CARDS WIN = BETTER ECONOMY: Alan Skrainka of Cornerstone Wealth Management - a former chief market strategist for Edward Jones - has some economic nuggets to offer regarding the Cardinals and the World Series.
According to Skrainka, research shows when the Cards win the series, the stock market rises an average of 13 percent in the following year, more than any other team that has won at least 4 times.
Skrainka’s theory is that the joy and exuberance experienced by the vast Cardinal Nation after a win gives an immediate boost to consumer and investor confidence — thereby lifting the stock market and the gross domestic product (GDP) instant payday loan.
This all adds up to Skrainka’s early decision to escalate his estimates for the stock market and GDP next year, since 12 of the past 14 teams have that have won the World Series won the first game.
Sounds a little like the idea that lipstick purchases are an economic indicator so I say, let’s go with it.
Scratch the Timbits the next time you order that double-double. How about a nice slab of lasagna instead?
Tim Hortons announced Monday it
The Libyan capital saw its first major gunbattle since Moammar Gadhafi fled Tripoli more than two months ago, as his supporters traded fire with revolutionary forces Friday after a crowd raised the ousted regime’s green flag.
Fearing more attacks, revolutionary forces set up checkpoints manned by young, armed men across the metropolis of some 2 million people, snarling traffic. They also rounded up several suspected African mercenaries, pulling them from cars and houses.
The violence in Tripoli and fierce resistance on two other fronts set back the new rulers’ stated goals of declaring total victory and establishing democracy as Gadhafi, the ruler for nearly 42 years, remains on the run.
The capital has been relatively calm since then-rebels swept into the city in late August. But Gadhafi’s loyalists have control of parts of his hometown of Sirte and the desert enclave of Bani Walid and have battled off NATO-backed revolutionary forces besieging them for weeks, perhaps encouraged by several audio recordings issued by Gadhafi from hiding.
The firefight in Tripoli began after Friday prayers. Witnesses said dozens of loyalists carrying the green flag appeared on a square in the Abu Salim neighborhood, which has long been a pro-Gadhafi stronghold and houses a notorious prison of the same name.
“I looked out of my window and I saw men and women in a group of 50 to 80 people, carrying the green flag,” said Abadi Omar, a resident in one of the buildings in the area. “They put one of these flags at the end of our street. This is when the revolutionary forces came out and these people disappeared.”
Revolutionary forces started searching every building in the area and found weapons on some of the rooftops, many hidden under water tanks, Omar said. Then pro-Gadhafi snipers opened fire, and the gunbattle began as anti-Gadhafi fighters chased loyalists around the closely packed buildings.
In amateur video shown to The Associated Press, gunfire can be seen coming from the upper floors of apartment buildings surrounding the square, prompting revolutionary forces to scramble and begin shooting from the street below.
Shouting “God is Great,” hundreds of revolutionary fighters converged on the area in pickups mounted with weapons. They set up checkpoints as heavy gunfire echoed through the streets.
Ameena Sami, a 39-year-old resident, said her brother was shot in his waist.
“My brother was standing at the front door of our house, and we heard shooting in the streets. We don’t know where it came from, and the revolutionaries came speeding onto our street and surrounded one of the buildings across the street,” she said. “The shooting just got more intense, and we looked outside and found my brother shot.”
Tripoli military officials said 12 suspected Gadhafi supporters were detained but played down the shooting, saying no clashes occurred and that the gunfire was primarily from revolutionary forces themselves. The local military council issued a statement saying 30 people were injured in friendly fire.
U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland also downplayed the seriousness of the fighting, calling it an “isolated, relatively small incident, by the sound of it.”
Ahmad al-Warfly, a fighter from the revolutionary forces’ Zintan brigade, said several Gadhafi supporters apparently planned a protest but drew fire because they were armed. They then fled and were pursued by revolutionary forces, prompting fierce street battles.
Al-Warfly said one man carrying a gun was captured and identified as a suspect wanted for the killings of protesters in the nearby city of Zawiya.
“It seems like it was organized,” he said. “They were planning to have a big demonstration, then the fight started.”
Witnesses also reported fighting elsewhere in the capital, but the shooting was most intense in Abu Salim.
Interim leader Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, the head of the governing National Transitional Council, has said that he hoped to declare liberation this week after the imminent fall of the holdout city of Sirte, 250 miles (400 kilometers) southeast of Tripoli on the Mediterranean coast. That could allow the council to name a new interim government and set a timeline for holding elections within eight months.
The revolutionary forces control much of Sirte after launching a major push a week ago.
On Friday, they pounded loyalists holed up in two neighborhoods with rocket and machine-gun fire but also suffered heavy casualties themselves. Wounded men streamed into front-line medical units, then were evacuated to field hospitals on the city’s outskirts.
