Finance & Business World

The stock market finally got a deal from Greece, but it didn’t produce much of a rally.

The Dow Jones industrial average is finishing six points higher at 12,890. The Standard & Poor’s 500 is closing up two at 1,352. The Nasdaq composite ends the day up 11 at 2,927.

Greece says it has agreed to cut spending to satisfy some of its lenders. That’s a key condition for Greece to avoid a default next month that could spook world financial markets.

Earlier Thursday, the Dow rose to within 75 points of 13,000, a milestone it hasn’t reached since 2008. The S&P’s gain took it within about a point of doubling its level on March 9, 2009, the low for stocks during the Great Recession.

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Stocks are edging lower Monday morning as talks drag on between Greek political leaders over a fresh austerity package required for the country to get more bailout loans.

The Dow Jones industrial average fell 36 points to 12,825 a half-hour before noon. That’s a drop of 0.3 percent. American Express Co. led the Dow lower, losing 1.4 percent.

Sam Stovall, chief equity strategist at S&P Capital IQ, said he thinks investors are starting to realize the stock market is vulnerable to a big drop. Trading has been subdued compared with the wild swings of 2011. The S&P has closed up or down by more than 1 percent only three times since the year began. In December, that happened nine times.

“I look at it like a very low tide warning of an impending tsunami,” Stovall said of the recent calm stretch. “We’re setting ourselves up for a decline, the sort of decline that would make you sit up and take notice,” he said.

In other trading, the Standard & Poor’s 500 index fell 3 points to 1,341, for a drop of 0.2 percent. The Nasdaq composite fell 7 points to 2,898.

The declines follow a big gain Friday after a surprisingly good U.S. employment report. Large gains in the stock market are often followed by modest moves, as traders pull some of their winnings off the table. On average since 1950, whenever the S&P rose by 1 percent or more in a trading day, the index has inched up just 0.1 percent the next day, according to S&P Capital IQ.

Greece’s Prime Minister Lucas Papademos will meet with negotiators from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund in the afternoon and then with the leaders of the three parties backing his coalition government. The Greek parliament must sign off on any budget deal.

Among companies making big moves:

_ Boeing Co. fell 1.3 percent following reports that the company found a problem in its 787 Dreamliner.

_ Netflix Inc. fell 3 percent after Verizon Communications and Coinstar Inc. said they will launch a video-streaming service later this year, a challenge to Netflix. Coinstar is the parent of Redbox, a DVD rental company. Coinstar rose 1.4 percent and Verizon less than 1 percent.

_ Micron Technology Inc. fell 2.5 percent following news that the chip maker’s CEO died in a plane crash. Steve Appleton, 51, was at the helm for 18 years, leading the only company he’d ever worked for.

_ Humana dropped 5.6 percent, the biggest loss in the S&P 500 index. The health insurance company reported revenue that fell short of analysts’ expectations. Humana also raised its earnings outlook for 2012 but that, too, was below analysts’ forecast.

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None of the 29 Chinese workers abducted after an attack in a volatile region of Sudan have been freed, Chinese state media said Tuesday, dismissing reports that some of the workers had been released.

The workers were abducted Saturday by militants in a remote region in the country’s south. Sudanese state media reported Monday that 14 of them had been freed, but the official Xinhua News Agency and China Daily newspaper said all 29 were still being held.

China has close political and economic relations with Sudan, especially in the energy sector.

The Chinese ambassador to Sudan, Luo Xiaoguang, told China Central Television in an interview in Khartoum that anti-government rebels attacked the road project the Chinese were working on.

“There are still Chinese workers missing. Some others are still being held by the anti-government armed forces,” Luo said.

Xinhua said 47 Chinese workers were caught in the attack in the South Kordofan region of Sudan. It said 29 were captured and the other 18 fled, and that one of those who fled remains missing.

The Foreign Ministry in Beijing had no immediate comment Tuesday. A statement from the workers’ company, Sinohydro Corp., said that it and the Chinese Embassy would “spare no effort in ensuring the personal safety of those abducted and rescuing them.”

