Lenon’s main business news

Japan posted a current-account surplus in January as exports climbed for a second month, an indication overseas demand is sustaining the nation’s recovery.

The gap was 899.8 billion yen ($9.9 billion) from a year earlier, when it was deficit, the Ministry of Finance said in Tokyo today. The median estimate of 26 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News was for a 783.9 billion yen surplus.

The report highlights the role overseas shipments have continued to play in propping up the world’s second-largest economy. Further export gains in coming months will prompt businesses to boost spending on plant and equipment, helping support the rebound, according to economist Naoki Iizuka.

“Right now the economy is being pulled by exports and inventory adjustments,” Iizuka, a senior economist at Mizuho Securities Co. in Tokyo, said before the report was released. “Once we enter the second quarter, manufacturers’ capital spending will be a new contributor to the economy’s growth.”

Today’s data adds to signs of sustained expansion in the first quarter. Factory production rose at the fastest pace since May and the unemployment rate fell to a 10-month low in January. The Finance Ministry said last week capital spending also fell 18.5 percent in the three months ended Dec. 31. While that was the 11th straight decline, it was also the smallest drop in a year.

Shipments to China rose at the fastest pace since 1985 in January, while exports to the U.S. advanced for the first time in more than two years, customs-cleared trade data showed last month. Today’s figures don’t include regional breakdowns.

Favorable Comparison

The export rebound has been driven in part by favorable year-on-year comparisons. Shipments had plunged last year in the wake of a global credit crunch caused by the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. Japan posted its first current-account deficit in 13 years in January 2009 as a result.

Overseas shipments of Nissan Motor Co. cars rose 29.6 percent in January, while Mitsubishi Motor Corp. shipped more than double the amount of vehicles compared with the same month a year ago, according to the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association.

The Cabinet Office will say the economy expanded at a revised 4 percent annualized pace last quarter, according to the median estimate of 27 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News. Preliminary figures showed 4.6 percent growth. The report is due on March 11 at 8:50 a.m. in Tokyo.

The current account tracks the flow of goods, services and investment income between Japan and its trading partners. It includes trade not shown in the customs-cleared balance.

Source

Quote and apply online or speak with an agent in your area. Compare health insurance plans for individuals and families.

President Barack Obama needs to grasp Southeast Asia’s economic potential and help boost U.S. investment when he travels to Indonesia three weeks from now, economic ministers from the region said.

“There’s still a lack of awareness in the U.S., a misperception that we have to address,” Indonesian Trade Minister Mari Pangestu said in an interview in Putrajaya, Malaysia, where envoys from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations met at the weekend. “We have to keep up the momentum” to expand cooperation, she said.

Asean ministers plan to travel to the U.S. in May to meet with business executives. The association plans to showcase its position as an economic hub in competing for funds with China and India, the world’s fastest-growing economies.

Obama, who became the first U.S. leader to meet with the 10-member bloc in November, is aiming to increase trade with Asia to help meet a January pledge to double exports in five years. Southeast Asia was the third-biggest market for U.S. goods in 2008 behind Canada and Mexico.

The region is rich in coal, oil and precious metals as well as containing sea lanes vital to world trade. Asean aims to form an economic community modeled on the European Union, though without a common currency, by 2015. It has already signed free- trade accords with China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand.

Economic Recovery

“It’s important that Mr. Obama look more to the East,” Thai Deputy Commerce Minister Alongkorn Ponlaboot said in an interview. “There has been a power shift toward this region after the financial crisis, and I hope Obama will have a clear message for Asean when he visits.”

Asia’s export-dependent economies are emerging from recession as global demand increases for the region’s computer chips, cars and commodities. In January, Detroit-based General Motors Co. received local funding to open a diesel-engine plant in Thailand, and Santa Clara, California-based Intel Corp. plans to start operations of a chip assembly and testing plant in Vietnam later this year.

Asean leaders will aim to make the U.S. “understand why we have been able to succeed and why we will continue to undertake the policies that would ensure that this economic recovery is not just a coincidence,” Pangestu said. “We’ve actually moved further than you think and the opportunity is there.”

