U.K. consumer confidence dropped last month and may decline further after the economy slipped into a double-dip recession, according to Nationwide Building Society.
An index of sentiment fell to 44 from 53 in March, the Swindon, England-based customer-owned lender said in an e-mailed report today. A gauge of consumers
Oil prices inched lower toward $96 a barrel Thursday in Asia after U.S. crude supplies rose to a 22-year high, suggesting demand remains weak.
Benchmark oil for June delivery was up 16 cents to $96.65 a barrel at midday Singapore time in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract fell 20 cents to settle at $96.81 in New York on Wednesday.
Brent crude for June delivery was down 44 cents at $112.76 per barrel in London.
On Wednesday, the Energy Information Administration said that increased oil imports and weaker domestic demand for petroleum helped boost U.S. oil inventories last week to 379.5 million barrels, the highest since 1990.
China reported Thursday that its imports and exports in April grew less than analysts expected, sparking investor concern crude demand may be waning in the world’s second largest economy.
Crude has slumped $10, or about 10 percent, from $106 last week amid fears the global economy may grow less than expected this year business card. Political upheaval in France and Greece this week also renewed worries about Europe’s debt crisis and weak economy.
Some analysts expect oil prices to stabilize after the recent sell-off unless the global economy deteriorates significantly further.
“One could perhaps argue that with inventories building and global oil demand conditions softer in the first quarter, prices were on the high side to begin with,” Barclays said in a report. However, “the path of least resistance in prices is likely to be a slow grind higher from here in the coming months.”
In other energy trading, heating oil was down 1 cent at $2.99 per gallon and gasoline futures slid 0.8 cents to $3.02 per gallon. Natural gas added 0.5 cents at $2.47 per 1,000 cubic feet.
Returning Australia
HumanKind Water, a bottled water company that touts its social conscience, won the most votes — and the top prize — in Wal-Mart’s "American Idol"-like contest.
As grand prize winner, the Philadelphia-based company will soon have its bottled water sold at up to 3,800 Wal-Mart stores nationwide and on Walmart.com.
"I am thrilled," said T.J. Foltz, president of HumanKind Water, which sources its product from the Poconos Mountains. "We knew people were voting for us like crazy. But we had no idea we’d win."
Scoring a deal with the world’s largest retailer is like hitting the jackpot for a small business vendor. For Foltz, it’s especially significant since his product just launched last October.
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More important to him, though, is the exposure he hopes this win will bring to the cause behind HumanKind Water.
Foltz said 100% of net profits from its sales will go toward developing clean water wells, water filtration systems and rain catchment systems in underdeveloped communities in Haiti, Africa and Asia.
"Ten thousand kids die every day because of lack of clean drinking water and poor sanitation from contaminated water," he said. "Every one of these deaths can be prevented."
Foltz is a Christian minister who witnessed the need for clean water firsthand during trips overseas. That experience inspired him to develop HumanKind Water and devote himself fully to his company.
"Children dying is everyone’s business," said Foltz, adding that there is nothing religious about HumanKind Water. "In our mission to end this, we’re not reaching out to one faith or another."
Wal-Mart (, Fortune 500), the world’s largest retailer, is announcing the winner at a time when it’s also trying to manage the fallout from allegations that it bribed its way to dominance of Mexico’s retail industry.
Wal-Mart tries to recover from Mexico allegations
The retailer launched its "Get on the Shelf" competition January 18, giving three small businesses, entrepreneurs or inventors a first-ever chance at winning virtual shelf space through Walmart payday loans online.com. The grand prize winner also gets a spot on Wal-Mart store shelves nationwide.
More than 4,000 contestants submitted video entries of their product; the retailer let the public vote on their favorites.
The contest drew more than 1 million votes in total, said Wal-Mart spokesman Ravi Jariwala. HumanKind Water captured the highest number of votes, followed by PlateTopper and SnapIt Eyeglass Repair Kit.
PlateTopper is a 100% BPA-free plastic cover that transforms plates into airtight food storage containers. SnapIt is a patented screw kit designed to fix sunglasses and eyeglasses in 30 seconds. These two products will sell on Walmart.com, but not in stores.
All three winning products will have an online banner touting them as the contest winners, said Jariwala. HumanKind will also get a special display in Wal-Mart stores.
Wal-Mart is assessing the three winners’ marketing and production capabilities, he added, and will give the three winners help ramping up if they need it.
Holding a public contest to find a vendor is an unusual departure for Wal-Mart.
The discounter is notoriously strict in selecting products. Prospective suppliers meet with Wal-Mart’s in-house buyers at the Bentonville, Ark., headquarters in small rooms lining a bluish-gray corridor unofficially referred to as "vendor row."
There, they get an hour tops to pitch their products and convince Wal-Mart buyers why they should stock them.
But for vendors of HumanKind Water, PlateTopper and the SnapIt Eyeglass Repair Kit, all this is unnecessary.
PlateTopper will begin selling on Walmart.com on May 3, while SnapIt Eyeglass Repair Kit will start selling online in the near future. HumanKind Water will launch on Walmart.com and in its stores nationwide soon after, the store said.
