Financial life in a big town

Asian stocks fell Wednesday after the U.S. lowered its economic growth estimate for the third quarter and climbing yields on Spanish bonds magnified worries over Europe’s debt load.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng fell 2 percent to 17,882.10. South Korea’s Kospi lost 2 percent to 1,789.83 and Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 shed 1.6 percent to 4,066.80. Japanese stock markets were closed for a public holiday.

Wall Street slipped Tuesday after a government report showed the U.S. economy grew at a 2 percent annual rate from July through September, down from an initial estimate of 2.5 percent. Economists had expected the figure to remain the same.

The Dow Jones industrial average lost 0.5 percent to close at 11,493.72. The Standard & Poor’s 500 fell 0.4 percent to 1,188.04. The Nasdaq composite fell 0.1 percent to 2,521.28.

Higher borrowing costs for Spain, meanwhile, renewed worries about Europe’s debt crisis. The higher rates suggest that investors are still skeptical that the country will get its budget under control despite a new government coming to power this week.

Investors have been worried that Spain could become the next country to need financial support from its European neighbors if its borrowing rates climb to unsustainable levels.

Greece was forced to seek relief from its lenders after its long-term borrowing rates rose above 7 percent. The rate on Spain’s own benchmark 10-year bond is dangerously close to that level, 6.58 percent payday advance lenders.

Underscoring jitters was the lack of market reaction to an announcement by the International Monetary Fund that it will provide quick cash on flexible terms to countries facing sudden financial stress.

“Failure of this news to result in significant gains across markets shows just how cautious investors are,” Stan Shamu of IG Markets in Melbourne said in a report.

Concerns remain that Europe’s debt crisis is pushing the region toward recession, which would slow industrial activity in countries around the world that export to Europe.

Australian resource shares took a big hit after the country’s House of Representatives approved a proposal to impose a windfall profits tax on big mining companies. The Senate is expected to endorse the measure in early 2012.

BHP Billiton, the world’s largest mining company, fell 2.6 percent. Rival Rio Tinto lost 1.6 percent and Energy Resources of Australia slid 4.2 percent.

Benchmark oil for January delivery was down 65 cents to $97.36 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract rose $1.09 to finish at $98.01 per barrel on the Nymex on Tuesday.

In currencies, the euro fell to $1.3466 from $1.3509 late Tuesday in New York. The dollar rose slightly to 76.99 yen from 76.97 yen.

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Whether people celebrate or criticize Occupy Wall Street, the movement has reinvigorated calls for local buying just in time for the manic holiday shopping season.

Buying local and American-made became a battle cry for some in the movement that blames big business greed for shuttering American operations and shipping those jobs overseas.

“Some people talk about buying local and not supporting large chain stores, but really I think we want to encourage people to think consciously about where they shop,” said Zach Chasnoff, 33, of south St. Louis.

Chasnoff has wielded a bullhorn at a few Occupy St. Louis rallies, though he said he couldn’t speak as a representative of a movement. He said he’d been waiting for an opportunity to ignite this particular discussion.

Chasnoff owns a house painting business that fluctuates from two to seven employees during his busy season. When the bottom fell out of the economy in 2008, he was virtually unemployed for about seven months and didn’t know if he’d keep his house, he said. Meanwhile, bank bailouts and news of continued executive bonuses infuriated him. He blames greed for companies’ transferring jobs overseas and cheap foreign goods for undercutting American-made items.

Many economists challenge that logic, saying that free trade ultimately benefits the U payday loans.S.

“It feels almost anti-patriotic to buy goods made elsewhere right now. You are perpetuating the loss of manufacturing jobs,” Chasnoff said, echoing long-standing protests by some against, for instance, buying foreign cars.

Buying local, on the other hand, puts consumers, not corporations, in control, he said.

Would it work?

Steve Farazzi, a professor of economics at Washington University, said that the wage disparity concerns at the root of the Occupy Wall Street movement wouldn’t be solved by shopping at boutiques and farmers markets.

“I’d have a hard time telling people that their holiday shopping patterns will have an important impact on income distribution,” Farazzi said.

