EU split on treaty

BRUSSELS (AP) — The leaders of the 17 countries that use the euro, plus six others, have tentatively agreed to a new treaty that enforces stricter budget rules seen as crucial to solving Europe’s debt crisis and holding the currency-bloc together.

The effort by Germany and France to persuade all 27 European Union countries to agree to treaty changes failed, in large part because of Britain’s refusal to give up some powers.

Following marathon all-night talks, the 23 decided to back a new treaty with strict oversight over national budgets, as they try to convince markets that the euro has a future. An agreement on fiscal discpline is considered a critical first step before the European Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund and others would commit more financial aid to help countries like Italy and Spain, which have large debts and unsustainable borrowing costs.

ECB President Mario Draghi praised the tentative deal as a good result for the eurozone.

The immediate market response was lukewarm, with stock markets in Europe fairly steady — the Stoxx 50 of leading European shares was trading 0.1 percent lower while the euro was down 0.1 percent at $1.3336.

Markets may be worried that the failure of the EU to get unanimous support for more stringent budgetary rules may rattle the foundations of a union created to foster peace and prosperity across Europe following World War II.

Even after Friday’s long-awaited deal, watched by governments and markets worldwide, the European leaders have huge hurdles still ahead. They are meeting again later Friday to work out what exactly their new treaty will contain and how violators of its strict budget rules will be policed. They want it written by March.

Britain, which doesn’t use the euro, led the push against a revised treaty tying all 27 EU countries to tighter fiscal union. The others that didn’t sign on were Hungary, the Czech Republic and Sweden.

Britain’s leaders argued that the revised treaty would threaten its national sovereignty and London’s esteemed financial services industry.

Most EU countries had pushed for an EU-wide accord to avoid a split, but Germany and France, the eurozone’s biggest economies, quickly made clear that a deal among the 17 euro countries and whoever else wanted to join was better than nothing.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy laid the blame at the feet of British Prime Minister David Cameron.

“David Cameron made a proposal that seemed to us unacceptable, a protocol to the treaty that would have exonerated the United Kingdom from a great number of financial service regulations,” Sarkozy said shortly before dawn, after what he called a “difficult” dinner meeting had dragged through the night.

Cameron defended his stance.

“What was on offer is not in Britain’s interest so I didn’t agree to it,” he told reporters in Brussels.

“We’re not in the euro and I’m glad we’re not in the euro,” he said. “We’re never going to join the euro and we’re never going to give up this kind of sovereignty that these countries are having to give up.”

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The prospect of oil topping $150 a barrel within a year has become the biggest bet in the options market as the U.S. and Europe work to limit Iran’s crude sales.

The number of outstanding calls to buy oil at $150 next December has jumped 29 percent since a Nov. 8 United Nations inspectors’ report on the Persian Gulf country’s nuclear program, to more than any other option on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contracts equate to about 38 million barrels of oil, or 43 percent of daily global demand, based on data from the U.S. Energy Department.

“People are taking a long shot and buying cheap insurance,” Fred Rigolini, vice president of Paramount Options Inc. in New York, who has traded crude options for 23 years, said in a telephone interview on Dec. 5. “They’ll probably play this through the spring.”

The price of the $150 calls has risen 9.2 percent to $1.30 since the day before the UN report was published, outpacing the 5.2 percent gain in oil futures. Crude will surpass $250 a barrel if nations threaten to ban purchases from Iran, the Tehran-based Shargh newspaper cited Ramin Mehmanparast, an Iranian foreign ministry spokesman, as saying Dec. 4. Iran is OPEC’s second-biggest producer.

Open interest, the number of contracts not closed or delivered, in options to buy crude at $150 next December increased 11 percent on Nov. 22 alone as the U.S., U.K. and Canada imposed new sanctions on Iran’s financial system, including measures that may make it more difficult for buyers to pay for Iranian crude.

Finally, fucking thank you.

