Congress looks to give more guarantees to farmers

WASHINGTON (AP) — Farm-state lawmakers are moving to create a whole new subsidy that would protect farmers when their revenue drops — an unprecedented program that critics say could pay billions of dollars to farmers now enjoying record-high crop prices.

The subsidy, free insurance that would cover farmers’ “shallow crop losses” before their paid insurance kicks in, has been pushed by corn and soybean farmers who could benefit the most from the program. It would replace for the most part several other subsidy programs, including direct payments preferred by Southern rice and cotton farmers. Growers get the direct payments regardless of crop yields or prices. They don’t even have to farm.

The income insurance plan has a diverse group of opponents — environmental groups that have long argued against farm subsidies, conservatives who say the plan won’t save the government much and even one of the nation’s largest farm groups. The American Farm Bureau Federation says the beefed-up insurance could encourage farmers to make riskier decisions and drive up the price of land.

Top Republicans and Democrats on the House and Senate Agriculture Committees are looking at folding the new subsidy into a farm bill proposal they are quietly crafting as part of their charge by the deficit-cutting congressional supercommittee to cut farm spending.

The four lawmakers — Senate Agriculture Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich.; Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kansas; House Agriculture Chairman Frank Lucas, R-Okla. and Rep. Collin Peterson, D-Minn. — have said they will shave $23 billion from farm and food aid programs over the next decade. The new revenue insurance program would be considered part of their effort to achieve that goal.

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China will make new commitments on its exchange rate policy Friday as part of the official Group of 20 communiqué, according to a U.S. official close to the matter.

“There will be some slightly new language on China and the exchange rate,” the official said, adding that the move “will not be the be-all-end-all.”

The United States has been pushing China to move toward a “market-based” exchange rate for its currency, the yuan, since at least 2008.

“This is an issue that has involved a lot of hard work on our part,” the official said.

China has allowed its currency to appreciate somewhat, but many economists say it remains significantly undervalued.

Critics say China manipulates its currency to give its export-driven economy an advantage in global trade. China has argued that its currency policy is necessary to maintain “social stability.”

I think I busted a rib from laughing…

A scathing new expose on the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change — which sets the world’s agenda when it comes to the current state of the climate — claims that its reports have often been written by graduate students with little or no experience in their field of study and whose efforts normally might be barely enough to satisfy grad school requirements.

Grad students often co-author scientific papers to help with the laborious task of writing. Such papers are rarely the cornerstone for trillions of dollars worth of government climate funding, however — nor do they win Nobel Peace prizes.

“We’ve been told for the past two decades that ‘the Climate Bible’ was written by the world’s foremost experts,” Canadian journalist Donna Laframboise told FoxNews.com. “But the fact is, you are just not qualified without a doctorate. In academia you aren’t even on the radar at that point.”

The IPCC insists that the lead authors of individual sections of its climate report are indeed the pre-eminent experts in their field.

“These authors are nominated by governments and selected based on expertise,” a spokesman told FoxNews.com. “Author teams on IPCC chapters are a mix of individuals who have excelled in their fields of specialism.”

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More people die in America every year from prescription drug abuse than die from heroin and cocaine combined. That stunning finding comes in a new report Tuesday from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The CDC found a fourfold increase in deaths from prescription narcotics over the past decade. Not surprisingly, it coincides with a fourfold increase in the number of prescriptions written for the powerful painkillers.

More and more kids are showing up in the emergency room after accidental poisoning from prescription drugs. One reason could be that children have a hard time telling the difference between medicine and candy. See how a 12-year-old proved this theory

In 2008, the most recent year for which there are statistics, there were 20,044 overdose deaths from prescription drugs. Of those, 14,800 were from narcotic painkillers.

“Prescription overdoses are epidemic in the U.S.”, says Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the CDC. Most people who die from prescription drug overdose are taking someone else’s medicines, he says. “Medicines that were left in the medicine cabinet. Medicines that were given to a friend or a relative. Maybe innocently, maybe maliciously.”

