Finance & Business World

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao

No faxing fast cash advance gets you cash fast and easily.

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.

Source

Stop the guess work, get your 100% free credit score and report today and know exactly what's on all three of your free credit reports

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.

Italy

A spokesman for special envoy Kofi Annan says satellite imagery and other credible reports show that despite its claims, Syria has failed to withdraw all of its heavy weapons from populated areas as required by a cease-fire deal.

Ahmad Fawzi also said Tuesday that Annan is aware that when the U.N. monitors enter conflict areas in Syria that “the guns are silent” and then “when they leave, the exchanges start again.”

He further noted there appear to be cases of Syrians being targeted by authorities after approaching U totally free credit score.N. observers monitoring the truce. Fawzi called the situation “totally unacceptable.”

The cease-fire is part of Annan’s peace plan, which aims to stop the violence in Syria, where more than 9,000 people are believed to have died during a government crackdown on a popular uprising.

Source

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.

Source

China’s economic growth slowed to its lowest level in nearly three years in the first quarter amid lending controls and weak trade.

The world’s second-largest economy grew by 8.1 percent in the three months ending in March, its weakest expansion since the second quarter of 2009, data showed Friday. It grew 8.9 percent in the last quarter of 2011.

China’s growth has declined steadily since mid-2010 as global demand for exports weakened and Beijing tightened lending and investment curbs to cool an overheated economy and surging inflation.

Most analysts expect China to achieve a “soft landing,” with its slowdown bottoming out later this year and growth rebounding. But some worry growth might fall too abruptly, raising the risk of job losses.

A sharp slump could have global repercussions, hurting demand for oil, industrial components and consumer goods at a time when U.S. and European growth are weak.

Other data reported Friday showed China’s factory output, retail sales and other economic indicators weakening, though still at robust levels. Factory output rose 11.6 percent over a year earlier in the first quarter. Retail sales were up 10.9 percent.

Source

Spending on prescription drugs in the U.S. was nearly flat in 2011 at $320 billion, held down by senior citizens and others reducing use of medicines and other health care and by greater use of cheaper generic pills.

Last year, spending on prescription drugs rose just 0.5 percent after adjusting for inflation and population growth, according to data firm IMS Health. Without those adjustments, spending increased 3.7 percent last year. The volume of prescriptions filled fell about 1 percent.

That continues a trend of restrained spending that began in 2007, when prescription spending dipped 0.2 percent. Before then, IMS generally reported annual increases of several percent. But since the Great Recession started, prescription spending has fallen or risen only slightly each year except for 2009.

IMS said Wednesday that it appears patients are still rationing their health care, with visits to doctors down 4.7 percent and hospital admissions down 0.1 percent. However, emergency room visits jumped 7.4 percent, a sign some people aren’t seeking care until they are very sick.

“We think we’ve reached a tipping point, where people are thinking they’re paying too much and they’re changing their behavior,” said Michael Kleinrock, head of research development at the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics.

Fewer visits to doctors and other health care providers results in fewer prescriptions, which holds down spending in the short term. But that doesn’t bode well for future health care costs, because many of the medicines people are doing without are taken for years to prevent heart attacks and other expensive complications of chronic conditions such as heart disease and diabetes, Kleinrock said.

“The ultimate result is that we will have more sick people driving health care costs” down the road, he said.

People 65 and older cut back on the number of prescriptions filled by 3.1 percent last year, particularly for medicines for high blood pressure. That was despite a 10 percent decline in average prescription co-payments under the Medicare Part D program, to $23.31, due to bigger discounts when patients hit the so-called doughnut hole coverage gap.

Only one group increased prescription use last year. People 19 to 25, now able to stay on their parents’ health insurance plans under a provision of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, boosted their use by 2 percent. That was led by more use of antidepressants and attention deficit disorder drugs.

Kleinrock noted the company’s data indicate both people with and without insurance are having trouble paying for medicines and other health care, and so are limiting or postponing treatments. For instance, insured patients spent $1.8 billion less out of pocket last year, at a total of $49 billion.

Meanwhile, use of inexpensive generic medicines continues to climb, hitting 80 percent of all prescriptions filled last year.

Source

China watchers got a mixed view over the weekend of the country’s all-important manufacturing sector.

China’s government reported that manufacturing expanded in March, while a closely-watched private report said factories struggled with poor demand for their products.

The National Bureau of Statistics said Sunday that its official index of purchasing managers’ sentiment rose to 53.1 in March from 51 in February. Any reading above 50 indicates expansion in the sector.

The March report marked the fourth consecutive monthly increase and the index’s highest reading in a year.

At the same time, banking company HSBC issued a report that showed factory output fell in March for the fourth time in five months.

"Factory output was reduced largely in response to lackluster demand from domestic and external markets," the HSBC report said on line pay day loans.

The contrasting reports follow a pattern of recent months, as the two indexes have diverged.

Investors and analysts have been concerned that China’s extraordinary growth may be slowing too quickly.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao rattled investors recently when he said that China’s new gross domestic product growth forecast for 2012 is 7.5%, down from an earlier prediction of 8%.

A "hard landing" by China could ripple throughout the world. Troubles in Europe, the largest market for China’s goods, have intensified fears about a China slowdown.

Of course, China’s growth far exceeds what many developed countries are experiencing. China’s GDP rose 9.2% last year, while the U.S. economy grew 1.7%.  

Source

Missouri Employers Mutual Insurance Co. plans to pay about $2 million in dividends to 11,033 policyholders this spring, the state-sponsored workers’ compensation company announced today.

It will be the company’s first dividend since its creation by the State Legislature in 1993. The company has accumulated a surplus of about $163 million.

“It took many years of successful operation before we established the financial strength needed to pay a dividend,” Jim Owen, the insurer’s president and chief executive, said in a written statement pay day loans.

MEM’s first dividend recognizes policyholders whose policies were effective in 2009, company officials said. Policyholders at all premium levels will receive a percentage of the premium they paid based on their loss ratio results. Dividends will not be paid to policyholders whose policies had too high a loss ratio.

Source