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World powers clashed Wednesday over whether it is legal to supply weapons to Libya’s badly equipped rebels as Moammar Gadhafi’s troops beat back their advance on the ground.

Britain and the U.S. believe that existing U.N. Security Council resolutions on Libya could allow for foreign governments to arm the rebels.

But NATO, which is in the process of taking over command of air and other military operations in Libya, rejected that theory, saying an arms embargo was in place. China, Russia and Germany were also against supplying weapons to the rebels, with Moscow warning of possible al-Qaida links to some rebels.

Analysts, however, suggested the only hope of avoiding a lengthy stalemate in the conflict would be to provide anti-tank weapons and shoulder-launched missiles to the rebels, allowing them to take on Gadhafi’s military hardware.

British Prime Minister David Cameron said he supported U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s assessment that nations could legally supply weapons to Libyan rebels, despite an arms embargo being in place. Cameron told the House of Commons that U.N. Security Council resolutions “would not necessarily rule out the provision of assistance to those protecting civilians in certain circumstances.”

“We do not rule it out, but we have not taken any decision” on whether to supply weapons, he told lawmakers.

Obama said in television interviews Tuesday the U.S. also did not rule out providing arms to rebels, while Clinton said in London that such a move would be legally permitted _ read as a signal the policy is under consideration.

NATO insists the U.N. resolutions prohibit the supply of weapons into Libya, while Russia and China expressed concern that some allies were overstepping the mark. In Germany, Foreign Ministry spokesman Stefan Bredohl said the relevant resolutions included a “comprehensive arms embargo.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warned Western nations against supplying weapons to Gadhafi’s opponents and said Moscow feared that some rebels could be allied with al-Qaida.

His remarks echoed concerns raised in Washington on Tuesday, when NATO’s top commander, U.S. Navy Adm. James Stavridis, said officials had seen “flickers” of possible al-Qaida and Hezbollah involvement with the dissident forces.

The comments were seized upon by Michele Bachmann, the tea party-backed conservative congresswoman, who said the U.S. should rule out supplying weapons because of those concerns about an al-Qaida influence.

NATO said agreement from all 28 members of the alliance would be needed to participate in the arming of rebel forces, and that approving such a move would risk further rifts between the members themselves and outside partners such as the Arab League and African Union no fax cash loans.

“The U.N. resolution forbids arms to enter Libya,” said an official who could not be named under standing regulations. “Quite honestly, NATO wouldn’t even consider doing anything else unless a new U.N. Security Council resolution is issued to that effect.”

In London, ex-British foreign secretary Malcolm Rifkind urged nations to ensure Libya’s rebels are “properly assisted to enable this war to be brought to an end as soon as possible.”

British Foreign Secretary William Hague said he supported that view, but also acknowledged that “introducing new weapons into a conflict can have unforeseeable and unknown consequences.”

Retired Brigadier Benjamin Barry, of London’s International Institute for Strategic Studies, said it wasn’t certain rebels would have the ability to use any weapons supplied by the West, because they would likely require basic training.

“The kind of arms that could be provided are simple, easy to use anti-armor weapons, unguided shoulder-launched rockets, guided missiles and mortars,” Barry said.

But he acknowledged there would be “a risk that these weapons could pass into unfriendly hands after the fighting is over.”

The history of arming anti-Soviet rebels in Afghanistan would weigh heavily on any decision to offer military hardware, Hague said. “There are examples of weapons being given to people in good faith and then those weapons being used for other purposes,” he told lawmakers.

Hague confirmed Britain had ordered the expulsion of five Libyan diplomats _ including the country’s military attache _ over threats to opponents of Gadhafi’s regime in the U.K., and because they posed a potential security risk.

“Were these individuals to remain in Britain, they could pose a threat to our security,” Hague said. Officials explained the Libyan diplomats had been involved in attempts to harass opposition supporters in Britain.

