyalists. According to calculations by the office of Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., the United Auto Workers Retiree Medical Benefits Trust has made out the best.

A UAW spokeswoman did not respond to requests for comment. In its 2007 contracts with Chrysler, GM and Ford, the union agreed to form the trust to pay health care costs for the companies’ retirees, including early retirees too young to qualify for Medicare. The trust started paying bills in January 2010, before Congress passed the health care law.

The calculations by Enzi’s staff also list AT&T, Verizon, General Electric, General Motors, Qwest, Caterpillar and other private companies in the top 25, not to mention the two Texas state programs. AT&T received $157 million.

Several media companies are also benefiting. The Associated Press, a nonprofit news-gathering service owned by the nation’s newspapers, has received $191,888.

Back in Texas, public and private employer retiree plans have collected more than $326 million from the subsidy. They range from American Airlines to Texas A&M University _ Perry’s alma mater.

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BlackBerry’s maker says smartphone users in Latin America and India also are experiencing problems with messaging and browsing services.

Research in Motion Ltd. said Tuesday users in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, India, Brazil, Chile, and Argentina are affected.

The brief statement follows an online uproar as BlackBerry users experienced a second day of disruptions after an unexplained glitch cut off Internet and messaging services Monday for large numbers of users in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

There were no reports of any problems in the U.S.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.

LONDON (AP) _ BlackBerry users across Europe, the Middle East and Africa were hit with service disruptions to their smartphones for a second day after an unexplained glitch cut off Internet and messaging services for large numbers of users around the world.

Research in Motion Ltd., which makes BlackBerry devices, acknowledged there were ongoing issues Tuesday, hours after it said services were operating normally and the issue responsible for delays in subscriber services a day earlier had been resolved.

“Some areas have messaging delays and impaired browsing,” Blackberry said on Twitter, adding it was working to “restore normal service as quickly as possible online payday advance.”

In Britain, Vodafone UK told customers via Twitter that service was not fully restored. Rival T-Mobile UK blamed “a European-wide outage on the BlackBerry network” which it said was affecting all mobile operators. There were also reports of problems elsewhere in Europe, such as Spain.

The disruptions were also felt in the Middle East and Africa.

Etisalat, which operates in the United Arab Emirates, apologized for “the further interruption” to Blackberry services, “once again due to RIM problems.”

And Kenya’s Safaricom Ltd. said on Twitter that its Blackberry customers were experiencing a “technical fault,” while South Africa’s Vodacom told subscribers the issues were affecting multiple networks and countries.

There were no reports of any problems in the U.S.

Angry smartphone users also used Twitter to vent frustration with the company and bemoaned the loss of their messaging capabilities, questioning why the company took so long to restore services.

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Asian stock markets were mixed Monday after a weekend meeting of the leaders of France and Germany provided a promise of action on Europe’s debt crisis but few details.

Oil prices hovered above $83 per barrel while the dollar slipped against the euro and the yen.

On Sunday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy said a comprehensive response to the debt crisis would be finalized by the end of the month, including a detailed plan to ensure European banks have adequate capital. Few other details were provided.

The market reaction in Asia was lukewarm. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng fell 0.7 percent to 17,589.15. But South Korea’s Kospi rose 0.7 percent to 1,771.29 and Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 gained 0.5 percent to 4,184.40.

Benchmarks in mainland China, New Zealand and the Philippines were lower. Singapore’s FTSE Straits Times Index rose. Markets in Japan were closed for a national holiday.

“Discussions over the weekend between German Chancellor Merkel and French President Sarkozy delivered little in substance,” Credit Agricole CIB said in a research note.

“In the meantime, markets may give eurozone officials the benefit of the doubt, but patience will run thin if no progress is made on these fronts,” it said.

Analysts have urged European officials to identify all the banks in the region that need to replenish their capital reserves, then decide whether to compel them to raise that money from markets and to provide government financing to the ones that can’t unsecured personal loans.

Many experts say the capital cushions of many European banks must be strengthened in order to withstand a possible government bond default by Greece.

Chinese real estate shares fell after a weekend report by a research firm that housing prices in 100 cities declined in September for the first time this year following repeated interest rate hikes and other government efforts to cool an overheated economy.

Hong Kong-listed China Overseas Land & Investment Ltd. lost 5.1 percent. China Resources Land Ltd. fell 5.2 percent. China Vanke Co. dropped 3.3 percent.

