World stock markets fell Thursday as signs of weakness in the world’s two biggest economies kept investors at bay.
Benchmark oil lingered near $105 a barrel. The dollar fell against the euro and the yen.
Caution in markets stemmed from U.S. Commerce Department data that showed orders for durable goods rose 2.2 percent in February. While that compared favorably to a steep drop in January, analysts had expected orders to increase 2.7 percent.
“U.S. data shows weakness in the economic recovery. That really confirms what the Fed Chairman, Bernanke, said last week that the Federal Reserve has to continue loose monetary policy in order to aid economic recovery and employment,” said Francis Lun, managing director of Lyncean Holdings in Hong Kong.
Investors are also concerned that China’s slowdown is accelerating. China is a huge importer of raw materials, so a slowing economy there can weigh on prices for raw materials.
European stocks were muted in early trading. Britain’s FTSE 100 was 0.4 percent lower at 5,787.75. Germany’s DAX lost 0.4 percent to 6,971.46 and France’s CAC-40 slipped 0.1 percent to 3,425.29.
Wall Street futures headed lower as traders awaited weekly jobless claims later in the day. Dow Jones industrial futures fell slightly to 13,049 while S&P 500 futures lost less than 0.1 percent to 1,399.50.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 index retreated for a second day after reaching a one-year high, falling 0.7 percent to 10,114.79.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng tumbled 1.3 percent to 20,609.39 and South Korea’s Kospi dropped 0.9 percent to 2,014.41. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 dipped 0.1 percent to 4,337.90.
The prospect of slowing growth from the world’s two biggest economies pummeled industrial, energy and materials stocks payday loans.
Hong Kong-listed Aluminum Corp. of China shed 1.3 percent. CNOOC Ltd., China’s main offshore oil and gas producer, tumbled 3.3 percent despite reporting that its 2011 profit rose 29.1 percent on higher oil and gas sales. Hyundai Heavy Industries Co., South Korea’s leading shipbuilder, fell 3 percent.
Leighton Holdings plummeted 6.7 percent in Sydney after the Australian construction company cut its full year profit forecast because of losses in several major infrastructure projects.
Mainland Chinese shares spiraled downward amid dwindling hopes for a looser monetary policy, analysts said.
The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index lost 1.4 percent to 2,252.16 and the Shenzhen Composite Index lost 1.6 percent to 895.07. Shares in nonferrous metals, engineering and materials weakened.
Analysts said investors are also holding back as they await news later this week on Europe’s progress in resolving its debt crisis.
Benchmark crude oil was up 1 cent to $105.42 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract fell $1.92 to end at $105.41 per barrel on the Nymex on Wednesday. Oil prices declined after France’s government said it is considering a release of emergency stockpiles as part of a U.S.-led effort to ease the recent climb in prices.
In currencies, the euro rose to $1.3326 from $1.3324 late Wednesday in New York. The dollar fell to 82.41 yen from 82.79 yen.
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Mostafa Farahmand, who oversees sales at a car dealer in Tehran, hasn
Bank of England Chief Economist Spencer Dale said U.K. inflation may not slow as fast this year as the central bank has forecast as tensions in the Middle East push up oil prices.
The Monetary Policy Committee
MADISON, Wis. — Apple’s latest iPad drew the customary lines of die-hard fans looking to be first, and entrepreneurs looking to make a quick profit.
Many buyers lined up for hours, and in some cases overnight, as the tablet computer went on sale in the U.S. and nine other countries. They did so even though Apple started accepting online orders a week ago.
The new model comes with a faster processor, a much sharper screen and an improved camera, though the changes aren’t as big as the upgrade from the original model to the iPad 2.
As with the previous models, prices start at $499 in the U.S.
“I don’t think it’s worth the price, but I guess I’m a victim of society,” Athena May, 21, said in Paris.
Dan Krolikowski, 34, was first in line at a mall in Madison, Wis. He arrived 14 hours before the store’s opening and was buying an extra one to sell on the “gray market.”
“Last year I sold one on eBay and made over $500 in profit,” Krolikowski said, leaning back in a reclining lawn chair he brought. “I’m hoping to do that again this year.”
Those who ordered iPads online started getting them delivered Friday. However, Apple now says there’s a two- to three-week shipping delay for online orders. There’s also demand in countries where the new iPad isn’t available yet.
In Hong Kong, a steady stream of buyers picked up their new devices at preset times at the city’s sole Apple store after entering an online lottery.
The system, which required buyers to have local ID cards, helped thwart visitors from mainland China, Apple’s fastest growing market. A release date in China has not yet been announced. Apple will begin selling the iPad in 25 additional countries next Friday, mostly in Europe.
At the flagship Apple Store on New York’s Fifth Avenue, the composition of the line, and the way many customers were paying for two iPads each with wads of cash, suggested that many of the tablets were destined to be resold abroad.
About 450 people lined up outside Apple’s Ginza store in downtown Tokyo. Some had spent the night sleeping outside the store.
Dipak Varsani, 21, got in line in London at 1 a.m. Thursday and said he was drawn by the new device’s better screen.
“You’ve got clearer movies and clearer games,” he said. “I use it as a multimedia device.”
Despite competition from cheaper tablet computers such as Amazon.com Inc.’s Kindle Fire, the iPad remains the most popular tablet computer. Apple Inc. has sold more than 55 million iPads since its debut in 2010.
Apple says the iPad is propelling us into a “post-PC era,” with computers that work very differently from the traditional laptops and desktops.