Hague said British diplomats had held talks in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi with opposition figures in recent days _ before similar meetings being held by U.S. and French officials _ to seek assurances about their motives.

He said he was assured that, despite the warning from Stavridis, violent Islamists did not hold a prominent role within Libya’s rebel movement.

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The agencies that measure employment trends here and elsewhere delivered a mixed message Friday on the St. Louis job situation.

According to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, regional unemployment in January stood at 9.6 percent

Congress will probably approve a measure this week to keep the U.S. government in operation through April 8, Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, the majority whip, said yesterday.

The legislation, proposed by House Republicans March 11, would reduce discretionary spending by about $6 billion and fund the U.S. government for three weeks, replacing a measure that expires March 18. Democrat Durbin, speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union,” said the Senate would take up the measure once it passes the House, where Republicans have majority control.

Enacting the sixth stopgap spending measure of fiscal 2011 is needed to prevent a government shutdown and will provide lawmakers and President Barack Obama with more time to work out a deal to fund U.S. programs through the fiscal year that ends Sept. 30, Durbin said. Congress needs to advance the measure to facilitate an agreement addressing the nation’s long-term fiscal straits, Durbin said.

“We’re not going to balance America’s budget in the next six months,” Durbin said. Republican lawmakers, led by the House, propose cutting $61 billion in government spending this year, which Durbin rejected as part of this year’s budget. “That goes way too far,” he said. The Democratic-controlled Senate rejected that proposal March 9.

Fiscal Issues

Long-term fiscal issues can’t be resolved in stopgap funding bills, Durbin said. “We’re looking at this in honest and hard terms about how we deal with this deficit, not in a matter of six months but over a period of time so that we responsibly cut spending and don’t do it at the expense of America’s economic growth.”

The three-week measure worked out between the White House and lawmakers from both parties would forestall a shutdown of non-essential government services after March 18.

Senator Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican and the minority leader, said on “Fox News Sunday” yesterday that the short-term bill puts the U.S. on a “slow path” toward the $61 billion target.

While Senate Republicans will support the latest spending bill, they will insist on deeper budget cuts as a condition of funding the government through Sept. 30 and of voting to raise the debt ceiling, McConnell said.

“My prediction is not a single one of the 47 Republicans will vote to raise the debt ceiling unless it includes with it some credible effort to do something about our debt,” McConnell said.

Political Bickering

President Barack Obama on March 11 urged lawmakers to work out a deal that keeps the government running through the end of the fiscal year, saying the public expects them to “stop with the political bickering.”

“We can’t keep on running the government on two-week extensions,” Obama said. “That’s irresponsible.”

Representative Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican who is the majority whip, vowed a government shutdown wouldn’t happen and said Obama and Senate Democrats hold the keys to an agreement on financing government operations through the end of the fiscal year.

“We think that Democrats need to step up and actually produce something,” McCarthy said on “State of the Union.”

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House Republicans continued their drive Wednesday to slash $60 billion from the current year’s budget, with some of the deepest cuts targeted at education and environmental regulation.

First up was a controversial amendment to cut to strip $450 million slated to build a new engine for the F-35 fighter jet, which passed 233-198, with bipartisan support.

That cut, in particular, demonstrates the strong sentiment in both parties to crack down on spending that appears excessive, transcending political priority lists. GOP leaders, including Speaker John Boehner and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, wanted to keep that engine funded; opponents included Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

Other deep cuts aim to slash funding for early childhood development programs that help low-income children, special education programs at public schools and family planning programs.

House Republicans have vowed to cull $60 billion from the fiscal 2011 budget.

A day after House Speaker John Boehner acknowledged that cuts could cost some federal jobs, adding, "so be it. We’re broke," Democrats wasted no time accusing Republicans of killing jobs and hurting the economy.

They’re citing a report by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, which gets funding from labor unions, that $60 billion in cuts would result in hundreds of thousands of jobs lost in both the public and private sectors.

"These cuts recklessly damage programs," said House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer. "We are talking about cutting tomorrow’s jobs."

