NEW YORK
The World Trade Organization ruled on Monday that U.S. planemaker Boeing received more than $5 billion in illegal government subsidies, much less than what European arch-rival Airbus received.
The world trade body’s appeals panel have now ruled on both sides of the dispute. It had earlier determined that the European Union subsidies to Airbus _ based in Toulouse, France _ totaled some $18 billion over more than a quarter-century.
The latest ruling suggests the end may finally be approaching in a long-running transatlantic trade spat between the world’s foremost commercial aircraft makers over a market believed to be worth more than $3 trillion over the next two decades.
As usual, both sides claimed a measure of victory.
The European Commission, whose complaint to the WTO was the subject of the ruling, said it welcomed the confirmation that Chicago-based Boeing also received billions of dollars in illegal subsidies between 1989 and 2006.
A WTO appeals panel had ruled last May on a U.S. complaint that European governments provided $18 billion in subsidies to Airbus that hurt Boeing, though not all were illegal under international rules.
EU Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht called Monday’s ruling vindication of the “EU’s long-held claims that Boeing has received massive U.S. government handouts in the past and continues to do so today.”
But his counterpart, U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk, called the ruling “a tremendous victory for American manufacturers and workers.” He noted the WTO appeals panel had determined that U.S. support for Boeing was “far below” the amount of EU help for Airbus.
Kirk said the disproportionate nature of the U.S. versus European handouts were further illustrated by the appeals panel’s finding that U.S. subsidies to Boeing cost Airbus 118 lost aircraft sales, while EU subsidies for Airbus cost Boeing 342 lost aircraft sales.
The United States added 227,000 jobs in February, the latest display of the breadth and strength of the economic recovery. The country has put together the most impressive three months of job growth since before the Great Recession.
The unemployment rate stayed at 8.3 percent. It was the first time in six months it didn’t fall, and that was because a half-million Americans started looking for work. In the past two months, almost a million have started looking.
“I have more optimism,” said Freda Bratcher, 54, who had worked as a substance abuse counselor but has been unemployed 16 months. She had stopped searching, but showed up Friday at a Miami career center after some of her friends landed jobs.
“There’s something out there for me,” she said. “And if other people are getting hired, then why not me?”
The Labor Department, in its monthly jobs report, said Friday that December and January, already two of the best months for jobs since the recession, were even stronger than first estimated.
January job growth was revised higher by 41,000 to 284,000. December job growth was raised by 20,000 to 223,000. The overall job growth for February of 227,000 beat economists’ estimate of 210,000.
“It’s a very strong report,” said Bob Baur, chief global economist at Principal Global Investors, an asset management company. “I could hardly find anything not to like in it.”
Since the beginning of December, the country has added 734,000 jobs. The only three-month stretch that was better since the recession ended was March through May 2010, when the government was hiring tens of thousands of temporary workers for the census.
Before that, the last stretch that was better was February through April 2006. A three-month gain of 734,000 is roughly what the country was achieving in the late 1990s, although it is less impressive now because the country holds about 40 million more people.
Stocks rose after the report came out, though they lost most of their gains later in the day. The Dow Jones industrial average closed up 14 points at 12,922. Last week, it closed above 13,000 for the first time since May 2008, four months before the financial crisis.
The improving jobs picture figures to improve the re-election chances for President Barack Obama and to complicate the political strategy for the Republicans competing for the right to replace him.
Obama on Friday visited a manufacturing plant run by Rolls-Royce, a maker of aircraft engines, in Virginia, a state expected to be closely contested in November. He told workers there that American manufacturing is adding jobs for the first time since the 1990s.
“The economy is getting stronger,” the president said. “When I come to places like this and I see the work that’s being done, it gives me confidence there are better days ahead. I would bet on American workers and American know-how any day of the week.”
Mitt Romney, the leader in delegates among Obama’s would-be challengers, did not directly address the fresh economic data at a stop in Mississippi, but he criticized Obama for failing to bring the unemployment rate below 8 percent.
The unemployment rate has remained above 8 percent since February 2009, a month after Obama’s inauguration, a point regularly hammered by Romney. But as more jobs are created, it is increasingly likely that the rate will fall below 8 percent by Election Day.
Matt McDonald, a partner at Hamilton Place Strategies and former Bush White House official, calculates that the economy needs to add about 185,000 jobs per month to get to that point.
“It will be a photo finish to get below 8,” he said.
Hiring in February was broad-based and improved in both high-paying and low-paying industries. The industries of manufacturing, professional services and health care all added jobs.
And government _ federal, state and local _ cut only 6,000 jobs in February and a revised 1,000 in January. Last year, government cut an average of 22,000 jobs a month, taking some of the economic punch out of job creation in the private sector.
