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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. 

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European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet intensified pressure on Greece to cut the continent’s biggest budget deficit with a warning that the country won’t get any favors from policy makers.

As Prime Minister George Papandreou struggles to convince investors and European Union governments he can regain control of the country’s budget, Trichet yesterday said no nation can expect any “special treatment.”

“The central bank has clearly chosen to maintain its pressure on the Greek government, rather than easing the heightened tensions in bond markets,” said Laurent Bilke, a former ECB economist now at Nomura International Plc in London.

Greek bonds extended declines after Trichet’s comments, which came after the ECB left its benchmark interest rate at a record low of 1 percent. While Greece was his main target, Trichet told other euro members to take the “difficult decisions” needed to tackle “sharply rising” budget gaps or face higher borrowing costs that hurt economic growth.

The Greek remarks eclipsed those made on monetary policy as officials turn their attention from the financial crisis to the nations most hurt by the recession. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in comments published yesterday that Greece’s fiscal woes could hurt the euro and Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean- Claude Juncker said International Monetary Fund aid wouldn’t be “appropriate.”

Collateral

Rating downgrades sparked a rout in Greece’s bonds in December as investors tuned into a budget deficit of 12.7 percent of gross domestic product, more than four times the European Union limit. The yield on the 2-year Greek note today rose 6 basis points to 3.559 percent, extending yesterday’s gain of 44 points.

Arguing that it has received enough of a benefit from euro membership, Trichet said the ECB won’t help Greece by delaying the reintroduction of its pre-crisis collateral rules at the end of 2010. Downgrades by Fitch Ratings, Moody’s Investors Service and Standard & Poor’s have fanned concerns its bonds will be excluded from the ECB’s market operations.

“We will not change our collateral policy for the sake of any particular country,” Trichet said.

The subsequent selloff suggests the market “still harbors hopes that the ECB would abort its collateral decision,” said Elga Bartsch, chief European economist at Morgan Stanley in London guaranteed high risk personal loans. Juergen Michels, chief euro-area economist at Citigroup Inc., said the ECB will ultimately agree to rules “that do not put too much additional pressure on member countries.”

Short Shrift

Trichet also downplayed the importance of Greece for the euro region as a whole. While Greece makes up about 3 percent of the bloc’s GDP, 13 percent of the U.S. economy is accounted for by California, which is also suffering financial difficulties.

Those remarks drew short shift from Andrew Bosomworth, a former ECB economist and now head of portfolio management at Pacific Investment Management Co. in Munich. He warned Greece could still cause “contagion” to other economies with poor finances such as Portugal or Spain.

“While each of those countries in their own right may not be very big, or a threat to the euro area, if one of them were to go you have potential domino effect that could snowball into a big problem for the euro area,” Bosomworth said in a television interview yesterday.

Marco Annunziata, chief economist at UniCredit Group in London, said policy makers are playing a “nerve-wracking game of chicken” in the hope that their tough rhetoric will pressure Greece into action.

Budget Shortfall

“If a rescue turns out to be necessary, a rescue operation will be mounted,” Annunziata said.

In Athens, Papandreou yesterday pledged to “do whatever it takes” to rein in the budget shortfall and restore confidence in the country’s finances when he published the three-year budget plan.

The government’s latest proposals, to be presented to the European Commission today, call for about 10 billion euros ($14 billion) of spending cuts and revenue increases this year to bring the shortfall from 12.7 percent of output to 8.7 percent by year-end.

“Our country can and is obliged to exit as soon as possible this vicious circle of misery,” Papandreou said. “We will not retreat; we will proceed quickly.”

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For top executives, ’tis the season to get paid in company stock - unless you happen to work at Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac.

The taxpayer-backed mortgage giants disclosed Thursday that they could pay out as much as $40 million to their top 10 executives for work in 2009.

The CEOs - Fannie’s (FNM, Fortune 500) Michael Williams and Freddie’s (FRE, Fortune 500) Charles Haldeman - are in line to receive as much as $6 million apiece, on an annualized basis (though both will get less this year because they took their jobs midway through the year).

That’s a nice chunk of change for running two companies that together lost $72 billion in the first nine months of 2009 and have received $112 billion in Treasury aid.

But what’s remarkable is that every penny Fannie and Freddie will pay out will be in cash - at a time when the White House is pressuring companies to pay more in stock, in the name of suppressing the bet-the-ranch mentality that helped pave the way for Wall Street’s 2008 collapse.

The government’s pay czar, Kenneth Feinberg, has cut cash payouts at taxpayer-backed companies like AIG (AIG, Fortune 500), Chrysler Financial and GMAC.

