Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao
Payday loans and instant cash advance. Get your first payday loan. Cash advance loans do not require any faxing.
KANSAS CITY, Kan. • Missouri and Kansas are divided here only by the yellow stripe of State Line Road. It’s a single community, but the division is sharp when it comes to the cutthroat business of economic development.
The two states have burned through hundreds of millions of dollars to lure businesses to one side of that stripe or the other in the pursuit of jobs. Yet sometimes, those jobs merely have shifted to different buildings across the border with little real growth for the region’s economy.
Amid rising competition nationwide for “job creation,” Missouri and Kansas have committed more than $750 million in tax incentives and bonds in the last five years for nearly 200 businesses to locate or expand in the Kansas City area, according to state records obtained by The Associated Press. The crosstown battle also has drawn in millions more dollars in incentives from cities and suburbs.
The two states sacrificed revenue and incurred debt even during tough budget times that forced cuts to public school districts, universities and social services. Kansas and Missouri each had projected budget shortfalls of around $500 million last year. Calls for a truce in the business border war have been growing from local business leaders, some lawmakers and from former officials who once doled out the incentives.
“You get to a point where you have to say we are wasting taxpayer money,” said Greg Steinhoff, Missouri’s economic development chief from 2005 to 2008.
Yet a truce appears unlikely anytime soon — in part because the states are still scrambling for every job.
“Politically, it sounds good — can’t we all get along? — but competition’s competition,” said Gary Sherrer, who was Kansas lieutenant governor and commerce secretary about a decade ago.
About three-fourths of the $750 million of tax breaks and bonding approved in the last five years has come from Kansas, though Missouri has given incentives — in smaller amounts — to about twice as many businesses to keep them from leaving or to attract new firms.
In part because of the glimmer of its big-ticket projects, Kansas appears to be winning the business border battle.
The spoils of success are highly visible in the sprawling Village West district at the junction of Interstates 70 and 435. Anchoring the development is the Kansas Speedway, the NASCAR track that the state landed more than a decade ago with a $150 million package of bonds, tax breaks and infrastructure aid after Missouri’s $42 million incentive package failed in the Legislature credit report. The Kansas incentives included bonds with a 30-year repayment life.
Nearby is a new, 18,500-seat stadium for the Major League Soccer team Sporting Kansas City, built with $145 million in bonds after Kansas lured the franchise away from the Missouri side. Also in the neighborhood is a new office complex for Cerner Corp., a medical computer systems firm that employs about 5,500 people on the Missouri side and planned to expand. Missouri and Kansas offered nearly equal incentives of about $85 million for Cerner’s expansion, which is projected to employ an additional 4,000.
Kansas’ willingness to issue bonds backed by tax revenue, which Missouri couldn’t match, helped cinch the deal, said Marc Naughton, Cerner’s executive vice president and chief financial officer.
Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback, a Republican, was unapologetic about giving away public revenue. “You’ve got to go out to compete and hustle,” Brownback said.
Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon, a Democrat, appears only slightly more open to a truce. “I’m going to compete for jobs for our state, I’m not backing up on that,” Nixon said.
In Kansas City, the most recent crosstown defection came in April, when Teva Neuroscience Inc. announced that it would move its headquarters — and 400 jobs — from Kansas City to a site about four miles away in suburban Overland Park, Kan. Records provided to the AP show that Missouri offered $11 million in incentives to try to keep Teva. Kansas did not disclose how much it offered, but the Kansas City Star reported the package totaled nearly $31 million.
Some firms have bounced back and forth across the state line. Restaurant chain Applebee’s International moved its headquarters from Kansas City to a Kansas suburb in 1993. Last year, it was lured back to Missouri ith nearly $10 million in state incentives plus additional local aid.
A few months later, movie theater operator AMC Entertainment Inc. announced it was moving to the suburb of Leawood, Kan. Missouri offered $4.2 million in incentives to keep the company, according to state records. Kansas declined to disclose its incentives, but media reports have valued the total aid at $47 million.
As with fast payday loans, this recently used to be the case, but competitive lenders and higher demand has taken this loan type to mainstay levels.
China’s inflation rate slowed slightly to 3.4 percent in April, down from 3.6 percent a month earlier, giving the government greater leeway to ease policy to boost the economy.
The National Bureau of Statistics announced the figure Friday, which comes after China’s economy grew in the first quarter by its slowest pace since 2009.
The figure also comes a day after China announced that its trade surplus widened in April as imports barely budged, sharpening fears that the world’s second-biggest economy is not doing enough to stimulate domestic demand and counter a slowdown.
China grew by a still-robust 8.1 percent in the three months ending in March, down from the previous quarter’s 8.9 percent, but above the government’s 7.5 percent target for the year.
Growth has fallen steadily since 2010 as a slump in global demand battered its exporters and Beijing tightened lending and investment curbs to cool an overheated economy and surging inflation.
Already, there are signs that the slowdown is hurting demand for oil, industrial components and consumer goods at a time when U.S. and European growth are weak.
