Finance Blog number 1

The number of Americans who signed contracts to buy homes fell for the third straight month in September after the spring-and-summer peak buying season failed to entice new buyers.

The National Association of Realtors says its index of sales agreements fell 4.6 percent last month to a reading of 84.5.

A reading of 100 is considered healthy. The last time the index reached that high was in April 2010, the final month that buyers could qualify for a federal tax credit that has since expired cash advance no fax.

Contract signings are usually a reliable indicator of where the housing market is headed. There’s typically a one- to two-month lag between a contract and a completed deal.

But the Realtors group said a growing number of buyers have canceled contracts.

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The French government says French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel will speak by phone later Monday to discuss an upcoming EU summit amid signs they disagree on parts of a new crisis plan.

Government spokeswoman Valerie Pecresse says that at the weekly cabinet meeting Wednesday Sarkozy emphasized that the Oct. 23 summit in Brussels “is a crucial moment, for Europe and for France.”

That view appears to clash with Germany’s recent downplaying of the summit’s importance Business Card Holders.

Earlier this week, German finance chief Wolfgang Schaeuble dampened expectations by saying that Sunday’s summit wouldn’t produce a comprehensive solution to the eurozone debt crisis that threatens to cause another global recession.

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Slovakia’s prime minister has raised the stakes ahead of a crucial vote on expanding Europe’s bailout fund, by linking it to a confidence vote in her government.

Ahead of talks with her coalition partners, Iveta Radicova confirmed that a coalition partner has not accepted a compromise offer and added that the vote later in Parliament “will be linked to a confidence vote in this government.”

That suggests her government will fall if the vote is not carried, though it does not necessarily mean early elections under the terms of the Slovak constitution.

On Monday, the four-party coalition, which met for three hours, was unable to agree on a compromise deal.

The 17 nations that use the euro must all approve expanding the powers of the bailout fund, which is designed to shore up Europe’s defenses against the debt crisis.

Slovakia’s “no” would be a bad signal for already nervous financial markets. Ahead of the vote, European markets were giving up some of their recent gains though remained sharply higher on the week. The euro meanwhile was solid above $1.36.

All other EU nations have backed the expanded powers for the EU bailout fund.

Slovakia, a nation of 5.5 million people, would contribute about 1 percent, or euro7.7 billion ($10.5 billion). With the help of EU funds and foreign investments, it has benefited significantly from its membership in the eurozone and the EU and become a leading European car exporter.

The outcome of the Slovak parliamentary vote is uncertain because a junior member of the four-party governing coalition is strictly opposed to boosting the fund.

The Freedom and Solidarity Party’s chairman, Richard Sulik recently described the expanded bailout fund “a road to hell” and vowed again Monday to block it.

Without the votes from Sulik’s party, the coalition government would have to rely on the opposition, but it’s unlikely to provide any help.

The major opposition party, Smer-Social Democracy of former Prime Minister Robert Fico, supports the fund expansion in principle but was ready to vote for it in exchange for nothing less than early elections.

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Researchers who study economic growth and how technology helps drive long-term development are among the top contenders for the Nobel prize for economics being awarded Monday, Swedish Nobel guessers say.

A day before the announcement of the prestigious 10 million kronor ($1.5 million) award, Americans Robert Barro and Paul Romer stand out as favorites for the prize for their research on growth, leading experts say.

The Nobel Committee maintains it doesn’t pay attention to current events when picking a winner, but an award to growth theory would be closely watched as the world debates how to revive the economy in the face of large public spending cuts.

Romer, a former senior fellow at Stanford University now at New York University, has been hot “for a couple of decades,” said Uppsala University economics professor Daniel Waldenstrom. That is one of the unspoken criteria to win the prize because it typically takes that much time to evaluate if results are sustainable.

“His research is focused on powers within technology and development that drive growth, that had previously been overlooked,” Waldenstrom told The Associated Press. “He has showed that it is actually significant for long-term growth and has changed our view of what drives growth.”