But his message has been heard everywhere, notably on Wall Street, where some big banks that have repaid Treasury loans have set plans to offer more compensation in stock.

"It’s amazing that the government is pushing companies with which it has no contractual standing to pay executives in stock, but isn’t doing the same with companies that it actually controls," said Len Blum, a managing director at investment bank Westwood Capital in New York.

For its part, the government agency that oversees Fannie and Freddie notes that this year’s payouts are 40% below the levels that obtained before the government takeover. Much of the money will be deferred over several years and some will be paid only if the companies hit certain targets.

Fannie adds that Treasury, which approved the payouts, prohibits it "from issuing common stock in connection with any new compensation arrangements without Treasury’s prior consent."

That stands in contrast to two of Fannie and Freddie’s big peers in the government-backed stable: insurer AIG and carmaker GM, which are now paying their executives mostly in stock.

AIG chief Robert Benmosche agreed in August to receive an annual salary of $7 million - $3 million in cash and $4 million in common stock. He won’t be able to sell the shares for five years. Benmosche also gets up to $3.5 million annually in stock-based incentive pay.

At GM, new finance chief Chris Liddell agreed this month to receive $750,000 annually in cash salary, $3.45 million in stock salary and $2 million in stock incentive pay.

Even at firms that have repaid their Troubled Asset Relief Program loans, the pay-in-stock message has sunk in.

Goldman Sachs (GS, Fortune 500) said this month it will pay its top executives’ bonuses in stock in 2009, a year in which the big trading firm is expected to set aside some $21 billion for employee pay.

"We believe our compensation policies are the strongest in our industry and … incentivize behavior that is in the public’s and our shareholders’ best interests," CEO Lloyd Blankfein said in a statement Dec. 10.

Of course, there are big differences between these companies and Fannie and Freddie.

Since September 2008, the government has been propping up Fannie and Freddie in the name of stabilizing the financial markets and ensuring that home mortgages remained available for Americans.

With their emphasis focusing from investor profits to supporting home prices, the firms’ financial results have collapsed. Fannie lost $58 billion in the first nine months of 2009 and Freddie $14 billion, as their share of the U.S. mortgage market soared near 90%.

The availability of Fannie-Freddie financing allows loans that "no one would normally make" to be extended, said Blum.

Shares of Fannie traded as high as $70 in August 2007, as the global credit bubble was getting ready to collapse. But in the past year, they have closed above $2 just once.

Even that is probably too high, Blum said, given the companies’ giant debt to taxpayers and the prospect of additional losses should this year’s recovery peter out.

Indeed, the giant paychecks also show little progress has been made in resolving the key conflict at the heart of these firms.

Given their obvious public policy function and their ballooning losses, it makes sense to simply take over Fannie and Freddie and make them into full-fledged government agencies, Blum said.

But in doing so, the government would have to wipe out the shareholders, foreclosing a possible sale of the firms back to the public. And it would have to start paying the firms’ workers on the federal pay scale - which would mean no more $6 million paydays for CEOs.

So as officials in Washington posture about the need to end too-big-to-fail and put the financial system on a sounder footing, action remains in short supply.

"These companies are never going to turn a profit again, but the government hasn’t come clean and wiped out the stock," said Blum. "After the crisis we have had, I don’t understand why we’re still allowing conflicts like this in our financial system." 

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After surging 10% in October, sales of existing homes jumped again in November, growing 7.4% compared with October to an annualized rate of 6.54 million units, according to the National Association of Realtors.

"This clearly is a rush of first-time buyers not wanting to miss out on the tax credit," said NAR’s chief economist, Lawrence Yun.

November was originally going to be the last month in which sales to first-time homebuyers would qualify for a federal tax credit of up to $8,000. However, that deadline was extended through June.

In addition, the tax credit was expanded to cover people who already own a home. They can qualify for a $6,500 tax credit if purchase a new house before the end of June. That should encourage "trade-up" buyers.

The strength of sales in November surprised the industry. A panel of experts compiled by Briefing.com had forecast month-over-month sales growth of just 2.5% to 6.25 million from 6.1 million a month earlier.

The sales total was also a huge improvement over a year ago. Sales rose 45.7% over the paltry annualized rate of 4.49 million units during November 2008.

The contribution made by first-time buyers is evident in a separate survey NAR conducted of its members. They estimate that 51% of sales in November were by newcomers to the market, up a point from 50% in October. Normally, first timers account for about 40% of sales.

Also propelling sales higher were rock-bottom interest rates. The average for a 30-year, fixed-rate loan during the month was just 4.88%, down from 4.95% in October and 6.09% a year ago.