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Boone Pickens, on CNBC, recently said oil was over supplied currently. This world renowned expert expects a downward movement in oil prices in the near to medium term. The Libyan oil is coming back online more quickly than early estimates indicated. In Nov. Libya was already providing 600,000 bopd to world markets. Libya’s National Oil Corporation said it expects to provide 800,000 bopd of light sweet crude to world markets by year end. OPEC officials estimate that Libyan output will return to pre-conflict levels by mid-2012. The 300,000 bopd that will be available at the world level once the 150,000 bopd Seaway pipeline (to Cushing, Okla. from the Texas coast) is reversed in the spring of 2012 should act to lower overall oil prices too. The extra oil that the Saudi’s have provided to replace the Libyan oil may not disappear.

With the extra continuing expenses the Saudi government recently incurred in compromising with the Saudi rioters, the Saudi government will be loathe to curb their production. They are using the extra income to pay for the increased benefits they acceded to. Other OPEC economies that are hurting will likely over produce too. Admittedly there is talk of an EU ban on Iranian oil for political reasons. To me this seems unlikely as the EU is moving steadily into recession. Higher oil prices due to a self imposed ban on Iran exports would only exacerbate the recession(s). All this means that the price of oil is likely to go down in the near term.

The secular growth in energy demand due to emerging markets growing energy demands is still in place longer term; but shorter to medium term we may see a move downward, especially if the EU Summit disappoints investors. Such a disappointment would presage a deeper EU recession(s). I’m sure most people can remember the commodities crash as the recent US recession took hold. The EU mediated commodities crash should be smaller. Futures trading rule changes have prevented many futures from becoming as over bought as they were before the US recession. Plus the EU is not quite as much of an oil glutton as the US, so the decrease in EU demand for oil will be smaller than that seen in the US. Still an EU decrease in demand is coming.

In the shorter term, the EU credit crisis events may provide more dramatic moves either way. However, medium term the EU recession should move commodities prices downward. It is less clear whether this down move will include gold, but just about everything else should come under significant pressure. Even EU food consumption may lessen. The EU recession(s) will also have trickle down effects on its major suppliers such as the US, China, and Japan (and on its minor suppliers too).

In a dance as intricate and gay looking as I’ve ever seen, Eric Holder is busy talking about the long lasting negative ramifications of the gun running scandal his department approved while at the same time denying he knew anything about it despite us having already seen memos that inform us he knew exactly what was going out. The hypocrisy is so thick it’s sickening.

WASHINGTON – Attorney General Eric Holder suggested Thursday that weapons lost during the course of the failed “Fast and Furious” gunrunning operation will continue to show up at crime scenes in the U.S. and Mexico “for years to come.”

Holder, in testimony on Capitol Hill that comes as the congressional investigation into the program expands, decried the “gun-walking” tactic used in the operation as “inexcusable” and “wholly unacceptable.” But a day after an influential senator called for the resignation of one of Holder’s top deputies over the scandal, Holder denied department leaders played any role in the crafting of Fast and Furious.

He continued to assert that top Justice officials were not told about the “inappropriate tactics” until they were made public.

Still, the top law enforcement official in the country conceded that, as a result of Fast and Furious, guns lost by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives remain in the hands of criminals.

“Although the department has taken steps to ensure that such tactics are never used again, it is an unfortunate reality that we will continue to feel the effects of this flawed operation for years to come,” he said. “Guns lost during this operation will continue to show up at crime scenes on both sides of the border.”

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Americans split on almost every important issue facing Washington, but they agree on this much: Republicans and Democrats share blame for the failure of the Congressional “super committee,” and the resulting automatic budget cuts are unacceptable.

In CNBC’s new All-America Economic Survey, a robust 62 percent majority blamed the two parties equally for the committee’s inability to reach a compromise on $1 trillion to $2 trillion in deficit reduction over the next 10 years. That includes more than 70 percent of Republicans and independents, though nearly half of Democrats and a majority of Occupy Wall Street supporters blame Republicans in particular.

Moreover, Americans overwhelmingly reject the consequences of that failure – $1.2 trillion in automatic budget cuts, divided equally between military and non-military programs. In the legislative deal Democrats and Republicans struck to create the super-committee, those cuts were intended to be so unpopular that they would force super committee members to reach a bi-partisan deal.

The survey shows that Washington got it half right – the part about the unpopularity of automatic cuts. Just 16 percent of Americans favor proceeding with the cuts, which are due to take effect in January 2013. Some 25 percent prefer an alternative plan with deeper budget cuts.

