Obama signs reauthorization of Export-Import Bank despite earlier opposition

President Obama on Wednesday signed a reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank that would raise its lending authority 40 percent to $140 billion by 2014 and pressed Congress to pass a list of other top White House priorities aimed at creating jobs and boosting the economy.

Enough Republicans came to the 78-year-old bank’s aid to move the bill to the president’s desk earlier this month after conservatives inCongress assailed it for meddling in the free market.

Increasing the bank’s lending power ensures “that we’re not just known as a nation that consumes,” the president said Wednesday at a signing ceremony. “We’ve got to be a nation that produces.”

Republicans quickly accused the president of hypocrisy, pointing out that he had called the bank “little more than a fund for corporate welfare” during the 2008 campaign and promised to eliminate it.

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This seems weird to me, and I would like to see more coverage of this. Probably not the best idea to make this public information, right?

US and South Korean special forces have been parachuting intoNorth Korea to gather intelligence about underground military installations, a US officer has said in comments carried in US media.

Army Brigadier General Neil Tolley, commander of US special forces in South Korea, told a conference held in Florida last week that Pyongyang had built thousands of tunnels since the Korean war, The Diplomat reported.

“The entire tunnel infrastructure is hidden from our satellites,” Tolley said, according to The Diplomat, a current affairs magazine. “So we send (South Korean) soldiers and US soldiers to the North to do special reconnaissance.”

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The euro was poised for the biggest monthly decline since September, before a sale of Italian debt tomorrow and data this week forecast to confirm that the prolonged debt crisis is hurting the region’s economy.

The 17-nation currency was 0.2 percent from the lowest since July 2010 after yield premiums on Spain’s securities over Germany’s rose to the most in 17 years. The Australian and New Zealand dollars slid versus the majority of their major peers as concern Europe’s fiscal turmoil is spreading and hurting economic growth curbed demand for higher-yielding assets.

Japanese stocks fell, with the Nikkei 225 Stock Average snapping a three-day rally, amid concern Europe’s debt crisis is worsening as Spain struggles to avoid tapping markets to rescue its third-biggest lender.

Kyocera Corp. (6971), an electronics maker that gets almost 20 percent of its sales in Europe, slid 1.7 percent. Nomura Holdings Inc. (8604) fell 1.2 percent on a report the country’s financial watchdog will recommend penalties for the brokerage’s suspected involvement in insider-trading cases. Panasonic Corp. (6752) gained 1.2 percent on a report the electronics maker will cut its headquarters staff by half.

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While Treasury 10-year note yields approach record lows, they’re cheap compared with AAA debt of other nations, helping trigger record demand at U.S. bond auctions even in a fourth year of $1 trillion budget deficits.

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The dollar is proving scarce, even after the Federal Reserve flooded the financial system with an extra $2.3 trillion, as the amount of the highest-quality assets available worldwide shrinks.

From last year’s low on July 27, the greenback has risen against all 16 of its major peers. Intercontinental Exchange Inc.’s Dollar Index surged 12 percent, higher now than when the Fed began creating dollars to buy bonds under its extraordinary stimulus measures at the end of 2008.

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Think Wall Street is the land of plenty when it comes to compensation? Think again. If 2011 pay to top executives is a window into the Wall Street compensation machine, then compared with other industries — the entertainment media, for instance — the bloom is definitely off the rose.

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British electrical retailer Dixons has spent the last few weeks stockpiling security shutters to protect its nearly 100 stores across Greece in case of riot.

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A 29-year-old North Carolina man remains jailed in Myrtle Beach after police charged him in connection with a stabbing that occurred early Sunday where the victim allegedly walked in front of him taking a photo, according to authorities.

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Protester bursts into courtroom as Tony Blair gives evidence at Leveson Inquiry (and former PM’s car is egged as he leaves)

• Intruder was filmmaker and veteran Iraq War protester David Lawley-Wakelin
• He burst in from behind Lord Justice Leveson through security-coded entrance reserved for the judge alone
• Police arrest 49-year-old man over incident
  
• He yells that Blair had been ‘bought’ by JP Morgan in build up to Iraq War
• Lord Leveson orders investigation into how he got into courtroom
• It echoed ‘custard pie’ incident when Rupert Murdoch was attacked at a Commons committee provoking wife Wendi Deng to leap to his defence
• Second protester held after egg was thrown at Mr Blair’s Range Rover as he left the High Court

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Now that the issue of the president’s birth certificate has been laid to rest (mostly), some conservatives are turning their attention to a new obsession: Barack Obama‘s college transcripts.