The small government losses meant the private sector added 233,000 jobs in February.
In all, 142.1 million Americans reported that they had a job in February, the highest since January 2009, during the depths of the recession. The low was 138 million, in December 2009.
The government uses a survey of mostly large businesses and government agencies to determine how many jobs are added or lost each month. That is the survey that produced the 227,000 number. But the payroll survey tends to undercount small businesses and does not count the self-employed.
It uses a separate survey of American households to calculate the unemployment rate. That survey picks up hiring by companies of all sizes, including small businesses, companies being started, farm workers and the self-employed.
The household survey found that 428,000 more Americans reported having a job in February. When the economy is improving, many economists say, the household survey does the better job of picking it up because it detects small business hiring.
Over the past three months, the household survey has shown that the number of employed people has risen by 1.45 million, the biggest three-month gain since 2000.
Normally the gain of 428,000 in February would lower the unemployment rate. But a long-awaited trend is emerging to offset: Unemployed people who had given up looking for a job have started looking again.
The work force consists of those with a job and those looking for one. People who aren’t looking aren’t part of the work force, and the government doesn’t count them as unemployed.
News that the economy is starting to perk up has caused many of those “discouraged workers” to start looking again. They’re still unemployed, but they’re back in the work force. The work force surged by 476,000 in February and almost 1 million the past two months.
There are still about a million discouraged workers in the United States. Workers are no longer counted as discouraged if they haven’t looked in the past year.
The gains produce something of a paradox: If the work force keeps growing because more people are confident enough to look for a job, the unemployment rate won’t decline as quickly.
The labor force participation rate, which measures how many adults are working or looking for work as a share of the adult population, rose in February for the first time since last August.
The rate came in at 63.9 percent, up from 63.7 in January, the lowest since 1983. It had fallen gradually for two years _ even after the worst layoffs of the recession were finished, as people continued to give up looking for work.
A measure of all unemployed and the so-called underemployed _ people who are working part-time but would rather by working full-time _ fell to 14.9 percent, the lowest the three years.
That figure includes three groups: the part-time workers who want full-time work, people who are unemployed and looking for work and people who are unemployed and have stopped looking.
Other economic indicators have improved markedly in recent weeks. Consumer confidence in February was the highest in a year, and applications for unemployment benefits, the best measure of the pace of layoffs, have averaged 355,000 a week, near a four-year low.
Wages are still rising only modestly. Average hourly pay increased by 3 cents in February to $23.31. In the past year, it has gone up only 1.9 percent, trailing the rate of inflation.
The factors restraining the U.S. economy seem to be easing, or at least less damaging than they used to be. Greece has struck a deal to get an international bailout and avoid a default later this month that could have rattled the world financial system.
And while the price of gas has crept up almost every day for a month, and is the highest on record for this time of year, that has less of a bite when the economy is growing and people feel more confident.
Another strong month of hiring makes it less likely that the Federal Reserve will take additional steps to help the economy at its meeting next week.
But it makes it more likely that the economy can continue a pattern known as a virtuous cycle _ a reinforcing loop in which stronger hiring leads to more consumer spending, which leads to even more hiring and spending.
“Overall, another very strong payroll report and there’s every chance that March will bring more of the same,” said Paul Ashworth, chief U.S. economist with Capital Economics, an economic research company.
Continued strength in Clayton, a decent showing in Creve Coeur and an uptick downtown are developments experts see for the St. Louis office market this year.
Until the market rebounds further, little construction will take place, said the experts, adding that hanging on to existing tenants is a priority.
“Landlords should do what they can to retain what they have,” said Steve Schmid, a St. Louis principal at CRESA Partners, a commercial real estate firm that represents tenants.
As the region — for yet another year — climbs only slowly out of the recession, a bright spot in commercial real estate is the lack of construction. That will allow absorption of space vacated when the economy tanked and unemployment shot up in 2008.
“The good news is that we didn’t overbuild,” Schmid said.
David Morris, senior vice president at Colliers International, said Thursday that until the recession becomes more of a memory no lender will back construction unless a developer gets leases in advance for much of the space. Even in Clayton, “there are no rumors of speculative development,” he said.
In 2012, downtown will remain “very much a tenants’ market” because of high vacancies in some areas, Morris said.
“There are some very bright spots downtown, but there are others that are still kind of struggling,” he added.
A downtown surprise, Morris said, was Nestle Purina PetCare’s decision to expand outside its campus on the south side of downtown to nearly 94,000 square feet of leased space at 100 North Broadway.