A 43 percent plurality favors an alternative plan containing fewer budget cuts. In a reflection of the limited appetite for cutting defense at a time when the nation is at war, even a 39 percent plurality of Republicans prefer fewer cuts than the automatic reductions call for.

That broad opposition to the automatic cuts underscores the opportunity Congress has over the next year to devise a new deficit-reduction plan.

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Martin Wolf, chief economic commentator for the Financial Times and long time critic of the Eurozone is optimistic that something tangible will emerge from the crucial, critical, and “endlessly hyped” two-day summit between EU officials commencing today. Alas, tangible and effective are wholly different concepts.

Wolf says the options are simple: the Eurozone can do the bare minimum to ward off economic chaos or come up with a maximal, comprehensive solution that is obviously never going to happen. The half-baked option, according to Wolf, is to “give enough cover, in terms of longer run discipline and longer run reform… to allow the ECB to start intervening in government bond markets in a much more aggressive way”.

By way of translation, Wolf’s idea is akin America’s method for cutting our budget. First you posture, yell, argue and point fingers. Next you refuse any meaningful compromise in the now, leaving the hard decisions to your political successors. Finally you chuck money at the problem in a fiscally reckless manner designed to do nothing more than buy time.

Barring a wild modification of human and political nature this bare-boned solution is what’s going to be detailed for us Friday afternoon. The problem with merely prolonging the crisis is that ultimate success is entirely reliant on an economic recovery in Europe to enable member nations to buy things from one another even as half of the Eurozone is facing mandatory austerity measures.

In short, the idea is to give countries less and hope they buy more while somehow not incurring more debt. It’s an idea akin to he ECB becoming a Federal Reserve cover-band playing tired versions of America’s failed policies. Regardless, Wolf says it’s the Eurozone’s only hope.

CHICAGO (AP) — Rod Blagojevich, the ousted Illinois governor whose three-year battle against criminal charges became a spectacle, was sentenced to 14 years in prison Wednesday, a stiff penalty for the man convicted of trying to sell President Barack Obama’s vacated Senate seat to raise campaign cash or land a high-paying job.

Judge James Zagel gave Blagojevich some credit for taking responsibility for his actions — which the former governor did in an address to the court earlier in the day — but said that didn’t mitigate his crimes. Zagel also said Blagojevich did some good things for people as governor, but was more concerned about using his powers for himself.

“When it is the governor who goes bad, the fabric of Illinois is torn and disfigured and not easily repaired,” Zagel said.

Just for the record, I know this post from an hour ago is outdated. I’m putting it up here purposefully, as a joke/warning to journalists about what happens when you infer causality.

If they don’t rush to cover the story, it can be read here:

The euro is falling against the dollar after Germany dashed hopes that European leaders would agree on a new plan to stem Europe’s debt crisis by the end of this week.

A German official said it could take until Christmas for the new plan to be agreed upon. Traders had expected some sort of solution by Friday when European leaders meet.

The euro fell to $1.3391 in midday trading Wednesday from $1.3414 late Tuesday.

The British pound rose to $1.5682 from $1.5605. The dollar fell to 77.68 Japanese yen from 77.70 Japanese yen and to 0.9251 Swiss franc from 0.9257.

As of the time of this writing, the euro is trading up for the day against the dollar at 1.314.

Quit trying to outlogic the markets, you pen monkeys.

NEW YORK (AP) — Oil is back above $101 per barrel after earlier losing ground when a government report showed an unexpected increase in supplies. Weakening demand for gasoline and other petroleum products was the cause.

Benchmark West Texas Intermediate on Wednesday fell 3 cents to $101.24 per barrel in New York. Brent crude, which is used to price foreign oil that’s imported by U.S. refineries, gave up 63 cents to $109.88 in London.

Prices dropped after the Energy Information Administration reported that oil supplies increased unexpectedly last week by 1.3 million barrels. Gasoline supplies jumped more than expected, adding 5.1 million barrels for the week ended Dec. 2. Supplies are growing because of weak demand for oil-based fuels in the U.S.

