The Senate unanimously approved tough new sanctions on Iran’s Central Bank amid fears of Tehran developing a nuclear weapon.
The 100-0 vote Thursday was for an amendment to the defense bill. Lawmakers had argued that concerns about a nuclear-armed Iran outweighed reservations about driving up oil prices and hurting Americans at the gas pump.
Sens. Bob Menendez of New Jersey and Mark Kirk of Illinois offered the amendment that would target foreign financial institutions that do business with the Central Bank of Iran, barring them from opening or maintaining correspondent operations in the United States easy payday loans. It would apply to foreign central banks only for transactions that involve the sale or purchase of petroleum or petroleum products.
Administration officials cautioned that driving up oil prices could mean more money for Iran.
Regulators on Friday closed small banks in Iowa and Louisiana, lifting to 90 the number of bank failures in the U.S. this year.
The number of closures has fallen sharply this year as banks have worked their way through the bad debt accumulated in the recession. By this time last year, regulators had shuttered 149 banks.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. seized Polk County Bank, based in Johnston, Iowa, with $91.6 million in assets and $82 million in deposits. It also closed Central Progressive Bank, based in Lacombe, La., with $383.1 million in assets and $347.7 million in deposits.
Grinnell State Bank, based in Grinnell, Iowa, agreed to assume the deposits as well as the loans and other assets of Polk County Bank. New Orleans-based First NBC Bank agreed to acquire all the deposits and $354.4 million of the assets of Central Progressive Bank.
The failure of Polk County Bank is expected to cost the deposit insurance fund $12 million; that of Central Progressive Bank is expected to cost $58.1 million.
Polk County Bank was the first bank in Iowa to fail this year, while Central Progressive Bank was the first Louisiana lender to fail this year.
In all of 2010, regulators seized 157 banks, the most in any year since the savings and loan crisis two decades ago. Those failures cost around $23 billion. The FDIC has said 2010 likely was the high-water mark for bank failures from the Great Recession.
In 2009, there were 140 bank failures that cost the insurance fund about $36 billion, a higher price tag than in 2010 because the banks involved were bigger on average. Twenty-five banks failed in 2008, the year the financial crisis struck with force; only three were closed in 2007.
From 2008 through 2010, bank failures cost the fund $76.8 billion. The FDIC expects failures from 2011 through 2015 to cost $19 billion.
The deposit insurance fund fell into the red in 2009. With failures slowing, the FDIC’s fund balance turned positive in the second quarter of this year; it stood at $3.9 billion as of June 30.
The deputy supreme commander of the United Arab Emirates’ armed forces says France is seeking unacceptable terms for the sale of up to 60 Rafale fighter jets.
The comments Wednesday by Sheik Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan could signal a final blow to the bid by France’s Dassault Aviation, which has been in talks with UAE officials for several years.
The official WAM news agency quotes Sheik Mohammed _ who is also the highly influential crown prince of Abu Dhabi _ as saying Dassault was offering noncompetitive and “unworkable” terms. He gave no other details.
He made the comments after touring the Dubai Airshow, where the Rafale and others, including American-made F-15, F-16 and F-18 fighters, performed flight demonstrations,
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) _ Airbus says its customers are committed to buy 1,420 of its new A320neo after less than a year of sales savings account payday advance.
Chief Operating Officer John Leahy said on Wednesday that the brisk business shows there’s strong demand for fuel-efficient planes despite some economic “storm clouds on the horizon.”
Leahy spoke as Airbus wrapped up its order announcements at the Dubai Airshow, where it scored 130 firm orders for the single-aisle plane.
Airbus says it now has 1,268 firm orders for the A320neo, which promises a smaller fuel bill than older A320 models. It ended the Dubai show with $13.7 billion worth of firm orders.
Its rival Boeing snagged the show’s biggest deal _ an $18 billion order for 50 777s from Dubai’s Emirates airline.
Dubai’s fast-growing airline Emirates is kicking off the Mideast city’s airshow with an order for 50 Boeing 777s.
The list price for the deal is $18 billion, but airlines typically negotiate discounts for large orders. The announcement was made Sunday by Emirates chairman and CEO Sheik Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum.
Emirates is the Middle East’s largest carrier. It is owned by the government of Dubai, which is recovering from a debt-fueled financial crisis that came to a head two years ago.
