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Mitt Romney’s new tax plan would mean lower taxes for most Americans. But some would benefit more than others.

According to a new analysis from the Tax Policy Center, wealthy Americans would see their taxes fall precipitously under Mitt Romney’s new plan — which scraps the Alternative Minimum Tax and cuts marginal tax rates by 20%.

Assuming the Bush tax cuts are extended, the Romney plan would give the top 1% of earners an average tax cut of $150,000, a 7.8% reduction in their average federal tax rate, according to the Tax Policy Center.

Americans in the middle 20% of income-earners would get an average tax cut of $810, a 1.4% tax rate reduction.

Those making $1 million or more would receive an average tax cut of $250,000, an 8.1% tax rate reduction, while the average American would get $2,800, a 3.5% rate drop.

The plan would also add to the deficit — $480 billion in calendar year 2015 alone, according to the study.

For its part, the Romney campaign disputes any claim that his plan would add to the deficit. The cuts "will be fully paid for through a combination of economic growth, base broadening and spending restraint," campaign spokeswoman Andrea Saul told CNNMoney on Wednesday.

But the campaign has not spelled out which tax cuts it wants to kill, making it difficult to score.

Taxing the rich is not enough

"Romney seems to be trying to walk a fine line between responsible fiscal policy and pandering to his base," Howard Gleckman, a resident fellow at the Urban Institute, wrote in a blog post savings account payday advance. "But by not identifying how he’d pay for his generous tax cuts, his tightrope is getting pretty wobbly."

The campaign has also said the tax cuts will spur growth that will, in turn, create additional revenue for the federal government. The TPC analysis does not take that growth into account.

The updated plan reiterates other proposals that were first laid out in September, including provisions that would eliminate taxes on interest, dividends and capital gains for taxpayers who make less than $200,000.

It also calls for the elimination of the estate tax, and a reduction in the tax rate paid by corporations from 35% to 25%.

The candidate’s initial economic plan — released in September — was billed by the Romney campaign as "the most detailed plan for economic growth and job creation of any presidential candidate."

But it would only "maintain current tax rates on personal income" as president before moving to a "fairer, flatter, simpler tax structure" in the future.

That plan fell flat with some influential conservatives, including the Wall Street Journal editorial board, which labeled the proposals "surprisingly timid and tactical."

The Tax Foundation, a think tank that generally advocates for lower tax rates, said that Romney’s initial plan for the individual code "really takes no step toward fundamental reform." 

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Businesses slashed spending on machinery and equipment in January after a tax break expired, pushing orders for long-lasting manufacturing goods down by the largest amount in three years.

Orders for durable goods fell 4 percent last month, the Commerce Department said Tuesday.

A big reason for the decline was demand for so-called core capital goods, which are viewed as a good measure of business investment plans, tumbled 4.5 percent. That’s the biggest drop in a year.

Demand for core capital goods hit an all-time high in December. Companies rushed to take advantage of a tax break that expired at the end of last year.

A durable good is a product expected to last at least three years. They include everything from appliances and cars to heavy machinery and planes. Orders tend to fluctuate sharply from one month to the next. But the overall trend in orders has increased since the recession ended nearly three years ago.

In January, overall orders totaled $206.1 billion. That’s 38.6 above the low hit during the recession. Orders are still 16 percent below their peak hit in December 2007.

Even without that tax break, many analysts believe business investment will pick up and stay strong in 2012 as companies take advantage of stockpiles of cash to expand and modernize their production facilities payday loan lenders.

U.S. factories boosted output last month and December ended up being their best month of growth in five years. Strong auto sales and growing business investment in machinery and other equipment are keeping factories busy and helping the economy grow.

About 9 percent of the nation’s jobs are in manufacturing. But last year, factories added 13 percent of new jobs. And in January, about one-fifth of the 243,000 net jobs the economy created were in manufacturing.

The economy grew at an annual rate of 2.8 percent in the final three months of last year. Economists are looking for roughly the same level growth in the current quarter. And a forecasting panel of the National Association for Business Economics said Monday that the economy should grow 2.3 percent this year.

