The price of US crude oil fell by $2.48 and went down to $105.61 per barrel in New York while Bent crude went down by $1.59 and touched $124.12 in the London market. Saudi Arabia said that they have got the capacity of producing 10 million barrels per day and they can very easily raise it to 12.5 million barrels a day. A statement provided by the Saudi government has stated that “to provide adequate supplies of petroleum stabilize oil markets and return oil prices to fair levels for producers, consumers and the oil industry.”

Iran can export more than 2 million barrels in a single day. Due to the imposed sanctions, it has become tougher for Iran to sell their oil. In protest, Iran has threatened to block the movement of ships carrying oil through the Strait of Hormouz. It has been found that about one fifth of the oil supplies of the world pass through this Strait.

Ruler of Kuwait has also said that he has spoken to the Iran authorities and they have been assured that the path will not be blocked and they will allow safe passage of oil shipments. Analysts say that this is one of the reasons for decline in oil prices at the international level.

source: http://news.yahoo.com/

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The amount is also very less when compared to the hundreds of billions that it would cost to prepare the alternative minimum tax, which Obama wants to replace with the Buffet rule tax. The initial aim of the alternative minimum tax was to ensure that taxes are properly paid by wealthy Americans in spite of breaks and other deductions. But after certain period of time, it was found that it has started affecting the upper middle class families. Every year, the US Congress always tries to minimize its impact.

The plan was named after the billionaire investor Warren Buffet, who feels that the taxes imposed on the richer America is too low. President Obama liked the proposals very much and has proposed that people who are earning at least $1 million annually can pay at least 30% of their income tax. Further details have not been disclosed yet. Few people are also commenting that the concept will now stay at the proposal stage and may not be implemented now, especially when the elections are due in November 2012.

Obama will try to project to the voters that they are the party which is trying to champion the cause of economic fairness. Republicans are criticizing the move, saying that they are trying to score political points in-spite of the fact that it will have little budgetary impact.

source: http://news.yahoo.com/

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It has been predicted that the economic status of US will come to a slow track, after it had accelerated at its firmest pace till 2011. While the economists expected that this lowering will be of 0.5 per cent, the actual drop is of 0.7 per cent; this data has been retrieved from the composite index of the home prices of a single-family in about 20 metropolitan zones by Case-Shiller.

Another surprising fact is that, this steep declination further experienced a thrash in October, 2011. The Board of Conference (that represents the private companies) claimed that the Americans became low-spirited about the prospects of income, as well as, the job arcade, which led to the drop from 64.8 to 61.1, in the month of January. After the market started to recover in the November-December span, it was expected that the price will go up.

Sean Incremona, an Economist in a New York firm, 4Cast Ltd said that the scenario for the next couple of months may continue to remain this fluctuating; this in turn may frustrate people who are sticking to their expectations for an incremental data. It is also said that the US economy is still in a position of a modest recovery. There has been an increase in income of average Americans in December, but the consumer spending has not yet picked up.

Some are hoping to see the economic status revive, while some feel that the situation have bottomed out. The debate still lies in and everybody is hoping to see the housing market recover.

Source: Home prices drop, consumers turn gloomier

The French national statistics office INSEE has stated that spending on food and manufacturing goods have gone down by 0.7% in the month of December, when consumer spending is generally found to be high as people tend to spend more on purchasing gifts for others and also go for travel and vacation. Economists are worried over the fact that if consumer spending is down during the peak month of December, then what will happen in the general months when life is normal with no such spending trends.

When compared to the statistics shown by the agency, it can be observed that consumer spending has gone down by 3.1% over the last one year. But the lower level of spending has remained stable since the last three months of December 2011. Sales of items such as shoes and clothes went down by 0.9% and energy consumption went down by 2.7%. Fall in energy consumption can be attributed to mild weather. People have travelled less and it can be established from the fact that petrol consumption has gone down by 4.2% when compared to the month of November.

The survey showed that consumer confidence has gone down as people have gone through the phase of economic turmoil and is still gripped with the fear of another round of recession. Heads of governments are simply worried about this fact that how to turn around the economy. Revival of the economy will be a far distant dream if people stop spending and keep the money in their account and fears a lot to spend the money.

The top European leaders gathering in Brussels will chalk out a strategy on how to boost the economic development and create more jobs to generate some hope among the people as that will result into more spending power and make the economy swing into positive direction. The situation still seems to be walking tight on the rope as every European government is marked by huge Government cuts in spending and that is putting many development works to a complete halt.

Data showed recently by the economists clearly shows that another European country Spain was also on the verge of recession. Technically speaking, the Spain economy is showing contraction or negative growth for two consecutive quarters this year. The Spanish economy is slowly shrinking during the last three months of 2011.

The meeting of the European leaders in Brussels may also come up with many encouraging proposals. They will discuss to frame a new treaty which will tighten the budget controls to make a turnaround. The economies are also seriously thinking of forming a permanent bailout fund.

But analysts are of the opinion that though the Greece bailout plan is not on the official agenda of discussion, the topic is bound to create some ripples at the Brussels meet. But Greece has been able to reach to an understanding with the private creditors which will help them to avoid being a defaulter during the coming spring. Investors who are having a $272 billion in Greek bonds can exchange them by having bonds which are half in face value of the bonds.

As per statistics released by the US Commerce department, the sales of new homes went down by 2.2% during December and the adjusted annual pace is 307,000. For the economy to survive in a healthy way, the figure must be close to 700,000. This is a clear sign that the house building industry is still in deep trouble in the USA. In spite of several liberal Government regulations, the picture still seems to be gloomy.