Prescription narcotics are being handed out almost like candy by doctors – some of whom are genuinely interested in patient care – others who run so-called “pill mills”, where narcotic prescriptions are traded for cash to feed addictions. The CDC study found that enough narcotics are prescribed every year to medicate each and every person in America every day for a month.

“It’s astonishing”, says Frieden. He adds that many addictions begin innocently, when patients are given narcotics for a minor injury that could be treated with less addictive medication. “When I went to medical school, we were incorrectly assured – don’t worry – if patients have short-term pain, they won’t get hooked. That was completely wrong, and a generation of doctors, patients and families have learned that’s a tragic mistake.”

The source was Foxnews.

HAHAHAHA

He’s a fucking anthropologist anarchist.

“I have arrived at a point where I can write about whatever I want.”

Apparently you need to teach at a university to write about nothing. That’s funny, I would have figured I could have done that without formal training and experience.

Have a chuckle here:

When he’s not busy brainstorming how to tear apart and rebuild America’s democratic system, David Graeber prefers to think about simpler things, like why we still don’t have flying cars.

Graeber, a professor at the University of London and a widely respected anthropologist, has achieved a new level of fame in recent weeks for his early influence on the Occupy Wall Street protests that began in New York City and have since spread around the world. The Wall Street Journal declared Graeber to be “the single academic who has done the most to shape the nascent movement,” while Bloomberg Businessweek declared him to be the “anti-leader” of Occupy Wall Street who generally abstains from the limelight even as his writings, including a new book on the history of debt and the influence of money, serve as an “intellectual frame” for the protesters.

Indeed, when MainStreet managed to reach Graeber by phone, his focus was light-years away from the protests, as he was busy working on an article about his disappointment that the world doesn’t yet have technology like flying cars, robots and other futuristic technology that one might have hoped would exist by the 21st century. As Graeber puts it, “I have arrived at a point where I can write about whatever I want.”

Flying cars probably aren’t the future that protesters are marching for around the world, but then again few can say for sure precisely what the demands of each protester in Manhattan and Oakland and Rome actually are, not even Graeber, who is based in London and shuttles between protests on a fairly regular basis.

Make sure you read the whole thing; AEC is mentioned explicitly.

Eat crow, doubters.

Strong growth of rents and occupancy levels of rental apartments have pushed some building values to record levels as Americans shift away from home ownership.

While concerns about the economy are cooling the market for most other types of commercial real estate, apartment rents and occupancies continue to be boosted by demand from millions of people who are victims of foreclosure or are unwilling or unable to buy their own homes.

At the end of the third quarter, 5.6% of the nation’s apartments were vacant, down from 5.9% in the second quarter, and the lowest level since 2006, according to Reis Inc., a real-estate data service.

.Rents are up even in some cities that have been hard hit by high unemployment and the housing crash, like Orlando, Fla., Detroit and Phoenix. Effective rents, which include landlord discounts in some markets, rose to $1,004 a month in the third quarter, up 2.3% from a year earlier, according to Reis. Of the 82 major markets that Reis tracks, only Las Vegas saw rents decline compared with a year earlier.

Forecasters say rent increases could slow or stop if the economy weakens further. But for now, these trends are producing outsized returns for real-estate companies, compared with other commercial-property classes.

Values of apartment buildings in the best locations—with modern amenities like resort-style swimming pools and outdoor movie viewing areas—went into record territory in the third quarter, according to an index compiled by Green Street Advisors. The previous record had been set in the second quarter of 2007.

Investors who bought apartment buildings just a few years ago are selling for big profits. Regency Club, a 372-unit complex in Jackson, N.J., with two swimming pools and tennis courts, sold for $44 million in August, compared with $39.9 million in early 2009, according to Marcus & Millichap.

At the same time, though, the rise in rents is squeezing large swathes of the middle class by increasing living costs just as wage increases are anemic and unemployment high.