Norway is moving closer to a housing bubble as the central bank
Indonesia
Gas prices are on the rise, and so like clockwork, politicians are now selling the promise of lower prices at the pump.
Newt Gingrich, struggling to regain momentum in the Republican presidential primary, is leading the way, promising to get prices down to $2.50 per gallon.
"I’ve developed a program for American energy so no future president will ever bow to a Saudi king again and so every American can look forward to $2.50 a gallon gasoline," Gingrich said during his self-introduction at Wednesday’s CNN debate.
The promise might garner attention on the campaign trail, but there’s little politicians can do to influence the price of gasoline in the short-term, and long-run efforts are likely to be complicated by the global nature of the crude oil market.
"Political rhetoric is all it is," said Guy Caruso, an economist who led the Energy Information Administration and worked as an analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency.
"Short of price controls, which were a disaster during the Nixon administration, politicians can’t do much to change the price of gasoline," he said.
See what you’re paying for gas
Other industry experts CNNMoney surveyed echoed those sentiments.
"This is absurd," said Paul Bledsoe, a Bipartisan Policy Center scholar who spent more than 20 years working on energy policy in Washington. "Obviously the price of oil is set on a global market. In the immediate term there is almost nothing you can do."
Gingrich’s plan for lowering prices revolves around increasing domestic energy production to levels that would make geopolitical concerns an afterthought. The way to do that, according to Gingrich, is by eliminating the EPA, building the Keystone pipeline and allowing more drilling.
"And at that point, if, in fact, the Iranians want to do something with the Strait of Hormuz, maybe the Chinese have a problem or the Indians have a problem or the Europeans have a problem," Gingrich said in a 28-minute video his campaign has produced on the subject. "But I am not sure at that point that the Americans will have a problem."
But unless the way crude oil is bought and sold in the global market is drastically changed, the United States would still have a very real problem.
Oil is a global commodity — it can be shipped anywhere around the world. Its price is determined largely by global supply and demand.
The United States would have to remove itself from the global trade in oil and gasoline to set its own prices, a move that could set the country up for a supply shortage and that most economists would not support.
Caruso said it’s just not a practical idea. "This is a global market with fungible supplies," he said. "We can’t isolate ourselves."
There’s also the question of whether Gingrich’s targeted production level is possible.
According to a 2009 study from the government’s Energy Information Administration, opening up to drilling areas off the East Coast, West Coast and Florida’s Gulf Coast would yield just 500,000 extra barrels a day by 2030 — not enough to replace U.S. imports or bring global prices down.
The world currently consumes 89 million barrels a day, and by then would likely be using over 100 million barrels. By the time OPEC finished cutting production to adjust for the increased supply, Americans might save 3 cents per gallon.
"The notion that somehow we can produce so much domestically that we will move the global price is incorrect," Bledsoe said.
Meanwhile, the oil industry says that by expanding beyond offshore areas and drilling everywhere that isn’t national park, an additional 10 million barrels of oil a day could come online by 2030 — more than enough for the U.S. alone.
Fear of Iran is inflating gas prices
All of this is not to say that oil production or prices are impenetrable to policy changes. Increasing domestic production is feasible, and even desirable — but the impact on price will hit around the margins.
"We need to be doing more energy, across the board," said Peter Beutel, an oil analyst at Cameron Hanover.
"There are ways forward here that would be very positive," he said, while acknowledging that even with a massive production increase, it is difficult to predict a certain price point, as Gingrich has. "Who’s to say whether it will be $1.75 or $2.75?"
The Gingrich campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on how the predicted $2.50 price point was reached.
Of course, it’s not only Republicans who have proposed tinkering with government policy in an effort to combat high gas prices.
During the Bush administration, then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi urged the president to release crude oil from the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve to combat high prices.
The White House rejected her call, saying that using the reserve to manipulate prices was "ineffective."
But catch a politician in a rare moment of candor and you might hear an acknowledgement that gas prices are largely out of their control. Here’s what President Obama had to say last year about high gas prices during the 2008 campaign:
"We were at the height of political season. You had all kinds of slogans and gimmicks and outraged politicians — they were waving their three-point plans for $2 a gallon gas," Obama said.
"And none of it was really going to do anything to solve the problem," he continued. "The truth is, none of these gimmicks, none of these slogans made a bit of difference."
Wells Fargo Advisors is moving jobs from Minneapolis to St. Louis, though the brokerage arm of Wells Fargo won’t say how many positions would shift to the region.
Wells Fargo Advisors announced to employees in Minneapolis this week that it is closing an office within its Business Services Group there and transitioning those jobs to St. Louis. Employees in Minneapolis can apply for the St. Louis positions.
Raschelle Burton, a Wells Fargo Advisors spokeswoman, confirmed the jobs are moving from Minneapolis but declined to specify how many.
“This is part of a broad and ongoing effort to maximize efficiency,” Burton said.
Wells Fargo Advisors, a subsidiary of San Francisco-based Wells Fargo & Co., is based in downtown St. Louis. The company employs more than 5,000 locally and provides financial services including brokerage, estate planning, and asset management.
In August, Wells Fargo Advisors CEO Danny Ludeman said 200 jobs would be added to the St. Louis headquarters campus within 18 months to improve efficiency following a series of acquisitions. Wachovia acquired St. Louis-based A.G. Edwards in 2007, followed by Wells Fargo’s acquisition of Wachovia in 2008.
Ludeman identified Minneapolis in August as a possible site for jobs that could move to St. Louis, in addition to trader jobs and IT and technical jobs from San Francisco, Seattle and New York.
Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean- Claude Juncker said he
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