Tanks and weapons-mounted vehicles from the revolutionary forces have kept up a steady barrage of fire into the small enclave known as District 2, where commanders believe several hundred remaining loyalists, possibly including high-ranking figures from the former regime, are hiding.
AP Television footage on Friday showed smoke rising from a building in one part of the city, and a burning car presumably in another. Pickup trucks with mounted machine guns are seen driving through a flooded street, and elsewhere an injured revolutionary soldier is carried on a stretcher into an ambulance.
Thousands of civilians have fled the city to escape the violence.
One resident returned Friday to collect personal items from his home, which had been used as a firing position for pro-Gadhafi forces. Their uniforms and mattresses littered the front courtyard.
The owner, who would not give his name because of fear of reprisals, left carrying just a blanket, saying, “the pictures speak for themselves.” He then left the city with several of his relatives.
NATO has called the continued resistance by Gadhafi forces in Sirte “surprising,” as they appear to be losing the battle since revolutionary forces have the area surrounded.
In Geneva, meanwhile, a senior U.N. human rights official, Mona Rishmawi, expressed concern about a risk of serious abuses against suspected loyalists after Gadhafi’s last strongholds fall to revolutionary forces.
Rishmawi, who recently visited Libya as part of a U.N. delegation, said the transitional government is trying to ensure that the rights of captured Gadhafi fighters are protected but “the system that is currently in place is not adequate.”
She said “there is a lot of room for abuse” of the estimated 7,000 people detained in sometimes makeshift prisons throughout Libya.
The Toronto stock market tumbled almost 400 points Tuesday, continuing a big two-day slide as nervous rumblings persist that another global recession could be coming.
The S&P/TSX composite index lost 362.66 points or 3.22 per cent to 10,889.17 as the possibility of a Greek debt default continued to rattle investors. The index had already hit its lowest level since last summer on Monday with a 375-point slide.
The junior TSX Venture Exchange fell 64.93 points to 1,324.46.
Investors have been concerned over the last couple of months about the slowing pace of economic revival, and the possibility that Greece might not be able to make key debt payments
TORONTO
Forecasters say Hurricane Hilary is now a Category 3 storm in the Pacific south of Mexico.
Hilary’s maximum sustained winds were near 115 mph (185 kph) Thursday. The hurricane is not forecast to make landfall, though officials say it is expected to rake the coast with wind, rain and heavy surf.
The U.S. National Hurricane Center says Hilary reached major hurricane status with winds of at least 111 mph (179 kph).
A tropical storm warning is in effect for Mexico’s coast from Lagunas de Chacahua to Punta San Telmo. A tropical storm watch is in effect for west of Punta San Telmo to Manzanillo.
Hilary is centered about 75 miles (121 kilometers) south of Acapulco, Mexico, and is moving west-northwest.
In the Atlantic, Tropical Storm Ophelia is expected to weaken.
Greece will have to take fresh austerity measures, the debt-ridden country’s finance minister said Wednesday, a day after Athens moved a step closer to getting the vital bailout funds it needs to avoid a disastrous default next month.
The prospect of more tax increases and spending cuts are likely to be met with mounting concern in a country mired in a deep recession and the number of unemployed rising to around one in seven.
“Do we have to take additional measures? Yes we have to take supplementary measures … because of the recession, because of the difficult task, and the weakness of the central administration have not produced the required results,” Evangelos Venizelos said in Parliament ahead of a Cabinet meeting.
He did not specify what the measures might be.
Greece has been under pressure from its international lenders to meet fiscal targets and slash the size of its bloated public sector, which has more than 750,000 staff in the country of 11 million people.
It has already pledged to suspend up to 20,000 civil servants on reduced pay as part of a plan to shed 150,000 public jobs through 2015. It also recently announced a new property tax, to be paid through electricity bills to make it easier and faster for the state to collect.
State electricity company unionists have threatened not to collect the tax and not to cut off the electricity supply to those who refuse to pay.
A public reeling from repeated rounds of spending cuts and tax hikes is showing waning patience with measures that appear not to have the necessary effect on the state budget. Many warn that with the country facing a fourth year of recession in 2012 and unemployment at more than 16 percent, yet more austerity could sink the economy.
Yannis Varoufakis, an economics professor at Athens University, said the government’s actions appear increasingly desperate and likened its strategy to “the last stages” of the Vietnam war.
“The more obvious it was that the war was lost, the more desperate the attempts of the United States army and air force to bomb Vietnamese villages in order to save them,” Varoufakis said.
Venizelos though is pressing ahead with the strategy and argues that Greece will emerge a stronger economy once it’s got a grip on its public finances and rebalanced the economy more towards the private sector.
