Finance Blog number 1

U.S. stock futures are rising sharply ahead of a meeting of the European Central Bank that could provide solutions to Europe’s debt crisis.

Investors expect that officials at the European Central Bank will announce plans to provide support to the region’s struggling banks.

In the U.S., investors will be looking toward a report on first-time applications for unemployment benefits last week.

Shares of Apple Inc. fell 1 percent in premarket trading. The company says co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs died Wednesday.

Two hours before the opening bell, Dow futures rose 115 points, or 1.1 percent, to 10,953. S&P 500 futures rose 12, or 1 percent, to 1,147. Nasdaq 100 futures gained 16, or 0.7 percent, to 2,183.

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NEW YORK, N.Y.

As the prospect of a disastrous debt default hung over Greece, the government faced more strikes and protests against its new austerity measures needed to appease the country’s rescue creditors.

Athens commuters faced more misery as metro, tram and suburban rail workers were on a 24-hour strike, while buses and trolleys were to stop operating for several hours in the middle of the day. Airline passengers also faced delays as air traffic controllers implemented work-to-rule action, refusing to work overtime. A 48-hour strike by all transport workers is expected later this week.

Greek police held their own protest, with the force’s Special Guards unit hanging a giant black banner from the top of Lycabettus Hill in the capital reading “Pay day, day of mourning.”

Faced with mounting anger from the country’s international creditors, the government recently announced a raft of new austerity measures in an effort to secure the next euro8 billion ($10.7 billion) installment of bailout loans from the euro110 billion rescue package it has been dependent on since last year. Without the funds, Greece only has enough funds to see it through mid-October, when it faces the prospect of a messy default.

In July, when it became clear that Athens needed more help, eurozone leaders agreed on a second, euro109 billion bailout, although several aspects of that deal still need to be finalized guaranteed fast personal loans.

The government’s new measures include a new property tax to be paid through electricity bills to make it easier for the state to collect, as well as pension cuts and more tax hikes. Greeks have been outraged by the new steps, as they come on top of previous austerity measures which failed to sufficiently reduce the country’s budget deficit.

Hundreds of protesters gathered in the capital’s central Syntagma Square on Sunday night, scuffling briefly with police who pushed them back with truncheons and small amounts of tear gas.

Debt inspectors from the International Monetary Fund, European Commission and European Central Bank, known collectively as the troika, are expected to return to Athens this week to resume a review suspended earlier this month amid talk of delayed implementation of reforms. No specific date has been set for their return, however.

Prime Minister George Papandreou heads to Berlin on Tuesday, where he will meet with German Chancellor Angela Merkel ahead of a parliamentary vote there on approving plans to beef up the eurozone rescue fund. German lawmakers vote on Thursday on expanding the powers of the euro440 billion ($595 billion) the European Financial Stability Facility.

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TORONTO — The loonie tumbled more than two cents in early trading Thursday as investors turned to the U.S. dollar as a safe haven and commodity prices continued to fall.

The Canadian dollar was down 2.47 cents to 96.96 cents US on financial markets.

The decline came as the U.S. dollar held steady against the euro.

Rising global economic uncertainty has pushed investors to the greenback as it is perceived as a safe option during times of financial turbulence. More: World stocks nosedive after Fed releases gloomy assessment Whenever there is a flight to quality towards the U.S. currency — even amid a slumping American economy — the Canadian dollar usually gets caught in the crossfire.

Besides a move toward the greenback by international money traders, falling commodity prices have also hit the Canadian currency, which is seen as linked to the price of oil, minerals and other resources.

Earlier Thursday, oil prices fell below US$85 a barrel in Asia, extending losses from the previous session after the U.S. central bank warned of major risks to economic growth.

Benchmark oil for November delivery was down $1.35 at $84.57 at midday Singapore time in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Crude dropped $1.00 to settle at $85.92 on Wednesday.

Elsewhere Wednesday, global mining giant Rio Tinto plc said some of its customers are asking the company to delay shipments of iron ore and other metals — the latest sign the global economic slowdown is squeezing the resources sector.

“It is noticeable that markets are somewhat weaker,” Rio Tinto CEO Tom Albanese said in an interview with the Financial Times of London published Wednesday business

Irene is gone, and East Coast airports are reopening. But it will take at least several days to get hundreds of thousands of travelers stranded by the storm to their final destinations.

Behind the scenes, ground crews worked through the night to get planes ready, air traffic controllers prepared for a deluge of landings and takeoffs and extra pilots were called into action.

Airports in New York, Boston and Philadelphia bustled Monday after being closed for part or all of the weekend. The week before Labor Day is always a busy one for airlines, so they struggled to cram travelers stranded by Irene onto already-packed planes.