Investment Programs

Foreign direct investment from the U.S. into Asean from 2006 to 2008 amounted to $12.8 billion, or 6.9 percent of the bloc’s total, down from 17 percent from 1995 to 2001. The EU invested $42.1 billion into Asean from 2006 to 2008 while Japan put down $28.7 billion, statistics show.

Economic disparity among Asean members has hindered the region’s ability to leverage its market of 584 million people guaranteed online payday loans.

The region’s four largest economies — Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia — account for almost 80 percent of all foreign investment into Asean. The Philippines, Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam are the other members of the 10-nation group.

“There is a lot of unutilized potential” for joint investments between Southeast Asian countries, Mustapa Mohamed, Malaysia’s minister of international trade and industry, said in an interview. “We are underperforming in intra-Asean trade, so that’s a priority this year.”

Trade Initiative

Southeast Asian countries are split on Obama’s top trade initiative, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which he aims to turn into a platform for economic integration in the Asia-Pacific region. Vietnam, Singapore and Brunei will join New Zealand, Chile, Peru, Australia and the U.S. for talks on the TPP later this year.

“The success of the TPP depends very much on the attitude and the viewpoint of the U.S.,” Vu Huy Hoang, Vietnam’s minister of industry and trade, told reporters.

Malaysia and Indonesia are both reviewing the TPP and haven’t decided whether to join talks. Thailand prefers a free- trade deal between the U.S. and Asean as a bloc, Alongkorn said.

“We have noted that investments from the U.S. have dropped,” Surin Pitsuwan, Asean’s secretary-general, told reporters yesterday after the meeting, which ran from Feb. 27 until today. “There is very keen interest in strengthening cooperation, but because of the differences and diversity among us we have not yet made a definite decision whether or not this is going to be a free-trade agreement.”

China Trade

Indonesia notified its partners in Asean earlier this year that it wants to revise the group’s free-trade agreement with China, which took force on Jan. 1 and scraps tariffs on about 90 percent of goods.

Textiles, food and electronics companies have said they will suffer from the inflow of cheaper Chinese goods.

China’s trade with Asean has jumped sixfold since 2000 to $193 billion in 2008. The country’s share of Southeast Asia’s total commerce increased to 11.3 percent from 4 percent in that time, whereas the U.S. portion fell to 10.6 percent from 15 percent, Asean statistics show.

“We don’t worry so much about having to compete with the U.S. in the way some sectors worry about having to compete with China,” Indonesia’s Pangestu said. “From the Asean-U.S. perspective of increasing trade and investment, it’s more like, ‘Hey guys, the U.S. is back.’”

Source

The team at Payday Loan Company is ready to tell anyone yes for a payday loans or cash advance for up to $1000 cash.

The U.K.’s unemployment rate would be almost double and its recession would have been deeper if Britain had joined the euro, according to the Centre for Economics and Business Research.

Gross domestic product would have contracted 7 percent last year and unemployment would currently be 15 percent if the nation had signed up to the single currency, CEBR’s Chief Executive Officer Douglas McWilliams said today in an e-mailed statement. The economy shrank 4.8 percent last year.

At 7.8 percent, the U.K. jobless rate is below that of the U.S. and the average of the euro region, which are both at 10 percent. Prime Minister Gordon Brown decided to keep Britain out of the European single currency when he was finance minister in 2003 after an assessment of the potential benefits of joining. Many euro members have struggled, McWilliams said personal business card.

“Most European economies have found keeping up with a German-inspired exchange rate a problem,” he said. “For those European countries that have a propensity to borrow, a single interest rate, kept low by frugal Germany, was a step too far and they over borrowed. Ireland and Spain are the most spectacular examples, but Portugal and Greece also had interest rates that were far too low for their economic circumstances.”

If the U.K. had joined the euro in 1998, economic growth would have been “slightly higher” and inflation would have been faster by about 0.6 percent through 2006, McWilliams said.