On Monday, Sudan’s state-run SUNA news agency quoted South Kordofan provincial governor Ahmed Haroun as saying that 14 workers had been released.

SUNA said the attack took place near Abbasiya town, 390 miles (630 kilometers) south of Khartoum.

Sudanese officials have blamed the attack on the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North, a branch of a guerrilla movement that has fought various regimes in Khartoum for decades. Its members hail from a minority ethnic group now in control of much of South Sudan, which became the world’s newest country only six months ago in a breakaway from Sudan.

Sudan has accused South Sudan of arming pro-South Sudan groups in South Kordofan. The government of South Sudan says the accusations are a smoke screen intended to justify a future invasion of the South.

China has sent large numbers of workers to potentially unstable regions such as Sudan. Last year it was forced to send ships and planes to help with the emergency evacuation of 30,000 of its citizens from the fighting in Libya.

China has used its diplomatic clout to defend Sudan and its longtime leader, Omar al-Bashir. Recently, it has also sought to build good relations with leaders from the south.

South Sudan and Sudan are in bitter dispute over oil, which is produced primarily in South Sudan but runs through Sudanese pipelines for export.

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Thousands of Romanians, including teenage students who cut class, marched through their capital on Thursday to demand the resignation of their government for imposing harsh austerity measures in order to receive international loans for the nation’s battered economy.

It was one of the largest protests in recent times in Bucharest and came after a week of sometimes violent anti-government demonstrations.

As the march reached University Square, protesters blocked traffic and shouted what has become a trademark slogan aimed at President Traian Basescu: “Get out, you miserable dog.”

The square _ a focal point of recent protests _ is historically significant for Romanians because it was a centerpiece of the 1989 anti-communist revolution that led to Romania’s birth of democracy.

On Thursday, some protesters pretended to hang Basescu and his close political ally, Tourism and Regional Development Minister Elena Udrea, by stringing their dummies to gallows set up in the square.

“Resign!” and “Down with Basescu!” other protesters screamed.

Some 14-year-old students at a school located along the route of the march abandoned class to join the demonstration. “To prison with you!” the students yelled at their president.

Police said 7,000 attended the rally, while organizers claimed the crowd was far larger.

In 2009, Romania took a two-year euro20 billion ($27.5 billion) loan from the International Monetary Fund, the European Union and the World Bank as its economy shrank by 7.1 percent. It imposed harsh austerity measures under the agreement, reducing public wages by 25 percent and increasing taxes. Anger has mounted over the wage cuts, slashed benefits, higher taxes and widespread corruption.

On Thursday, Basescu made his first public appearance since the protests began a week ago in an address to ambassadors in Bucharest. He spoke about Iran, the Middle East, domestic reforms and the “Arab Spring,” but did not touch on the demonstrations or the anger over the state of Romania’s economy.

During the Bucharest rally, one protester who only identified himself as Tudor, a 43-year-old locksmith said: “We want decent salaries and pensions. We want change _ from the top to the bottom.”

Another protester, a 55-year-old nurse named Lorelei said, “We wouldn’t have needed to have austerity measures if our governments hadn’t stolen so much and bled us dry.” She said she has attended all this week’s anti-government rallies.

Three opposition parties organized Thursday’s march, with protesters arriving in the capital from all over the country. Opposition leaders and Romanian personalities addressed the crowd before the march.

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China is expecting foreign trade growth to slow this year to around 10 percent amid a grim outlook for exports, a state news agency reported Saturday.

The world’s second-largest economy’s foreign trade will be hurt by weak external demand, increasing trade competition, a stronger Chinese currency and other factors, the official Xinhua News Agency cited an official from the country’s top economic planning agency as saying.

“We expect more difficulties in foreign trade and the export situation will be grim in 2012, especially in the first half of the year,” said Zhang Xiaoqiang, deputy director of the National Development and Reform Commission, according to Xinhua.

Last year, China’s foreign trade grew 22.5 percent to $3.6 trillion, according to data from the official General Administration of Customs released earlier in the week.