The carrier is Boeing’s largest customer for the wide-body 777. Its young fleet also includes Airbus A330s and A340s, and the double-decker A380.
In nearly every category from real estate loans to small business loans to consumer loans, banks in the St. Louis area are lending less than a year ago, according to data released from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
The Federal Reserve, which tracks more than 70 banks chartered in the St. Louis area, released its third quarter report from locally chartered banks. The figures do not include financial services firm Stifel Financial or banks that are headquartered outside of St. Louis, such as Bank of America or M&I.
The number of locally chartered banks, 73, dropped by one in the quarter as Citizens State Bank of Shipman, Ill., merged in July with Carlinville National Bank in Carlinville Ill., creating the newly named CNB Bank and Trust.
Locally chartered banks’ loans for the third quarter that ended Sept. 30 totaled $20.04 billion, down from $22.2 billion in the third quarter of 2010. The third quarter loans are up slightly from the second quarter of this year, when locally chartered banks had $20.03 billion in total loans.
“What we’re seeing is that lending standards have changed from prior to the economic crisis,” said Julie Stackhouse, senior vice president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. “Banks have plenty of cash to lend. The disconnect is finding borrowers that have the demand and the credit record to support a loan.”
Some borrowers are sitting on the sidelines waiting for the economy to improve before they expand their businesses. Construction and industrial, or C&I, loans, which go to pay for equipment upgrades and inventory, fell in the third quarter to $3.3 billion, down from $3.6 billion a year ago. Many banks in the St. Louis area have targeted growing C&I loans to replace construction and land development loans, which had high default rates during and following the recession payday loans direct lenders.
Small business loans have also declined, to $3.6 billion in the third quarter, down from $3.9 billion a year ago.
“At this point, so much is dependent on confidence in the economy, and demand for loans is flat,” Stackhouse said. “Businesses don’t want to gear up until (consumer) spending is up.”
Not all banks are seeing slowdowns in loan activity. Clayton-based Enterprise Bank & Trust grew its loans, both organically and through acquisitions, with its fastest growth category in C&I loans.
“Overall, most business owners are careful about adding more people or equipment, but some segments are growing, such as health care and manufacturing,” said Enterprise Bank & Trust’s Chief Executive and President Stephen Marsh.
Nonperforming loans, or those that are at least 90 days past due, totaled $855 million for all St. Louis-chartered banks in the third quarter, down from $1.1 billion a year ago. Banks are also setting aside less for loan loan provisions, which fell to $545.1 million in the third quarter compared to $614.3 million a year ago.
“Credit quality is a slow, steady improvement,” Marsh said.
Another positive trend is that profitability is improving. Banks chartered in the St. Louis area had a combined profit of $104. 8 million for the year through Sept. 30, compared with a $50 million loss in the same time period last year. Of the 10 largest locally chartered banks, only two posted a loss for the first nine months of the year, First Bank and Reliance Bank.
First National Bank of St. Louis posted a $14.6 million profit for the first nine months of the year, up 8 percent from the comparable period a year earlier.
“Our customer base has seen some improvement in their businesses in the last 12 months, but this is still the worst economic downturn I’ve seen in 35 years,” said President Rick Bagy.
More U.S. homes entered the foreclosure process in October than in the previous month, with Florida, Pennsylvania and Indiana registering among the largest monthly increases, new data show.
Some 77,733 properties received an initial default notice last month, up 10 percent from September, foreclosure listing firm RealtyTrac Inc. said Thursday.
The number of homes scheduled to be auctioned or repossessed by lenders also posted monthly increases.
All told, notices of default, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions _ warnings that can eventually lead to a home being lost to foreclosure _ hit a seven-month high in October.
The numbers are further evidence foreclosure activity is picking up.
The activity slowed a year ago after problems surfaced with the way many lenders were handling foreclosure documentation, namely shoddy mortgage paperwork comprising several shortcuts known collectively as robo-signing. Many of the nation’s largest banks reacted by temporarily ceasing all foreclosures, re-filing previously filed foreclosure cases and revisiting pending cases to prevent errors.
But banks appear to be moving past those problems now and starting to tackle a swelling backlog of homes with mortgages that have gone unpaid _ something that lenders are seeing more of as the economy struggles and unemployment remains high.
The rate that homeowners were 60 or more days late on their mortgage payment rose in the June-to-September period for the first time since the last three months of 2009, according to TransUnion.