Source

Spain’s unemployment rate, the highest in the euro region, rose more than economists expected in the fourth quarter, threatening to delay recovery from the worst recession in six decades.

The jobless rate rose to 18.8 percent from 17.9 percent in the previous quarter, the National Statistics Institute said today in an e-mailed statement. The active population fell as immigrants left the labor market. The rate had been expected to climb to 18.5 percent, according to a Bloomberg News survey of five economists.

Reeling from the collapse of a debt-fueled construction boom as well as the global crisis, Spain’s unemployment rate has more than doubled in two years and joblessness among young people has surged beyond 40 percent. The greatest job losses in the euro region are eroding support for the Socialist government of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, re-elected in 2008 on pledges of full employment, even after his stimulus programs put more than 400,000 people back to work.

“This is going to make the recovery more difficult,” said Estefania Ponte, an economist at Fortis Bank in Madrid. “The most important factor for private consumption is the labor market, and if there’s no improvement in the labor market, it’s very difficult for consumption to recover.”

Construction Workers

About half a million construction workers joined the jobless ranks in the two years to December as the decade-long building boom came to an end, Labor Ministry data show. Ford Motor Co. announced 600 job cuts last year in Spain, once the motor of job creation in the euro region, and olive-oil bottler SOS Corporacion Alimentaria SA also reported plans for layoffs.

The government’s 8 billion-euro ($11.2 billion) works program, which employed builders to widen sidewalks and install cycle routes, ended last month and is being replaced this year with a program half its size. Monthly jobless figures for January will be published on Feb. 2.

“It’s quite a risk,” said Giada Giani, an economist at Citigroup Global Markets in London, who expects unemployment to reach 20 percent this year. “With no pickup in employment, wages slowing and inflation picking up, the overall impact on real disposable incomes for households is likely to be felt more in 2010 than last year.”

People’s Party Gains

The opposition People’s Party extended its lead over the ruling Socialists and would win 43.6 percent of the vote if elections were held now, a poll published in El Mundo newspaper showed on Jan. 2. Unemployment is Spaniards’ main concern, according to the latest survey from the state-run Center for Sociological Research.

While the International Monetary Fund expects the 16-nation euro area, the U.S. and the U.K. to expand this year, it forecasts Spain will contract 0.6 percent in 2010. The budget deficit probably grew to 11.2 percent of economic output in 2009, according to a European Commission forecast, as job losses mounted and the government extended benefits for the long-term unemployed.

The Cabinet today plans to discuss spending cuts of as much as 50 billion euros by 2013, the deadline set by the commission to bring the shortfall within the EU’s 3 percent limit, said an official at the prime minister’s office who declined to be named in line with policy.

Source

Ben Bernanke watch: 6 days and counting.

The Federal Reserve chairman’s term ends on Sunday, and Washington is abuzz with speculation about whether the Senate will reconfirm him.

The Obama administration is confident that he has the 60 votes he needs to get Bernanke another term.

"We need his leadership," White House adviser David Axelrod told CNN on Sunday. "And the president is very confident that the chairman will be confirmed."

Obama phoned senators over the weekend to "check in" a White House official told CNN. And Senate leaders also scrambled to see where the votes are. Bernanke is expected to spend part of Monday talking to senators on Capitol Hill.

Until last week, Bernanke’s confirmation had been viewed as a sure thing.

But voter frustration has been growing against Washington, as lawmakers are accused of doing a better job at getting Wall Street back on its feet than Main Street.

Then Massachusetts voters chose upstart Republican Scott Brown to take over a Senate seat once considered a Democratic stronghold.

Gauging support: Lawmakers, especially those up for election in November, began to publicly turn on Bernanke.

Last Friday, Sens. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and Russell Feingold, D-Wis., said they plan to vote against Bernanke. Both are up for re-election this fall. Several other Democratic senators told CNN they’re undecided.

Even Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who is also up for re-election and down in the pools, issued a tepid statement late Friday saying he’d support Bernanke, but "my support is not unconditional."

It’s not clear whether Bernanke’s confirmation is in jeopardy, because he was always expected to win some Republican support.