In much of the area, a trend that began last year is office consolidation in reasonably priced buildings with large floors adjacent to ample parking. Schmid said making such a move was American Family Insurance, which last year signed a long-term lease for nearly 71,000 square feet of space at Riverport, in Maryland Heights.
Another recent trend is for companies to consider fully furnished “plug-and-play” space, much of which became available during the recession as office users downsized or were bought out. Schmid said an example of such space drawing interest is the former Creve Coeur headquarters of Smurfit-Stone, the container maker that merged last year with Rock-Tenn Co., of Norcross, Ga.
The St. Louis area’s premier office market is still Clayton, which enjoys low vacancy and high rents. Despite the loss of the Smurfit-Stone headquarters, Creve Coeur remains a strong office market, experts said. Overall, the St. Louis market still gives tenants the upper hand but that could slowly change as the economy continues to improve, employment creeps upward and demand for office space rises.
Downtown, hurt by recent law firm departures to Clayton, will benefit in 2012 by decisions of some major remaining employers to grow, said Robert Reardon, vice president of research at commercial real estate brokerage Cassidy Turley payday advance online. Among them are Peabody Energy, Ralcorp Holdings (which is expanding at 800 Market Street, where Bank of America gave up space), Nestlé Purina PetCare (which is completing a four-story employee training center) and Stifel Financial Corp., which bought its headquarters and plans to add employees.
Reardon said St. Louis is likely to get a boost from health care reform. Cassidy Turley calculates the reform will add 250,000 area residents to the number of U.S. citizens with health insurance. By using a standard measure of 1.9 square feet of medical space for each insured person, the area will need an additional 475,000 square feet in medical space over the next few years, Reardon said. Much of that growth could occur among the area’s big care providers, including SSM Health Care, Mercy and BJC HealthCare, he added.
“I think it’s fair to say all the companies in that industry will grow,” Reardon said.
While St. Louis is helped this year by stable office rents and lower vacancy rates, enthusiasm is tempered by election-year uncertainty, the possibility company acquisitions and European debt “contagion,” Jim Mosby, Cassidy Turley’s senior managing director, said this month at the annual forecast meeting of the St. Louis chapter of the Society of Industrial and Office Realtors.
Because it’s a secondary market, St. Louis barely registers in the Urban Land Institute’s national real estate outlook for 2012. Coastal 24-hour gateway cities, growing in importance as international financial and commercial centers, remain the nation’s strongest markets, the institute noted.
St. Louis also is absent from the institute’s roster of “cool towns,” such as Austin, Seattle and Portland. Mentioned as cool in this year’s institute study is Denver, where a “revived downtown, full of restaurants and sports attractions, fits the bill, too.”
Among the 51 metro areas in institute’s survey of 950 real estate experts, St. Louis holds the 39th spot, just one spot below “fair” as an investment market for commercial and multifamily residential properties. St. Louis leads institute’s “generally poor” pack, trailed by Detroit, which is at the survey’s bottom.
Is there any good news for St. Louis? Yes, some.
At a recent ULI St. Louis event, a Federal Reserve economist William Emmons said that the St. Louis real estate market will remain fairly weak this year but has better “fundamentals” than some “glamor cities,” such as Miami.
Chrysler Group is recalling 210,000 Jeep Libertys in northern states because road salts could cause part of the SUV’s rear suspension to corrode and break.
A rear lower control arm could break after becoming weakened by rust. That, in turn, could lead to a loss of control and a crash. The lower control arm helps keep the rear suspension from moving forward and back.
The Jeeps in question are from the 2004 and 2005 model years and were manufactured between July 2003 and July 2005.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration had opened an investigation into the problem in April after receiving 9 reports of lower control arm fractures in Libertys. The agency’s statement did not mention any injuries associated with the problem payday advance lender.
Chrysler itself became aware of 83 complaints, according to a report posted to NHTSA’s Safercar.gov Web site.
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The automaker will begin notifying the owners of affected vehicles in April. Only Liberty’s in so-called "salt belt" states are involved. Owners will be instructed to take the vehicle to a Chrysler dealer so the lower control arms can be replaced.
Owners who have already had the control arms replaced will be reimbursed for the expense.
Israeli President Shimon Peres plans to visit Facebook headquarters Tuesday in what he describes as an effort to use social networking to mend divides governments have been unable to bridge.
Peres is scheduled to meet with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to launch the 88-year-old leader’s personal page aimed at creating a dialogue with young Arabs who live in countries that do not have diplomatic ties with Israel.
“The President will call on them to talk with him, to ask questions and to offer ideas to advance peace between peoples, not just between governments,” Peres’ staff said in a statement.