The credit reporting agency said 5.88 percent of homeowners missed two or more payments, an early sign of possible foreclosure. That was up from 5.82 percent in the second quarter of 2011.
The number of U.S. homeowners underwater on their mortgage, or owe more than their homes are worth, represent another potential source of trouble for lenders.
As of June 30, some 22.5 percent of all U.S. homes had a mortgage that was under water, according to CoreLogic. That’s 10.9 million properties. Another 2.4 million borrowers had less than 5 percent equity in their home, the firm said.
Industry experts say a housing market turnaround isn’t likely to occur as long as there remains a glut of potential foreclosures hovering over the market, so October’s increase in foreclosure activity means a potentially faster revival for housing.
“We all know that there is an underlying amount of properties that need to go into foreclosure and the sooner we clear that the sooner we can get housing to a normal level,” said RealtyTrac CEO James Saccacio.
In some states, the number of homeowners put on notice by banks for missing payments far exceeded the national average for October.
Florida posted a 28 percent jump in October from September in homes receiving an initial default notice. Pennsylvania saw a 50 percent increase and Indiana registered a 61 percent gain, according to RealtyTrac.
In some cases, though, government intervention is slowing lenders down.
Take Nevada, where a law went into effect Oct. 1 requiring that foreclosure documents must be filed in the county where a property is located and a lender must provide a notarized affidavit detailing their legal right to proceed.
Saccacio said the law helped cause a 75 percent drop in initial default notices in Nevada last month versus September, bringing defaults to the lowest level since June 2006 at the peak of the housing boom.
“It’s like a rain delay,” Saccacio said. “We’ll eventually see foreclosure processing go up.”
Despite registering a 34 percent drop in foreclosure activity overall, Nevada still registered the highest foreclosure rate in the nation for October, with one in every 180 households receiving a foreclosure-related notice, RealtyTrac said.
In all, 230,678 U.S. homes received a foreclosure-related warning last month, up 7 percent from September, but down nearly 31 percent from October 2010.
Foreclosure auctions rose 8 percent from September, but climbed by more than 35 percent in several states, including Florida, Minnesota and Illinois.
Lenders took back 67,624 properties in October, up 4 percent from the previous month, but down 27 percent from a year earlier.
Bank repossessions increased by a far larger margin in several states. In Oregon they climbed 45 percent, while in New Jersey they posted a 48 percent jump. Indiana registered a 73 percent increase.
Premier Silvio Berlusconi’s government failed to come up with immediate growth measures to show a summit of world leaders, sending Italy’s borrowing rates to dangerous new highs Thursday and igniting talk of a possible government collapse.
Italy’s respected president, who would be responsible for choosing an interim government if Berlusconi’s did fail, was holding talks with party leaders in a search for possible alternatives.
Berlusconi’s weakening grip on his majority was evident in a Cabinet meeting that lasted late into the night Wednesday amid reports of discord with his finance minister, Giulio Tremonti. Berlusconi wanted the Cabinet to agree to enforce some emergency economic reforms as a decree, so they could take immediate effect, including selling government property and privatizing some local public services.
Instead, he headed Thursday to a summit in Cannes of the Group of 20 wealthy nations with only proposed legislation, requiring approval by a divided Parliament.
At Cannes, Berlusconi pledged to other eurozone leaders that he would put the measures to a vote of confidence within the next two weeks. If those measures fail, Berlusconi would be forced to step down.
Berlusconi has insisted that his government will survive its mandate until 2013, but even his coalition partners, the Northern League, have cast doubt on that.
“It is difficult to avoid the impression that this government’s time is numbered in days, or weeks, and that the legislature will finish at the beginning of 2012,” the Corriere della Sera newspaper wrote in a front page editorial.
“Berlusconi has become a puppet in the Italian political theater,” the speaker of the lower house and former Berlusconi ally, Gianfranco Fini, told state TV.
He urged Berlusconi to show his leadership by seeking a broad alliance to see the country through the crisis.
Market reaction to Italy’s political deadlock was withering. Italy is the eurozone’s third largest economy, far too large to be bailed out like Greece, Portugal and Ireland have been. Yet Italy has a debt of euro1.9 trillion ($2.6 trillion), or 120 percent of GDP, second only to the debt ratio in extremely troubled Greece.