With rates that much lower, homebuyers can save more than $150 a month on a $200,000 mortgage.

The industry expects home sales to slacken December, partially because of the tax credit’s originally scheduled demise. That caused some buyers to push up their closing, stealing sales from December.

However, sales will not fall off a cliff, though, according to Walter Molony, a NAR spokesman payday loans with no faxing. "The psychology seems to be turning around," he said. "Potential buyers, who had been staying on the fence, now believe we’re at or near the market bottom."

One X-factor, however, is the vast numbers of homes that may come to market over the next few months. There is a large "shadow inventory" — homes owned by banks and mortgage companies — that have not yet been put up for sale. It could be as many as 1.7 million units, according to First American CoreLogic.

In addition, another spate of foreclosures could be hitting the market as a number of option-ARM mortgages are set to default.

All that may drive prices down, according to Shari Olefson, author of "Foreclosure Nation: Mortgaging the American Dream." And the impact of these renewed price declines could again alter the market psychology.

"People think that prices have bottomed," she said. "I don’t think they have. People will see price declines and that will discourage them from buying."

Mike Larson, a real estate analyst with Weiss Research has preached all through the bust that price declines are what will "fix" the housing crisis.

"We needed to see prices fall to make ownership competitive with renting again, and to restore the normal relationship of house prices to income," he said. "That has now happened and you’re seeing buyers come out of the woodwork as a result."

Still, they will have to come out in large numbers to offset the inventory overhang in some of the worst markets, according to Olefson. In the Florida condo market, for example, there is a 35-to-40 month supply of units at the current rates of sale, she said.

Prices still almost certainly have further to fall. 

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Citadel Broadcasting Co., the third-largest radio group in the United States, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy Sunday.

The company, which has stations in 25 states, listed liabilities of $2.5 billion on assets of $1.4 billion, according to court papers filed with the Southern District of New York.

Citadel has been saddled with debt for some time and it had been widely reported in recent months that the company could be headed toward bankruptcy.

More than 60% of the company’s secured lenders backed Citadel’s pre-negotiated bankruptcy, which will allow it to extinguish $1.4 billion of debt and convert its $2.1 billion secured credit facility into a new term loan.

Chief Executive Farid Suleman said in a statement that "business will continue as usual" and Citadel would work hard to emerge from bankruptcy "as quickly as possible."

The company said Sunday that it had reached a deal with its lenders to gain access to over $36 million of cash plus cash flow from operations to help it through the restructuring process.

According to Sunday’s filing, the three largest unsecured creditors were JPMorgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500) (with an unspecified amount owed), Wilmington Trust Corp. (WL) (with a $49.2 million claim) and The Walt Disney Co. (DIS, Fortune 500) (with a claim of $11.2 million).

Citadel had reported a third-quarter loss of $21 million and a 14% drop in revenue for the three months ended Sept. 30. The company’s stock was delisted earlier in the year and last month Citadel warned, in a regulatory filing, that it expected sales would continue to decline through the end of the year.

The company comprises 165 FM stations and 58 AM stations. Programming includes syndicated radio properties like ABC News Radio, The Mark Levin Show and The Huckabee Report.

Citadel’s attorney was unavailable for immediate comment. 

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Colorado research biotech Array BioPharma Inc. has reached a deal with industry giant Amgen Inc. that gives $60 million to Array and separately funds research jobs at the company.

The Boulder-based company licensed continued development of an experimental Type II diabetes drug, ARRY-403, to Amgen in exchange for the $60 million up front. Amgen also agreed to pay for an undisclosed number of research jobs at Array for two years.

Array BioPharm will complete the Phase I trial it started this year on ARRY-403, testing its safety and dosing in people for the first time. Under the licensing arrangement, Thousand Oaks, Calif.-based Amgen, will conduct future testing and development of the drug.

Under the terms of the deal, Array BioPharma retains the right to co-promote the drug in the United States, if ARRY-403 makes it to market. It will also make royalties on future sales of ARRY-403 that Amgen makes, the companies announced Monday evening.

With 390 employees, Array is second in size only to Amgen among Colorado’s commercial biotech drug employers, and the largest one based in the state. Amgen employs about 900 people in Boulder County.

Array researchers struck upon developing "glucokinase activator" compounds for treating diabetes in 2005 Same day payday loans. ARRY-403, the leading drug resulting from the research, is hoped to be a once-a-day pill that helps the body modulate glucose levels in the blood and increases the production of insulin, a process that doesn’t work properly in diabetics.

"Amgen is a leading innovator of important new therapies, with a focus on the treatment of severe, chronic diseases, and we believe that this collaboration indicates the significant potential of our glucokinase activator program," said Array CEO Robert Conway in a press release.