Government figures show that gasoline demand in the U.S. is on track this year to be at the lowest level since 2003.

Oil has been hovering around $100 per barrel for more than a week. Investors are watching Europe’s struggles to contain a banking crisis that threatens to pull the region into recession. Widespread spending cuts are expected to reduce energy demand within Europe and among major manufacturing countries like China that export goods to the eurozone.

European leaders are working on ways to boost fiscal discipline and reduce debts. But credit ratings agencies have questioned if they’re doing enough.

At the pump, gasoline prices rose more than a penny to $3.286 per gallon, according to auto club AAA, Wright Express and Oil Price Information Service. A gallon of regular unleaded is 12.1 cents cheaper than it was a month ago, but it’s still 32.8 cents higher than the same time last year.

In other energy trading, heating oil gave up 1.8 cents to $3.004 per gallon and gasoline futures lost 4.12 cents to $2.6042 per gallon. Natural gas dropped by 6.1 cents $3.427 per 1,000 cubic feet.

Give it up, this pony has two legs and was born with its head in its ass.

Read here, if you even care to bother:

On paper and in terms of demographics, Lee Munson doesn’t fit the stereotype of an Occupy Wall Street enthusiast. Not only is the opposite true but the author of Rigged Money: Beating Wall Street at its Own Game sees genius where others see chaos.

“Occupy Wall Street never had central leadership which is what was so brilliant about it,” says Munson. Or at least what was brilliant about the movement’s ability to grow so quickly and gain such widespread attention. If the group is able to evolve, it’s impact could be long-lasting.

“By 2013 they might turn into the greatest watchdog group that my generation has ever seen,” he states.

Since its first Manhattan protest on September 17th, OWS has established the fact that they are undeniably angry. And while many see the group as unfocused, Munson has a specific cause they should rail on. It’s not capitalism itself but rather a structural change over the last 30 years that has placed finance above all other aspects of the capitalist system.

“Finance rules capitalism and it needs to be the other way around,” says Munson. “If Occupy Wall Street can force that point I think we’ll have a better world.”

Now that he puts it that way, yes, we would have a better world. Finance is supposed to be the grease for the wheels of capitalism. Believe it or not, IPOs were once a mechanism for otherwise thriving companies to fund additional growth. The vast majority of modern IPOs seem to be driven by the desire to allow early stage investors to cash-out with brokers taking a cut by distributing the shares to institutional investors who promptly “flip” to the public for instant, riskless profit.

BERLIN (AP) — Germany suggested Wednesday that European leaders could fail to agree on a plan to tighten the continent’s economic ties by the end of the week, dampening investors’ optimism about a broad resolution of Europe’s debt crisis.

Instead, a senior German official said it could take until Christmas for changes to the European Union treaty to be agreed upon, a critical first step in saving the euro.

It is unclear whether the leaders have that long, as ratings agencies have warned of a possible credit downgrade of 15 European countries unless they quickly build a firm plan to solve the continent’s two-year-old debt crisis.

Markets turned lower after the German official’s comments, dampening the optimism that had seen stocks and bonds rally over the past week. Investors had been hoping that a promise of more enforceable rules on budgets would permit the European Central Bank to take bolder action to reducing borrowing costs for Italy and other struggling countries.

Germany’s main stock index fell 1.1 percent, while the Dow futures were down 0.4 percent and the euro shed 0.3 percent to $1.3358.

PARIS (AP) — German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy have sent a letter outlining their proposals to save the euro, including punishing countries that spend too much money.

The letter sent to European Council President Herman Van Rompuy on Wednesday sums up what the leaders outlined on Monday.

It says governments that allow their deficits to exceed 3 percent of their GDP should be automatically sanctioned and asked to lay out a plan for reducing spending. It also says that countries that continue to flout spending rules will face a series of increasingly strict sanctions.

Overspending and ballooning government debt is at the heart of Europe’s crisis. Sarkozy and Merkel want their proposals to form the basis of a meeting Friday to tackle the crisis.

Read up on this cliche here:

They call it the Robin Hood tax — a tiny levy on trades in the financial markets that would take money from the banks and give it to the world’s poor.