The data also showed that exports in December rose 13.4 percent, down slightly from November’s growth rate. In a new that sign the economy is slowing, import growth showed an unexpectedly sharp drop, falling to 11.8 percent, barely above half the previous month’s gain payday loans.

On Saturday, Zhang told a forum in Beijing that improving tax and insurance policies and providing financial support for small trading companies could help stabilize export growth, Xinhua said.

China’s relatively robust growth has been a rare bright spot for a struggling global economy. But growth has slowed in recent months after Beijing tightened lending and investment curbs to prevent overheating.

A slump in demand for Chinese goods abroad has prompted the government to reverse course and promise to help struggling exporters and shore up growth with more bank lending and other measures. It is unclear what impact the measures will have.

Chinese export growth has fallen steadily since August as Europe’s debt crisis and high U.S. unemployment hurt demand. But it has stayed in double digits, showing the competitive strength of Chinese exporters in global markets.

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So the U.S. economy added hundreds of thousands of jobs last month and everything is fantastic, right?

Well, not exactly. More than 40,000 of those jobs were couriers and messengers, which were in demand during the holidays because of the increased focus on online shopping rather than retail. But these jobs tend to be temporary seasonal hires and not permanent additions.

"People are happy to get those jobs for the time they have them, but come January, they’re out looking for jobs again," said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

The U.S. Labor Department reported that the economy added 200,000 jobs, which was stronger than economists expected, and the unemployment rate dipped to 8.5%.

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But spokeswomen for FedEx (, Fortune 500) and UPS (, Fortune 500) confirmed that they increased temporary hiring during the 2011 holiday season even more than the year before. However, many of those jobs have already evaporated.

"The hiring boost this holiday season was greater than the prior holiday season," said Kara Ross of UPS, noting that her company hired 55,000 temporary workers for the 2011 holiday season, an increase of 5,000 from the year before credit reports free.

Ross said that many of those new hires were drivers, driver helpers, loaders and unloaders. Many of them won’t remain on the payrolls after the holiday season, she said, though the level of attrition is yet to be determined.

"It just depends on our volume loads," she said. "Some of them we might keep on; some of them we might not."

Carla Boyd of FedEx said her company hired 20,000 temporary seasonal workers from October to December, an increase of 17,000 from the prior holiday season.

Unemployment rate, state by state

"There’s an incredible holiday surge," said Boyd. "We had our busiest day in history on Dec. 12."

On that day, FedEx had 17 million shipments, compared to the year-ago holiday peak of 15.6 million. But the annual average is 8.5 million, so FedEx doesn’t need that many workers year-round.

"The problem is that you have a lot of reporters touting this as a really strong report, and if that creates a view among policy makers that the economy is on the mend, then that undermines the need to do anything," said Baker. 

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Maybe the best person to take on issue number one — the economy — should be an economist?

At least, that’s the thought of Laurence Kotlikoff, an economics professor at Boston University. He’s planning on throwing his hat in the ring next week, announcing he’s running for president as a third-party candidate.

"I think I may be the first economist to run for president," Kotlikoff said. "We see economists now running Greece and Italy. It’s not everyday that an economist decides to work this way for his country — but I’m one of those cases."

Kotlikoff has never before run for public office. His goal is to secure a place on the 2012 ballot as an independent through a new online nomination site, AmericansElect.org.

The nonpartisan group, which has raised $22 million so far, aims to put an alternative candidate on the ballot, chosen by online voters through a three-stage primary.

CNN: New group paves way for alternative 2012 choice

In addition to his role as an economics professor, Kotlikoff is the author of 15 books and a regular columnist for Bloomberg.com. He has also served as a consultant to Fortune 500 companies, foreign governments, central banks and international agencies like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

Kotlikoff’s platform centers on what he calls the "Purple Plan." Purple, because he hopes it will appeal to both blue Democrats and red Republicans, and all Americans in between.

Political observers question whether a nonpartisan candidate could have a serious shot at winning, and it’s not as if Kotlikoff is the only alternative candidate out there. Currently 165 people, not in the Republican or Democratic parties, are on file with the Federal Election Commission as presidential candidates.