A trio of former Amgen scientists launched Array BioPharma in 1998 after Amgen closed some of its Boulder labs there. Array started with 25 employees and grew by researching potential drug compounds — primarily potential cancer treatments — for other biotechs.

ARRY-403 is among the first generation of treatments Array started developing for itself.

The Amgen deal helps Array end the year with positive news after it laid off 40 employees in January and scaled back its research focus.

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Human Genome Sciences Inc. announced today it’s submitted its second application so far this year to federal regulators to sell a drug on the market, this most recent being for its hepatitis C treatment called Zalbin.

With these applications, including a third that the Rockville biotech plans to submit in the first half of next year for a lupus treatment, Human Genome Sciences hopes to sell its first drugs on the commercial market by the end of next year — a major milestone for the 17-year-old company.

In May, Human Genome Sciences applied to the Food and Drug Administration for approval to sell its anthrax treatment, though that submission hit a stumbling block earlier this month when regulators said they still needed further information before they could sign off on it. The company has already sold several lots of that drug to the federal government for its national stockpile.

For Zalbin, Human Genome Sciences (NASDAQ:HGSI) is relying on results from two late-stage human clinical studies that enrolled a total 2,255 patients. The data showed that Zalbin performed comparably to its competitor, F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd.’s Pegasys, with half the number of injections — every two weeks instead of every week.

But those results, while meeting federally set endpoints, failed to excite Wall Street, which drove down the company’s stock price by 55 percent in one day to new lows below $1. Analysts said at the time that the study data didn’t differentiate Zalbin enough from the pharmacy’s current offerings and expressed skepticism that the fewer dosages alone could attract enough physicians and patients to result in healthy market share fast cash advance loan.

Instead, investors are more anxiously awaiting Human Genome Sciences’ third offering to the commercial market: what could be the first federally approved lupus treatment in decades. The local company’s drug, called Benlysta, exceeded expectations in two late-stage studies announced in July and November, sending the company’s market cap and stock soaring to new 52-week highs.

Under a partnership agreement signed in 2006 with Novartis AG for Zalbin, Human Genome Sciences will sell the drug jointly and share equally in costs and profits for U.S. sales if it gets approved. Novartis will apply by year’s end for approval to sell the drug in other countries, starting with Europe, under the brand name Joulferon.

The partnership will yield Human Genome Sciences royalties, and as much as $300 million more in payments from Novartis for meeting certain regulatory and commercial milestones.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that about 3.2 million Americans have chronic hepatitis C, a viral infection that kills 8,000 to 10,000 people each year.

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The dollar slipped on Monday as traders took a lack of agreement on currencies among Asian and U.S. leaders as a cue to sell the greenback, even as speculation of a near-term yuan appreciation cooled.

The U.S. currency also came under selling pressure with European shares rising and gold hitting a fresh record high, suggesting an increase in risk appetite.

The United States and China failed to reach an agreement over currencies at a summit of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in Singapore over the weekend, resulting in the omission to a reference to "market-oriented exchange rates" from the communique.

Analysts said the APEC meeting offered little new direction on currencies, which traders took as a green light to keep the dollar’s ongoing downtrend intact on the view that U.S. interest rates will stay low as those in other countries eventually rise.

"There were no comments against the weak dollar (from APEC), and that’s giving the market free rein to sell the dollar," said Ante Praefcke, currency strategist at Commerzbank in London.

The disagreement between Washington and Beijing comes as U.S. President Barack Obama visits China this week. The yuan’s peg to the dollar keeps the Chinese currency weak against its U.S. counterpart, and any yuan appreciation is seen weakening the dollar.

The dollar was down roughly 0.5% to 74.990, near a 15-month trough hit last week.

The euro rose 0.4% to $1.4975, edging closer to the psychologically key $1.50 level. Market participants said the euro was supported by a 0 installment payday loans.7% rise in European shares in early trade.

The dollar slipped 0.3 % to ¥89.50.

Traders offered limited reaction to data showing Japan’s economy grew at the fastest pace in more than two years in the third quarter as stimulus lifted consumer spending and capital spending rose.

U.S. retail sales awaited

Trading ranges were small as the market watched comments from the International Monetary Fund on Monday saying a stronger yuan was part of the reforms Beijing needed to boost domestic consumption.

Also on Monday, a Chinese Commerce Ministry official said the country should keep the currency stable as it was beneficial to a global recovery.

Traders were also looking at flow direction, watching for yen outflows from Japanese investment trusts launching on Monday and Tuesday, as well as looking for signs of yen repatriation from U.S. Treasury coupon flows which fell due on Nov. 15.