Glen Guile, a 40-year-old information technology and marketing employee for an auto-parts company in Raleigh, N.C., says he’s looking on Craigslist, an online classified-ad service, for a roommate because he just heard his $629 rent for a one-bedroom apartment could be increased another $30 to $40 a month. He’s already working a second job at a Costco store. “I don’t get a day off. I work seven days a week,” he said.

But thanks to rising rents and occupancies, some analysts predict that real-estate companies will have the highest growth in property net income this year and next year since 2006.

Associated Estates Realty Corp. kicked off the earnings season for apartment-building companies Monday by reporting a 12.5% year-over-year increase in funds from operations, a common metric used by real-estate companies to measure performance. When looking at apartments owned for a year or more, rents for Associated’s 12,000-unit portfolio were up 4.6% compared with the third quarter of 2010.

“Some people try to make the argument that what’s going on in the job market affects apartment demand,” said Jeffrey Friedman, Associated’s chief executive. “We don’t believe that.”

The apartment sector has been insulated from high unemployment because it continues to inhabit a sweet spot in the economy created by demographic factors and the anemic home sales market. The U.S. is expected to see 1.5 million rental household formations in 2011, a record year, according to Green Street.

The main reason for the rental increase is a faster-than-expected decline in the home ownership rate, according to Green Street. The nation’s rate came in at 66% in the second quarter, down from 66.4% in the first quarter and 66.9% in the second quarter a year ago, according to the Census Bureau.

Some industry watchers say the rate could fall to as low as 60%. Each 1% decline in the home-ownership rate represents the movement of one million households to rentals.

If a current tenant balks about a lease renewal including higher rent, Mr. Friedman says he isn’t overly concerned. “There’s someone coming right behind them who can afford it,” he said.

To be sure, the economics of apartment investments aren’t detached from the concerns about financial problems in Europe and the possibility of a double-dip recession in the U.S. As a result, landlords have started to temper rent growth in some areas, including Denver, Atlanta and the Baltimore area, according to Green Street.

If another recession hits and unemployment rises, millions of renters could likely double up or move home with their parents, putting a crimp in demand. “People just aren’t going to write bigger and bigger rent checks into infinity,” warns Andrew McCulloch a Green Street analyst.

The high rents are also being supported by a lack of new supply. Developers have scrambled to launch new projects, but most of them won’t start hitting the market until late 2012. Roughly 8,200 new apartments hit the market in the third quarter, the second lowest number since Reis began tracking data in 1999.

Yes, I did run the numbers.

NEW YORK (AP) — Oil prices dropped more than 2 percent after the government said U.S. crude supplies grew much more than expected last week.

The price of benchmark oil fell $2.13, or 2.3 percent, to $91.04 per barrel in New York. Brent crude fell $1.32 to $109.60 in London.

The Department of Energy reported an increase of 4.7 million barrels in the nation’s storage tanks last week. Analysts expected supplies to grow by only 200,000 barrels, according to Platts, the energy-information arm of McGraw-Hill Cos.

For most of the year oil supplies fell in the U.S., as drivers and businesses burned less fuel and refineries cut their inventories to save money. Last week crude oil imports increased as operations at many refineries picked up again following seasonal maintenance. Refineries operated at nearly 85 percent capacity last week, up almost 2 percentage points in a week.

Oil and gasoline demand is still down in the U.S., when compared with a year ago, the government said.

Meanwhile gasoline pump prices fell less than a penny on Wednesday to a national average of $3.441 per gallon, according to AAA, Wright Express and Oil Price Information Service.

In other energy trading, heating oil was down about a penny at $3.0388 per gallon and gasoline futures lost 4 cents at $2.6319 per gallon. Natural gas fell 5 cents to $3.610 per 1,000 cubic feet.

BERLIN (Reuters) – Angela Merkel’s supporters praised her for getting France to drop demands to use the European Central Bank to leverage euro crisis funds, but looked like making a meal out of the German parliament’s new right to be consulted on how these are used.

“Merkel’s Battle for our Euro,” was Monday’s headline in the mass-circulation conservative paper Bild, saying she taught France’s Nicolas Sarkozy “that the EFSF rescue fund cannot be used to print money” to solve the debt crisis.