The yield on Italy’s 10-year bonds jumped to 6.4 percent on the secondary market at one point Thursday, 4.62 percentage points higher than the rate on the German equivalent bund. Speculation that the European Central Bank was back in the markets buying up Italian bonds took the yield back down to 6.17 percent.
The ECB has been buying up Italian bonds for weeks in an attempt to keep borrowing rates at manageable levels. Borrowing costs of 7 percent or more are widely considered unsustainable, which could cause a default on public debt.
President Giorgio Napolitano met with leaders of Italian parties Thursday to gauge the political situation and seek alternatives. If the government falls, Napolitano would decide if a technical government or someone else in the center-right would run the country before new elections.
Napolitano sought to reassure Italy’s partners and the markets, saying that both the majority and the opposition “are aware of the weight of the problems that Italy must confront with urgency.” He said the next parliament vote would allow him to better evaluate the political situation.
The head of Berlusconi’s party, Alfonso Alfano, insisted after meeting with Napolitano that Berlusconi has a majority to continue to 2013. But even he addressed the possibility of the government’s failure, saying that new elections, and not a technical government, should be next.
Berlusconi’s influence frayed further when six of his Party of Freedom (PDL) lawmakers signed a letter saying they would no longer support him in parliament if he did not seek to build a national unity government.
“The current government does not have the consensus in parliament to achieve the difficult agenda of commitments taken in front of European institutions, the parliament and the Italian people,” they wrote.
Later, another two of his lawmakers defected to a centrist party.
The government has been further weakened by reports of discord on emergency measures between Berlusconi and his finance minister.
After raising expectations of a decree, the government announced legislation reportedly after Napolitano suggested they would enjoy more legitimacy if passed by parliament. They include divesting government-owned real estate, privatizing local public companies, encouraging investment in infrastructure and liberalizing the labor market.
The measures must be approved by the end of the year, the government said in a statement.
They were outlined to the European Union last week after Italy and Berlusconi came under pressure from other eurozone governments and financial markets to find ways to boost the country’s anemic growth.
However, doubts have been growing that Berlusconi has the political muscle to push such reforms through.
Barclays PLC reported a 7 percent rise in net profit in the first nine months on Monday, largely on the back of a one-time boost from investment banking.
The bank reported a net profit of 2.65 billion pounds ($4.25 billion) compared to 2.48 billion pounds a year earlier.
Revenue was up 10 percent to 25.2 billion pounds in part due to a 3 billion pounds credit gain in the third quarter.
The bank said the gain came from widening spreads on Barclays Capital’s structured products, a range of investment products which typically include complex derivatives.
For the third quarter, pretax profit was up from 327 million pounds a year ago to 2.4 billion pounds, again reflecting the one-off gain. Adjusted pretax profit for the quarter was up 5 percent to 1.34 billion pounds, broadly in line with the market consensus.
The adjusted figure excludes the own credit, a 1.8 billion pounds writedown on its stake in the investment firm BlackRock Inc. and other one-time items.
Barclays Capital third-quarter income excluding the gain was down 15 percent to 2.25 billion pounds.
Barclays shares were up 2.9 percent to 207 pence in early trading on the London Stock Exchange.
“Overall, these results are slightly better than we had expected,” said Gary Greenwood, analyst at Shore Capital, who nonetheless rates the shares as “sell.”
The bank reported that it had reduced its exposure to sovereign debt in Spain, Italy, Portugal, Ireland and Greece by 31 percent in the quarter to 8 billion pounds, with about half of the remaining exposure in Italy.
The threat that floodwaters will inundate Thailand’s capital could ease by the beginning of next month as record-high levels in the river carrying torrents of water downstream from the country’s north begin to decline, authorities said Sunday.
The Flood Relief Operations Command made the comments just a day after reports that Bangkok’s main Chao Phraya river was overflowing its banks deepened concerns that the city would be inundated. The report said the river was at its highest levels in seven years.
The command’s chief, Justice Minister Pracha Promnok, said in a televised press conference Sunday that people should not be too concerned about the river’s spillover because it could be drained off. He also said water in Klong Prapa, a major canal that had been overflowing, was receding, and that plans to drain water to the east and west were working well.
Floodwaters that have spilled onto highways north of the capital, including near Bangkok’s second airport in the Don Muang district, came from rising groundwater that will quickly recede, he said.
Off the highways, however, the situation remained dire. Associated Press reporters found people scrambling for safety outside a hospital in northern Rangsit district, where the water was waist-deep.