And like the mythical hero of Sherwood Forest, it is beginning to capture the public’s imagination.

Driven by populist anger at bankers as well as government needs for more revenue, the idea of a tax on trades of stocks, bonds and other financial instruments has attracted an array of influential champions, including the leaders of France and Germany, the billionaire philanthropists Bill Gates and George Soros, former Vice President Al Gore, the consumer activist Ralph Nader, Pope Benedict XVI and the archbishop of Canterbury.

“We all agree that a financial transaction tax would be the right signal to show that we have understood that financial markets have to contribute their share to the recovery of economies,” the chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel, told her Parliament recently.

On Sunday, Mario Monti, the new prime minister of Italy, announced plans to impose a tax on certain financial transactions as part of a far-reaching plan to fix his country’s budgetary problems, and he endorsed the idea of a Europewide transactions tax.

So far, the broader debt crisis engulfing the euro zone nations has pushed discussion of the tax into the background. But if European leaders can agree on a plan that calms the financial markets, they would be in a stronger position to enact a levy, analysts said.

“There is some momentum behind this,” said Simon Tilford, chief economist of the Center for European Reform in London. “If they keep the show on the road, they probably will attempt to run with this.”

The Robin Hood tax has also become a rallying point for labor unions, nongovernmental organizations and the Occupy Wall Street movement, which view it as a way to claw back money from the top 1 percent to help the other 99 percent. Last month, thousands of demonstrators, including hundreds in Robin Hood outfits with bright green caps and bows and arrows, flooded into southern France to urge the leaders of the Group of 20 nations to do more to help the poor, including passing a financial transactions tax.

Enacting such a tax still faces many hurdles, however — most notably, skepticism from leaders in the United States and Britain, home to some of the world’s most important financial exchanges.

Detroit, MI just took home the trophy for worst heart disease diagnoses in the nation. Let’s hear it for Detroit.

I actually don’t care about heart disease at all; I just like to see Detroit properly represented. In all candidness, most the people I see aren’t fat; just in terrible health.

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1. Detroit, MI Detroit residents report more heart disease diagnoses than any other big city in the nation, according to CDC data, and 33% of them are obese. One thing the city’s hearts do have in their favor: A vibrant urban agriculture movement is transforming empty lots into veggie-filled community gardens, increasing access to fresh produce in neighborhoods where it was previously scarce.

Don’t fight them. Go with them until the opportune moment.

LONDON/SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Manufacturing activity is contracting across Europe and most of Asia, data showed on Thursday, and a Chinese official declared that the world economy faces a worse situation than in 2008 when Lehman Brothers collapsed.

Factory activity shrank even further in the euro zone, reinforcing the view that the debt-strapped region is in recession, while British manufacturing contracted at the fastest pace in two years, raising the risk that the UK economy may suffer the same fate.

This has been the case for much of the developed world for several months, with the exception of pockets of better news from the United States. But the slowdown now appears to be spreading to economic powerhouses of the developing world.

Adding to the gloom, new U.S. claims for unemployment benefits rose unexpectedly last week, popping above 400,000 for the first time in over a month and reinforcing the view that the battered labor market was healing only slowly.

China’s official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) showed factory activity shrank in November for the first time in nearly three years, while a similar PMI showed Indian factory growth slowed close to stall speed.

Both China and Brazil eased monetary policy on Wednesday. It came alongside coordinated action from the world’s biggest central banks to try to prevent another credit crunch by lowering the cost of dollar swaplines.

“The big picture here is this is an unwinding of a 20-year debt bubble,” said Peter Dixon, global financial economist at Commerzbank. “It’s going to be painful, and it’s going to be nasty. What policymakers are aiming for is a smoothing of the path.”

But those policymakers appear to be getting more worried.

The EU notwithstanding, this will be the biggest issue in 2012. I cannot see how commodities don’t go into a total meltdown if the Chinese armor cracks.

SHANGHAI (AP) — China’s leaders are reversing their two-year effort to cool the economy, seeking to counter slowdowns in manufacturing and property that are dragging growth lower and threatening to spur unrest.

In the latest sign the world’s No. 2 economy is weakening faster than thought, business surveys released Thursday showed manufacturing contracted in November for the first time in nearly three years.