“The chancellor must stick to her guns — in the interests of Germany and of Europe,” said the newspaper.

But while her supporters in the Bundestag (lower house of parliament) welcomed the assertiveness in Sunday’s summit from a leader often accused of dithering, they also risked delaying Europe’s response to the debt crisis at a crucial juncture by insisting on a full debate before Wednesday’s second summit.

Her Christian Democrats’ (CDU) floor leader Volker Kauder was said to want a full debate rather than just a vote by the 41-member budget committee, which would be quicker and less risky while still fulfilling new rules on consulting MPs.

A government source said the lower house would vote on the issue on Wednesday.

With criticism ringing in Germany’s ears from the head of the Eurogroup of single currency members, Jean-Claude Juncker, about it being slow to make decisions, Merkel met the heads of the main parties to seek consensus.

As a result of a constitutional court decision last month, she cannot agree to changes to the 440 billion euro European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) without the agreement of the Bundestag’s budget committee, scheduled to meet on Tuesday.

She is then due to address parliament on Wednesday before returning to Brussels for what should be a more decisive summit on boosting the firepower of the EFSF, raising the contribution of private banks to Greece’s rescue, and getting European banks to increase their own capital to prevent contagion.

Her conservative bloc’s chief whip, Peter Altmaier, said Sunday’s summit “made headway” on all three issues, including “using the EFSF to avoid having to print money,” and it should now be possible to produce the “comprehensive” crisis response that Merkel and Sarkozy have promised by the end of this month.

The 100 or so assholes camped out in the middle of a Detroit park (ironically dedicated to and adourned with the statues of business men who would be ashamed to live here nowadays) have thankfully had to suffer some of the most miserable, rainy October weather imaginable, up to now.

May the plagues against them continue…

Read here:

The past week’s weather hasn’t always been conducive to their cause, with rainy days and cold temperatures, but members of the Occupy Detroit movement say they’re undeterred and will stay the course at their encampment in Grand Circus Park downtown.

“We’re still basically a work in progress, but I continue to remain wildly optimistic about what we’re accomplishing here,” Sarah Coffey, 38, one of the volunteers in charge of organizing the group’s informational meetings, said late Sunday afternoon.

“In order for us to transform society, we have to bridge the differences between the races and classes. And when you stop to think about it, is there any better spot to begin than in Detroit?”

Ann Arbor residents Marcia Mai, 59, and Bob Davis, 87, said they came downtown to observe what was happening.

“We’re here to show some solidarity with the young people, and it’s great to see they’re actually doing something about the gross inequalities that exist in the country,” said Mai, who said she did her share of protesting during the 1970s.

“I’m encouraged because people are here and they plan to remain for the long term,” Mai said. “And why not? Their future has been impacted by a loss of jobs and homes, and the fact that they’re committed to being here is very moving to see.”

This naturally includes such principles as totally banning interest on loans because it “pits man against man” or some such nonsense. Awesome…

Read here:

The transitional government leader Mustafa Abdul-Jalil called on Libyans to show “patience, honesty and tolerance” and eschew hatred as they embark on rebuilding the country at the end of an 8-month civil war.

Abdul-Jalil set out a vision for the post-Qaddafi future with an Islamist tint, saying that Islamic Sharia law would be the “basic source” of legislation in the country and that existing laws that contradict the teachings of Islam would be nullified.

In a gesture that showed his own piety, he urged Libyans not to express their joy by firing in the air, but rather to chant “Allahu Akbar,” or God is Great. He then stepped aside and knelt to offer a brief prayer of thanks.

“This revolution was looked after by God to achieve victory,” he told the crowd at the declaration ceremony in the eastern city of Benghazi, the birthplace of the uprising against Qaddafi began. He thanked those who fell in the fight against Qaddafi’s forces. “This revolution began peacefully to demand the minimum of legitimate rights, but it was met by excessive violence.”

