Economix Blog: Bernanke Defends Stimulus as Necessary and Effective

The Federal Reserve’s chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, picked an unusual time to offer his most recent defense of the Fed’s campaign to stimulate the economy: 7 p.m. on a Friday night in San Francisco, 10 p.m. back home on the East Coast.The basic message was the same as Mr. Bernanke delivered to Congress earlier this week: The Fed regards its current efforts as necessary and effective, and the risks, while...

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Peugeot Bets on a Different Kind of Hybrid

PARIS — What’s that car that just breezed past? It’s the Hybrid Air — an experimental vehicle that the French automaker PSA Peugeot Citroën has been trumpeting lately as an exemplar of energy efficiency. While some skeptics doubt whether it is truly breakthrough technology, the Peugeot and Citroën concept cars containing it may prove to be some of the more intriguing models on display next...

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DealBook: In Europe, Risks and Opportunities

BERLIN – Is Europe a risk or an opportunity?As its economies struggle, private equity managers offer differing views about the region.Speaking at the SuperReturn conference in Berlin, Henry R. Kravis, co-founder of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, said Europe was an attractive market, particularly the Continent’s southern countries, which have been hit by high unemployment and meager growth.“I like Spain,...

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DealBook: Regulators Block Ryanair’s Latest Attempt to Buy Aer Lingus

BRUSSELS — The European Commission on Wednesday blocked the third attempt by Ryanair to take over Aer Lingus, saying the tie-up of the two Irish airlines would damage competition and raise prices on air routes to Ireland.The decision was widely expected after Ryanair — the largest budget carrier in Europe — said earlier that the commission would prohibit the deal, worth about 700 million euros or...

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DealBook: Banks Fear Court Ruling in Argentina Bond Debt

A fierce battle between the government of Argentina and hedge funds and other investors led by a group of hedge funds has already led to the seizure of a naval ship and dragged in the United States Treasury. Now a federal appeals court is hearing the dispute, and how it rules could have a major impact on world debt markets.The investors — including the hedge fund tycoon Paul E. Singer — sued Argentina...

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DealBook: Barnes & Noble Founder Leonard Riggio to Bid for Bookstore's Retail Business

The founder of Barnes & Noble plans to bid for the retail business of the bookstore chain he started 40 years ago, as the company struggles to deal with the changing competitive landscape.On Monday, Leonard Riggio told the company’s board that he will make an offer for Barnes & Noble Booksellers, barnesandnoble.com and other retail assets. The proposal would not include the e-book division,...

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Major Banks Aid in Payday Loans Banned by States

Major banks have quickly become behind-the-scenes allies of Internet-based payday lenders that offer short-term loans with interest rates sometimes exceeding 500 percent. With 15 states banning payday loans, a growing number of the lenders have set up online operations in more hospitable states or far-flung locales like Belize, Malta and the West Indies to more easily evade statewide caps...

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Many States Say Cuts Would Burden Fragile Recovery

States are increasingly alarmed that they could become collateral damage in Washington’s latest fiscal battle, fearing that the impasse could saddle them with across-the-board spending cuts that threaten to slow their fragile recoveries or thrust them back into recession. Some states, like Maryland and Virginia, are vulnerable because their economies are heavily dependent on federal workers,...

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DealBook: Office Supply Rivals' Merger Leaked by a Wayward Report

8:56 p.m. | Updated It was a paragraph buried on Page 4 of an earnings release, under the heading of “other matters.” Yet what those four sentences revealed sent bankers and lawyers who had been working all night on a deal scrambling early Wednesday morning.The earnings release, from the office supplies chain Office Depot, appeared shortly after 7 a.m. and inadvertently disclosed the terms of a long-awaited...

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DealBook: Court Gives Investor an Edge in a Lawsuit Against Apple

7:47 p.m. | Updated In the battle between Apple and the hedge fund manager David Einhorn, score a point for the billionaire who is taking up the mantle of shareholder advocate.A federal judge said on Tuesday that he was leaning toward Mr. Einhorn’s contention that Apple had violated securities regulations by bundling several shareholder proposals into one matter.A lawsuit by Mr. Einhorn’s Greenlight...