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Singapore intensified efforts to address the island

U.S. stocks fell sharply Friday after Greece’s bailout deal was put on hold, a day after it seemed that the country had satisfied its creditors.

The Dow Jones industrial average was down 115 points to at 12,775 just before midday. The broader Standard & Poor’s 500 was down 11 points to 1,341. The Nasdaq composite fell 21 points to 2,906.

Investors had breathed a sigh of relief Thursday after Greek Prime Minister Lucas Papademos and the heads of the three parties backing his government agreed to private sector wage cuts, civil service layoffs and cuts in government spending.

But finance ministers from the other 16 countries that use the euro insisted that Greece save an extra euro325 million ($430 million), pass the cuts through parliament and guarantee that they will be enforced after planned elections in April.

Greece needs another round of international bailout money, its second, to avoid missing a bond payment next month and defaulting, an event that could cause a shock in world financial markets.

By Friday, four Greek cabinet ministers had resigned over the wage cuts and spending reductions, known as austerity measures.

“The economy in Greece is deteriorating faster than anticipated, and the austerity measures aren’t particularly popular,” said Mark Luschini, chief investment analyst at Janney Montgomery Scott. “There could be a disorderly default.”

The decline in U.S. stocks was broad. All 10 categories of stock in the S&P 500 were down, led by materials companies, down 1.8 percent. Industrial, energy and financial companies fell 1 percent.

Stocks have been generally rising on small daily gains this year because of good economic news and sense that the worst of the debt crisis in Europe may be over. The Dow has risen 4.5 percent in 2012. Its last loss of 100 or more points was Dec. 28.

The benchmark index in Athens fell 3.2 percent. Germany’s DAX was down 1.6 percent. The CAC-40 in France was down 1.1 percent.

The euro, which had risen Thursday to its highest level against the dollar in two months, fell by a penny and was trading at just under $1.32. U.S. Treasury yields fell, a sign that investors were buying bonds as a safer investment than stocks.

Among stocks making big moves in the United States:

_ LinkedIn rose 17 percent. The online networking company announced that fourth quarter earnings had soared and revenue doubled.

_ Jeans maker True Religion Apparel plunged 24 percent. The company reported earnings that were far below what analysts were expecting and analysts slashed their ratings on the stock, citing weak sales and big markdowns.

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Nokia Corp. plans to stop assembling cell phones in Europe by year-end as it shifts production to Asia and will cut another 4,000 jobs, its latest attempts to cushion itself from stiff competition in the smartphone sector.

The Finnish company said Wednesday it will make the new job cuts at three plants in Finland, Mexico and Hungary this year as it reorganizes global manufacturing operations to compete better with the likes of Apple Inc.’s iPhone and handsets using Google Inc.’s Android operating software.

The cuts come on top of nearly 10,000 layoffs announced last year.

Nokia said it had increasingly shifted cell phone assembly from Europe to Asia, where the majority of component suppliers are based, to help it reach markets faster. The company said it would not close the three factories, however.

“There will be no assembling of mobile phones at our plants in Europe after this,” Nokia spokesman James Etheridge said. “We plan to focus product assembly at our plants in Asia where the majority of our suppliers are based, while our facilities in Salo, Komarom and Reynosa will focus on the software-heavy aspects of the production process.”

Neil Mawston from Strategy Analytics said Nokia’s move “made sense” and was in line with what other cell phone makers had been doing for years, such as Samsung Electronics Co., Motorola Inc., and Sony Ericsson, which had large assembly plants in Europe.

“It’s an unstoppable trend really. Essentially, labor costs, land costs and other associated costs are so much lower in Asia,” Mawston said. “Also, Asia is so much closer to the biggest pool of users now so from a supply and demand side Asia looks a lot more attractive than Europe.”

Nokia said the shift to Asia would enable it to introduce innovations into the market more quickly and “ultimately be more competitive.”