Tens of thousands gathered in the eastern city of Benghazi Sunday as Libya’s transitional leader declared his country’s liberation, three days after ousted dictator Muammar Qaddafi was captured and killed.

President Obama congratulated Libya on their declaration of liberation.

ANKARA, Turkey – Rescue teams on Monday sifted through rubble of flattened multistory buildings to try to reach dozens of people believed trapped beneath after a 7.2-magnitude earthquake struck eastern Turkey.

Cries of panic and horror filled the air as the earthquake struck, killing at least 238 people as buildings pancaked and crumpled into rubble.

Tens of thousands fled into the streets running, screaming or trying to reach relatives on cell phones as apartment and office buildings cracked or collapsed. As the full extent of the damage became clear, survivors dug in with shovels or even their bare hands, desperately trying to rescue the trapped and the injured.

“My wife and child are inside! My 4-month-old baby is inside!” CNN-Turk television showed one young man sobbing outside a collapsed building in Van, the provincial capital.

The hardest hit area was Ercis, an eastern city of 75,000 close to the Iranian border, which lies on one of Turkey’s most earthquake-prone zones. The bustling city of Van, about 55 miles to the south, also sustained substantial damage. Highways in the area caved in. The temblor struck at 1:41 p.m. local time, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

KABUL, Afghanistan – Afghan President Hamid Karzai has said if the United States and Pakistan ever went to war, his country would back Islamabad, drawing a sharp rebuke Sunday from Afghan lawmakers who claimed the country’s top officials were adopting hypocritical positions.

The scenario is exceedingly unlikely and appears to be less a serious statement of policy than an Afghan overture to Pakistan, just days after Karzai and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Islamabad must do more to crack down on militants using its territory as a staging ground for attacks on Afghanistan.

“If fighting starts between Pakistan and the U.S., we are beside Pakistan,” Karzai said is an interview with private Pakistani television station GEO that aired Saturday. “If Pakistan is attacked and the people of Pakistan need Afghanistan’s help, Afghanistan will be there with you.”

He said that Kabul would not allow any nation, including the U.S., to dictate its policies.

Both Washington and Kabul have repeatedly said Pakistan is providing sanctuary to militant groups launching attacks in Afghanistan.

LANCASTER, Pa. (AP) – Teenage girls in ponytails and boys in long athletic shorts dash across the gym at Abraham Lincoln Middle School, pausing their game of indoor tennis to motion “Y-M-C-A” with their arms as the Village People’s song blares from the loudspeaker.

It’s a scene happening less frequently these days. Budget cuts and teacher layoffs have forced the school to cut some PE classes, reduce library hours and eliminate small literacy classes for problem readers and Spanish for sixth- and seventh-graders.

“I’m scared to death. As we continue to look at fewer and fewer non-classroom positions that are there, at some point it’s going to impact core classroom positions and that’s a very, very scary thing,” said principal Josh Keene.

Educators across America, like Keene, are bracing for a tough reality. Even in a best-case scenario that assumes strong economic growth next year, it won’t be until 2013 or later when districts see budget levels return to pre-recession levels, said Daniel Domenech, executive director of the American Association of School Administrators in Arlington, Va. That means more cuts and layoffs are likely ahead.

“The worst part is that it’s not over,” Domenech said.

Already, an estimated 294,000 jobs in the education sector have been lost since 2008, including those in higher education.

The cuts are felt from Keller, Texas, where the district moved to a pay-for-ride transportation system rather than cut busing altogether, to Georgia, where 20 days were shaved off the calendar for pre-kindergarten classes. In California, a survey found that nearly half of all districts last year cut or reduced art, drama and music programs. Nationally, 120 districts primarily in rural areas have gone to a four-day school week to save on transportation and utility costs, according to the National Conference of State Legislators. Others are implementing fees to play sports, cutting field trips and ending after-school programs.

Districts have little choice but to put off buying textbooks and technology and training teachers, said Rob Monson, a principal in Parkston, S.D., who is president of the National Association of Elementary School Principals.