Meanwhile, energy shares rose on the back of stabilizing oil and gold prices. Australia’s Woodside Petroleum gained 1.3 percent and Energy Resources of Australia gained 4.3 percent.

The euro rose to $1.3449 from $1.3388 in late trading Friday in New York. The dollar weakened to 76.74 yen from 76.82 yen.

In energy trading, benchmark crude for November delivery was up 67 cents to $83.65 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract climbed 39 cents to end Friday at $82.98 a barrel in New York.

Brent crude was up 16 cents at $106.04 a barrel on the ICE Futures Exchange in London.

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Stock futures rose sharply Thursday after applications for unemployment benefits fell to a five-month low. The government also reported that the economy grew slightly faster in the spring than previously reported.

Initial unemployment claims fell to a seasonally adjusted 391,000. That’s the lowest level since April 2 and also the first time applications have fallen below 400,000 since Aug. 6. The big drop suggests that layoffs are stabilizing. Still, economists say unemployment requests need to consistently fall below 375,000 to indicate job growth.

The Commerce Department also said that the economy grew at a 1.3 percent annual rate in the April-June quarter, up from the 1 percent estimate made a month ago. The improvement reflects modest growth in consumer spending and trade.

Both reports gave investors some confidence about the strength of the economy.

“The economy in the rear-view mirror here … was growing at a pretty modest pace; not anywhere near what anyone would like, but not troublesome,” said Rob Lutts, president and chief investment officer of Cabot Money Management. “This gives us a little more confidence that maybe the economy will muddle through here as we go through all these challenges.”

About a half hour before the opening bell, Dow Jones industrial average futures are up 137 points, or 1.3 percent, at 11,113.

Standard & Poor’s 500 futures are up 15, or 1.3 percent, at 1,163. Nasdaq 100 futures are up 35, or 1.6 percent, at 2,253.

In Europe, German lawmakers voted to expand the powers of the region’s bailout fund quick guaranteed personal loans. That reassured investors that Europe is working to contain its debt problems.

The measure needs to be approved by all 17 countries that use the euro before it can take effect. It will allow the bailout fund to buy government bonds and lend money to troubled governments before they get to a full-blown crisis. Finland approved it on Wednesday.

Concerns about Europe have roiled the financial markets since late July. Analysts say investors are reacting to every bit of news from the region, which has contributed to volatility in stocks.

Case in point: Stocks rose earlier this week on hopes that Europe was moving closer to resolving its debt problems. The Dow soared 272 points on Monday, its fourth-largest increase this year, and another 147 points on Tuesday. By Wednesday, a three-day winning streak came to an end on more uncertainties about Europe’s debt. The Dow fell 180 points.

In corporate news, Advanced Micro Devices Inc. fell 9 percent in premarket trading Thursday after the company cut its revenue and earnings forecast for the third quarter, saying it was having problems getting its chips made.

Wheel and tire maker Titan International rose 3 percent ahead of the opening. The company boosted its revenue forecast for the year and said it is in a “great position to grow.”

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It may almost be time to start hyperventilating.

American Girl, the retailer that has a cult-like following among little girls, is proposing to put a store at Chesterfield Mall. In the words of a tween: OMG!

I have never set foot inside an American Girl store. But my colleagues have regaled me over the years with tales of taking their mesmerized daughters to the company’s flagship store in Chicago. In the store, you can dress up and accessorize the dolls, take them to a hair salon, and have tea parties with them. And that’s just the highlight reel.

So when I told my co-workers on Friday about the proposed store, one of them screamed in delight. But another groaned and said her daughter’s head was going to explode.

“In fact, mine just did,” she said, adding that she enjoys visiting the store, but is not so happy with how much poorer she is by the time she drags her can-we-stay-just-a-little-bit-longer daughter out of it.

An American Girl spokeswoman was quick to note that the retailer hasn’t signed a lease yet.

“Nothing is official or final,” Susan Jevens, the spokeswoman, wrote in an email.

But the retailer has submitted detailed plans to the city of Chesterfield to develop the former Wapango space at the mall into a 10,850-square-foot store.

The submitted architectural renderings, which include a candy apple red facade and pink awnings, makes the store seem more than just a pipe dream.

The proposed development goes before the city’s planning commission on Monday night. The next step will be getting a building permit, said Aimee Nassif, Chesterfield’s planning and development director.

American Girl has been slowly expanding in recent years. It opened its first store in Chicago in 1998 and later opened two more flagship stores

Alarmed by dismal economic conditions around the world, Toronto economist David Rosenberg asserts that “it’s time to start calling this for what it is: A modern day depression.”

