Business and Finance news

Bundesbank President Axel Weber said the German economy, Europe’s largest, probably contracted 3 percent in the first quarter from the fourth, which would be the most on record.
“I expect the first quarter to still show a marked drop” in gross domestic product, “even bigger than the last quarter of 2008,” when the economy […]

Rising home vacancies may be a blessing in disguise for Ben S. Bernanke.
A record number of empty homes across the U.S. will depress rents, the largest item in the Labor Department’s consumer price index, into 2010, analysts said. That offers the Federal Reserve chairman plenty of time to withdraw the cash he’s pumped […]

Australia’s economy is in its first recession since 1991, central bank Governor Glenn Stevens said today, adding he is confident that stimulus measures, a strong banking system and a pickup in China will drive a rebound.
“I think the reasonable person, looking at all the information available now, would come to the conclusion that […]

The Philippine central bank may cut its benchmark interest rate to a 17-year low to prop up an economy battered by falling exports amid the global recession.
Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas will lower the rate it pays lenders for overnight deposits a quarter of a percentage point to 4.5 percent, according to 10 of […]

China’s property prices fell by a record in March and new construction tumbled in the first quarter, dragging down growth in the world’s third-biggest economy.
Real-estate prices in 70 major cities fell 1.3 percent in March from a year earlier, the most since records began in 2005, the National Bureau of Statistics said in […]

Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis President Gary Stern said that while “appreciable strains” remain in credit markets, the resumption of U.S. economic growth “should not be too far off.”
“While it is still far too early to fully tally results, there has been progress and I anticipate more to come,” Stern, 64, said in […]

ProLogis Inc. plans to offer 115 million common shares in a registered public offering partly to cut back on borrowing under its global line of credit.
The Denver-based warehouse developer (NYSE: PLD) also says it has repurchased more than $220 million of its senior notes.
ProLogis is the third-largest property management company in the Nashville area, managing […]

European producer prices fell more than economists forecast in February and retail sales dropped by a record, highlighting the increasing risk of deflation in the region.
Factory-gate prices in the euro region fell 1.8 percent from the year-earlier month, the most since April 1999, the European Union’s statistics office in Luxembourg said today. Economists […]

Qdoba, a rapidly expanding Mexican food chain, is targeting the Buffalo Niagara and upstate regions as one its preferred locations for new restaurants.
Qdoba has begun a marketing campaign to land franchise operators for the Buffalo sites. The chain, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Jack-in-the-Box Inc., sees the Buffalo area as potentially being home to as many […]

The world faces crisis of finance, not a crisis of capitalism.
As protestors gather to denounce capitalism on the occasion of the G-20 summit in London, it is worth remembering that free markets and free trade are not to blame for the current economic mess. The real culprit has been skewed finance. This distortion has […]