At Abraham Lincoln Middle School, Keene says he’s worried — not just about offering electives next year, but whether class sizes in core subjects will jump from around 25 to 35 or 40. His district received $6 million less from the state this year, which meant six staff positions in his school were cut. Even if state funding remains the same next year, the district expects to have from $5 million to $7 million less because of increased pension obligations and other expenses.

Recognizing the reality districts face, President Barack Obama included $30 billion in his $447 billion jobs creation package to save teachers’ jobs. The Senate rejected the jobs package as well as a separate measure focused on saving the jobs of teachers and first responders. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell has said the plan resembles “bailouts” that haven’t proven to work and only perpetuate economic problems.

Not everyone sees all doom and gloom in schools’ budget woes. Some say many districts haven’t wisely spent tax dollars or didn’t adequately prepare for the end of the $100 billion in federal stimulus dollars for schools. And that while the number of students per teacher in America dropped from 22.3 in 1970 to 15.3 in 2008, according to the National Center For Education Statistics, they say the reduction hasn’t made a noticeable difference.

WASHINGTON (AP) – The Obama administration’s decision to pull the plug on a financially flawed long-term care insurance plan is likely to worsen a dilemma most middle-class families are totally unprepared for.

A nursing home can cost more than $200 a day and a home health aide averages $450 a week, usually part-time. Yet long-term care is one major health expense for which nearly all Americans are uninsured. Only about 3 percent of adults have their own policy, and Medicare doesn’t cover it.

Families confront their financial exposure when a frail elder takes a turn for the worse, a teen is calamitously injured in a car crash or a middle-aged worker suffers a debilitating stroke.

The demise of the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports program, or CLASS, means it could take a decade or longer before politicians seriously engage the issue again. By then the retirement of the Baby Boomers will be in full swing.

“Long-term care is a critical issue, and people are in total denial about it,” said Bill Novelli, former CEO of AARP. “I am very sorry the administration did what they finally did, although I understand it. It is going to take a long time to get this back — and fixed.”

The irony, experts say, is that paying for long-term care is the kind of problem insurance should be able to solve. It has to do with the mathematics of risk.

Most drivers will have some kind of accident during their years behind the wheel, but few will be involved in a catastrophic wreck. And some very careful drivers will not experience any accidents. The risks of long-term care are not all that different, says economist Harriet Komisar of the Georgetown University Public Policy Institute.

“A small percentage of people are going to need a year, two years, five years or more in a nursing home, but for those who do, it’s huge,” Komisar said. “Insurance makes sense when the odds are small but the financial risk is potentially high and unaffordable.”

Komisar and her colleagues estimate that nearly 7 in 10 people will need some level of long-term care after turning 65. That’s defined as help with personal tasks such as getting dressed, going to the toilet, eating, or taking a bath.

Many of those who need help will get it from a family member. Only 5 percent will need five years or more in a nursing home. And 3 in 10 will not need any long-term care assistance at all.

For those who do need extended nursing home care, Medicaid has become the default provider, since Medicare only covers short-term stays for rehab. But Medicaid is for low-income people, so the disabled literally have to impoverish themselves to qualify, a wrenching experience for families.

Liberals say the answer is government-sponsored insurance, like the CLASS plan the Obama administration included in the health overhaul law, only to find it wouldn’t work financially.

The administration was unable to reconcile twin goals of CLASS: financial solvency and affordable coverage easily accessible to all working adults, regardless of health.

Conservatives have called for private coverage, perhaps with tax credits to make it more affordable.

Some experts say it will take a combination of both approaches.

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The world’s biggest banks are squabbling with European leaders over the size of losses on their Greek bonds as they seek a deal to cut the country’s debt load, two people with knowledge of the discussions said.

The financial companies, represented by the Institute of International Finance, proposed a loss of 40 percent on Greek debt, said one of the people, who declined to be identified because talks are confidential. The European Union is calling on investors to forfeit as much as 60 percent, making a compromise at 50 percent possible, the person said.