He said that without the supervision of debt inspectors from the European Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the European Commission, collectively known as the troika, Greece would have “slipped off the fiscal track instant personal loans guaranteed.”
The troika has been pressing the Greek government hard to adhere to the reforms it agreed to in return for bailout money. In particular, the inspectors want it to move faster in reducing the size of the public sector.
Their quarterly reviews of the country’s progress is essential to the country’s international creditors releasing funds from a euro110 billion ($151 billion) bailout loan that has been keeping Greece afloat since last year.
Measures taken so far include pension and salary cuts in the public sector, and a series of tax hikes on everything from food and fuel to property and income.
The troika suspended its current review in early September amid talk of missed targets and delays, and Venizelos held two critical conference calls with them on Monday and Tuesday.
Brussels and Athens said progress had been made in the calls, and the troika heads are due back in the Greek capital next week _ a clear hint that the next batch of bailout cash amounting to euro8 billion ($11 billion) is likely to be released.
Venizelos conceded that it was a “humiliation” for Greece to ask for loans and to be under international supervision, but that the country had to if it was to avoid a more a calamitous outcome.
“If we did not have the supervision of the troika … we would have again unfortunately slipped off the fiscal track,” he said. “Just as the country derailed in an unprecedented away between 2004 and 2009. It’s not a question of intent. It’s a matter of mentality, lack of ability, management structure, methods, habits, and inertia.”
Greece has been struggling to persuade its creditors that it deserves to receive the next installment of its bailout. Without it, the country only has enough funds to see it through mid-October.
“The choices we are making are, unfortunately, absolutely necessary,” Venizelos insisted.
“When you are borrowing money, you are obliged to consider the opinion of the lender,” he said. “There is a negotiation. And of course the strong party is the one who pays out, not the one who receives. That is of great importance.”
____
Theodora Tongas in Athens contributed.
Think of 100,000 St. Louis homeowners as hungry kids with their noses pressed against the window of a financial candy store cash advance loan no fax.
Luckier homeowners are getting something really sweet
Security forces clashed with thousands of mourners and opposition factions Friday after the funeral march for a man whose relatives say died after inhaling tear gas fired at Shiite-led protesters in the Gulf kingdom.
The skirmishes erupted shortly after mourners joined in anti-government chants that included cries for Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa to step aside after more than seven months of unrest on the strategic island, which is home to the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet.
Tensions could further increase before next week’s elections to fill 18 seats in the 40-member parliament that were abandoned in a walkout by Shiite lawmakers to protest the sweeping crackdowns. Top Shiite political blocs have called for a boycott of the Sept. 24 voting.
Security forces fired tear gas and stun grenades and chased protesters along narrow streets of Shiite-populated neighborhoods in Sitra, Bahrain’s oil hub.
Before the funeral, Bahrain’s most senior Shiite cleric accused Sunni authorities of treating opponents as “enemies of state.” Bahrain’s rulers have taken some steps at outreach, including reconciliation talks in July, but they have failed to quell the opposition.
Shiites account for about 70 percent of Bahrain’s population, but claim they face deep-rooted discrimination such as being blocked from key government and security posts. The Sunni dynasty, which has ruled for more than 200 years, has retained crucial support from the West and Gulf Arab neighbors. Among their fears is that Shiite powerhouse Iran could widen its influence with Shiite gains in Bahrain.
The funeral for 35-year-old Sayyed Jawad Ahmed was the latest rallying point for the opposition. The kingdom’s health ministry confirmed the death in a statement Thursday, saying Ahmed died from “acute respiratory syndrome distress.”
More than 30 people have died since February when protests started in Bahrain, inspired by other Arab uprisings.
Hundreds of activists have been detained and brought to trial on anti-state charges in a special security court set up after authorities imposed marital law and invited a Saudi-led Gulf military force in the country to help deal with dissent in the tiny island nation.
“The regime has designated the section of society asking for rights as enemies of state,” Sheik Isa Qassim said during Friday’s sermon at a mosque in the opposition stronghold of Diraz, northwest of the capital Manama.
Bahrain lifted emergency rule in June. Since then, government opponents have clashed with police almost every night.
Stocks are opening sharply lower on renewed worries that Europe’s debt crisis will spread.
Banks are leading stocks lower in early trading Monday. Treasury prices are rising, pushing yields near their lows for the year.
Traders fear that Greece could default on its debts, and European policymakers are divided over how to handle the crisis.
A default by one of Europe’s heavily indebted governments could spread through the global banking system payday loans guaranteed no fax. Economists worry that Europe’s debt crisis could tip a weakening U.S. economy into another recession.
The Dow Jones industrial average is down 114 points, or 1 percent, to 10,882. The S&P 500 index is down 10, or 0.9 percent, to 1,143. The Nasdaq is down 15, or 0.6 percent, to 2,452.
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