Although the 2011 budget up for debate only covers the next seven months, March through September, the clock is ticking to pass something soon. The current stop-gap measure that’s keeping the lights on at federal agencies expires March 4.

The pressure is on Republican lawmakers to outdo each other when it comes to cutting the budget. The GOP took control of the House after last fall’s election riding a wave of public discontent of the mounting deficit and government spending.

They’ve also pledged to allow any lawmaker to offer any suggestion for cuts. There are nearly 600 amendments on the table. However not all will be taken up, since many are duplicative and others that will get blocked, like a Democratic proposal to restore $150 million for safety on the DC Metro system, which made headlines in 2009 when a collision killed nine people.

Cuts to be discussed target many White House priorities, such as Treasury’s mortgage modification program for homeowners, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency’s efforts to cut greenhouse gases.

If lawmakers fail to pass a budget, or at least another stop-gap measure, by March 4, the federal government could be shut down like it was during the GOP showdown with the Clinton administration in 1995.

The House was expected to pass the budget by Thursday, but the timing is uncertain as the process has gone longer than expected. The Senate isn’t expected to take up the measure for a few more weeks. Then the chambers will likely have to negotiate the differences and come to a compromise.

The White House has vowed to veto the budget if the deep cuts that House Republican want survive, saying the president can’t support a bill that "undermines critical priorities or national security." 

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Labor unrest unleashed by Hosni Mubarak’s ouster flared again Wednesday in Egypt despite a warning by the ruling military that protests and strikes were hampering efforts to improve the economy and return life to normal.

Hundreds of Cairo airport employees protested inside the arrivals terminal at Cairo International Airport to press demands for better wages and health coverage. Their protest did not disrupt flights.

In the industrial Nile Delta city of Mahallah al-Koubra, workers from Egypt’s largest textile factory went on strike over pay and calls for an investigation into alleged corruption at the factory, according to labor rights activist Mustafa Bassiouni.

Mahallah in April 2008 witnessed the country’s largest protests in decades, when demonstrators seeking better pay and a check on rising food prices. The youth movement behind the Mahallah protest then was a key player in the 18 days of anti-Mubarak protests that broke out Jan.. 25 and eventually forced the longtime authoritarian leader to step down.

In Port Said, a coastal city at the northern tip of the Suez canal, about 1,000 people demonstrated to demand that a chemical factory be closed because it was dumping waste in a lake near the city guaranteed fast personal loans.

Authorities, meanwhile, decided to put back by another week the reopening of schools and universities across the country, an indication that the country still has some way to go before it returns to full normalcy. Schools and universities were just starting their midyear break when the protests broke out.

Banks remained closed Wednesday and would remain shut Thursday, the last day of the business week in Egypt. There was no word on whether they would reopen Sunday, the start of the business week.

The stock market has been closed for the past three weeks and, again, there was no word on when it would resume operating. The market lost nearly 17 percent of its value in two tumultuous sessions in late January before it was ordered shut to halt the slide.

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ask the expert

Marc Lopata, chief operations officer

Microgrid Energy

314-657-0955

MLopata@MicrogridEnergy.com

Considering tax law provisions for 2011, is this a good time to install a solar energy system?

Missouri sunshine combined with a package of federal, state and utility incentives makes this a terrific time to install solar. It’s also a good time to take a look at a business’ overall energy performance.

The 2010 tax-cut extension bill allows for faster depreciation and a higher, earlier after-tax cash flow for a new solar energy system.

At the state and utility levels, rules enacting Proposition C, which Missouri voters overwhelming approved two years ago, are scheduled to go into effect this month. The proposition requiring utilities to get some of their energy from renewable sources further improves the business case for solar and keeps Missouri revenue in Missouri easy pay day loans.

An investment in solar for profitable businesses with good credit can deliver positive cash flow every year, shorten the payback period, increase net operating income and produce a double-digit internal rate of return. Combine solar, other renewables and energy efficiency into a corporate energy strategy, and a company can have tools to help manage risk and improve financial performance.