Still, he hopes his campaign will have an impact saving account pay day loan.

"I’m hopeful that my candidacy will be taken very seriously," he said. "And that young people in particular will realize this is someone who is really focused on their interests."

If he does win, Kotlikoff pledges to eliminate income taxes on both individuals and businesses, as well as estate and gift taxes. Instead, he would institute a progressive sales tax and inheritance tax, and make the payroll tax highly progressive.

Kotlikoff would also replace the current health care system with one under which all Americans receive a voucher each year to purchase a standard health plan from the private-plan provider of their choice. In true economist speak, he says he would reallocate the roughly 10% of GDP that the federal and state government currently spend on Medicare, Medicaid and health exchanges, to pay for this program.

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"I’m not suggesting that only an economist is qualified to be President, but I am suggesting that, other things equal, economic problems are likely to be better understood and fixed by an economist than a career politician or someone who has, for example, spent his life running a pizza chain," Kotlikoff wrote on his campaign website Kotlikoff2012.org.

Kotlikoff says he does not have a party affiliation and he plans to file an official statement of candidacy with the Federal Election Commission next week.

He previously worked as a senior economist on President Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisors, but voted for President Carter. He has also served as an economic adviser to former Senator Mike Gravel, who switched from the Democratic Party to the Libertarian Party amid his 2008 bid for president. 

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Boeing Co. beat Lockheed Martin Corp. to win a $3.48 billion, seven-year contract that lets it keep its role as the primary developer of the U.S. shield against intercontinental ballistic missiles.

The Missile Defense Agency announced the contract in a statement Friday. The agency oversees the Ground-based Midcourse Missile Defense, which includes interceptors in Alaska and California, ground- and sea-based radar, satellites and a command and control system.

The Boeing team, which included Northrop Grumman Corp. of Falls Church, Va., delivered “a cost-effective approach to program management and execution,” Dennis Muilenburg, chief executive of Boeing’s defense unit, said in a statement.

Lockheed, the world’s largest defense contractor, was seeking to dislodge Boeing from the contract it has held since 1998. Boeing has said the program totaled as much as $18 billion during the 10 years ending 2011.

Lt. Gen. Patrick O’Reilly, head of the Missile Defense Agency, said in August 2010, when the agency was preparing to call for bids, that it needed to contain costs.

“But before we get to cost, bidders have got to demonstrate they’ve the capacity and capability, and also an ability to do upgrades,” he said high risk personal loans.

Lockheed’s team included Raytheon, which makes the non-exploding warhead that is designed to seek and destroy enemy missiles. Raytheon was on both teams.

The news for Boeing officials came just one day after they and St. Louis leaders lauded a $30 billion deal for the company to provide Saudi Arabia with 84 new F-15 fighters. The deal will prolong production of the F-15, which is largely built at Boeing’s plant in north St. Louis County, by about five years, through 2020.

The Regional Chamber and Growth Association on Friday estimated that the F-15 work supports 1,000 manufacturing jobs at Boeing and contributes to nearly 4,000 more through local suppliers and spinoff activity.

The Boeing jobs generate $1.1 billion a year in wages and other economic activity, and the indirect impact is another roughly $1.8 billion, according to RCGA economist Ruth Sergenian.

Tim Logan of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.

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Eleventh-hour contract talks have started between two Saint Louis area hospitals and a leading insurer who had been locked in an impasse, according to officials on both sides.

Representatives of St. Louis University Hospital and Des Peres Hospital as well as Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Missouri and HealthLink Inc., confirmed Tuesday that limited talks occurred last week.

So far, negotiators have failed to reach an agreement that may avert an end-of-the-year contract deadline. And the impasse may result in thousands of patients fleeing to other medical providers.

Both sides offered widely different accounts Tuesday of their recent talks, which were apparently held via phone calls, conference calls and emails, but not in person. They accused each other of undermining or walking away from the negotiations. And they could not agree on which offer or counter-offer is currently on or off the table - or even if talks will likely move forward. 