If globalization has killed American jobs and driven down wages, then the tool to combat the trend would be higher wages in emerging markets such as China, not necessarily closing operations there. China’s extremely cheap labor is the problem for American workers, not the fact that Chinese workers have jobs formerly held by Americans, Farazzi explained.

Rising global wages would level the playing field for American workers, he said, and it would increase the demand for all goods if we have more people who can afford to buy. But Farazzi acknowledged that a push to boost wages for Chinese workers

BERLIN

German industrial equipment maker Siemens AG swung back to profit in its fiscal fourth quarter as sales increased in Asia.

The company said Thursday it made a net profit of euro1.23 billion ($1.66 billion) in the three months to end-September in contrast to the loss of euro396 million loss in the same quarter a year ago, when the company had a large one-time charge at its health care division.

The company increased its dividend but gave an outlook for only moderate sales growth and indicated it didn’t expect profits to rise next year.

Revenues rose 5 percent to euro20.35 billion, boosted by a 12 percent increase in Asia. The company said Thursday sales grew across all regions and experienced particularly strong growth in emerging markets.

Orders, however, fell 2 percent and the company forecast only “moderate” sales growth. It said its outlook for earnings in the coming year were “based on the high level we achieved in the prior year” and foresees earnings from continuing operations that are unchanged, excluding one-time gains from exiting its nuclear partnership with Areva.

Company CEO Peter Loescher said the company had performed well thanks to its balanced portfolio of businesses but warned that the economic environment ahead was uncertain.

“The macroeconomic environment continues to be volatile and difficult to assess,” he said.

He said he expected growth in Europe’s core markets but that turmoil from Europe’s debt crisis could hurt the business environment in southern Europe _ which remains only 5 percent of Siemens’ business.

The company raised its dividend to euro3.00 per share from euro2.70 per share last year.

Across Siemens divisions, its fossil-fuel power generation unit raised earnings by 10 percent to euro407 billion. Its power transmission equipment divisions, however, saw earnings slip 28 percent due to costs of hedging raw materials costs and the emergence of new competitors in low-cost countries.

Munich-based Siemens makes a wide range of heavy industrial goods, including trains and streetcars, power generating and transmission equipment, diagnostic machines for hospitals and factory automation and equipment.

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ROME

OTTAWA

Qantas Airways planes returned to the skies Monday after an Australian court ruled on a bitter labor dispute that had prompted the world’s 10th-largest airline to ground its entire fleet.

A flight from Sydney to Jakarta, Indonesia, took off shortly after Australia’s Civil Aviation Safety Authority gave the “Flying Kangaroo,” as the Australian flag carrier is known, the all-clear to resume flying.

Qantas said in a statement it still expected some delays as it worked to clear the backlog of customers affected by the nearly 48-hour grounding. The airline is adding extra flights and expects its schedule to return to normal within one or two days.

The grounding disrupted the travel plans of tens of thousands of people across the world, and Qantas passengers were gathering at airports in Australia, Los Angeles and elsewhere in the hopes of finally getting to their destinations.

The airline’s resumption of flights comes around 12 hours after an emergency ruling by an arbitration court ended weeks of strikes and canceled a staff lockout.

The court ruling was a major victory in the airline’s battle with unions representing pilots, aircraft mechanics, baggage handlers and caterers, whose rolling strikes have forced the cancellation of 600 flights in recent months, disrupted travel for 70,000 passengers and cost Qantas 70 million Australian dollars ($75 million).

But some aviation experts said the surprise grounding of all 108 planes on Saturday, at a cost of $20 million a day, has hurt the Australian flagship carrier’s reputation around the world. Moody’s Investors Service said it could downgrade the airline’s credit ratings as the weekend’s events could hurt bookings, profits and the value of the Qantas brand.

Still, the stock market welcomed the weekend developments as allowing the airline to focus on its long-term strategy. Qantas shares on Monday jumped 4.3 percent to AU$1.61 on the stock exchange in Sydney.

Henry Harteveldt, an airline industry analyst in San Francisco, predicts the shutdown will do long-term damage to the Qantas name by hurting its reputation for reliability.

“A lot of travelers won’t take a chance and will book away to Virgin Australia, Air New Zealand and other airlines,” Harteveldt said. “Brand loyalty in the airline business is very low, and there is so much competition.”

