UNITED STATES
Fed to make housing points
The Federal Reserve plans on sending Congress “legislative recommendations” next week on how to help the housing market recover, Senator Dianne Feinstein said on Thursday after a meeting with Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke. Democratic lawmakers, who met with Bernanke at their weekly policy luncheon, said he stressed that more needed to be done to help the housing sector, which has hindered the country’s economic recovery and forced President Barack Obama’s administration to retool foreclosure prevention programs. Bernanke also told senators the debt crisis in Greece and Europe were having an impact on the domestic economy, according Senator Richard Durbin.
GERMANY
Business confidence drops
The country’s business confidence deteriorated again this month, the Ifo economic research institute said yesterday, but the decline was not quite as steep as expected. The monthly Ifo business climate index fell to 106.4 points this month from 107.4 points last month, while economists had been penciling in a fractionally steeper decline to 106.3 points. Nevertheless, the index is still at its lowest level since June last year, when it also stood at 106.4 points.
CHINA
No rate moves soon: expert
The country is unlikely to cut interest rates or change its monetary policy stance until the pace of consumer price increases slows to less than 5 percent, said Yu Yongding (余永定), a former central bank adviser. “Inflation is under control and the inflation rate will fall,” said Yu, a Chinese Academy of Social Sciences researcher, in Beijing yesterday. “I don’t think there will be any major changes in policy either further tightening or loosening” until cost-of-living gains decline, he said. Inflation moderated to 6.1 percent last month from a year earlier after reaching a three-year high of 6.5 percent in July. Gains in consumer prices will drop to 5.8 percent by the end of the year, Yu said. He estimated the inflation rate may be less than 5 percent next year as food and pork prices stabilize.
TELECOMS
Nokia trims Q3 losses
Nokia Corp narrowed its losses more than anticipated during the third quarter even though its smartphone sales continued to suffer in the face of stiff competition from Apple Inc’s iPhone. Finland’s biggest company reported a third-quarter net loss of 68 million euros (US$94 million). Though that’s a big reverse from last year’s equivalent profit of 529 million euros, it represented an improvement on the second quarter’s 368 million euro loss. Despite signs of encouragement, Nokia continues to suffer from heavy competition in the smartphone market. Its sales of smartphones dropped 39 percent to 2.2 billion euros, from 3.6 billion euros a year earlier, knocking overall revenue by 13 percent to 8.9 billion euros.
ELECTRONICS
HP’s Robison stepping down
Hewlett-Packard Co (HP) chief strategy officer Shane Robison is stepping down, one of the first major casualties at the technology giant under new CEO Meg Whitman. The 11-year veteran of HP will retire effective Nov. 1, the company said. Robison also was chief technology officer and a member of the company’s executive council. HP said he was instrumental in steering the company’s multibillion-dollar research and development spending and has guided many of the company’s largest acquisitions.
KEEPING UP: The acquisition of a cleanroom in Taiwan would enable Micron to increase production in a market where demand continues to outpace supply, a Micron official said Micron Technology Inc has signed a letter of intent to buy a fabrication site in Taiwan from Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (力積電) for US$1.8 billion to expand its production of memory chips. Micron would take control of the P5 site in Miaoli County’s Tongluo Township (銅鑼) and plans to ramp up DRAM production in phases after the transaction closes in the second quarter, the company said in a statement on Saturday. The acquisition includes an existing 12 inch fab cleanroom of 27,871m2 and would further position Micron to address growing global demand for memory solutions, the company said. Micron expects the transaction to
Vincent Wei led fellow Singaporean farmers around an empty Malaysian plot, laying out plans for a greenhouse and rows of leafy vegetables. What he pitched was not just space for crops, but a lifeline for growers struggling to make ends meet in a city-state with high prices and little vacant land. The future agriculture hub is part of a joint special economic zone launched last year by the two neighbors, expected to cost US$123 million and produce 10,000 tonnes of fresh produce annually. It is attracting Singaporean farmers with promises of cheaper land, labor and energy just over the border.
US actor Matthew McConaughey has filed recordings of his image and voice with US patent authorities to protect them from unauthorized usage by artificial intelligence (AI) platforms, a representative said earlier this week. Several video clips and audio recordings were registered by the commercial arm of the Just Keep Livin’ Foundation, a non-profit created by the Oscar-winning actor and his wife, Camila, according to the US Patent and Trademark Office database. Many artists are increasingly concerned about the uncontrolled use of their image via generative AI since the rollout of ChatGPT and other AI-powered tools. Several US states have adopted
A proposed billionaires’ tax in California has ignited a political uproar in Silicon Valley, with tech titans threatening to leave the state while California Governor Gavin Newsom of the Democratic Party maneuvers to defeat a levy that he fears would lead to an exodus of wealth. A technology mecca, California has more billionaires than any other US state — a few hundred, by some estimates. About half its personal income tax revenue, a financial backbone in the nearly US$350 billion budget, comes from the top 1 percent of earners. A large healthcare union is attempting to place a proposal before
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