Wal-Mart hasn’t made any decisions yet whether to repeat the contest in the future, Jariwala said.
"Our focus at this point is on evaluating the success of this contest," he said.
While the stock market put up its best first-quarter performance in over a decade, the first three months of 2012 weren’t as hot for Corporate America.
Analysts are forecasting a 0.1% drop in first-quarter earnings for companies in the S&P 500 (), compared with a year earlier, according to FactSet. While that’s not exactly a major decline, it would mark the end of a nine-quarter winning streak.
And excluding Apple (, Fortune 500)’s always-impressive financial performance, the outlook is even more downbeat, with S&P 500 earnings on track for a 1.6% decline.
The materials sector is expected to post the worst performance, with earnings falling 14.5%. The sector will be in the spotlight Tuesday, when aluminum giant Alcoa (, Fortune 500) reports results, marking the unofficial start of the quarterly earnings season.
Google (, Fortune 500), JPMorgan Chase (, Fortune 500) and Wells Fargo (, Fortune 500) are also on tap to report this week.
One reason earnings growth is beginning to stagnate is sheer math.
When company balance sheets were recovering from the depths of the recession, earnings were growing by double-digits. But almost three years into the recovery, year-over-year improvements are more difficult to deliver.
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On top of that, companies are facing some tough headwinds, too.
High energy costs are the biggest factor to blame for the earnings growth slowdown, according to analysts. Oil priced rose more than 4% during the quarter, sparking a 20% spike in gas prices.
While all 10 sectors of the S&P 500 are expected to post sales growth for the first quarter, there are at least seven that may have had trouble converting that to earnings growth, analysts said, reflecting the strain of higher input costs.
In fact, the number of companies projected to deliver higher sales but a decline in profit stands at 104, the highest since the third quarter of 2009, according to FactSet. Consumer discretionary and consumer staples make up a big bulk of those companies, since higher fuel costs typically weigh significantly on those companies cash advance loan no fax.
For example, General Mills (, Fortune 500), which reported earnings for the three-month period ended Feb. 26, said the uptick in input costs is pressuring its profit margins. Cruise line operator Carnival Corp. () has also been expressing concern about higher fuel costs.
Sluggish global economic growth is also expected to have impacted earnings. Europe’s economies are struggling with massive debt and severe austerity measures, while growth out of emerging economies, particularly China, is also slowing.
For the three months ended Jan. 31, Hewlett-Packard (, Fortune 500) said sales out of Brazil, Russia, India and China dropped 13%, compared with a year earlier.
Though first-quarter earnings results are lining up to be unimpressive, investors won’t put much stock into them. Rather, they’ll be tuned more closely into what company executives have to say about future quarters.
"We want to know what executives are seeing from Europe and China, and what their expectations are going forward," said Rex Macey, chief investment officer of Wilmington Trust Investment Management.
Europe’s still a thorn, but ‘out of crisis mode’
In particular, Macey said he’ll be looking at companies like construction equipment maker Caterpillar (, Fortune 500), which has significant exposure to China, as well as multinational consumer giants like Coca-Cola (, Fortune 500).
Analysts are hopeful that earnings will improve over the course of the year, as Europe’s economy stabilizes and China’s easing efforts help spur growth.
Second-quarter earnings are expected to rise by 7%, according to FactSet, while third-quarter profits are expected to grow 4.7%. Double-digit growth is expected to return in the fourth quarter.
President Obama on Friday nominated Dr. Jim Yong Kim, the president of Dartmouth College, to be the next president of the World Bank.
Kim’s background is in medicine, not economics or business as has been the case with most previous World Bank presidents. He has worked with international organizations, serving as a senior official at the World Health Organization.
Kim is particularly known for his efforts addressing health concerns, including AIDS, in developing countries. He was one of the founders and former executive director of Partners In Health, a not-for-profit organization that supports health programs in poor countries.
"Despite its name, the World Bank is more than just a bank. It’s one of the most powerful tools we have to reduce poverty and raise standards of living in some of the poorest countries on the planet," Obama said in introducing Kim in the White House rose garden. "It’s time for a development professional to lead the world’s largest development agency."
The World Bank was created along with the International Monetary Fund in 1944 to help the Allied powers shape the post-World War II economic order. It now includes 187 member states, offering loans and grants as well as technical expertise for development projects around the world.
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But while the World Bank’s influence is felt most directly in the developing world, it’s the United States that has a stranglehold on its leadership. Under a tacit agreement in place since their inception, an American has always headed the bank while a European has been in charge of the IMF.
The World Bank and the IMF get funding from their members, also known as shareholders, and it is this funding that is the basis for voting power on the organizations’ boards.
The board will vote on the new leader for the bank, but it is widely assumed that the U.S. nominee will be the one confirmed by the full body.
As the largest contributor to the bank and the IMF, the United States has the most voting shares on their boards at roughly 16%. The United States and Europe together have roughly half these shares, and have long been able to impose their will in matters of leadership.
The World Bank announced its short list of nominees late Friday, so Obama was facing a deadline for his pick. The organization expects to pick the new president by its spring meeting the week of April 16.