Many Republicans and Democrats have yet to publicly declare their allegiance.

In the Senate Banking Committee, four Republicans voted to confirm Bernanke, crediting him for saving the economy from a second Great Depression payday loans.

Other Democratic senators and a Republican issued statements of support over the weekend. These include Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. and Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont.

"The White House appears to have applied a sufficient tourniquet to Bernanke’s reconfirmation over the weekend," wrote Chris Krueger, an analyst for Concept Capital Washington Research Group in a report.

But the Senate can’t even start the process of considering Bernanke until 60 senators sign off, because a few senators who oppose his confirmation filed official "holds" delaying the process.

Some have started to wonder whether Bernanke will be confirmed before Feb. 1. If the vote is delayed, there’s a question as to whether Bernanke can be temporarily re-appointed as acting chair. If not, Fed Vice Chair Donald Kohn would serve as acting chairman.

Senate Democrats are expected to start the confirmation process later this week, according to Congressional aides.

Bernanke has always had his critics in the Senate. Bernie Sanders, a left-leaning independent from Vermont who often votes with the Democrats, and Jim Bunning of Kentucky, Sanders’ political opposite, are two of the most vocal.

"Democrats and President Obama are putting their credibility on the line if they think they can criticize Wall Street and big banks one day and then turn around and support Bernanke, Wall Street’s candidate, the next day," Sanders said. "That doesn’t pass the smell test."

* CNN’s Jamie Crawford contributed to this report. 

Source

Canadian media luminaries Jerry Grafstein, Raymond Heard and Beryl Wajsman announced today they are leading a consortium of local investors to acquire Montreal’s The Gazette, The Ottawa Citizen and The National Post.

The group is in the process of filing a bid to buy the three dailies Canwest LP, a division of Canwest Global Communications Corp. The partners hope to be able to begin due diligence on the operating data in the next few weeks.

The consortium partners have received strong financial commitments from unspecified sources. They said additional participants in the consortium will be announced shortly.

“Our partnership represents a cross spectrum of engaged Canadians committed to a vigorous, independent media voice for the communities that each newspaper serves. We are encouraged by the positive response we have received from investors,” the three consortium partners said. “We are firm in our view that there remains a bright future for newspapers supported by creative web platforms.”

The offer may face an uphill battle. The papers are part of a larger chain of 11 publications, which is currently operating under bankruptcy court protection from creditors. The chain is being offered for sale as an intact group, not as individual publications.

The founding family, headed by Leonard Asper, chief executive officer of Canwest Global, has indicated it wants to keep the papers together. Asper has noted in a pre-filing letter that the newspaper chain and another Canwest property, the Global television network, benefit financially from being able to sell joint advertising space to major national advertisers.

As well, the newspaper group would somehow have to improve on the offer Canwest already has on hand from its secured creditors, led by Canada’s major banks. The creditors say they will pay $950 million for the chain, the amount they are owed by Canwest LP.

But the media consortium said today it believes the newspapers would benefit from local involvement that would produce timely, informative, well-written stories and grassroots journalism reflecting the priorities of Canada’s diverse communities. Each newspaper has a loyal and interested readership, which the consortium said it is confident can be broadened and deepened.

Grafstein is a former Senator and founder of CITY-TV in Toronto and other electronic and print enterprises in Canada, the U.S., Europe and Latin America. He retired from the Senate when he turned 75 — the mandatory retirement age — on Jan. 2.

Heard, a media consultant with major corporate clients, was White House correspondent and Managing Editor of the Montreal Star, editor of the London Observer News Service, and head of Global TV News, which is also owned by Canwest.

Wajsman, is editor of Quebec’s largest English-language weekly, publisher of the bilingual journal of political commentary, The Metropolitan, and was the producer and host of a Montreal radio news magazine program.

Source

OTTAWA–Canadian businesses reported near record optimism about their future sales and say they are stepping up plans to hire more workers and invest, the Bank of Canada said Monday.

