LITTLE ROCK — QUOTE OF THE DAY
“It’s a warning sign to the government not to sit back in the process of fiscal consolidation and that although the budget has been presented it must be applied right to the end.”
Alejandro Varela,
a fund manager for Madrid brokerage Renta 4, on Spain’s Wednesday debt auction Article, 1D
JPMorgan to pay fine of $20 million
WASHINGTON - JPMorgan Chase has agreed to pay a $20 million fine to settle federal regulators’ civil charges of illegally handling customer funds that failed Lehman Brothers had deposited with the bank.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission announced the settlement Wednesday. It involved JPMorgan’s handling of customer funds from November 2006 to September 2008 when Lehman collapsed. Lehman’s futures brokerage firm, LBI, deposited its customers’ funds with JPMorgan.
The commission said JPMorgan extended too much credit to LBI on a daily basis for its own trades because the bank included customer funds in calculating LBI’s equity.
The handling of customer funds at futures brokerages has drawn more attention since the failure last fall of MF Global. About $1.6 billion in MF Global customer funds are missing.
The collapse of Lehman Brothers into the biggest bankruptcy in U.S. history in September 2008 precipitated the financial meltdown that plunged the economy into the most severe recession since the 1930s.
Payrolls grew by 209,000, report says
Companies in the U.S. expanded payrolls in March, showing the labor market is strengthening, according to data from a private report based on payrolls.
Employment increased by 209,000 for the month after a revised 230,000 gain in February, ADP Employer Services said in a report Wednesday.
Faster job growth may lead to the wage gains needed to sustain consumer spending, which accounts for about 70 percent of the world’s largest economy. Businesses added 215,000 jobs in March, and the unemployment rate held at 8.3 percent, economists project a Labor Department report will show Friday.
“Labor market conditions continue to improve at a moderate pace,” Joel Prakken, chairman of Macroeconomic Advisers LLC in St. Louis, which produces the report with ADP, said in a statement.
WTO: U.S. clove cigarette ban unfair
A U.S. ban on clove cigarettes that’s designed to prevent teenagers from starting to smoke is discriminatory, World Trade Organization judges said as they upheld an earlier ruling backing a complaint by Indonesia.
WTO appellate judges agreed with a Sept. 2 decision that the U.S. tobacco legislation, signed by President Barack Obama in June 2009, unfairly prohibits cloves and not the mint used to make menthol cigarettes. Indonesia, the world’s largest producer of clove cigarettes, or kreteks, made by companies such as PT Gudang Garam, accounted for almost all of the $15 million of clove-cigarette sales in the U.S. before the ban.
Menthol-flavored cigarettes produced by U.S. manufacturers such as Altria Group Inc.’s Philip Morris USA and Lorillard Inc. were excluded as part of a 2008 compromise by lawmakers that led Altria to endorse the legislation.
Menthol cigarettes, the most popular flavor, constituted 27 percent of the U.S. market in 2008, the most recent Federal Trade Commission data show.
The U.S. law “accords imported clove cigarettes less favorable treatment than that accorded to domestic menthol cigarettes,” appellate judges said in their 103-page report on the Geneva-based WTO’s website.
Studies show that 17-year-olds are almost three times more likely to use flavored cigarettes than people older than 25, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
WTO judges found in September that the U.S. decision to exempt menthol cigarettes from the ban appeared to be driven by commercial as well as health considerations.
U.S. prescription spending nearly flat
TRENTON, N.J. - Spending on prescription drugs in the U.S. was nearly flat in 2011 at $320 billion, held down by senior citizens and others reducing use of medicines and other health care and by greater use of cheaper generic pills.
Last year, spending on prescription drugs rose just 0.5 percent after adjusting for inflation and population growth, according to data firm IMS Health. Without those adjustments, spending increased 3.7 percent last year. The volume of prescriptions filled fell about 1 percent.
That continues a trend of restrained spending that began in 2007, when prescription spending dipped 0.2 percent. Before then, IMS generally reported annual spending increases of several percent. But since the most recent recession started, prescription spending has fallen or risen only slightly each year except for 2009.
IMS Health said Wednesday that it appears patients are still rationing their health care, with visits to doctors down 4.7 percent and hospital admissions down 0.1 percent.
“We think we’ve reached a tipping point, where people are thinking they’re paying too much and they’re changing their behavior” and getting less treatment, said Michael Kleinrock, head of research development at the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics.
Report calls for imports cooperation
WASHINGTON - Food and drug regulators in the U.S., Europe and other developed countries should offer training, technology and expertise to developing nations in Asia, Latin America and other regions to better assure the safety of imported products, states a new report.
A panel assembled by the Institute of Medicine recommends the U.S. Food and Drug Administration work with counterparts throughout the world to assure supply chains for imported food and drugs, which increasingly cross borders. More than 80 percent of pharmaceutical ingredients are imported from abroad, as well as 85 percent of the seafood consumed in the U.S., according to federal figures.
“The integrated global economy demands cooperation across borders - to thwart terrorists, reduce environmental hazards, and ensure that our food and medical products are safe and effective,” states the 300-page report released Wednesday.
The report comes amid an ongoing FDA investigation into counterfeit vials of a popular cancer drug sold to U.S. doctors in California and other states. European regulators have traced the counterfeit product through distributors in Denmark, Switzerland and the Middle East. Previous import safety scares have involved contaminated seafood, pet food and blood thinning drugs from China.
Business, Pages 26 on 04/05/2012