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Small firms to the St. Louis Cardinals

Stocks are ending the day at their highest levels in more than two years after a successful bond auction in Portugal eased worries about Europe’s debt crisis.

Financial firms led stocks higher Wednesday on hopes that banks would start raising their dividends this year.

An analyst at Wells Fargo Securities issued a report saying banks’ earnings should grow much faster than other companies this year, allowing them to raise dividends.

The Dow Jones industrial average rose 83 points, or 0.7 percent, to close at 11,755.

The S&P 500 index gained 11, or 0.9 percent, to 1,285.

The Nasdaq composite rose 20, or 0.7 percent, to 2,737.

More than two stocks rose for every one that fell on the New York Stock Exchange. Volume was 964 million shares.

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Venezuela will devalue its currency for the second time since January in a bid to pull South America’s third-biggest economy out of recession.

Venezuela will unify its two fixed foreign exchange rates at 4.3 bolivars per dollar, Finance Minister Jorge Giordani said in comments carried by state television. Imports of so-called essential goods, such as food and medicine, were previously bought at a rate of 2.6 bolivar per dollar.

“We think that by unifying the exchange rate, we’ll have economic growth in 2011,” Giordani said today.

Chavez devalued the bolivar for the first time since 2005 in January and created a multitiered exchange system in an attempt to spur non-oil exports and curb the consumption of luxury imports at subsidized exchange rates payday loan. A devaluation may accelerate inflation, which at 27 percent, is the highest of 78 economies tracked by Bloomberg.

Venezuela’s economy contracted for a second consecutive year on an electricity crisis, foreign currency shortages and a drop in oil production, the central bank said in a report published on its website.

Gross domestic product fell 1.9 percent this year, with the oil sector shrinking 2.2 percent and the non-oil sector contracting 1.8 percent, according to today’s report, which cited preliminary figures. The economy shrank 3.3 percent in 2009.

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A suicide bomber blew up his car Sunday outside government offices west of the Iraqi capital, killing 17 people, including women and elderly people waiting to collect welfare checks, officials said.

Six police officers were among the dead in the latest strike on the provincial council compound in the Anbar province capital of Ramadi, police and hospital officials said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media.

At least 23 people were wounded in Sunday’s attack on the compound, which has been a favorite target for insurgents in the past.

“We rushed out of the office complex and saw many people injured and dead, lying on the street,” said Anbar Deputy Gov. Saadoun Obeid, who was at his office when the explosion touched off a fire in the compound. “I saw two women who were dead, their bodies burnt.”

Obeid said a traffic jam kept the suicide bomber from driving his explosives-laden car to the front gate. Eyewitnesses said the vehicle exploded about 200 meters (yards) from the compound, creating a crater several meters wide.

Officials immediately blamed al-Qaida in Iraq for the attack in Anbar, a former stronghold of al-Qaida militants and Sunni insurgents that stretches just west of Baghdad to Iraq’s borders with Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

Police found a second bomb in a nearby parking lot a few minutes later, but said they safely disposed of it. The compound in Ramadi, which is 70 miles (115 kilometers) west of Baghdad, also houses the Anbar police headquarters and the governor’s office.

The chairman of the Anbar council, Jasim Mohammed al-Halbusi, put the casualty count much lower, at eight killed and 12 wounded, but said the death toll likely would rise because many of the wounded were in critical condition fast payday loan no faxing. Obeid said as many as 57 people were wounded.

Conflicting casualty tolls are common in the immediate aftermath of insurgent attacks in Iraq.

Al-Halbusi said the dead and wounded were Anbar residents who had come to the compound to fill out paperwork or receive government aid.

“The bombing came after a period of calm in the province,” al-Halbusi said, blaming it on “powers of hatred who killed innocent civilians.”