Before the court ruling, Virgin Australia said it was scheduling extra flights and offering 20 percent fare discounts to help stranded Qantas passengers through Thursday.

If Qantas loses customers, that could also hurt partners in its alliance of global airlines, including American Airlines. A rival alliance that includes Air New Zealand and is led by United Continental Holdings Inc. could benefit, as could a third group of airlines that includes several major Asian carriers and is led by Delta Air Lines Inc. and Air France-KLM.

CEO Alan Joyce praised the court ruling, which prevents unions from taking any further strike action over their demands for pay hikes and job security clauses under news contracts being negotiated. The strikes have been blamed for a sharp decline in the airline’s future bookings.

“The important thing is that all industrial action is now over and we have certainty,” Joyce told reporters in Sydney.

“We will be returning to business as usual over the next 24 hours,” he said.

Other industry veterans said the lockout was a daring move that will pay off for Qantas, which wants to expand the low-cost, low-fare model that it uses at its Jetstar Airways subsidiary business cards design.

Jetstar has extensive routes to Southeast Asia and Japan, and lower costs than Qantas. But Qantas unions fear that expansion of low-cost airlines will result in Australian jobs being sent overseas. Joyce hopes to bend the unions closer to the company’s vision for growth by tapping into Asian markets.

“It was a very shrewd move by their CEO to force the issue and stop the potential deterioration of the brand,” said Mo Garfinkle, an airline consultant who has worked for Qantas rival Virgin Australia. “In the end, it will benefit Qantas financially.”

Garfinkle said the short duration of the fleet grounding will help Qantas get back up to full speed quickly, cutting its losses.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard on Monday described the grounding as “extreme,” while Transport Minister Tony Albanese has sharply criticized Joyce for giving the government only three hours notice of his plans.

The Australian government, angered by a lack of warning of the grounding, had called an emergency court hearing on Saturday night to end the work bans for the sake of the national economy.

The three judges heard more than 14 hours of testimony from the airline, the government and unions. Workers have held rolling strikes and refused overtime work for weeks out of worry that some of Qantas’ 32,500 jobs would be moved overseas in a restructuring plan.

The unions wanted the court to temporarily suspend the employee lockout so that strike action could resume if negotiations in the labor dispute failed to progress. But the airline said the strikes had devastated the airline’s reputation for reliability and that the threat needed to be removed permanently before customers would return.

Tribunal President Geoffrey Giudice said the panel decided that a temporary suspension would still risk Qantas’ grounding its fleet in the future and would not protect the tourism and aviation industries from damage.

Qantas is the largest of Australia’s four national domestic airlines, and the grounding affected 108 planes in 22 countries.

About 70,000 passengers fly Qantas daily, and would-be fliers this weekend were stuck at home, hotels or airports, or even had to suddenly deplane when Qantas suspended operations. More than 60 flights were in the air at the time but continued to their destinations, and Qantas was paying for passengers to book other flights.

Qantas infuriated unions in August when it said it would improve its loss-making overseas business by creating an Asia-based airline with its own name and brand. The five-year restructure plan will cost 1,000 jobs.

The airline also said in August that it had more than doubled annual profit to AU$250 million but warned that the business environment was too challenging to forecast earnings for the current fiscal year.

Qantas is the 10th-largest airline in the world by passenger miles flown, according to the International Air Transport Association, an airline trade group.

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Associated Press writers David Koenig from Dallas, Texas, and Andrew Dalton from Los Angeles contributed to this report.

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Stocks edged between small gains and losses Friday afternoon as traders scrutinized a plan to contain Europe’s debt crisis that sent the market soaring a day earlier.

The Dow Jones industrial average ended up nearly 23 points at 12,231. The Dow surged 339 points the day before, its biggest gain since Aug. 11. The Dow is headed for its biggest monthly gain since 1987.

“It’s a kind of sobering-up after a day of partying,” said Jerry Webman, chief economist with Oppenheimer Funds in New York.

European leaders unveiled a plan early Thursday to expand their regional bailout fund and force banks to keep bigger cash buffers. Banks agreed to forgive half of Greece’s debt. The Dow and the Standard & Poor’s 500 index both gained more than 3 percent.