Last year’s unexpectedly steep plunge in demand for China’s exports due to U.S. and European economic woes prompted communist leaders to reverse course and ease controls on bank lending to help struggling manufacturers.
Further easing measures are expected, especially now that inflation appears to be under control, economists say.
U.K. house prices dropped the most in 1 1/2 years in April as a stamp-duty exemption for first-time buyers ended and the economy fell into its first double-dip recession since the 1970s, Halifax said.
Prices dropped 2.4 percent from March, the largest monthly decline since September 2010, to an average 159,883 pounds ($258,700), the mortgage unit of Lloyds Banking Group Plc (LLOY) said in a statement in London today. Prices had risen 2.2 percent in March. From a year earlier, values were down 0.6 percent.
Surveys show the property market is struggling to gain traction as banks limit lending and consumers are squeezed by rising energy prices. Demand for homes was boosted earlier this year as first-time buyers took advantage of a tax exemption on purchases of homes costing less than 250,000 pounds before it ended in March. Consumer confidence may be undermined after data last week showed the economy shrank in the first quarter.
Fast-growing Etihad Airways has taken a nearly 3 percent stake of Aer Lingus as part of a strategy to build closer bonds with the Irish carrier, the Abu Dhabi-based airline said Tuesday.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. But it appears part of a wider Etihad effort to seek shares in smaller carriers to gain a possible edge in its rivalries with Gulf carriers Emirates and Qatar Airways.
Etihad said Tuesday the 2.987 percent stake in Aer Lingus reflects a “desire to forge a commercial partnership with the Irish national carrier.”
Etihad in recent months has bought large stakes in Air Berlin and Air Seychelles in a bid to challenge Emirates and Qatar Airways. Etihad operates 10 flights a week from its Abu Dhabi hub to Dublin.
The head of Qatar Airways, however, said the carrier is not currently looking to acquire another airline.
Qatar Airways Chief Executive Officer Akbar al-Baker said the airline is focused on building its own business, and doesn’t want to take on the financial problems of restructuring a weaker carrier. Al-Baker was in Dubai for a travel expo.
State-owned Qatar Airways competes for long-haul international passengers with Dubai-based Emirates airline and Etihad Airways.
Last month, Etihad said its sales jumped 28 percent to $989 million in the first quarter of the year as it pushed ahead with its rapid expansion.
In February, Aer Lingus reported a strong growth in profits for 2011 despite the country’s economic downturn. The Dublin-based carrier says in a statement Tuesday its full-year net profit rose 66 percent to euro71.2 million ($95.6 million). Sales rose 6 percent to euro1.29 billion ($1.73 billion).
Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner said the U.S. faces risks from the crisis in Europe while the confrontation with Iran has helped drive up oil prices.
ST. CHARLES COUNTY • Longtime banker and civic leader Darrell B. Roegner, who died last November, will be honored posthumously at the annual awards banquet of Partners for Progress of Greater St. Charles.
Roegner was chosen by the civic group for this year’s Lifetime of Progress award in recognition of his business, civic and charitable activities over the years.
At different times he chaired the boards of Partners for Progress, the Salvation Army of St. Charles County and the St. Charles Community College Foundation.
He also helped organize countywide campaigns to pass and continue a sales tax that helps pay for road construction. He also was on the boards of Barnes-Jewish Hospital St. Peters, the Tri-County YMCA and Habitat for Humanity.
The banquet will be at 6:30 p.m. May 4 at the St. Charles Convention Center in St. Charles.
Among other honorees:
* Education Progress Award: the River City Robots, which works on robotics and technology with children and teenagers.
* Health Progress Award: Barnes-Jewish Hospital St. Peters and Progress West Healthcare Center for its anti-obesity program.
* Quality of Place Progress Award: Team Target, a group of volunteers from Target stores who played a major role in the MO’ Cowbell Half Marathon put on by the partners group last fall.
* Leadership Progress Award: Shared by St. Charles County government and city governments across the county for working together to secure state and federal funding for completion of the Page Avenue extension.
* Economy Progress Award: General Motors’ Wentzville plant for its expansion plan.
Banquet tickets are $100 per person. For more information, call 636-441-6880, extension 254.
Six world powers and Iran are meeting in an attempt to find common ground over concerns that Tehran’s nuclear program could be used to make weapons.
Iran insists it has no such ambitions, but the international community fears it could use its uranium enrichment program not only to make reactor fuel but also the fissile core of nuclear weapons.
After years of futile meetings, both sides have expressed optimism that enough progress could be achieved this time for a second round of talks business card.
The six _ the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany _ hope Iran will commit to at least discussing their concerns over its enrichment program on Saturday. That is something Tehran has refused to do during the most recent meetings.
With the wow factor conspicuously absent from the latest crop of smartphones and tablet PCs offered by vendors including Apple Inc., some experts are asking whether innovation has hit a wall in the post-Jobs era.