That news came a day after Beijing moved to invigorate business activity by easing credit curbs, ending a long campaign to take some fizz out of rapidy expanding economy. China’s leaders had resisted easing lending curbs out of fear that opening the spigots might revive an outright investment boom and re-ignite inflation.

High living costs are risky for China’s communist leaders because they erode the economic gains that underpin the ruling party’s claim to power. But slowing growth is another peril: already news of labor unrest at factories in the south suggests that workers are being squeezed as exporters juggle tight credit and slowing demand.

The decision by the People’s Bank of China to reduce the amount of money that China’s commercial lenders must hold in reserve by 0.5 percent of their deposits “is a clear signal that Beijing now sees the balance of risks as lying with growth rather than inflation,” said Stephen Green, an economist with Standard Chartered in Shanghai.

The European debt crisis and feeble U.S. recovery have weakened demand in China’s biggest export market, while at home efforts to curb inflation by cooling the property market are hurting a wide range of industries heavily dependent on housing and other construction.

The worsening conditions are no surprise to Chen Xiaoyan, a saleswoman at the Cangnan Qianku Qingfeng Pet Supplies Craft Factory in Wenzhou, a manufacturing base that has been hit especially hard by tight credit policies, leaving many factories short of operating cash.

“It was hard enough to do business last year. This year is the hardest,” said Chen. “Our profit was 30 percent lower last year and it will be down another 10 percent this year,” she said. Materials costs have come down in recent months, but labor costs have not, said Chen.

Worries over erring on the side of too fast growth are being overshadowed by greater alarm over a deeper slump as conditions worsen overseas.

“They’re stuck,” Patrick Chovanec, an associate professor at Tsinghua University’s School of Economics and Management in Beijing said of China’s policymakers.

That explains a comment by Vice Premier Wang Qishan to U.S. trade negotiators last week that “an unbalanced recovery is better than a balanced recession,” he said.

The Chinese economy is one of the few still growing at a respectable pace, and Beijing’s leaders intend to keep it that way.

China’s economic growth eased to a still-robust 9.1 percent in the quarter ending in September from 9.5 the previous quarter. But indicators showing export industries and some other areas of the economy were cooling more sharply raised fears of job losses and possible unrest.

In the manufacturing sector, the activity gauge of the China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing fell an greater-than-expected 1.4 percentage points to 49 in November, well below the 50-level that signifies expansion. That was the first contraction in manufacturing activity since early 2009.

Another manufacturing survey by HSBC showed an even steeper decline, with its PMI dropping to 47.7 in November from 51.0 in October.

The property market also appears to have reached a turning point, at least in the biggest cities. New home sales fell 17 percent by transaction volume in China’s top 20 cities in July-September compared with a year earlier.

Sharp discounts by some property developers have angered home buyers who bought when the market was at its peak, with some staging protests or storming real estate company offices.

“They promised us the price of our apartment would never go down, that it would only increase,” complained Zhu Hongxia, a property owner in Shanghai who was standing with others outside the office of China Vanke, the country’s biggest developer.

“You can’t decrease the price suddenly by such a big amount,” Zhu said.

While many homeowners have been angered by the drop, the government is seeking to prevent prices from surging further out of reach of most families. Leaders say property curbs will stay in place despite signs the effort to deflate the bubble is reverberating throughout an economy that already was slowing.

The construction slowdown has prompted builders to cut jobs — losses that have fallen heavily on unskilled migrant laborers.

Beijing Xuanyu Construction Co. in Shunyi on the outskirts of Beijing, a subcontractor on apartment projects, has cut its workforce of construction site laborers from 100 a year ago to about 70, according to Liu Jun, a manager.

The core staff of about 200 engineers, project managers and administrators so far is unaffected, Liu said. He said bricklayers are paid about 200 yuan ($32) a day and lower-skilled workers at least 140 yuan ($23).

“The volume of business has declined,” Liu said. “Our workforce costs are too high.”

China is striving to shift its economy toward greater dependence on consumer demand, rather than construction investment and exports. But they remain key drivers in this developing economy, and the job-scarce U.S. recovery and Europe’s recent upheavals do not bode well: export growth has fallen steadily since hitting a peak of nearly 36 percent in March.