Rosenberg made his reputation as a globally esteemed economist in New York as one of the top economic forecasters at Merrill Lynch & Co. When the Toronto money management firm Gluskin Sheff recruited Rosenberg home to his native Canada to continue his sage analysis from a slightly more Canadian perspective, I regarded this as a public service.

When someone of Rosenberg’s stature, even discounting his characteristic bearish sentiment, starts using the D-word, one can assume it will start popping up in the reports of securities analysts and macroeconomists worldwide.

There’s no question we’re in a world of hurt, from which Canada is not isolated.

Jim Flaherty, the federal finance minister, tried to slap down Peggy Nash, the NDP finance critic, in the Commons earlier this week by accusing her of “badmouthing” the economy. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) had just downgraded its forecasts of Canadian GDP growth — from 2.8 per cent this year to only 2.1; and to a mere 1.9 per cent next year from an earlier forecast of 2.6 per cent.

If Nash is badmouthing the economy, then so are the IMF and David Rosenberg. Spitting on the messengers doesn’t change the fact that for the almost 1.4 million Canadians who are unemployed, we are indeed in a depression. And that about one million children in this country are living in poverty.

Our jobless rate, at 7.3 per cent, remains higher than the 6.0 per cent of October 2008, when the Great Recession began. And Canadian household debt is at near-record levels, as the income of middle- and working-class Canadians has continued its 30-year stagnation.

The U.S. and Europe, markets we rely on for export revenue, are in economic crisis.

Yet for all that, we are not in a depression, nor bound for one. Not remotely.

Put aside that the same IMF report that downgraded our GDP growth also forecast that it will continue to outpace our G7 peers over the next two years. And that Flaherty remains convinced GDP growth will be strong enough to enable him to keep his pledge to eradicate the last of the deficit accumulated in 2009-10 within three to four years.

The crippling North American jobless rate during the Depression ranged from 17 to 28 per cent. It was much higher in the hardest-hit regions like Appalachia and in “Dust Bowl” communities where family farms perished by the thousands.

Not until 1954 did the stock markets recover to their previous peak at the time of the Crash of ’29 — a span of a quarter century.

Today’s stock market, despite a slide over the summer, is trading at 2000 levels — not shabby given the epic global financial meltdown of 2008-09. U.S. banks failed by the thousands in the Depression. Today’s U.S. banks are sitting on about $2 trillion in idle reserves they refuse to lend until they’re absolutely certain that the meltdown will have no second act.

Similarly, corporate profits have soared, recovering to record levels in many industrial sectors. And perhaps most important is the absence of Depression-era trade wars, regarded by most economic historians as the chief cause of the Depression’s depth and duration.

There was, of course, no elaborate social safety net in place during the Depression, an unprecedented failure of cowboy capitalism that caused us to bring about those protections.

If you look beyond the admittedly discouraging conditions of the moment, you can see the European powers — chiefly all-important Germany — overcoming their reservations about reinventing the eurozone, to resolve that crisis and emerge with a far stronger common currency zone than they first conceived only 12 years ago.

And concern about the so far “jobless recovery” has lately pulled governments in Canada, the U.S. and Britain away from their sole obsession — as recently as a few months ago — with balancing the books.

The Depression was wholly different. In 1932, the Saturday Evening Post asked John Maynard Keynes, the great British economist, if the Depression had any precedent. “Yes,’ he replied. ‘It was called the Dark Ages, and it lasted four hundred years.”

It’s hubris to say a Depression could never happen again. Yet in these troubled times, we are dealing mostly with familiar problems, to which there are solutions that have reliably worked in the past.

We are, it’s true, in the grips of economic malaise. And the lack of urgency in curing us of it is a temptation to strong words. But since the crisis is more political than economic, better that we hold to account the powers that be and not go into rhetorical overdrive about the conditions themselves.

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Consumers spent less on autos, clothing and furniture, leaving retail sales unchanged in August. The lack of growth in retail sales during a month of wild stock market fluctuations may increase recession fears.

The Commerce Department says retail sales showed no growth in August and demand in July was weaker than first thought.

Auto sales fell 0.3 percent. Sales at clothing stores declined 0.7 percent. Gasoline sales rose.

The flat reading in August was a surprise given reports from retailers that back-to-school shopping and auto sales were strong during the month compared to a year ago.

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