Last week, a website that already had offered a $10,000 reward for Obama’s transcripts from Occidental College,Columbia University and Harvard Law School, increased the bounty to $20,000.

About a year ago, Donald Trump, among the highest-profile “birthers,” helped get the mini-movement started. After the president released his long-form birth certificate, Trump abruptly changed subjects:

“The word is, according to what I’ve read,” said Trump, “that he was a terrible student when he went to Occidental. He then gets into Columbia; he then gets to Harvard. … How do you get into Harvard if you’re not a good student? Now maybe that’s right or maybe it’s wrong, but I don’t know why he doesn’t release his records.”

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Greece handed 18 billion euros ($22.6 billion) to its four biggest banks on Monday, an official said, allowing the stricken lenders to regain access to European Central Bank funding.

The long-awaited injection—via bonds from the European Financial Stability Facility rescue fund—will boost the nearly depleted capital base of National Bank, Alpha , Eurobank and Piraeus Bank.

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There are growing concerns that the regulatory bodies overseeing the financial sector are incapable of understanding, preventing or even properly investigating excessive risk taking that threatens to ruin the economy.

This issue was raised before the 2008 financial crisis and received more attention during the debate that led to the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial-reform law. Some tweaks were made in various parts of the regulatory apparatus, including the governance of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, to reduce the influence of Wall Street.

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Toyota Motor Corp. (7203)’s Prius, a niche oddity when it went on sale 15 years ago, jumped to the world’s third best-selling car line in the first quarter as U.S. demand and incentives in Japan turned the hybrid into a mainstream hit.

Prius sales more than doubled as Toyota extended the name to a four-model “family” of vehicles at the same time that rebates and tax breaks in Japan are saving buyers the equivalent of $2,500 or more. In the quarter, sales soared to 247,230, trailing only Toyota’s Corolla, at 300,800, and Ford Motor Co. (F)’s 277,000 Focus sales.

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David Cameron on Monday summoned top policy makers to discuss contingency plans for an implosion of the eurozone, as Spanish bond yields neared the danger zone.

Against the backdrop of a banking crisis in Spain and uncertainty in Greece, Mr Cameron and his senior ministers met Sir Mervyn King, Bank of England governor, and Lord Turner, the City’s top regulator, to discuss the worsening outlook.

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Asia stocks reversed losses and oil gained on speculation China will take steps to boost growth in the world’s second-largest economy. The euro traded near a 22- month low as Europe’s banks seek more financial support.

The MSCI Asia Pacific Index (MXAP) advanced 0.2 percent as of 10:56 in Tokyo. Standard & Poor’s 500 Index futures advanced 0.5 percent, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng China Enterprises Index of mainland stocks added 0.6 percent. The euro slid 0.1 percent to $1.2525 and Australia’s currency fell 0.2 percent to 98.32 U.S. cents. Crude rose 0.4 percent in New York, while gold declined 0.4 percent.

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(Reuters) – Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney chose Veterans Day to proclaim to the American people his conviction that the world is a dangerous place, and the United States must remain its most formidable military power.

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday voiced “revulsion” over the bloodshed in Syria, while accusing Iran and its Lebanese militia ally Hezbollah of being accomplices.

He was “revolted was by the incessant massacres conducted bySyrian President Bashar Assad’s forces against … civilians … which continued over the weekend in the town of Houla,” the premier’s office said.

“Iran and Hezbollah are an inseparable part of the Syrian atrocities, and the world needs to act against them too,” Netanyahu was quoted as saying.

At least 92 people, more than a third of them children, were killed in the central Syrian town of Houla on Friday and Saturday, provoking international outrage.

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Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, insisted that “both sides” inSyria’s conflict were responsible for the deaths of at least 108 people in the town on Friday, and that Russia was not interested in trying to remove Bashar al-Assad from power.

Mr Hague had expressed hope on Sunday that he could persuade the Kremlin to lean on the Syrian president – whose forces are suspected of committing the massacre – to curtail the spiralling violence.