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European Parliament Approves Plan to Bolster Carbon Trading

LONDON — In a move to bolster the floundering European market for carbon offsets, the environmental committee of the European Parliament voted Tuesday to allow the European Commission to reduce the numbers of carbon permits that it auctions in the next three years. Prices of carbon allowances, which permit companies to emit greenhouse gases, plunged below €3, or about $4, per ton last...

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Today's Economist: Nancy Folbre: Preschool Economics

Nancy Folbre is an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She recently edited and contributed to “For Love and Money: Care Provision in the United States.“Even a 4-year-old can understand the case for early-childhood education. It’s fun, you learn things, you make it easier for Mom and Dad to earn a decent living, and when you grow up you will be better able to earn a decent...

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Dismissed as Doomsayers, Advocates for Meteor Detection Feel Vindicated

For decades, scientists have been on the lookout for killer objects from outer space that could devastate the planet. But warnings that they lacked the tools to detect the most serious threats were largely ignored, even as skeptics mocked the worriers as Chicken Littles. Jim Watson/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesDr. Edward Lu, a former NASA astronaut and Google executive, has warned...

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DealBook: Blackstone Keeps Most of Its Money With SAC

9:06 p.m. | Updated The Blackstone Group, the largest outside investor in the hedge fund SAC Capital Advisors, said it would keep most of its $550 million with the hedge fund for three more months while it monitors developments in the government’s insider trading investigation.Blackstone acted as SAC’s clients faced a regularly scheduled quarterly deadline on Thursday to decide whether to continue...

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DealBook: Big Investors Stiffen Their Resistance to Dell's Offer

12:29 p.m. | Updated Michael S. Dell’s plan to take the computer maker private for $24.4 billion is the biggest leveraged buyout since the financial crisis.It is also quickly becoming one of the biggest deals in years to face a shareholder uprising.The opposition to Mr. Dell’s buyout effort now includes the mutual fund giant T. Rowe Price, which on Tuesday said that it opposed the offer at its current...

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DealBook: S.E.C. Nominee Mary Jo White Discloses Law Firm Wealth

It is no secret that the partners at the white-shoe law firms Debevoise & Plimpton and Cravath, Swaine & Moore earn a decent living. The financial disclosure form of Mary Jo White, the Obama administration’s pick to become the next chairwoman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, reveals just how decent.Ms. White and her husband, John White, have amassed at least $16 million, according...

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DealBook: S.E.C.'s Revolving Door Hurts Its Effectiveness, Report Says

Robert S. Khuzami took a step through Washington’s revolving door on Friday, departing his post as one of Wall Street’s top enforcers en route to the private sector, where he is expected to reap millions.A new report suggests that Mr. Khuzami, like other Securities and Exchange Commission officials who pass between Washington and Wall Street, will be well worth the pay.The Project on Government Oversight,...

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Boeing 787 Completes Test Flight

A Boeing 787 test plane flew for more than two hours on Saturday to gather information about the problems with the batteries that led to a worldwide grounding of the new jets more than three weeks ago. The flight was the first since the Federal Aviation Administration gave Boeing permission on Thursday to conduct in-flight tests. Federal investigators and the company are trying to determine...

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John E. Karlin, 1918-2013: John E. Karlin, Who Led the Way to All-Digit Dialing, Dies at 94

Courtesy of Alcatel-Lucent USAJohn E. Karlin, a researcher at Bell Labs, studied ways to make the telephone easier to use. A generation ago, when the poetry of PEnnsylvania and BUtterfield was about to give way to telephone numbers in unpoetic strings, a critical question arose: Would people be able to remember all seven digits long enough to dial them? And when, not long afterward, the dial...

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Chinese Imports and Exports Soar in January

HONG KONG — January trade data from China on Friday showed a surge in exports and imports from the levels of a year earlier — a phenomenon largely due to the timing of the Lunar New Year holiday but also supporting the view that the Chinese economy is firming up. Economic data from China are often severely distorted by the holiday, when many factories shut down for a week or more. ...

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