Optimism ebbed on Friday as analysts raised questions about the plan, which lacks many key details. It is not yet clear how the rescue fund will work, for example. European markets mostly fell, and the euro declined against the dollar.

“We got back to what’s more of a square position, closer to where we want to be, and now we’re going to take a couple of deep breaths and reassess what this really means,” Webman said short term personal loan. He said there are still plenty of obstacles to overcome before the crisis is resolved.

One troubling sign: Borrowing costs for Italy and Spain increased, signaling that traders remain worried about their finances.

The S&P 500 index was up less than a point at 1,285. The Nasdaq composite index slipped a little over a point to 2,737.

The Dow is up 11.9 percent this month, the S&P 13.4 percent. Both indexes are on pace to have their best month since January 1987.

In less than four weeks, the Dow has risen 14.5 percent from its 2011 low, reached on Oct. 3. The S&P has gained 16.6 percent in that time. However, the Dow remains 4.8 percent below this year’s high, reached on April 29. The S&P is 6.1 percent below its high.

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Folk music legend Pete Seeger and `60s folk singer Arlo Guthrie joined Occupy Wall Street demonstrators Friday in their campaign against corporate greed while residents near the protest park encampment pushed to regain some peace and quiet in their neighborhood.

Seeger joined in the Occupy Wall Street protest Friday night, replacing his banjo with two canes as he marched with throngs of people in New York City’s tony Upper West Side past banks and shiny department stores.

The 92-year-old Seeger, accompanied by musician-grandson Tao Rodriguez Seeger, composer David Amram, and bluesman Guy Davis, shouted out the verses of protest anthems as the crowd of about 1,000 people sang and chanted.

They marched peacefully over more than 30 blocks from Symphony Space, where the Seegers and other musicians performed, to Columbus Circle. Police watched from the sidelines.

Occupy Wall Street began a month ago in lower Manhattan among a few young people, and has grown to tens of thousands around the country and the world. A recent Associated Press-GfK poll says more than one-third of the country supports the Wall Street protesters, and even more _ 58 percent _ say they are furious about America’s politics.

But the encampment at Zuccotti Park has become more than a tolerable nuisance, some neighborhood residents say. At a meeting Thursday, they complained of protesters urinating in the streets and beating drums in the middle of the night. Some called for the protesters to vacate the park.

The area’s community board voted unanimously for a resolution that recognized the protesters’ First Amendment rights while calling for a crackdown on noise and public urination and defecation.

U.S. Rep. Jerrold Nadler, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer and state Sen. Daniel Squadron said in a statement that the resolution was “an attempt to establish a sensible framework that respects the protesters’ fundamental rights while addressing the very real quality of life concerns for residents and businesses around Zuccotti Park.”

Asked about Occupy Wall Street on WOR Radio on Friday, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the protesters’ leaderless structure has made it difficult to negotiate with them.

Occupy Wall Street spokesman Han Shan, who has served as a liaison between protesters and local elected officials, agreed the protesters needed to be better neighbors. Shan, who attended the meeting, promised to limit the noise.

At Columbus Circle, Seeger and friends walked to the chant of “We are the 99 percent” and “We are unstoppable; another world is possible.” Seeger stopped to bang a metal statue of an elephant with his cane _ to cheers from the crowd.

At the center of the plaza, Seeger and Amram were joined by Guthrie in a round of “We Shall Overcome,” a protest anthem made popular by Seeger.

After more singing, Seeger asked for a mic check to tell the crowd: “The words are simple: I could be happy spending my days on the river that flows both way-ay-ays.”

During the march, the younger Seeger, in troubadour fashion like his grandfather, walked among the protesters playing songs. Amra took up a flute and others enlivened the night protest with the sounds of the accordion, banjos, and guitars.

At the front of the throng, marchers held American flags and a large blue flag that said: “Revolution Generation … Debt is Slavery.” Along the way, the crowd sang protest songs made popular or written by Seeger, Woody Guthrie, and others of the protest era.

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Associated Press writer Karen Matthews contributed to this report.

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Enormous oil wealth lies thousands of feet below Libya, but whether it will be claimed, and by whom, now that Moammar Gadhafi is gone is very much an open question.