China’s monthly trade surplus with the 27-nation European Union fell 10.3 percent from a year earlier to $13 billion in October as countries that use the euro common currency struggle to contain a sovereign debt crisis.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — More than 1,400 police officers, some in riot gear, cleared the Occupy Los Angeles camp early Wednesday, driving protesters from a park around City Hall and arresting more than 200 who defied orders to leave. Similar raids in Philadelphia led to 52 arrests, but the scene in both cities was relatively peaceful.

Police in Los Angeles and Philadelphia moved in on Occupy Wall Street encampments under darkness in an effort to clear out some of the longest-lasting protest sites since crackdowns ended similar occupations across the country.

Beanbags fired from shotguns were used to subdue the final three protesters in a makeshift tree house outside Los Angeles City Hall, police Cmdr. Andrew Smith said, describing it as a minor use of force incident. No serious injuries were reported.

Police Chief Charlie Beck praised the officers and the protesters for their restraint and the peaceful way the eviction was carried out.

From the makers of safety-system-less high speed rail cars and lead laden children’s toy products, I give you the latest health hazard to be mass produced from the Asian world. Safety will, of course, be a top priority.

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BEIJING (AP) — The world should get ready for a new Made in China product — vaccines.

China’s vaccine makers are gearing up over the next few years to push exports in a move that should lower costs of lifesaving immunizations for the world’s poor and provide major new competition for the big Western pharmaceutical companies.

However, it may take some time before some parts of the world are ready to embrace Chinese products when safety is as sensitive an issue as it is with vaccines — especially given the food, drug and other scandals the country has seen.

Still, China’s entry into this market will be a “game changer,” said Nina Schwalbe, head of policy at the GAVI Alliance, which buys vaccines for 50 million children a year worldwide.

“We are really enthusiastic about the potential entry of Chinese vaccine manufacturers,” she said.

LONDON (AP) — The British government blamed the euro crisis for a big downgrade of the country’s growth projections and warned that it will only achieve its deficit-reduction goals if European leaders deliver a big, bold solution soon.

Britain’s Treasury chief George Osborne said Tuesday that Europe’s third-largest economy was being buffeted by the slowdown in the eurozone. Though Britain retains the pound, having opted out of joining the euro, around 50 percent of the country’s exports go to the 17-nation eurozone.

“If the rest of Europe heads into recession, it may prove hard to avoid one here in the U.K.,” Osborne told the House of Commons.

A number of economic indicators have shown that the eurozone is heading for recession in the wake of a crippling debt crisis that’s shown alarming signs of spreading from the relatively small economies of Greece and Ireland to much-bigger Italy and Spain.

Given the sharp deterioration in the eurozone, Osborne said the government was “undertaking extensive contingency planning to deal with all potential outcomes of the euro crisis.”

Osborne told lawmakers that the independent Office for Budget Responsibility now expects Britain’s GDP to grow by 0.9 percent this year, around half the 1.7 percent rate predicted in March. For next year, the OBR predicts growth of 0.7 percent, sharply down from the 2.5 percent prediction in March.

Its forecasts are in line with the Bank of England though slightly better than Monday’s projection by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development that showed Britain already slipping into a mild recession.

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Most investors for the next several years will be lucky to get a 5 percent return in their portfolios thanks to the growth-constricting debt problems in the U.S. and Europe, Pimco’s Bill Gross said.

Europe’s “dysfunctional family” of disparate nations will make a long-term debt solution elusive and cause the crisis to spread to other countries, said Gross, who as co-CEO at Pimco helps run the world’s largest bond fund.

In his monthly commentary, Gross paints a grim picture of Europe’s future and advises investors to avoid the region and focus on other parts of the world such as Brazil and Asia.

“Investors should recognize that Euroland’s problems are global and secular in nature, reflecting worldwide delevering and growth dynamics that began in 2008,” he wrote. “It will be years before Euroland, the United States, Japan and developed nations in total can constructively escape from their straightjacket of high debt and low growth.”

Until then, he said, investors should get used to low rates, slow growth and weak returns from their portfolios.