Another suicide bomber in Iraq’s eastern Diyala province killed a Shiite pilgrim and his son as they headed to a parade of worshippers marking Ashoura, an annual ritual for Shiite Muslims.

Diyala police spokesman Maj. Ghalib al-Karkhi said a follow-up blast wounded eight people, including six policemen. The director of the federal police in Diyala province Raghib al-Mamouri was among those injured in the blast along with the provincial councilman Muthana al-Timimi, al-Karkhi said.

Insurgents have frequently targeted government and security officials since shortly after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein. More recently, the have sought to undermine Iraq’s security as U.S. troops prepare to leave by the end of next year.

The Islamic State of Iraq, an al-Qaida front group, claimed responsibility for a December 2009 bombing on the same government complex in Ramadi in which Anbar Gov. Qasim al-Fahadawi lost a leg. In July, a female suicide bomber blew herself up at a reception room outside al-Fahadawi’s office.

Obeid said al-Fahadawi was not in the building during Sunday’s strike.

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Investors’ no-confidence vote in the aid package for Ireland may force European policy makers to expand their arsenal to fight the debt crisis threatening to tear the euro apart.

Options outlined by economists at Societe Generale SA and Barclays Capital include: Boosting the 750 billion-euro ($975 billion) temporary rescue fund or turning it into an asset- buying program; cutting interest rates on bailout loans; issuing joint bonds for the 16 euro nations or flooding the economy with cash from the European Central Bank.

All would be unprecedented, and none of Europe’s political leaders — dominated by German Chancellor Angela Merkel — has indicated the steps are being considered. Earlier this year, they struggled to cobble together the measures that investors and economists now say are proving inadequate to safeguard the euro and keep speculators at bay.

“You’ve had repeated interventions, but the markets are still selling in response,” said Andrew Balls, London-based head of European portfolio management at Pacific Investment Management Co., which runs the world’s biggest bond fund. “Policy makers have to move beyond a country-by-country approach and think about the system-wide challenges.”

Investors punished Europe’s markets in the two days since Ireland became the second euro nation after Greece to get outside aid. Selling extended beyond “peripheral” countries including Portugal to core members of the euro area such as Italy and Belgium.

Euro Weakens

The euro yesterday fell to a 10-week low versus the dollar and yen and most European stocks declined. Italian, Belgian and Spanish government bonds fell, driving the extra yield investors demand to hold the securities instead of German bunds to euro- era records. The ECB bought Irish government bonds, according to people with knowledge of the transactions.

“Contagion in the peripheral countries is rampant,” said Joachim Fels, co-chief global economist at Morgan Stanley in London. “It is also starting to put pressure on some of the core countries.”

Behind the selloff are concerns that the European Union is overcharging Ireland; fear that politically unpopular deficit cuts will flop or trigger recession; suspicion some countries may still restructure their debt; doubts that cash injections can treat underlying debt woes, and speculation that the EU’s fractured politics will negate a pledge by Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn to do “whatever it takes” to maintain financial stability.

Debt Rules

While euro-area governments can lend to each other, they are barred from assuming each other’s debts under rules dictated by Germany in the 1990s.

Signaling officials may be willing to step up their response, ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet yesterday said they must assert authority to fight “demanding” market conditions. “We need a sense of direction,” Trichet told lawmakers in Brussels. Observers “are tending to underestimate the determination of governments.”

The off-the-shelf option is to expand the European Financial Stability Facility, set up in May to lend to distressed treasuries. Ireland was the first to tap it, drawing about 18 billion euros from a 440 billion-euro war chest underwritten by euro-region governments.

Due to collateral constraints, the EFSF’s actual lending capacity is less than the headline figure, raising doubts about whether it would be able to respond to a fiscal emergency in Spain, the euro region’s fourth-largest economy, according to strategists at Barclays. They say at least another 100 billion euros of funds should be added.