The visit comes as part of Peres’ four-day swing through Silicon Valley. Touring top tech companies has become a rite of passage for politicians and celebrities passing through the region.
The Israeli president will also take selected questions from the site’s users during an interview with Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg that will be streamed live from the company’s website.
In addition to Facebook, Peres’ California itinerary includes meetings with leading venture capitalists and Google co-founder Sergey Brin in hopes of forging stronger ties with Israel’s tech industry.
President Obama became the first sitting head of state to visit Facebook’s headquarters when he came last year for a town hall meeting and interview led by Zuckerberg.
In September, Sandberg moderated a discussion at Facebook with leading Republicans. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy and House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan talked taxes and jobs while taking questions from the audience and online members.
Regulators have closed a small bank in Georgia, bringing to 12 the number of U.S. bank failures this year.
The pace of bank failures has slowed markedly, however. By this time last year, 23 had been shuttered.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. on Friday closed Global Commerce Bank, in Doraville, with $143.7 million in assets and $116.8 million in deposits.
Metro City Bank, also of Doraville, agreed to assume all of Global Commerce Bank’s deposits and about $79 million of the failed bank’s assets payday lenders.
As a result, the three branches of Global Commerce Bank will reopen as branches of Metro City Bank.
The bank failure is expected to cost the deposit insurance fund $17.9 million.
Global Commerce Bank is the third FDIC-insured bank in Georgia to fail this year.
Markets were steady Friday as a two-day summit of EU leaders headed to a conclusion with the signing of a treaty that is designed to prevent a repeat of the debt crisis that’s rocked financial markets for the best part of two years.
However, a renewed sense of concern over Greece and confirmation that overnight deposits at the European Central Bank hit a record high of euro777 billion ($1.03 billion) on Thursday have done little to boost sentiment in the markets, on a day largely devoid of meaningful economic and corporate news.
“Consolidation is back in fashion this morning, as investors weigh various competing bits of news after a week of choppy trading,” said Chris Beauchamp, market analyst at IG Index.
In Europe, the FTSE 100 index of leading British shares was down 0.1 percent at 5,926 while Germany’s DAX was flat at 6,940. The CAC-40 in France was 0.2 percent higher at 3,505. The euro was faring worse, trading 0.5 percent lower at $1.3260.
Wall Street was poised for a fairly flat opening with Dow futures and the broader S&P 500 futures down around 0.1 percent.
Most of the world’s leading indexes are back at levels they were trading at before last summer’s massive sell-off. U.S. markets are actually trading at their highest levels since before the collapse of U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers in September 2008. The tech-heavy Nasdaq index is doing even better, having breached the 3,000 level Wednesday for the first time since 2001.
Much of the credit for that has been the seeming easing in Europe’s debt crisis.
Another long-term offering of super-cheap loans to Europe’s banks’ from the European Central Bank on Wednesday has helped relieve those concerns further. The figures showing the rise in the amount deposited overnight at the ECB the following day was more likely a side-effect of the euro530 billion ($706 billion) three-year loans that banks took on board _ after the previous offering in December, the amount of deposits spiked up sharply before falling back to more normal levels.
The expectation that Greece will avoid defaulting on its debts this month remains even though the country still has one more hurdle to clear before it can get its hands on its second massive international bailout. Finance ministers from the 16 other countries that use the euro said on Thursday they wanted more evidence from Athens that it would push through austerity and reform plans.
On Friday, the leaders of 25 European states signed a new treaty designed to prevent the 17 euro countries from living beyond their means and prevent a repeat of the currency union’s crippling debt crisis. Only Britain and the Czech Republic from the 27-nation EU failed to sign.
Earlier in Asia, Japan’s Nikkei 225 index rose 0.7 percent to finish at 9,777.03, its highest close in seven months.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng added 0.8 percent to 21,562.26 and South Korea’s Kospi added 0.2 percent to 2,034.63.
Mainland Chinese shares rose, with the benchmark Shanghai Composite Index adding 1.4 percent to 2,460.69. The Shenzhen Composite Index climbed 2.1 percent to 980.77. Benchmarks in Australia, Singapore and Taiwan also rose.
Oil prices fell back modestly after Saudi Arabia denied an Iranian media report of an explosion at a Saudi pipeline. Benchmark oil for April delivery was down 41 cents to $108.43 in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
____
Pamela Sampson in Bangkok contributed to this report.
Want to become a landlord in one of the nation’s hardest-hit foreclosure neighborhoods? Well, Uncle Sam has a deal for you.
Fannie Mae (, Fortune 500) will offer up nearly 2,500 distressed properties in eight locations to investors who are willing to buy them in bulk and rent them out for a set number of years.