A spokeswoman for Tenet Healthcare Corp. of Dallas, which owns the two hospitals, said that WellPoint Inc. of Indianapolis, which owns the two health insurance plans, had delivered an ultimatum in the form of a new, only slightly better contract proposal that the hospitals rejected last Friday.

“They’ve said, ‘Take it or leave it,’” said Laura Keller, a spokeswoman for SLU Hospital. “They offered an increase that is so low it doesn’t keep up with the increase in cost of taking care of patients.”

But a spokesman for Anthem insisted that the negotiations were still ongoing - and that the insurer is in fact examining an earlier offer from the hospitals.

“We are incredulous,” said Deb Wiethop, an Anthem spokeswoman. “We’re not aware that the negotiations are over. … We received a proposal from Tenet on Dec. 19. We’re going to look at it and get back to Tenet in January.”

Wiethop acknowledged that the hospitals had rejected an offer last Friday from the insurer. “It’s not a ‘take it or leave it’ proposal,” she said.

The two hospitals announced in early December that - because of a breakdown in talks - they would cancel their managed care contracts with Anthem as well as HealthLink as of Jan. 1. This termination does not apply to SLUCare physicians.

Without the contracts, Anthem and HealthLink customers would pay significantly higher rates next year for out-of-network care at both of the hospitals. And if that occurs, it would no doubt drive away many patients who would ordinarily visit Des Peres Hospital or SLU Hospital to other competing St. Louis-area hospitals that accept WellPoint’s health plans.

Under the existing contracts, the two hospitals’ agreements with HealthLink patients will end on Dec. 31. However, patients covered by the Anthem contract will continue to receive care at ‘in-network’ rates until Feb. 22.

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Wall Street is poised for further gains amid ongoing evidence of a strong start to the U.S. holiday shopping season and hopes for a plan to deal with the European debt crisis.

Dow futures are up 0.5 percent at 11,555. The broader Standard & Poor’s 500 futures are up 0.6 percent at 1,198.

Markets overseas were boosted again on Tuesday by hopes that the 17 countries that use the euro will finally come up with a plan to deal with their crushing debt crisis.

Italy’s borrowing rates shot up Tuesday to above 7 percent, an unsustainable level on a par with rates that forced the others to seek bailouts.

The fear is that the crisis _ which already has forced bailouts of Greece, Ireland and Portugal _ could engulf bigger economies such as Italy, the eurozone’s third-largest. If Italy were to default on its debt of euro1.9 trillion ($2.5 trillion), the fallout could spell ruin for the euro project itself and send shock waves throughout the global economy.

Though no specific details have yet emerged of what will likely result from a Dec. 9 summit of EU leaders, the ministers are thought to be discussing ideas that would have been taboo only recently: countries ceding fiscal sovereignty to a central authority; some kind of elite group of euro nations that would guarantee one another’s loans _ but require strong fiscal discipline from anyone wanting membership.

On Tuesday, finance ministers also were likely to discuss the options _ plus a possible way to boost the region’s rescue fund, the European Financial Stability Facility, at a meeting in Brussels easy payday loans.

On Monday, stocks advanced strongly, particularly in Europe, with the CAC-40 in France up a massive 5 percent or so.

As a result, the gains Tuesday were not as marked but did provide some further evidence of the hopes that European leaders will finally get their act together in around 10 days time.

In Europe, Germany’s DAX was up 0.2 percent at 5,756, while the CAC-40 fell slightly to 3013. The FTSE 100 index of leading British shares was 0.1 percent higher at 5,320. The euro, meanwhile, was up 0.2 percent at $1.3309.

Earlier, most Asian markets ended higher, with the Nikkei 225 index in Tokyo climbing 2.3 percent to close at 8,477.82.

Elsewhere in Asia, South Korea’s Kospi rose 2.3 percent to 1,856.52 and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng added 1.2 percent to 18,256.20. Benchmarks in Singapore, Taiwan and Australia were also higher.

Mainland Chinese shares advanced, with the benchmark Shanghai Composite Index gaining 1.2 percent to 2,412.39.

Oil prices tracked equities modestly higher _ benchmark crude for January delivery was up 49 cents to $98.70 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

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