China’s passenger-car sales growth slowed in June as inflation accelerated, reducing consumers’ spending power in the world’s largest auto market. Sales of cars, sport-utility vehicles and multipurpose vehicles rose 10.9 percent from a year earlier to 839,228 last month, the China Automotive Technology & Research Center said today. That compares with 34 percent growth in April and 25 [...]

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Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble slashed prices on their rival electronic book readers on Monday, responding to intensifying market competition and the success of Apple’s iPad. Shares in both companies fell about 3 percent as investors feared intense competition could lure away buyers of e-books, the fastest-growing segment in a moribund bookselling industry. Profit margins on Barnes [...]

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U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne said he’ll raise taxes on banks and savers, while cutting welfare spending in a budget tomorrow that aims to close a record deficit without strangling an economic rebound. Osborne said yesterday the “pain” of the biggest spending squeeze in 30 years will be spread over the Parliament’s five- year [...]

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Russian President Dmitry Medvedev illustrated his call for a supranational currency to replace the dollar by pulling from his pocket a sample coin of a “united future world currency.” “Here it is,” Medvedev told reporters today in L’Aquila, Italy, after a summit of the Group of Eight nations. “You can see it and touch it.” The coin, [...]

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European banking shares indicate a Greek debt default may be just a matter of time. Investors have already pushed down financial stocks enough to imply the “erosion” in book value that may result from losses tied to a sovereign debt restructuring, said Dirk Hoffmann-Becking, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein in London. A Bloomberg index of [...]

debt, Euro Zone, global markets, greece, investments, Portugal Hide

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said the U.S. recovery, while being sustained by private demand, isn’t as strong as he prefers and faces risks from Europe’s debt crisis that may require further Fed action. U.S. growth is “not as fast as we would like,” Bernanke told the House Budget Committee in testimony today just hours [...]

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The U.S. has supplanted China and Brazil as the most attractive market for investors as confidence in the global economic recovery wanes in the wake of the Greek debt crisis. Investors are putting their money on President Barack Obama’s stewardship of the U.S. economy even as his job-approval rating has declined, according to a global quarterly [...]

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President Barack Obama is poised to increase the U.S. debt to a level that exceeds the value of the nation’s annual economic output, a step toward what Bill Gross called a “debt super cycle.” The CHART OF THE DAY tracks U.S. gross domestic product and the government’s total debt, which rose past $13 trillion for the first [...]

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If you think the jobs situation has become pretty hopeless, you’re not alone. Roughly 1.1 million workers have given up hope of finding employment. The staggering level of “discouraged workers” as the government calls them has swelled to historic proportions in 2010, past the million barrier for the first time since the Bureau of Labor [...]

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European Central Bank President Jean- Claude Trichet and Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithnerdiverged on prescriptions to sustain growth, with Europe set to tighten budgets and the U.S. seeking stronger domestic demand. The impact of narrower budget gaps “on growth could not be considered negative because it would improve confidence,” Trichet told reporters yesterday after meeting with Group [...]

China, debt, dollar, economic growth, Euro, European Central Bank, global markets, greece, IMF, stimulus Hide