To make matters worse, more than 1,600 flight were cancelled Monday, adding to the nearly 12,000 grounded this weekend, according to flight tracking service FlightAware. The service estimates that 650,000 passengers have been stuck on the ground since Irene hit, but some experts think it’s a million or more.

Delays of mass transit are slowing airlines’ efforts to get stranded passengers back in the air.

Some passengers opted for other means of travel.

Joseph McCann, 22, of Northern Ireland, was waiting with a friend at 30th Street Station in Philadelphia to catch a bus to New York no faxing pay day loans.

The pair, who had been visiting California, flew into Philadelphia on Monday morning and were supposed to catch a connecting plane to Newark, N.J., but the flight was canceled. Friends suggested the bus.

McCann will arrive in New York about five hours later than originally scheduled, but said it could have been worse.

“I’d say we were lucky in comparison,” McCann said.

The storm is expected to cost U.S. airlines $200 million in revenue _ between lost flying and ticket-change fee waivers. Airline officials estimate it will take about two days to get every plane and crew member back in place.

“The next couple of days are going to be trying,” said Mike Flores, a US Airways flight attendant and union president. “Once we get to work we’re going to be dealing with a lot people who have been up for 24 hours, camped out in airports.”

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AP Airlines Writer Scott Mayerowitz in New York and AP Writer Kathy Matheson in Philadelphia contributed to this report.

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President Barack Obama says people are frustrated by the partisanship that has gridlocked Washington and he wants them to tell lawmakers they must compromise for the sake of the country.

The president used his weekly radio and Internet address Saturday to try to position himself on the side of the public and against a Congress with abysmal approval ratings after the bitter fight over increasing the nation’s borrowing limit.

Obama’s approval ratings aren’t so good either. But the president clearly sees a need to direct the public’s anger toward Congress or risk being the target himself as the 2012 campaign revs up.

“You’ve got a right to be frustrated,” the president said. “I am. Because you deserve better. I don’t think it’s too much for you to expect that the people you send to this town start delivering.”

“Members of Congress are at home in their districts right now. And if you agree with me _ whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican or not much of a fan of either _ let them know.”

The president listed several initiatives he’s pushing, including trade deals, improvements to the patent system and extension of a cut in the tax that workers pay to fund Social Security no faxing payday loans.

“These are all things we can do right now. So let’s do them,” said Obama, who will repeat his economic message during a three-day Midwestern bus tour beginning Monday.

Republicans used their weekly address to criticize Obama on the economy, particularly government regulations that Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., said burdened businesses and discouraged them from expanding and hiring.

“Clearly, the policies of this administration are not working,” said Toomey, one of the lawmakers newly appointed to the congressional panel that’s supposed to develop recommendations to cut the debt. “So, what went wrong? Well, a big part of the problem has been job-killing regulations.”

Toomey said that America can still thrive, “but first, government has to get out of the way.”

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OTTAWA

Russian-born tycoon Leonid Nevzlin, a former business partner of jailed Russian oil baron Mikhail Khodorkovsky, has bought a 20 percent stake in the dovish Haaretz daily for 140 million shekels ($41 million).

The deal leaves the paper’s founding Schocken family with a 60 percent share. Germany’s DuMont Schauberg publishing company holds the remaining equity.

Haaretz said Sunday that the cash injection would let it invest in unspecified “new technological opportunities.”

Nevzlin immigrated to Israel in 2003 after the Russian government started going after Yukos, the oil company he and Khodorkovsky created.

In 2008, he was convicted in Russia in absentia of conspiring to murder.

Israel deemed the evidence against him invalid and refused Moscow’s request to extradite him.

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Portugal’s Social Democrats unseated the Socialist government in an emphatic election victory Sunday, according to projections, giving the center-right party a strong mandate to enact a grinding austerity program amid a euro78 billion ($114 billion) bailout expected to pitch the country into deep recession.

Jose Socrates, the Socialist leader and the country’s prime minister for the past six years, conceded defeat long before official results were in.

“The Socialist Party lost these elections,” Socrates said in a speech, adding he would resign as party leader.

The Social Democratic Party collected between 38 and 42.5 percent in the ballot compared with about 25-29 percent for the center-left Socialists, according to an exit poll by broadcaster TVIndependente.

State broadcaster RTP’s projections were broadly similar, while the S.I.C channel gave the Social Democrats 40-41 percent and the Socialists 28-29 percent.

The Social Democrats had asked for a clear endorsement at the ballot box that would give them a strong mandate to make tax hikes and welfare cuts and introduce longer-term economic reforms such as making it easier to hire and fire workers _ a proposal parties on the left have balked at.