Drilling and shipping equipment has been damaged in the Libyan civil war, land mines must be cleared around oil fields, and a legal framework for how oil money is collected and distributed must still be worked out.

Whatever government is formed could open vast regions of Libya for drilling at reasonable terms _ or it could demand that foreign oil companies pay exorbitant royalties or require them to build infrastructure in exchange for access to oil.

Libya sits on the biggest reserves of oil in Africa. Those resources could help Libya recover from Gadhafi’s decades-long corruption and the civil war. Or the oil could be kept out of reach by political chaos, crumbling infrastructure or violence.

“It’s extraordinary how the Gadhafi regime squandered so much oil wealth and left it a deprived country in terms of infrastructure,” says Daniel Yergin, chairman of IHS CERA, an energy research firm, and author of a Pulitzer Prize-winning history of the oil industry. “The country will need oil revenues to rebuild and recover.”

The oil industry had already begun to recover in recent months, especially in parts of the country where fighting had long since stopped. Libya is producing about a quarter of the 1.6 million barrels per day of oil it pumped out before the war.

Gadhafi’s death reduces the threat of further fighting in other parts of the country, especially the west and south, where the country’s most important oil fields are. In the best outcome, the national oil company and international companies will soon be able to return to those fields, repair equipment and get oil flowing again.

Analysts say it will take about a year for the country to return to full oil production, but many uncertainties remain.

The country has the potential to someday produce much more oil than it has in recent years, but the oil industry could languish if Libya’s dozens of tribes can’t form a representative government and the country falls into chaos.

The first and most important step is to establish security, experts say. International oil companies with a presence there won’t bring in engineers to assess damage to oil fields and pipelines until they are reasonably sure their workers will be safe.

Gadhafi loyalists are thought to have planted land mines around critical oil infrastructure. Thousands of shoulder-fired missile systems have disappeared from Libyan weapons depots and could be in the hands of Gadhafi loyalists or insurgents.

“If you want to cripple the state, you attack its biggest source of revenue,” says Helima Croft, an analyst for Barclays.

Next, the country must set up a system for oil companies to negotiate contracts for finding, retrieving and selling oil. At least in the interim, it appears that a government oil minister will set policy, such as how much oil companies must pay to extract Libyan oil, and the head of the national oil company will oversee operations.

But the details will probably remain in flux until an interim government can be established. Until then, oil companies can’t be sure that their existing contracts in Libya will remain in effect, although the head of the national oil company has said contracts will be honored at least for a while. It would be up to an elected government to determine whether the contracts would be revised.

What’s most important, analysts say, is that oil companies feel assured that whatever terms are set will not change in the future. Otherwise, they will never agree to spend tens of billions of dollars to repair fields and infrastructure and restore production. Some of the nation’s oil fields, pipelines, refineries and shipping terminals are in relatively good repair, but others are badly damaged.

In general, though, analysts say infrastructure in Libya is in better shape than once feared.

“What we haven’t seen is oil fields blazing,” says Jon Marks, an Africa and Middle East expert with London-based consulting firm Cross-border Information.

Major international oil companies that operated in the country before the civil war, such as Italy’s Eni and Spain’s Repsol, are beginning to assess the situation and restore production in the oil fields offshore and in Libya’s east, long held by anti-Gadhafi forces.

But international oil companies have yet to assess oil fields in the south and west, which produce most of the nation’s oil. U.S. companies that were active in Libya before the war, including Hess Corp. and Marathon Oil Corp. have not returned workers to the country.

Nuri Berruien, the head of the national oil company, told The Associated Press earlier this month that most of the damage appears to be from corrosion. Some older oil fields, such as those of the Sirte basin, require water or natural gas injection to maintain pressure in the reservoir, and that has not been done for more than six months.

Two important oil terminals, which are needed to export oil, are said to be severely damaged, but another is said to have suffered little damage. Also, looters have made off with essential oil field equipment such as power generators, pumps and trucks.

And there are other issues. Many of the country’s most experienced and senior oil engineers are seen by workers as Gadhafi loyalists. At one field, workers are refusing to work until these top engineers are removed.

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AP Business Writers Tarek El-Tablawy in Kabul, Afghanistan, Alan Clendenning in Madrid, and Adam Schreck in Dubai contributed to this story.

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