Once the bellwether of the industry, Nokia has lost its dominant position in the global mobile phone market, with Android phones and iPhones overtaking it in the growing smartphone segment. It’s also been squeezed in the low-end by Asian manufacturers making cheaper phones, such as ZTE.

Nokia has been the leading handset maker since 1998 but after reaching its global goal of 40 percent market share in 2008, the company has gradually lost overall market share. It plummeted to below 30 percent last year.

In an attempt to remedy the slide, Nokia launched its new Windows Phone 7 in October, eight months after CEO Stephen Elop announced a partnership with Microsoft Corp. That heralded a major strategy shift for the Espoo-based company as it adopted the Windows operating system in its new phones.

But analysts have said it could take a few quarters before Nokia’s success can be measured.

Last month, Nokia reported that smartphone sales plummeted 23 percent globally in the fourth quarter as net revenue fell 20 percent to euro10 billion ($13.11 billion) compared to a year earlier.

Nokia share price closed up slightly at euro3.88 ($5.09) on the Helsinki Stock Exchange.

Nokia, based in Espoo near the Finnish capital, employs 130,000 people _ down from more than 132,000 a year ago.

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Online:

http://www.nokia.com

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Japan

German unemployment dropped more than economists forecast to a two-decade low in January, bolstering economic growth as the euro region

It’s a move that Ameren Missouri’s founders couldn’t have possibly imagined more than a century ago: Utility officials on Friday proposed spending $145 million over three years to reduce electricity use.

The filing comes three months after Ameren made deep and widely criticized cuts to its existing efficiency programs, saying they penalized shareholders by not compensating the company for lost energy sales.

The program proposed on Friday would more than double what Ameren Missouri was spending on energy efficiency before the cuts, and promises to save its customers 800 million kilowatt-hours a year, an amount of equal to the energy use of 60,000 homes.

Of course, energy efficiency programs aren’t free — and Ameren wants ratepayers to finance them. From 2013 through the end of 2015, Ameren would collect the cost of implementing the plan through a surcharge on customer bills that would equal a rate increase of a little more than 3 percent, said Warren Wood, the utility’s vice president of legislative and regulatory affairs.

But all of Ameren’s 1.2 million customers will benefit from a reduction in energy use, Wood said.

“This filing aligns the business interests of the utilities and their customers,” he said.

The Public Service Commission has 120 days to review Ameren’s proposal. If approved, it would take effect in January 2013.

The plan is the first filed by St. Louis-based Ameren under the Missouri Energy Efficiency Investment Act. The law, signed by Gov. Jay Nixon in 2009, was designed to encourage reductions in energy use by allowing utilities to earn the same profit on energy efficiency investments that they do on investments in power plants, poles and wires. The PSC, utilities and other groups have spent the past two years debating rules to implement the law.

Ameren spent $70 million on efficiency from 2009 to 2011, helping customers save more than 550 million kilowatt-hours. But the those efforts led to $26.4 million in losses, according to Wood. That amount will grow to $60 million by 2014 — the reason why Ameren killed many of the rebates and other incentives at the end of September to the chagrin of energy efficiency advocates.

Wood explained the problem like this: Every time a customer pays their electric bill, some of the money is used to pay for variable costs like coal and other fuel used to run power plants. Another piece goes to cover fixed costs like poles, wires and substations — infrastructure that’s needed regardless of how many electrons flow through the grid.

When electricity demand declines, so does revenue, including that portion that goes to cover fixed costs. Friday’s proposal would compensate Ameren for that lost revenue while still producing tangible benefits for consumers, he said.

Efficiency and consumer advocates hadn’t read through all of the hundreds of pages that Ameren filed as of Friday afternoon.

While they would welcome an increase in efficiency spending in Ameren’s plan, they said they need to analyze the details before endorsing or opposing the plan.

“Are they seeking to be overcompensated (for efficiency investments)? Are they overreaching?” asked Lewis Mills Jr., Missouri’s Public Counsel. “That’s my biggest concern.”

Rebecca Stanfield of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Chicago office said it’s time for Ameren, regulators, and consumer and environmental groups to make energy efficiency work in Missouri.

