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With the global economy growing more slowly than expected, worries about a potential US government shutdown and the possibility of a default are keeping nations around the world and investors, cautious. Republicans in the US House of Representatives have so far refused to give in to President Barack Obama's demands for straightforward bills keeping the government running beyond September 30. House Republicans also challenged Obama on the debt ceiling increase, the amount the government is allowed to borrow; that the Treasury Department of the world's largest economy says is urgently needed by October 17. There is an October 1 deadline for Congress and the President to sign off on an emergency spending bill to avert a government shutdown. This is not the critical event that immediately leads to the risk of impending default - that comes on October 17 according to US Treasury Secretary Jack Lew - but it is significant enough that it can undermine investor confidence and further stymie an economic recovery. Last week Lew cautioned Congress that the United States would exhaust its borrowing capacity no later than October 17, at which point it would have only about $30bn in cash on hand. The fresh estimate adds another layer of pressure on lawmakers to raise the $16.7tn debt limit and comes as Congress struggles to pass a spending bill to keep the government funded beyond October 1, when the new fiscal year starts. "If the government should ultimately become unable to pay all of its bills, the results could be catastrophic," Lew warned in a letter to congressional leaders. The fate of the debt ceiling is up in the air with Democratic and Republican lawmakers once again deeply divided over how to extend the Treasury's borrowing authority. The trouble lies in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives push for a bill that includes a delay or complete halt to the Affordable Care Act (nicknamed "Obamacare") legislation passed in 2010 and set

hendren global group stock fraud watch Any doubt over who calls the shots at Britain's part-nationalised banks has been dispelled by the fate of Stephen Hester. The RBS chief executive has been forced out at the behest of George Osborne. Forget the arms-length paraphernalia of the UKFI holding company. When ministers want the bailed-out banks to do something, they do it. That's as it should be, since the state (not the "taxpayer" as the media constantly intones) currently owns 81% and 39% of RBS and Lloyds TSB respectively. The problem is what they want to do with them - which is sell them off fast, regardless of the loss to the public purse or the damage to the economy. The chancellor is driven by a mixture of unbending ideology and raw electoral calculation. He and David Cameron are determined to start the largest privatisations in Britain's history by the end of 2014 - just in time for a 2015 election. The idea is to engineer a "Tell Sid" 1980s-style Thatcherite handout to the right kind of voters, while ensuring that the heresy of publicly owned banks is consigned to the nightmares of the 2008 market meltdown. Hester, who now stands to pocket an extra £5.6m after more than 40,000 RBS workers have lost their jobs, was insufficiently gung-ho for the scale of early sell-off Osborne regards as critical to Tory fortunes. His successor will get the message. Next week Osborne is expected to set out the kind of discounts he plans to offer for Lloyds shares. He's also toying with the rightwing thinktank Policy Exchange's plan for a wider share giveaway. For the Tory leadership, it's a trade-off between the appearance of a public windfall and the risk of being seen again to stuff the pockets of the better-off as living standards plummet. In reality, it will be a fraud against the public and an attack on genuine economic recovery. The Brown government paid well over the odds to prevent the collapse of RBS and Lloyds in 2008. Now, Cameron and Osborne show every sign of