The talks are part of an attempt to solve the two-year-old sovereign-debt crisis that has pushed Greece closer to default, roiled global markets and dented confidence in the survival of the 17-nation currency. EU leaders are scrambling to reach an agreement on bolstering the region’s rescue fund, recapitalizing banks and relieving Greece to avoid contagion spreading to Italy and Spain before another summit in two days.

Luxembourg’s Jean-Claude Juncker, who leads the group of euro-area finance ministers, said talks on private-sector involvement in a second aid package for Greece are focusing on losses of “about 50 percent, 60 percent.”

LONDON (Reuters) – The euro zone’s private sector tipped further into decline in October, according to business surveys on Monday that showed the bloc’s economy is in serious danger of lurching from stagnation into outright recession.

Shrinking order books and plummeting confidence sent euro zone factories into contraction for the third month in a row, and service sector companies for a second month.

The Flash Markit Eurozone Services Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI), which measures business activity at thousands of firms from banks to restaurants, sank to 47.2 this month from September’s 48.8, well below a Reuters consensus of 48.5.

In fact, none of the 35 economists polled by Reuters thought this preliminary reading of the services index would fall so far below the 50 mark that divides growth and contraction.

With Europe’s leaders laboring over effective means to fight a sovereign debt crisis that threatens to unleash a new global financial crisis, the PMIs showed little hope of cheerier days ahead soon.

“Most indicators seem to suggest it is going to get worse not better in the coming months. So there is a significant chance of a contraction in the fourth quarter,” said Chris Williamson, chief economist at survey compiler Markit.

He said the current level of the indexes, which have a good record of tracking economic growth, could signal a quarterly rate of decline approaching half a percentage point.

The services new business sub-index fell to 46.2 in October from 47.1 in September, its lowest reading since July 2009 when the euro zone was still escaping the worst recession since World War II.

A Reuters poll conducted earlier this month showed a 40 percent chance the euro zone will slip back into recession, while economists now expect the European Central Bank to reverse some of its monetary policy tightening later this year.

German manufacturing contracted this month for the first time in two years, according to individual country PMIs released earlier on Monday. The service sector rebounded unexpectedly but that was perhaps the only bright spot among this month’s surveys.

BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s vast manufacturing sector expanded moderately in October to snap three months of contraction, reflecting the resilience of robust domestic demand that is likely to soothe fears of an abrupt slowdown in the world’s second-largest economy.

HSBC’s flash purchasing managers’ index (PMI) also showed price pressures eased in China, underlining consumer price data that has shown a slight pullback in inflation from three-year peaks.

The flash PMI, designed to give an early snapshot of the month’s factory activity, rose to 51.1 in October from September’s final reading of 49.9 as new orders and new export orders expanded.

The reading surpassed the 50-point level demarcating expansion from contraction for the first time since June, when the PMI was 51.6.

“Thanks to the pick-up in new orders and output, the headline flash PMI rebounded back into expansionary territory during October, marking a steady start to manufacturing activities in the four quarter,” said Qu Hongbin, China economist at HSBC.

“Meanwhile, inflation components within the PMI results confirmed stable output prices growth and slower input price inflation. All these data confirm our view that there is no risk of a hard landing in China,” he said.

Qu expects annual industrial output growth to hover around 13 percent in October and the central bank to keep monetary policy stable in the coming months.

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European leaders reached the halfway mark of their marathon to end the debt crisis, outlining plans to aid banks and ruling out tapping the European Central Bank’s balance sheet to boost the region’s rescue fund.

Stocks advanced and the euro rose after Europe’s 13th crisis-management summit in 21 months, which also explored how to strengthen the International Monetary Fund’s role. The leaders excluded a forced restructuring of Greek debt, sticking with the tactic of enticing bondholders to accept losses to help restore the country’s finances. China said today that it had “faith” in the European Union’s ability to tackle the crisis.

“It seems that progress has been made over the weekend to get to a ‘comprehensive package,’ but it is unlikely to be a bold one,” said Juergen Michels at Citigroup Inc. in London. “There remain many open questions.”