Seventy per cent of executives said sales growth will quicken over the next year, while another 21 per cent expect it to slow, the bank said in a quarterly Business Outlook Survey. The gap of 49 percentage points is close to 53 in the last survey, the biggest since the question was first asked in 1998.

Executives on balance said for the second quarter since mid-2007 that credit conditions had eased. Twenty-six per cent of executives said loans were easier to get, compared with 13 per cent who said they were harder. In the last report, the gap was four percentage points.

The survey indicated that terms have improved more for large companies, with some small firms still facing tighter lending terms.

Executives also predict slower inflation over the next two years, and on balance plan to buy equipment and hire workers.

On hiring intentions, 54 per cent of the 100 firms surveyed by the bank said they planned to add employees in the next year, as opposed to only 14 per cent that said they expected to reduce staff.

The balance of opinion on adding to payrolls in the next year was 40 percentage points, the highest since the first quarter of 2007. For investment in machinery and equipment, the balance of opinion was 17 percentage points, the highest since the third quarter of 2008.

In a news conference in St. Boniface, Man., Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said he was encouraged that both consumer and business confidence were improving but added that dangers remained.

"The economy is still recovering … (but) has not recovered," he said.

From the Star’s wire services

Source

Stocks ended a choppy session barely higher Wednesday, with the Dow and Nasdaq eking out fresh 2009 highs as investors mulled a stronger dollar and opted to play it cautious at the end of a tumultuous year.

The Dow Jones industrial average (INDU) added a few points, ending at the highest point since Oct. 1, 2008. The S&P 500 index (SPX) ended just above the unchanged line, closing just shy of 15-month highs hit two days ago.

The Nasdaq composite (COMP) added a few points, ending at the highest point since Oct. 3, 2008.

Stocks ended a volatile session modestly lower Tuesday, with the three major indexes breaking a six-session winning streak that had left the market at 15-month highs. That weakness spread into Wednesday’s session, the second-to-last trading day of the year.

A stronger U.S. dollar put some pressure on the market as well, dragging on commodity prices and stocks, and pulling down shares of companies that do a lot of business overseas and therefore benefit from a weaker dollar. After sliding for most of the year versus the euro and yen, the dollar has gained over the last few weeks as investors have bet that the economy is improving.

Trading volume has been low this week, with many market pros and individual investors on vacation. Lighter trading volume can cause increased volatility. All financial markets are closed Friday for the New Year’s Day holiday.

Year-to-date, the Dow has risen 20%, the S&P 500 has climbed almost 25% and the Nasdaq has gained 45%, as of Tuesday’s close. All three indexes have posted more substantial gains since falling to multi-year lows on March 9 amid the height of the financial crisis.

"I think the market seems to have ended the year on a slightly positive note, with many investors happy to lock in their profits and look ahead to the new year," said Michael Sheldon, chief market strategist at RDM Financial Group.

Any stock market gains accrued next year are expected to be a lot milder, analysts say, as the government stimulus fades at the same time the slow-growing economy struggles to create jobs. Meanwhile, the consumer spending environment is expected to stay weak, the dollar could firm up and the Federal Reserve is expected to begin raising interest rates in the second half of 2010.

Sheldon said that 2010 could end up looking something like 2004, which proved to be a leveling year after the massive gains of 2003. 2003’s gains followed a three-year bear market.

The S&P 500 rose 26% in 2003, seesawed for the first nine months of 2004 and then managed a big run in the last quarter, ending the year up around 9%.

Sheldon said it wouldn’t be surprising to see the market churn or even selloff a bit in the first half of the year but eventually move back up to end the year with gains of 10% to 15%.

Other analysts are concerned that a bigger selloff could take hold, particularly if economists have been overly-optimistic about the economy’s ability to recharge once the fiscal and monetary stimulus starts to fade out.

"Right now the sentiment in the stock market is at bullish levels that haven’t been seen since 2007," said Matt Havens, wealth advisor at Global Vision Advisors. In October 2007, the S&P 500 and Dow industrials closed at all-time highs and the Nasdaq composite at the highest point since 2000.

"The underlying strength of the economy is uncertain going into the next year and the longer stocks keep moving higher, the greater the potential for a significant pullback," Havens said.