The figure of Americans applying for unemployment benefits surprisingly cut down last week, signifying an upturn in the labor market. This could be very fastidious news. If the economy will continue to rise, possible revival will soon be realized. At some point recovery seems implausible but turn of events is favoring us and results are even enthralling. Early reports from the Labor Department said on Thursday, state unemployment benefits fell 7,000 to a seasonally adjusted 340,000, waning for a second straight week. The preceding week's claims number was altered to demonstrate 3,000 more applications received than earlier reports. According to Reuters' poll, economists had expected first-time applications to mount to 355,000. The four-week inconsistent average for new claims, an improved measure of labor market trends, also fell 7,000 to 348,750 pointing to some firming in underlying labor market conditions. Since March 2008, this has been the lowest number. No states had been estimated and there were no special factors influencing the report, says a Labor Department analyst. According to a Reuters' survey of economists, employers probably added 160,000 jobs to their payrolls last month, a small pick-up up from January's 157,000 count. That would just be enough to hold the jobless rate steady at 7.9%. The figures due on Friday have no bearing on February's employment report as it falls outside the survey period. Economists claim job increases of about 250,000 per month over a constant period are needed to significantly change the ranks of the unemployed. Job escalation averaged 200,000 in the last three months. Companies have no plans hiring domestic demand remains lackluster even though layoffs decreased. Claims stay pushed in the low end of a 330,000 to 375,000 range for this year. Federal Reserve last year to launch an open-ended bond buying program because high unemployment provoked them. The U.S. central bank said it would keep up the program until t

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http://www.flixya.com/video/4953956/Fs-Code-81345798450-HGG-Hendren-Global-Group-Top-Story-Serving-a-country-that-wont-save-their-jobs-Scribd National Guard and reserve troops too often come home to find that their employers have given away their jobs. Among the worst offenders: government agencies. The jobs of the nation's citizen soldiers are supposed to be safe while they are serving their country: Federal law does not allow employers to penalize service members because of their military duties. Yet every year, thousands of National Guard and reserve troops coming home from Afghanistan and elsewhere find they have been replaced, demoted, denied benefits or seniority. Government agencies are among the most frequent offenders, accounting for about a third of the more than 15,000 complaints filed with federal authorities since the end of September 2001, records show. Others named in the cases include some of the biggest names in American business, such as Wal-Mart and United Parcel Service. With good jobs still scarce in many states, the illegal actions have contributed to historically high joblessness among returning National Guard and reserve members - as high as 50% in some California units - and created a potential obstacle to serving. "The whole point of the National Guard and reserves, how they save the country money, is they get paid only when they are serving," said Sam Wright, director of the Service Members Law Center at the Reserve Officers Assn. "It's a great deal for the country, but if we don't protect their civilian jobs … they aren't going to volunteer and serve." Veterans' advocates say that the heavy use of the nation's citizen-soldiers to fight the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan placed a burden on employers in a tough economy. Even as 11 years of war wind down, Guard and reserve members are being called up for peacekeeping and other duties around the world. Source: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-citizen-soldiers-20130506,0,6250161.st

Interview: opportunism keeps Cube leader on upward course Myanmar has seemingly swung from being a martial communist state to a semi-democratic capitalist darling, with foreign investors scrambling for a foothold, in the blink of an eye. But is the southeast Asian state ready for perhaps the most bourgeois of sports, golf? That is the hope of Cube Capital, a London and Hong Kong-based boutique with a history of taking counter-intuitive bets, and which claims to have been the first western house to have entered Myanmar after sanctions were lifted in 2012. Cube is financing a golf villa development, having already made 20 per cent-plus returns from a more traditional 15-home villa park and a head office development. "There is no equity or bond market [in Myanmar]," says Francois Buclez, chief executive and chief investment officer of Cube. "There is public equity traded in Singapore, around three or four stocks, but their valuation is seven times book because that is all there is and everyone wants to buy them. "You can do private equity, but there is no proven or tested management team in Myanmar, or real estate [where] you don't need a management team, you just need a construction team. And in this market whatever you build will be taken out." Cube provides first lien finance for the developments, and Mr Buclez, a former Crédit Agricole and Credit Suisse First Boston banker, is critical of those who only view emerging markets through the prism of equity investing. "In emerging markets people dream about equity, they always want to make five, seven, 10 times their money, but they end up making 10 per cent. They forget that in these markets you can get a 20 per cent return with a protected asset class." To Mr Buclez, the real estate route also avoids arousing the ire of the local populace, unlike some sectors of the economy. "We tend to avoid natural resources in emerging markets. Typically a local will resent a foreigner milking the natu