The flood relief agency said “people should adjust their lifestyles in accordance with the situation” and check all information because rumors have been quick to circulate. Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra said Saturday that the waters may take up to six weeks to recede to manageable proportions.
The death toll from the flooding, which began in August in northern Thailand before moving south, has reached 356, while the economic costs are estimated to be as high as $6 billion and still counting.
Residents of Bangkok and its suburbs have settled into a daily routine of waiting and worrying. Advice from the authorities has generally been vague or sometimes overly detailed, giving little idea of the urgency of evacuation, so many people have decided to hunker down in their homes and hope for the best.
Many are hoarding supplies for the aquatic siege, and supermarket shelves have been emptying faster than they can be restocked. Bottled water, batteries and canned food were among the first items to go.
At a supermarket in central Bangkok’s business district _ which is not under immediate threat _ sandbags were lined up at both entrances Sunday, forcing shoppers to step over to go inside. Many of the shelves were bare, with the handful of shoppers inside grabbing the few snacks that were left small personal loans. Cat food and toilet paper were gone.
While larger stores in Bangkok have kept their prices fixed, in the flooded zones north of the city, smaller merchants were raising theirs. A Rangsit resident, Taweetit Hongsang, complained that the price of a papaya, 10 baht (33 cents) a week ago, had shot up to 30 baht ($1)
The front lines in the battle against the flood have been shifting every day, but always drawing closer to the capital. The latest red zone is the Don Muang area in northern Bangkok, where the city’s second and older airport _ now serving as an anti-flood headquarters and evacuation center _ is located.
Other spots of concern in Bangkok are in the west, where several thousand people living along the Chao Phraya river have been advised to move, as high tides expected late Sunday could cause the river to overflow its banks in some areas, and in the east, where barriers were being erected to protect an industrial estate.
At least five major industrial estates north of Bangkok have been forced to suspend operations, contributing to an estimated 700,000 people put out of work by the flooding. Among those affected are Japanese carmakers Toyota and Honda, which have halted major assembly operations. The electronics industry has also suffered, including computer hard drive maker Western Digital, which has two major production facilities in the flooded zone.
Some flooding on Bangkok’s outskirts was expected after Yingluck ordered floodgates opened Thursday in a risky move to drain the dangerous runoff through urban canals and into the sea. Nobody knows with any certainty to what extent the city will flood.
In a weekly radio address Saturday, Yingluck said that “during the next four to six weeks, the water will recede.”
In the meantime, the government will step up aid to those whose lives have been disrupted, including 113,000 people living in temporary shelters after being forced to abandon submerged homes, she said.
The flooding is the worst to hit Thailand since 1942, and the crisis is proving a major test for Yingluck’s nascent government, which took power in July after heated elections and has come under fire for not acting quickly or decisively enough to prevent major towns north of the capital from being ravaged by floodwaters.
Most Sub-Saharan countries made doing business easier over the past year, but the African region is still the costliest and most complex in the world for entrepreneurs, the World Bank said in a report Thursday.
In its annual ranking of 183 countries, the bank found 36 of 46 Sub-Saharan African nations improved their business environment in the year through June 2011, the highest number since the study began nine years ago.
The world’s top five countries for doing business were unchanged from last year _ Singapore, Hong Kong, New Zealand, the U.S. and Denmark.
The bank judges nations on 11 criteria _ starting a business, dealing with construction permits, getting electricity, registering property, getting credit, protecting investors, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing contracts, resolving insolvency and employing workers.
The bank said 125 countries improved business regulations in the past year, up 13 percent from the previous year.
Morocco was this year’s biggest gainer in the rankings, jumping to 94 from 115 after the North African nation simplified construction permits, allowed minority shareholders to obtain some corporate documents during trials and enhanced electronic tax filing guaranteed payday loans.
South Korea leapt to 8th place from 15th by introducing an online process for starting a business, merging several taxes and filing commercial litigation electronically. Sweden fell out of the top ten to 14th.
Sub-Saharan Africa’s improvement was led by Sierra Leone, which advanced to 141 from 150. Mauritius at 23, and South Africa at 35, are Africa’s highest ranked countries.
Africa also has eight of the 10 lowest ranked nations, including Chad in last place.
Venezuela is South America’s lowest ranked country at 177, the only non-African nation in the bottom nine.
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