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A $250 million loan on the Four Seasons Resort Maui at Wailea was transferred Wednesday to a special servicer after owner MSD Capital LP, owned by billionaire Michael Dell, defaulted on the note, according to Fitch Ratings.

The special servicer, which refers to companies that specialize in dealing with loans in default, is CWCapital Asset Management LLC.

The note is part of a whole loan balance of $425 million that was split into two mortgages, according to the Wall Street Journal. The loan was 30-days delinquent as of March 12.

The loan was provided by Deutsche Bank in December 2006, when the property’s value was appraised at $600 million. The value is now estimated at around $190 million, according to Fitch.

New York-based MSD Capital, the firm that handles investments for Dell, bought the resort and its 380-room hotel on 15 oceanfront acres of Maui’s coastline for $280 million in June 2004.

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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.

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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.’”

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Taiwan’s economy probably exited the deepest recession on record last quarter as the global recovery spurred demand for the island’s semiconductors and mobile phones, according to a survey of economists.

Gross domestic product increased 7.1 percent in the three months through December from a year earlier, the median of the Bloomberg News survey’s nine estimates shows, after contracting for the previous five quarters. The report will be released on Feb. 22 at 1:30 p.m. in Taipei.

The emergence of the world economy from the worst slump since World War II spurred businesses in Taiwan, where exports equal half of GDP, to boost production and hire more workers. President Ma Ying-jeou is negotiating a trade accord with China that would cut import duties on Taiwanese goods in the world’s fastest growing major economy and help cement the recovery.

“Taiwan is ‘out of the woods’ for as long as the global economy is — and is particularly benefitting from a surge in growth in China,” said Dariusz Kowalczyk, chief investment strategist in Hong Kong at SJS Markets Ltd. “Since inflation in bound to return, we expect the central bank to begin raising rates in April, with 50 points of tightening likely in 2010.”

Taiwan’s exports to China, its biggest trading partner and No. 1 overseas investment destination, soared 187.8 percent in January from a year earlier, after a 96.7 percent gain in December. Shipments to the U.S., the second largest export market, rose 13.7 percent after increasing 4 percent in December.

Surging Profits

Stronger demand for electronics helped Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and United Microelectronics Corp., the world’s largest makers of custom chips, post fourth-quarter profits that beat analysts’ estimates and boost capital spending this year.

The economy is emerging from the worst recession since records began in the 1950s. Central Bank Governor Perng Fai-nan kept interest rates unchanged at a record-low 1.25 percent on Dec. 24, after slashing them by 2.375 percentage points from September 2008 to February 2009 to revive the economy.

The unemployment rate fell for a third month in December after reaching a record 6.09 percent in September. Taiwan Semiconductor, the island’s biggest company by market value, said it plans record spending this year and will add more than 3,000 engineers.

“Local exporters have been reporting good sales figures in the fourth quarter because of rising demand from overseas,” said Lee Ming-han, an economist at Sinopac Bank in Taipei. “Domestic consumption also improved on a falling jobless rate and gains in the stock markets.”

China Accord

President Ma’s administration has been pushing for the trade agreement with China to prevent Taiwan from being “marginalized” after a Chinese accord with the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations took effect this year.

China and Hong Kong combined is Taiwan’s largest overseas market, accounting for 40 percent of the island’s $203.7 billion of exports last year. Overseas shipments of flat screens, computer chips and other electronics goods made up about 28 percent of the total. Asean, which represents a quarter of the world’s population, accounts for 15 percent of Taiwan’s exports.

The government estimates the so-called Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement with China would increase GDP by 1.65 to 1.72 percentage points annually, spurring exports and creating more than 260,000 jobs. Exports would rise as much as 5 percent a year and imports by 7 percent, it says.

Opposition Rally

The opposition is against signing the accord and is calling for a public referendum. The Democratic Progressive Party on Dec. 20 rallied 100,000 people into the streets of Taichung city to protest Ma’s China policies, on concern that they will erode the island’s sovereignty.