Greece’s deteriorating finances have narrowed Europe’s room for maneuver in battling the contagion, which threatens to pitch the country into default, rattle the banking system, infect Spain and Italy and tip the world economy into recession.

The complete blueprint won’t come together until a summit in two days, giving German Chancellor Angela Merkel time to go back to Berlin to brief her lawmakers and seek their approval for the next steps. Like yesterday, it will start with all 27 EU leaders before the 17 heads of euro economies gather on their own.

‘Options are Converging’

“Work is going well on the banks, and on the fund and the possibilities of using the fund, the options are converging,” French President Nicolas Sarkozy told reporters at the Brussels summit yesterday. “On the question of Greece, things are moving along. We’re not there yet.”

The euro rose as much as 0.4 percent to $1.3951, trading at $1.3897 at 9:49 a.m. in Berlin. The benchmark Stoxx Europe 600 Index advanced 0.5 percent to 240.12, its second day of gains.

The mayhem began in Greece in October 2009, when an unexpected cash shortfall left the new government unable to pay for its election promises. Since then, 256 billion euros of bailouts have failed to stem the tide, which rattled France this month, prompting Standard & Poor’s to warn the country may lose its top sovereign credit rating.

Expressing concern over the potential impact on their nations, world leaders including President Barack Obama and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao have stepped up calls for Europe to defuse the risk to the global economy.

European leaders reached the halfway mark of their marathon to end the debt crisis, outlining plans to aid banks and ruling out tapping the European Central Bank’s balance sheet to boost the region’s rescue fund.

Stocks advanced and the euro rose after Europe’s 13th crisis-management summit in 21 months, which also explored how to strengthen the International Monetary Fund’s role. The leaders excluded a forced restructuring of Greek debt, sticking with the tactic of enticing bondholders to accept losses to help restore the country’s finances. China said today that it had “faith” in the European Union’s ability to tackle the crisis.

“It seems that progress has been made over the weekend to get to a ‘comprehensive package,’ but it is unlikely to be a bold one,” said Juergen Michels at Citigroup Inc. in London. “There remain many open questions.”

Greece’s deteriorating finances have narrowed Europe’s room for maneuver in battling the contagion, which threatens to pitch the country into default, rattle the banking system, infect Spain and Italy and tip the world economy into recession.

The complete blueprint won’t come together until a summit in two days, giving German Chancellor Angela Merkel time to go back to Berlin to brief her lawmakers and seek their approval for the next steps. Like yesterday, it will start with all 27 EU leaders before the 17 heads of euro economies gather on their own.

‘Options are Converging’

“Work is going well on the banks, and on the fund and the possibilities of using the fund, the options are converging,” French President Nicolas Sarkozy told reporters at the Brussels summit yesterday. “On the question of Greece, things are moving along. We’re not there yet.”

The euro rose as much as 0.4 percent to $1.3951, trading at $1.3897 at 9:49 a.m. in Berlin. The benchmark Stoxx Europe 600 Index advanced 0.5 percent to 240.12, its second day of gains.

The mayhem began in Greece in October 2009, when an unexpected cash shortfall left the new government unable to pay for its election promises. Since then, 256 billion euros of bailouts have failed to stem the tide, which rattled France this month, prompting Standard & Poor’s to warn the country may lose its top sovereign credit rating.

Expressing concern over the potential impact on their nations, world leaders including President Barack Obama and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao have stepped up calls for Europe to defuse the risk to the global economy.

WASHINGTON (CNNMoney) — Even before Moammar Gadhafi’s death Thursday, the Treasury Department was already starting to thaw some $37 billion worth of frozen Libyan assets to make them available to the new government in Tripoli.

The new Libyan government will get all the money. Eventually.

Earlier this year, the United States froze its piece of what some analysts believe to be as much as $150 billion in assets that had been available to the Gadhafi regime around the world.

Outside of the United States, those assets range from real estate to stakes in the Italian bank UniCredit, the British publisher Pearson, which owns the Financial Times, and Italy’s soccer club Juventus.