‘Punitive’ Rates

The EFSF needs twice the firepower, said Paul de Grauwe, a professor at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium and two-time candidate for an ECB post. Ireland’s average interest rate on the bailout of 5.8 percent is “punitive,” he said, and jolts confidence by showing that European governments aren’t sure they’ll get their money back.

“We shouldn’t be surprised if the markets don’t trust it either if the European leaders don’t trust their own program — that’s what the high interest rate means,” De Grauwe said. “It really undermines the credibility of this whole program.”

Bundesbank President Axel Weber’s suggestion last week to increase the fund was repudiated the next day by Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, both targets of domestic criticism for using taxpayer money to prop up Europe’s fiscal weaklings business cards design.

Just as U.S. authorities transformed the aim of their Troubled Asset Relief Program from buying illiquid assets to injecting cash into banks, Klaus Baader, co-chief European economist at Societe Generale, suggests EU policy makers may use the facility to buy bonds of peripheral countries.

‘Burn’ Shorts

“They would have to burn short positions with serious amounts,” said Baader, who also says governments may soon threaten to ban certain bets against European bonds.

Another option is to make the EFSF available to countries before they succumb to a speculative attack, along the lines of a flexible International Monetary Fund credit line tapped by Poland last year, said Andre Sapir, an economics professor at the Universite Libre de Bruxelles and former EU adviser.

“One could discuss which countries would maybe benefit and the system as a whole would benefit from having that umbrella,” Sapir said. “This is the next step that should be considered seriously.”

Joint bond issuance — an idea kicking around since the pre-euro era — is also back up for debate. Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, head of the panel of euro-area finance ministers, last week sought to overcome German opposition to forging a common bond market for all euro users.

EU Bonds

The upside would be to create a more liquid market, attracting buyers such as China. The downside, in the German mind, is that fiscally prudent governments would end up paying higher interest rates, in effect subsidizing the weaker ones.

“If bond yields keep rising like this then we may see a much faster move towards a de facto fiscal union with a central debt management office and a single European government bond, possibly under the auspices of the EFSF initially,” said Gary Jenkins, head of fixed income at London-based Evolution Securities Ltd.

Another solution suggested by JPMorgan Chase & Co. chief European economist David Mackie is to transfer 350 billion euros from the balance sheets of Greece, Ireland and Portugal to richer sovereigns. Mackie calculates that would reduce their debt to the EU limit of 60 percent of gross domestic product, and push up the debt ratios of core euro economies by less than 5 percentage points.

Fiscal Union

The result would be a reduction in the fiscal tightening required in the weaker economies and the elimination of chaos caused by a debt restructuring, he said in a Nov. 17 report.

“In the next five to 10 years there has got to be more of a fiscal union within the euro region than we have today,” said Paul Donovan, deputy chief global economist at UBS AG in London. “One of the things that Europe does well is integrate in a crisis.”

With politicians sluggish to act, investors are banking on tomorrow’s meeting in Frankfurt of the ECB’s Governing Council amid speculation it will again delay its exit from emergency liquidity measures for the good of the euro.

Peter Westaway, chief European economist at Nomura International Plc, predicts the ECB will delay a return to more limited auctions of three-month loans until after January. It will boost its buying of bonds to include Spanish and Italian assets, he said. The bank already bought the most government bonds in two months last week.

Bond Buying

“This is not the time to experiment with money-market operations,” said Westaway. “A significant increase in ECB bond purchases to the extent that is feasible would signal that it is providing a crucial policy back-stop that would halt the increase in periphery bond spreads.”

Ultimately, the ECB may be forced to follow the Federal Reserve and Bank of England in conducting quantitative easing in which it buys assets to inject cash into the economy and doesn’t offset the purchases as it does now, said Marc Chandler, global head of currency strategy at Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. in New York.

“As the crisis deepens and threatens core countries, the future of monetary union continues to be called into question,” said Chandler. “As the situation becomes more desperate, the unthinkable has to be thought. Quantitative easing by the ECB may be one of the few ways out.”

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