China and Taiwan have been ruled separately since Nationalist troops fled to the island after losing a civil war to Mao Zedong’s Communist forces in 1949. China has threatened to invade Taiwan if it declares formal independence, and in 2006 carried out a weeklong series of missile tests near the island.

The risks to Taiwan “are centered around the global outlook, which is strong only in the short term,” Kowalczyk of SJS said. “By late 2010 and early 2011 we see a double dip in G-3 economies, which will trigger a slowdown. This is bound to hit Taiwanese exports and reduce its growth rate in 2011.”

Taiwan’s currency climbed 0.3 percent to close at NT$32.1 against the U.S. dollar on Feb. 12, the last trading before the Lunar New Year holiday, according to Taipei Forex Inc. The benchmark Taiex index gained 1.1 percent, after surging 78 percent last year, the best performance since 1993. Taiwan’s financial markets will resume trading on Feb. 22.

Export Growth

Taiwan is aiming for 22 percent growth in exports in 10 markets this year, including China, India, Japan, Russia and Brazil, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said last month. The island’s statistics bureau forecast in November that exports would increase 15.4 percent this year.

Nanya Technology Corp. last month reported NT$211 million ($6.6 million) profit in the fourth quarter, after posting losses in the previous 10 quarters, as demand for computers rebounded and prices of semiconductors rose. Smaller rival Powerchip said Jan. 20 that its fourth quarter profit exceeded NT$1.6 billion.

Taiwan Semiconductor, the island’s biggest company by market value, plans record spending of $4.8 billion on equipment and factories this year after reporting fourth-quarter profit more than doubled to NT$32.7 billion.

Prime View International Co., the screen supplier to Sony Corp.’s Reader and Amazon.com’s Kindle e-book readers, plans to triple its capacity in the U.S. and China this year on rising orders, Chairman Scott Liu said in an interview last month.

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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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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

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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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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.”

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The Federal Reserve is expected to leave interest rates at a record low this week. The big question is whether Chairman Ben Bernanke and his colleagues will hint about when they will reverse course and start boosting rates.

Plans for reeling in the unprecedented amount of money the Fed has plowed into the economy to bolster the recovery are likely to dominate discussions during the two-day meeting, which started on Tuesday afternoon. The Fed is expected to announce its policy decisions later today.

The central bank faces a high-stakes challenge: If it removes the stimulus too soon, it could short-circuit the fragile recovery. But if it moves too late, it could unleash inflation or new speculative asset bubbles.

A new report out Tuesday showed that wholesale prices shot up last month, but most economists think it will prove fleeting payday loan lenders.

Wholesale prices jumped 1.8 percent in November, lifted partly by more expensive energy products, the Labor Department said. That was up from a 0.3 percent gain in October and marked the largest one-month increase since August.

Stripping out energy and food, closely watched "core" prices rose 0.5 percent, the biggest increase in more than a year.

Meanwhile, the Fed reported that industrial production jumped 0.8 percent in November from October, the largest gain since August. Even with the stronger-than-expected showing, activity is still down 5.1 percent from a year ago, showing that the industrial sector is far from running at top speed.

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A surge in pre-holiday listings was blamed for troubles with eBay Inc.'s search system for much of the weekend.

The problem began Saturday morning when shoppers began noticing that they couldn't find items for sale using eBay's search in the U.S. and some overseas marketplaces.

The company reported the problem at 11:17 a.m. on Saturday in a note on its site, but eBay (NASDAQ:EBAY) reported full service was restored by Sunday afternoon.

The company said that it saw a 33 percent increase in live listings, compared to last year, which triggered its weekend problems.

Ebay further said full credits for all affected items will be issued for this title search outage, according to its outage policy, referring users to its page here fast payday loans.

President Lorrie Norrington issued an apology, saying, "We know this is a really busy time for sellers ramping up for the holiday season. We’re sorry that this technical issue occurred, causing search to return limited or no results throughout the day Saturday, and we regret any potential impact to your business."

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