Last year, around 302,000 homes were sold in the USA and this figure was less than 323,000 sold in the year 2010. Home sales record of last year is so poor that it can only be compared to that in the year 1963 when the sales of homes was really down.

As a result, it was seen that the median sales price of homes also going down in the month of December. This was a consequence of huge drop in the demand for sales of new homes. It was seen that the median sales prices went down to $210,300. In order to remain competitive in the weak markets, builders started a price war, offering reduced prices to attract customers.

But surprisingly, during the last quarter of 2011, sales of homes picked up as compared to the first three quarters. Builders are slightly optimistic about the year 2012 as they are finding many people who are saying that they may consider buying a new home in the current year. Home construction business is also seen to be picking up in the last quarter of 2011.

This is also good news for the housing sector as far as hiring is considered. Unemployment in this sector fell to a lowest level during the last three years. Work has come to a standstill in many projects as builders have stopped working in them due to lack of funds.

If, British Telecom gets a favorable verdict, it would result in Google having to pay huge royalties to the telecom company for all its Android handsets sold till date, and also for the ones that they are going to produce in the future. This could turn out to be a huge amount considering the fact that Android is the most dominating smartphone platform across the world. Android devices have a greater than 40% market share in the Smartphone category, and 40 million such handsets are produced in a quarter.

British Telecom may file similar legal claims in European courts also. This action means that the Android OS from Google has been subject to lawsuits from six large corporations; the others being Oracle, Apple, Microsoft, Gemalto and eBay.

A British Telecom spokesperson has confirmed to the Guardian that that the company has indeed commenced legal actions against Google over alleged patent infringement. The spokesman added that the pertinent patents were based on technologies relating to guidance and navigation information, individual access to content and services as well as location-based features. He also added that BT believed in continuously investing in innovation and this had resulted in the company having a large patent portfolio.

Google has however refuted the claims of British Telecom stating that they lacked in merit, and that the company is going to vigorously defend itself against the same. This latest lawsuit is being viewed as an attempt by British Telecom to legalize its huge patent portfolio.

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As per MBA’s weekly assessment, the refinance activity in U.S. also skidded by 1.6 %, which in turn covers 75% of the merchandising residential-mortgage solicitations. Procuring dropped by a 4.9% seasonal adjustments, during the week-end session on Friday.

The creditors continue charging interests at a historical low rate, but have encountered challenges, tantalizing the new debtors in the present year. It happened because of the increased unemployment, thus leading to constricted lending requisitions, which continued to pressure newer applications.

The Vice-president of MBA stated that the unusual low rates aren’t enough, since various homeowners holdback, owing to the dearth of equity in their assets, a feeble job arcade plus low credit margins.

On an average, fixed-rate mortgages for a span of 15 years alleviated to 3.39% from its previous mark of 3.44%. An average decrement from 2.93% to 2.9% occurred in case of 5/1 ARM.

The moving average for four weeks that counted every mortgage application sums up to around 0.26 per cent. The count of refinancing application for a prevailing mortgage was 79.7% in the last week, which shot up to 80.7% in the present one; this caused a hike for the year. The adjustable-rate loans (mortgages) covered up 5.1% of doings in the previous week, which is 5.6% less than that of the earlier ones.

A regular down-shot from 4.12% to 4.08% occurred in case of the mortgages on fixed-rate for a span 30 years with conformable loan-balances; in case of the similar types with jumbo-loan-balances the rate plummeted from 4.47% to 4.44%. Average rates for FHA-backed loans also skated from 3.94% to 3.93%, in the instances of 30years-fixed ones.

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The news has got remarkable attention in the financial markets since for the first time in history, Japan has intended to shift a part of their foreign reserves into a debt which is denominated by Yuan. Announcing this at a press conference, he said that both the nations are having discussions for a long time and it will bring huge mutual benefits if both the countries start buying government bonds of each other.

He said in the press conference that, “Our country currently has no Chinese bonds. My assessment is that our holding those products would be beneficial to building relationships between us.”

Foreign currency reserve of Japan is $1.3 trillion and the amount is second only to that of China. Most of Japan’s foreign reserves are utilized to buy US treasury bonds and only a small portion of it goes to Euro. The two economically strong nations were holding a discussion for many days on cooperation on various aspects and out of it the most important one was holding sovereign debt of each other.

An estimate given by the officials says that Japan is willing to invest as much as $10 billion in Chinese government bonds over a certain period of time. Analysts are of the opinion that Tokyo may have taken this effort in order to protect the true value of their foreign reserves against a strong yen. For one year, yen is going record strong against the dollar and Japan has seen huge losses in tens of trillions of yen.

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The bankruptcy application was filed personally by Saab CEO Victor Muller in a court in southwestern Sweden. The District Court is expected to approve the application soon. With this ended his two years effort to bring a turnaround of the noted car maker which has been known for more than six decades for their rounded sedans and nice designs of their various models.

General Motors is holding some technology license for Saab and with that controlling power they ditched their last effort to come out of the crisis involving a Chinese investor. A financing plan was chalked out by the company and it was supposed to be executed with the help of some Chinese company.

Some people are saying that company may be broken into several parts and then sold in pieces. The company is located in Trollhattan where more than 3000 Saab employees are staying. They are hopeful that a new buyer can come out to salvage the brand.

The city Mayor said that “Our absolute hope is that the bankruptcy administrator will aim for a solution where the company is sold in its entirety.” Production of cars stopped and salary payments started getting delayed a few months back. CEO Muller was trying his level best to postpone the bankruptcy by selling of the different real estate of the company and coming up with various financial options in China and Russia.

But unfortunately, none of the deals matured as they were being blocked by the regulators showing different clauses being shown up by General Motors. He used to buy more time by making a reconstruction process under the bankruptcy protection.

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