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The properties, which are located in Atlanta, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Los Angeles/Riverside, and three Florida regions, include all types of housing units, from single-family homes to co-op apartment buildings.
"This is another important milestone in our initiative designed to reduce taxpayer losses, stabilize neighborhoods and home values, shift to more private management of properties, and reduce the supply of REO properties in the marketplace," said Edward J. DeMarco, the acting director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), which oversees Fannie Mae.
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The sales, which will cover a small fraction of the more than 180,000 properties Fannie and Freddie Mac (, Fortune 500) hold, will be open to qualified buyers under strict guidelines.
Most of the properties already house tenants and buyers will be required to continue to rent out the properties to them for as long as their leases last. Investors will also be required to rent the properties out for a specified number of years. The exact number of years has yet to be disclosed.
Investors must post security deposits in order to bid and also must prove that they are financially stable, have property management experience and have strong ties to the local community, such as a history of working with local development organizations.
FHFA said that bidders must purchase all of the homes that are for sale in a given metro area. In Atlanta, that’s as many as 572, while in Chicago it’s 99.
Despite the fact that the strict requirements could limit the number of applicants seeking to invest in the properties, the government agencies have said there is strong interest in the program. FHFA said it has received more than 4,000 responses to a request for public input on how best to dispose of the vast number of homes Fannie and Freddie Mac (, Fortune 500) have acquired from borrowers who defaulted on their loans.
Real estate consultant John Burns said there should be no problem at all finding buyers.
"I’ve got three or four clients myself, maybe more, who will bid on every one of those portfolios," he said.
Burns believes the sales should help bolster the housing market. By taking these distressed properties off the market, it will prevent them from further weighing on home prices in surrounding neighborhoods, said Burns. It will also add to the rental property inventory, which should help offset recent rent hikes.
And, by filling up what otherwise could be vacant homes, it should also reduce blight. Vacant homes attract vandals and criminals, which reduces property values and make it more likely that other nearby homeowners will walk away from their mortgages.
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"We believe that this initiative holds promise for providing support to local neighborhoods that were especially hard hit by the housing crisis and will help meet the rising demand for rental housing in many communities," said Michael Stegman, a housing finance advisor at the Treasury Department.
FHFA will not say when the first sale is expected to go to contract. Given that it is a complicated process that includes analyzing and comparing bids, it will probably take a couple of months before any final buyers are selected.
The sports gambling site Bodog was shut down and four Canadians indicted, including founder Calvin Ayre, for illegal gambling that generated more than $100 million in winnings, federal prosecutors announced Tuesday.
The website’s domain name was seized Monday and the indictments, which were returned Feb. 22, were unveiled Tuesday in Baltimore, prosecutors said.
The indictments follow federal prosecutions last year of three of the biggest websites involved in online poker. More than 75 company bank accounts in 14 countries have been frozen, and authorities are seeking $3 billion in fines and restitution, in that investigation.
In addition to the 50-year-old Ayre, prosecutors say the indictment names website operators James Philip, David Ferguson and Derrick Maloney.
Gamblers in Maryland and elsewhere were sent a least $100 million by wire and check from 2005 to 2012, the U.S. Attorney’s office said, adding Bodog conducted a $42 million advertising campaign between 2005 and 2008 to attract gamblers to the Bodog.com website.
The operation allegedly moved funds from Bodog’s accounts located in Switzerland, England, Malta, Canada and elsewhere to pay winnings to gamblers. The four Canadians face up to five years in prison for conducting an illegal gambling business and 20 years for money laundering. Bodog.com faces a fine of up to $500,000 for gambling and money laundering. Initial appearances for the individuals have not been scheduled.
Marcia Murphy, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s office in Baltimore, said the four are not in custody. Spokeswoman Vickie LeDuc said later Tuesday that arrest warrants had been issued for the four.
An affidavit filed along with the warrant to seize the site said investigators created accounts with Maryland addresses and received checks in the mail for winnings. The affidavit also said investigators interviewed a former Bodog employee who named top officers and directors and said the company had hundreds of employees in Canada and Costa Rica handling day-to-day operations.
“Sports betting is illegal in Maryland, and federal law prohibits bookmakers from flouting that law simply because they are located outside the country,” said U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein. “Many of the harms that underlie gambling prohibitions are exacerbated when the enterprises operate over the internet without regulation.”
Prosecutors say the investigation was led by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Homeland Security Investigations in Baltimore and also involved the Internal Revenue Service, Anne Arundel County Police and Maryland State Police. HSI agents seized the domain name on Monday.
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