“We’ve had three years of positioning and brinksmanship on this issue,” she said. “All of the parties need to recognize that there’s tremendous value in what can be created with these programs. Lets look at the big picture of what we could achieve if they are successful.”

No one disputes that energy efficiency must be a significant part of the state’s energy policy. That includes Ameren, which has identified efficiency as the cheapest way to meet energy demand in the future.

Missouri has long been dependent on relatively cheap coal to meet its electricity needs. But prices for the fuel and cost of hauling it from mines in Wyoming have been increasing. And new environmental regulations aimed at cutting back on air and water pollution from coal-fired power plants are certain to lead to further increases.

The state also continues to lag behind most others when it comes to policies to reduce energy use. The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy ranks Missouri 44th in the nation for energy efficiency.

In Illinois, meanwhile, utilities are increasing spending on energy efficiency programs. That includes Ameren’s sister utility, which sells electricity to customers across much of central and southern Illinois.

Ameren Illinois will spend $78 million this year on discounts and rebates for energy saving lighting and appliances to its 1.2 million electric customers and 800,000 gas customers.

One key difference is that Illinois has an energy efficiency standard. The law requires Ameren and the state’s other investor-owned utility, ComEd, to cut energy use by 25 percent from 2007 levels by 2025.

Without a mandate, Missouri utilities must be willing to aggressively push efficiency programs on their own. How to get them do that has been a contentious issue.

Mills, the main advocate for consumers on utility issues, realizes some Ameren customers may chafe at the idea of seeing bills go up, at least initially, to pay for energy efficiency programs.

But energy efficiency can benefit all consumers — even those who don’t take advantage of rebates and other incentives — by lowering statewide energy use, Mills said. That can help utilities defer or avoid building new power plants or running more expensive plants when electricity demand spikes.

“While it looks like rates are going to be going up,” he said, “they’re going to be going up more if we don’t do this.”

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Sales of previously owned homes rose to an 11-month high in December and the supply of properties on the market tumbled to a near 7-year low, pointing to a nascent recovery in the housing market.

The National Association of Realtors said on Friday existing home sales increased 5 percent month over month to an annual rate of 4.61 million units.

November’s sales pace was revised down to a 4.39 million-unit pace, previously reported as a 4.42 million-unit rate.

Economists polled by Reuters had expected sales to rise to a 4.65 million-unit sales pace. Sales in December were up 3.6 percent from a year ago. A total of 4.26 million homes were sold in 2011, up 1.7 percent from the prior year.

“A sector of the economy that has been a large weight on growth has started to stabilize over the last few months and we will continue to look for momentum in 2012,” said John Doyle, currency strategist at Tempus Consulting in Washington.

The third straight month of gains in sales added to hopes that a tentative recovery in the housing market was starting to take shape, but progress will be painfully slow given a glut of unsold properties that is weighing down on prices.

Data this week showed single-family home starts rose for a third straight month in December and optimism among builders this month was the highest in four-and-a-half years.

But the sector, responsible for the 2007-09 recession, remains challenged by an oversupply of homes amid an 8.5 percent unemployment rate. In addition, declining prices have left many Americans with homes that are worth less than their mortgages.

But there are tentative signs of improvement. There were 2.38 million unsold homes on the market last month, the fewest since March 2005. That represented a 6.2 months’ supply at December’s sales pace, the lowest since April 2006, and compared to 7.2 months’ supply in November.

However, the inventory of unsold homes tends to decline in winter. A supply of 6 months is generally considered as ideal and anything above indicates further declines in house prices. The median sales price fell 2.5 percent to $164,500 from a year ago.

Sales last month rose across all four regions, with gains in both the multifamily home and single-family home segments.

Single family home sales rose 4.6 percent, while multi-family dwellings advanced 8.7 percent.

But the road to recovery will be bumpy. Distressed properties, foreclosures and short sales which typically occur at deep discounts, accounted for 32 percent of overall sales last month, little changed from November.

A third of pending existing home sales contracts were canceled, the NAR said.

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