Earlier Friday, South Africa announced it had nominated Nigerian Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala for the post. Jose Antonio Ocampo, formerly the finance minister of Colombia, has also been nominated.
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One other American who had been lobbying for the job, Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs, withdrew his self-nomination Friday, saying he supported Kim 100%.
The World Bank’s projects range from health and education to infrastructure and private sector initiatives. It’s a massive organization, comprising more than 9,000 employees in over 100 locations and offering nearly $250 billion worth of financial assistance over the past five years.
"It’s the premier institution in the development arena," said Colin Bradford, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who has also worked at the World Bank and the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Last year, France’s Christine Lagarde took over the top job at the IMF from her countryman Dominique Strauss-Kahn after he resigned in the wake of sexual assault charges that were later dropped.
At that time, however, the so-called BRICS countries — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — issued a joint statement following Strauss-Kahn’s resignation calling Europe’s leadership of the IMF an "obsolete, unwritten convention."
Some in Washington have argued that it’s important for the World Bank head to continue to be an American to ensure continued Congressional funding for the institution. But there is pressure building internationally for a non-American to take over the post.
Kim might be a seen as a compromise between those two competing pressures.
According to Dartmouth’s Web site, Kim was born in South Korea. His family emigrated to the United States when he was five, and he grew up in Muscatine, Iowa. He had an all-American childhood, becoming valedictorian and president of his high school class, and playing quarterback for the high school football team.
Kim got his bachelor’s degree at Brown and his medical and Ph.D. degrees at Harvard, according to the Dartmouth site.
While many of the previous World Bank presidents have a background in business and finance, it is not always the case. Paul Wolfowitz — a nominee of President George W. Bush — served as the 10th president from 2005 to 2007, coming from a career in academia and government service. His post immediately before joining the bank was Deputy Secretary of Defense.
The position became vacant when current president Robert Zoellick, a former deputy secretary of state who also served as international vice chairman at Goldman Sachs (, Fortune 500), announced in February that he would depart when his term concludes at the end of June.
Sales of previously owned U.S. houses held in February near an almost two-year high, adding to evidence the market that triggered the recession is firming.
Purchases dropped 0.9 percent to a 4.59 million annual rate from a revised 4.63 million pace in January that was faster than previously estimated and the highest since May 2010, a report from National Association of Realtors showed today in Washington. The median price increased over the past year for the first time since November 2010.
Stocks are edging higher after their biggest loss this year as reassuring reports on productivity and hiring overshadow jitters about the Greek debt crisis.
The government said early Wednesday that U.S. workers were more efficient late last year, though productivity grew more slowly than in the summer. Slower productivity growth could boost hiring.
Payroll processor ADP said employers added 216,000 jobs last month, slightly more than economists had expected.
The Dow Jones industrial average dove 203 points on Tuesday, raising doubts about the momentum behind stocks’ strong rally this year. Investors fretted about the latest deadline in Greece’s debt crisis.
The Dow is up 21 points at 12,780 in the first ten minutes of trading. The S&P 500 is up 4 at 1,347. The Nasdaq is up 14 at 2,924.
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Home prices fell to their lowest point in more than a decade in January, which helped to lift the pace of home sales, according to a report from an industry trade group.
The National Association of Realtors reported that the median home price in January fell 2% from December to $154,700. That’s the lowest price reading since November 2001, before the run-up in home prices that became known as the housing bubble.
The median price is the point at which half of homes are sold for a higher price, and half are sold at a lower price. (Multi-million dollar foreclosures)
Serving as a drag on existing home prices is a large inventory of homes in foreclosure. Distressed home sales, which includes homes in foreclosure and so-called short sales in which the home is sold for less than what is owed on the mortgage, made up 35% of sales in January.
"Prices will continue to fall through the first half of 2012 due to the high share of distressed sales," said Stuart Hoffman, chief economist with PNC Financial. "The recent agreement between the big mortgage servicers, state attorneys general and the Obama administration will also result in more homes going to foreclosure over the next few months, adding to downward pressure on prices."
But the pace of sales rose to the highest level since May of 2010, helped by the low prices and rock-bottom mortgage rates. The seasonally-adjusted annual sales pace of 4.57 million homes was up slightly from the revised 4.38 million in December. The last time homes sold at that pace, buyers were rushing to qualify for an $8,000 homebuyer’s tax credit that was about to expire. The latest reading was roughly in line with the expectations of economists surveyed by Briefing.com.
"The uptrend in home sales is in line with all of the underlying fundamentals — pent-up household formation, record-low mortgage interest rates, bargain home prices, sustained job creation and rising rents," said Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the Realtors.
The housing market has been showing signs of recovery in recent months. The combination of low mortgage rates and a decline in home prices means homes are more affordable than they’ve been in decades. PNC’s Hoffman agreed that the report is a further sign of recovery in the market, although he cautioned "it will remain a long process."
New home starts by builders have been rising, along with their confidence and customer traffic, according to an industry survey.
The supply of existing homes on the market tightened slightly in the Realtors’ latest report, slipping 0.4% to 2.3 million homes, roughly a 6 month supply. That is down 20% from the supply of homes a year ago.
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