Romer has constructed mathematical models showing how technological advances are the result of specific decisions to invest in research and development. Later, he advanced his ideas, concluding that to make real progress, societies must also keep implementing better rules that structure how people work together.

He could share the prize with growth theory pioneer Barro, a professor of economics at Harvard University, who has specifically looked at the links between innovation, public investment and growth.

Hubert Fromlet, a professor in International Economics at the Jonkoping International Business School and Linnaeus University in Sweden, put Barro among his top-five candidates for the prize.

Fromlet correctly predicted that American economist Dale Mortensen would win the award last year for his work, together with fellow prize winners Peter Diamond and Christopher Pissarides on developing a theory that helps explain why many people can remain unemployed despite a large number of job vacancies.

“You have to look at research areas: What areas haven’t been awarded in a while?” Fromlet said. “Most often a certain research area is awarded, but sometimes lifetime achievements can also be awarded.”

The economics prize is not among the original awards established by Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel in his 1895 will, but was created in 1968 by the Swedish central bank in his memory.

Fromlet said other hot candidates for this year’s award include: the India-born game theorist Avinash Dixit; French professor Jean Tirole, for work within industrial organization and other fields; as well as MIT professor Jerry A. Hausman, who created a method that allows scientists to evaluate their statistical models.

Also mentioned are Douglas Diamond of the University of Chicago, for his analysis of financial crises, or American professors Anne Krueger and Gordon Tullock for their description of a behavior they called rent-seeking, which refers to actions to manipulate an environment for personal gains without contributing to productivity.

Another potential candidate is American professor Martin S. Feldstein for his work on macroeconomics and public finance, including research on public pension systems.

Since the economy prize was first awarded in 1969, more than 40 Americans have received it.

Last week, Bruce Beutler of the U.S. and Frenchman Jules Hoffmann won medicine prize for their research on innate immunity, when receptor proteins that recognize bacteria and other microorganisms as they enter the body activate the first line of defense in the immune system.

They shared it with Canadian-born Ralph Steinman, who died three days before the announcement, and who was honored for his discovery of the dendritic cell and its role in adaptive immunity.

U.S.-born scientists Saul Perlmutter, Brian Schmidt and Adam Riess won the physics prize for discovering that the universe is expanding at an accelerating pace, while Israeli scientist Dan Shechtman won the chemistry award for his discovery of quasicrystals, a mosaic-like chemical structure that researchers previously thought was impossible.

Acclaimed Swedish poet Tomas Transtromer won the literature prize and Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Liberian activist Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkul Karman of Yemen shared the Nobel Peace Prize “for their nonviolent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work”.

The awards are always handed out on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel’s death in 1896.

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Online:

http://www.nobelprize.org

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The more than 1,000 hourly employees at the General Motors plant in Wentzville are voting today on a local contract.

Voting began at 4 a.m. and will run until 7 p.m., said Tom Brune, communications coordinator for United Auto Workers Local 2250. The local contract covers work rules, transfers and job classifications.

Last week, Local 2250 employees voted overwhelmingly to approve a national four-year contract with GM. Local 2250 represents the 1,196 hourly workers at the Wentzville plant. As part of the new contract, GM is proposing investing $380 million in the Wentzville facility and adding 1,850 jobs.

Some of those new jobs will be added in the coming weeks. GM spokesman Greg Martin said Wentzville employees were told today that a second shift at the plant for full-size van production will be added in early 2012, adding about 400 jobs easy payday loans. The plant currently produces GMC Savana and Chevrolet Express vans.

“We’ll start bringing them on as soon as we can,” Martin said. Workers for the second shift will start to receive training within the next month, he said.

GM has not yet offered details about the addition of a mid-size pickup slated for Wentzville, which union officials announced as part of the national contract last month. Analysts have speculated that GM will begin producing the next generation Colorado pickup in Wentzville. Colorados are currently produced at a plant in Shreveport, La., which is slated to close.

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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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A civic support organization for the Basque separatist group ETA has disbanded in Spain, a newspaper that acts as a mouthpiece for the separatists reported Saturday.