Economy: The Chicago PMI, a regional read on manufacturing, rose to 60 in December from 56.1 previously. The improvement was a surprise, with economists surveyed by Briefing.com expecting it to drop to 55.1.

Financials: Troubled auto and mortgage financing firm GMAC Financial Services is expected to receive a third round of bailout funds, according to a published report. GMAC is expected to get an additional $3.8 billion on top of the $13.5 billion it has already received since Dec. 2008.

World markets: Asian markets mostly ended lower. In Europe, London’s FTSE 100 lost 0.7%, Germany’s DAX lost 0.9% and France’s CAC 40 lost 0.6%.

Commodities and the dollar: COMEX gold for February delivery fell $5.60 to settle at $1,092.50 an ounce. Gold closed at an all-time high of $1,218.30 an ounce earlier this month.

U.S. light crude oil for February delivery rose 41 cents to settle at $79.28 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Bonds: Treasury prices rose, lowering the yield on the 10-year note to 3.79% from 3.80% late Tuesday. Treasury prices and yields move in opposite directions.

Market breadth was negative. On the New York Stock Exchange, losers beat winners by eight to seven on volume of 645 million shares. On the Nasdaq, advancers topped decliners seven to six on volume of 1.31 billion shares. 

Source

U.S. President Barack Obama called a climate change agreement with China and about 25 other nations an “unprecedented” move to slow global warming. Environmental groups and at least five developing nations called it a failure.

The accord, which pushes off signing a treaty for at least a year, is “a first step,” Obama said yesterday before leaving Copenhagen, where he spent 14 hours cobbling together the agreement in meetings with world leaders, and addressing 8,000 envoys from 193 nations.

Delegates from the countries failed to reach consensus on the accord today after discussing it through the night, agreeing instead to “take note” of the document, or recognize that it exists. The agreement seeks voluntary cuts in greenhouse-gas emissions that scientists blame for global warming without binding countries to take action.

“The meeting was a disaster,” Lars-Erik Liljelund, the director general of Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt’s office, said in an interview today. “The process needs to be changed because if we continue like this, we won’t be any further a year from now.”

Negotiators met in the Danish capital for two weeks of United Nations talks on curbing global warming. Debate stumbled on aid to developing countries facing damage from climate change, pollution-reduction goals and how to verify individual country’s pledges to cut harmful emissions.

Environmentalists said the agreement that includes the U.S. and China — the world’s two biggest emitters of greenhouse gases — falls well short of what’s needed to deal with global warming. Bolivia, Sudan and Venezuela were among countries that spoke out against the accord, which will serve as a framework for continuing talks in 2010.

‘Backroom Deal’

“This is the United Nations and the nations here are not united on this secret backroom declaration,” Kate Horner, policy analyst for the London-based environmental group Friends of the Earth, said in statement. “Copenhagen has been an abject failure.”

The proposal calls for voluntary steps to reduce emissions blamed for heating the atmosphere, melting icecaps and causing destructive weather patterns. For two years, nations from China to members of the 27-country European Union repeatedly called for a binding treaty to be signed in Copenhagen.

“It will not be legally binding, but what it will do is allow for each country to show to the world what they are doing,” Obama told reporters in Copenhagen. “There will be a sense on the part of each country that we’re in this together and we’ll know who is meeting and who’s not meeting the mutual obligations that have been set forth.”

Bleeding Hand

Obama, U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva were among about 25 world leaders who spent ten hours “in a rather stuffy room” drafting details normally left to lower-level negotiators, UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer told reporters today.

The text, called the Copenhagen Accord, was then introduced to the meeting hall where delegates from all nations were present. Envoys from Bolivia, Sudan and Venezuela rejected the text.

During the meeting, Venezuelan negotiator Claudia Salerno Caldera raised her hand that was bloodied and complained about the way the document was drafted, calling it a “Coup d’état on the UN charter.”

“This hand that is bleeding wants to talk and has as much right as any of those you call a “representative” group of leaders,” she said. “International agreements can’t be imposed by a small and select, as you call it, group of countries.”