However, the result would leave the Social Democrats just shy of an absolute majority in the 230-seat Parliament where it will need approval for its policies.

Social Democrat leader Pedro Passos Coelho, probably the country’s next prime minister, may invite the smaller, conservative Popular Party to form a coalition government and bolster his party’s parliamentary support. The Popular Party was projected to come third with 11-14 percent.

Turnout was around 60 percent, the projections said, in line with recent elections.

As in Ireland, where the governing party lost heavily in an election after taking a bailout, the Socialists who have been in power for the past six years appeared to pay heavily for the country’s economic downturn.

The winner faces the formidable task of trying to nurse the debt-wracked country of 10.6 million back to financial health after a decade of negligible growth when it borrowed more than it could afford.

The next government inherits a record jobless rate of 12.6 percent and an anticipated economic contraction of 4 percent over the next two years in what is already one of Europe’s poorest countries. Necessary welfare and pay cuts, tax hikes and promises of strikes from trade unions will also present tough challenges.

Given its continuing difficulties, Portugal still hasn’t escaped the possibility of a financial catastrophe.

The new government must move quickly to enact more than 200 measures over the next two years, cutting expenditure and reforming social and economic sectors in accordance with the bailout terms. At the same time, it has to find a way to engineer the fresh growth that will allow it to free itself from debt in the long term.

Any sign that Portugal is not abiding by the terms of its bailout agreement with its eurozone partners and the International Monetary Fund will likely add fuel to Europe’s debt crisis. There are already signs of bailout fatigue among the continent’s wealthier nations, with Greece’s financial future remaining uncertain as its original bailout appears too small.

With reforms billed as vast changes in Portuguese expectations and way of life, keeping the political peace in Portugal won’t be easy.

The election _ the country’s second in two years _ came after months of political squabbles over how best to reduce the debt burden. Opposition parties refused to accept the Socialist government’s austerity plans, prompting the administration to resign and worsening Portugal’s financial plight.

All three main parties gave their blessing to the bailout deal, though they differ over how to meet the debt targets and other issues such as the possible privatization of public services.

The Portuguese Communist Party and its like-minded rival the Left Bloc, which are each projected to get less than 10 percent of the vote, have fought against the bailout demands but could potentially support the Socialists in Parliament against a right-of-center coalition.

The left-of-center parties are especially disinclined to accept reforms which scrap long-standing welfare entitlements and make it easier to hire and fire workers _ a measure the Social Democrats views as crucial.

Luisa Diogo, a 56-year-old high-school teacher, said the country’s near future is already mapped out and she felt “sad and powerless” while facing years of hardship.

“Europe is changing. All those postwar policies designed to give dignity to the old, the infirm and the unemployed are being taken away,” she said after voting in Lisbon.

The Bank of Portugal has predicted that economic hardship will be “particularly severe” in coming years, with an “unprecedented” drop in family income.

Over the past decade Portugal recorded average annual growth below 1 percent. It took advantage of cheap loans as a member of the 17-nation eurozone to build up debt, which financed its western European lifestyle of welfare entitlements and job security.

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Federal regulators are seeking to block VeriFone Systems Inc.’s proposed purchase of rival electronic-payment provider Hypercom Corp.

The Justice Department on Thursday filed a civil antitrust lawsuit in federal district court to stop the deal, warning it would harm competition in the market for point-of-sale terminals in the U.S. Such terminals are used by retailers and other firms to accept electronic payments with credit cards and debit cards.

VeriFone Systems announced plans to buy Hypercom in November in an all-stock deal valued at $485 million, including $65 million of debt.

Christine Varney, head of the Justice Department’s antitrust division, said that allowing VeriFone to buy Hypercom would likely drive up prices for point-of-sale terminals since the two companies together control more than 60 percent of the U.S. market for terminals used by the largest retailers.

Last month, Hypercom said it would sell its U.S. payment systems business to France’s Ingenico SA for $54 million in cash to alleviate antitrust concerns about the deal with VeriFone cash advance to savings account. Verifone would then acquire Hypercom’s networking products operations.

But that was not enough to satisfy the Justice Department since Ingenico is the only other significant provider of point-of-sale systems in the United States.

The sale of part of Hypercom’s business to Ingenico, the Justice Department said in a suit filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., would not create a new, independent competitor in the market and would make it easier for VeriFone and Ingenico to coordinate pricing for point-of-sale terminals.

“The proposed divestiture does not resolve the significant competitive concerns posed by the merger, and in some ways exacerbates them,” Varney said in a press release.

Verifone had no immediate comment. And Hypercom did not respond to requests for comment.

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