The news adds weight to Spanish government claims that support for ETA’s violent tactics is crumbling. The group has been responsible for hundreds of killings since the late 1960s.

According to Gara newspaper, the support group, Ekin, formed in November 1999 with the aim of “impelling independence, nation-building and socialism at street level.” But on Saturday, the paper’s website said two unidentified spokesmen told it. “Ekin members have ended their endeavors as an organization.”

Interior Minister, Antonio Camacho, said Ekin’s disappearance proved ETA was “in an unstoppable process of dissolution.”

“We are experiencing the last phase of the terrorist group’s existence,” Camacho said.

Government spokesman Jose Blanco said Ekin’s disbanding was yet another step toward ETA’s demise, but he added that it was “not the final step” that Spain hoped for.

“What the whole of Spanish society yearns for is a statement announcing an end to terrorism, and the end of ETA,” Blanco said Saturday.

ETA, which is classified as a terrorist organization by Spain, the European Union and the U.S., has killed 829 people since the late 1960s in a campaign of bombings and shootings aimed at forcing the government to allow the creation of an independent Basque homeland No teletrak payday loan.

Former National Court judge Baltasar Garzon found in April 2001 that Ekin, like the banned Batasuna party, had acted as a political wing for ETA, “co-directing activity” such as low-level street violence.

In April 2001 Garzon banned Ekin for being part of ETA, and in July of that year he jailed 31 of its members for “collaboration with ETA.”

A week ago, a group representing 700 ETA prisoners in Spain and France called for an end to violence as a tool for achieving Basque independence.

The prisoners’ group also endorsed a groundbreaking agreement reached late last year by pro-independence Basque political parties _ chiefly the remnants of Batasuna _ and civic groups such as Ekin, that said Basque independence should be achieved through peaceful means.

ETA declared a cease-fire in September 2010 and went further in January by calling the truce permanent and saying it was prepared to let international observers verify it.

The separatist group has been decimated in recent years by arrests of its leaders and members, and it has not killed anyone in Spain in more than two years.

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Fifth Third Bank has opened a new branch downtown and has tapped former Cardinals player Lou Brock to make an appearance at a grand opening event Friday.

The Baseball Hall of Famer is slated to sign autographs and be available for photos free of charge for customers at the branch at 921 Olive Street from 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. immediately following a ribbon cutting at 10 a.m.

Fresh off the Cardinals’ win against the Houston Astros Wednesday night, giving the team a playoff berth, Fifth Third Bank’s Senior Vice President and Retail Executive Tony Manisco said Brock’s appearance is good timing. “We could not have planned this any better,” he said.

The downtown location, which opened in the Syndicate Trust building on Aug. 29, is the Cincinnati-based bank’s 14th local branch since entering the St. Louis market in 2005.

In the last two weeks, Fifth Third Bank has started banking relationships with more than 100 households from the downtown branch, Manisco said. “The density of people downtown during the daytime was very compelling,” he said.   

The new branch won’t be Fifth Third Bank’s last in the area. “We do have bigger plans for the St. Louis area,” Manisco said.

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A British employment tribunal filing shows that News of the World’s chief reporter Neville Thurlbeck is claiming unfair dismissal from his former publisher, Rupert Murdoch’s News International.

News International said Wednesday it “will vigorously contest the case,” filed on Sept. 13. Thurlbeck is expected to claim he was sacked for whistleblowing in the phone-hacking scandal that brought down his tabloid.

A preliminary hearing will take place at the East London Tribunal Service center on Friday.

Murdoch’s News International had long maintained that the eavesdropping was limited to a single rogue reporter, Clive Goodman, and the private investigator he was working with to break into voice mails of members of the royal household bad credit payday loans.

But an email uncovered during legal proceedings seemed to cast doubt on that claim. It contained a transcript of an illegally obtained conversation, drawn up by a junior reporter and marked “for Neville” _ an apparent reference to Thurlbeck.

Thurlbeck, 50, was arrested in April on suspicion of conspiring to intercept voicemail messages and released on bail.

On Tuesday, he had his bail extended through the end of the year.

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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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