Burning the Midnight Oil

Negotiations went through the night yesterday, finally ending today at about 3:30 p quick guaranteed personal loans.m. local time, more than 21 hours after their scheduled conclusion. That followed debate by Brown, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton until about 2:30 a.m. on Dec. 18.

Dessima Williams, Grenadian ambassador who was lead negotiator for a group of 43 small-island and low-lying states, today said she’d been awake for 48 hours.

“Although I’m not ecstatic, I’m not unhappy in a major way. I wish I could’ve gotten more, but I think I’ll live to fight another day.”

Rich countries offered to provide $100 billion a year by 2020 to help poor nations reduce carbon emissions, conditional on developing countries cutting gas discharges, according to the text. They may also pay out $30 billion in aid from next year through 2012.

“In terms of finance, it is vague, it is a big soup,” Pa Ousman Jarju, a Gambian delegate, said in an interview in Copenhagen. “It’s well below what is required.”

Move Forward

The agreement was reached after Obama had last-minute talks with Wen, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Brazil’s Lula and South African President, Jacob Zuma. It was then taken to all nations and most backed it.

“There emerged over time a real sense in the room that most countries wanted to move forward with some kind of decision,” said Ruben Kraiem, co-chair of the climate practice for attorneys Covington & Burling LLP in New York.

Nations should try to keep the global temperature increase before industrialization “below 2 degrees” Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), according to the agreement.

Envoys from the U.S., Europe and China have supported the 2 degrees target. Poorer nations and environmental groups wanted 1 or 1.5 degrees, fearing a higher increase will raise sea levels and make coastal cities and some island states uninhabitable.

‘Well Short’

“As President Obama said, its well short of what’s ultimately needed,” Elliot Diringer, vice president for international strategies at Arlington, Virginia-based Pew Center on Global Climate Change, said in a statement. “But it would provide a reasonable basis for negotiating a fair and effective climate treaty.”

Without emissions curbs, temperatures would rise by 6 degrees Celsius, an increase that “would lead almost certainly to massive climatic change,” the International Energy Agency, an adviser to 28 oil-consuming nations, said in a report. A more-than-2-degree warming will bring more intense flooding and drought and a faster sea-level increase, according to the UN.

“This declaration or outcome or whatever you want to call it, is not a legally binding document,” Indian Environment Minister Ramesh said in an interview. “It’s a political statement.”

For 20 years, scientists working for the United Nations have provided guidance for global climate talks. The result is the Kyoto Protocol, a 1997 accord that limits greenhouse-gas emissions among 37 industrialized nations. Those targets are set to expire in 2012, leaving the world without binding goals if Copenhagen doesn’t renew them.

“The objective of these negotiations of securing the future of the planet definitely wasn’t achieved,” Melinda Kimble, the U.S. chief negotiator for the Kyoto Protocol and senior vice president at the United Nations Foundation said in an interview in Copenhagen. “It’s a limited outcome.”

Source

Billionaire hedge fund manager John Paulson is launching a new gold fund, which will include $250 million of his own personal investment, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.

Paulson is among a number of hedge funds managers stocking up on the precious metal, for centuries considered a hedge against inflation, as governments around the world ramp up spending to combat recession.

Citing three investors, the Journal said the fund will focus on gold mining stocks and gold-related investments.

Paulson spoke about the new fund, which will begin on January 1, at a meeting with his investors in New York on Tuesday.

Paulson’s combined gold and gold-related investments make up about half of his firm Paulson & Co’s holdings bad credit cash loans.

Paulson already owns big stakes in gold miners AngloGold Ashanti Ltd, Kinross Gold Corp and Gold Fields Ltd.

He is also by far the biggest shareholder of SPDR Gold Trust, the world’s largest gold-back exchange-traded fund (ETF). His investment in the ETF is valued at about $3.53 billion on Wednesday.

A spokesman for Paulson & Co declined to comment.

(Reporting by Frank Tang; Editing by Christian Wiessner)

Read more