A final reading of euro zone inflation for October is due to be released later Monday, but with little in the way of economic data or events in the European session, analysts said the market would be watching U.S. retail sales due later in the day.

A Reuters poll showed expectations for sales to rise in October, reversing a fall the previous month, and analysts said a strong reading boost risk appetite, which may push the dollar lower. 

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U.S. department store operator Macy’s Inc forecast earnings for the fourth quarter, which includes the crucial holiday shopping season, far below Wall Street expectations on Wednesday, sending shares down 8.1 percent.

“The falls in same-store sales were less dramatic than they could have been, and there are consumers shopping,” said Leah Hartman, an analyst with CRT Capital Group. “Expectations might have gotten a little ahead of themselves.”

Macy’s is the first major U.S. department store chain to report financial results this week. The others include: JC Penney Co, Nordstrom Inc and Kohl’s Corp.

On a call to analysts, Chief Financial Officer Karen Hoguet warned that the economy made forecasts more challenging.

“There is more uncertainty than usual in the environment,” she said.

Macy’s forecast same-store sales, or sales at stores open at least a year, to fall between 1 percent and 2 percent in the fourth quarter.

It also said it expects fourth-quarter earnings of $1 to $1.05 per share. Wall Street analysts had expected earnings of $1.17 per share, according Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

The company did improve its outlook for full-year same-store sales, forecasting a decline of 5.4 percent to 5.7 percent, compared to an earlier forecast for a decline of 6 percent to 8 percent payday cash advances.

Analysts said Macy’s efforts to keep inventories lean resulted in fewer markdowns, better sales and improved gross margins. Macy’s gross margin rose to 40.2 percent from 39.5 percent a year earlier.

3RD QUARTER BEAT

In the third quarter, Macy’s net loss narrowed to $35 million, or 8 cents a share, from $44 million, or 10 cents a share, a year earlier. Excluding one-time items such as $33 million in restructuring costs, its loss was 3 cents a share.

Last year, the retailer restructured itself under its “My Macy’s” program, designed to help the chain focus on local tastes and reduce head office expenses and duplications. So far in 2009, the company has spent $205 million on its restructuring.

Macy’s said sales fell 3.9 percent to $5.28 billion in the third quarter.

Analysts, on average, had been expecting a loss of 7 cents per share and sales of $5.25 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

The Cincinnati-based chain said losses had narrowed on the strength of its Bloomingdale’s stores and online sales, which rose 21.1 percent during the quarter. 

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China’s exports face a “hard and tortuous” path to recovery as uncertainties dog the global economy’s gradual return to health, with this year’s trade surplus set to shrink from last year’s record, the Commerce Ministry said.

Commerce Minister Chen Deming told a conference on Saturday that China’s trade surplus was expected to fall to $180 billion to $190 billion this year from last year’s record $295.5 billion.

The surplus was $136.4 billion in the first nine months of the year.

With China’s economic recovery relying heavily on government spending to boost domestic demand, imports have seen greater improvement than exports in recent months.

Exports in September were 15.2 percent below their level a year earlier, beating forecasts of a 21 percent fall, although the government expects a double-digit fall for all of 2009.

In a statement released late on Friday on the ministry’s website (www.mofcom.gov.cn), it said the full-year fall in exports compared with the previous year should be less than 20 percent.

“In 2010, the world economy will hopefully see a gradual recovery, and the environment for Chinese trade will gradually improve,” it said.

“But as there is not yet sufficient strength in the global economic recovery, many problems and contradictions have yet to be basically resolved. The recovery will be hard and tortuous, and it will be hard to see an obvious recovery in international demand in the short term default payday loan.”

Net exports shaved 3.6 percentage points off headline GDP growth of 8.9 percent in the third quarter as Chinese manufacturers continued to reel from a slump in global trade.

Protectionism in these straightened times was a particular worry, as was increasing competition, the ministry said.

“At present some nations are conducting probes into Chinese goods, which is causing yet further obstruction for a recovery in Chinese exports,” it said.

A U.S. trade panel on Friday approved the eighth government investigation this year into charges of unfair Chinese pricing practices in a case in which U.S. companies want a nearly 100 percent duty or more on $382 million of imported steel pipes.

Still, there were signs for optimism, the ministry added.

The government was continuing to provide help to exporters in the form of export tax rebates, and numerous new markets awaited Chinese firms.

“There is a bright future for developing trade with newly emerging markets,” it said.

(Reporting by Ben Blanchard in Beijing and Fang Yan in Shanghai; Editing by Nick Macfie)

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