QINGTONGXIA, China — When the central government in Beijing announced an ambitious nationwide campaign to reduce energy consumption two years ago, officials in this western regional capital got right to work: not to comply, but to engineer creative schemes to evade the requirements.

....click the link to read more

Most countries in Latin America have made serious strides toward re engineering and reforming their economies in the last 15 years, opening their markets to trade and foreign investment, reducing government budget deficits, adopting more flexible currency regimes and reducing inflation. Yet despite these reforms, the financial systems in Latin America remain small relative to the size of the economies. And this reality, we believe, weakens the region’s prospects for sustainable growth.

THE use of old-fashioned price controls to fight inflation is causing road chaos in some parts of China as speculators hoard fuel and refineries send their product overseas.

The oil price edged above $US99 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange yesterday but Chinese authorities continued to hold retail fuel prices well below the cost of production. Retail prices have risen only 10 per cent this year, but this masks rampant profiteering on the wholesale market.

In Guizhou, the largest energy exporting province in southern China, retailers had capped the price of diesel at 5.24 yuan a litre, or 79 Australian cents, a little more than half of the average Australian price.

SALISBURY, North Carolina: If the fortunes of Power Curbers were tied solely to business in the United States, these would be grim days at its factory on the fringes of this North Carolina hill town. This small, family-owned company engineers and makes machines that turn cement into curbs, and with the U.S. construction industry in distress, domestic sales are expected to drop at least 10 percent this year.

But fortunately for Power Curbers, and indeed for the U.S. economy, the company has transcended geography. Aided by the falling dollar, which makes American goods cheaper on world markets, Power Curbers, like thousands of other businesses in the United States, is tapping rapid growth abroad to compensate for sluggish sales at home.

Not a throw back to the age of the Charleston but to the dry old process of setting a price for gold --

LONDON (Reuters) - When gold reached dizzying heights above $800 a troy ounce in recent weeks, it cast a spotlight on a ritual that has taken place in London for the past 88 years.

Twice a day, representatives of five banks pick up the phone to trade physical gold and arrive at the London "fixing" price, which then becomes a benchmark for gold around the world.

As the clock in the vast Barclays Capital trading room in London ticks towards 3 p.m., attention turns to Marc Booker, the bank's head of spot gold trading.

Booker joins a conference call with the four other banks who take part in the fixing. The chairman, from Deutsche Bank, suggests an opening price and Booker relays it to his trading room and customers. Booker and the other participants say whether they are buyers or sellers at that price, and the chairman adjusts the price until the buyers and sellers are in balance.
....click the link to read more

The growing populist sentiment in the United States against illegal immigration likes to point out that not only do these migrants steal U.S. jobs, they also send $50 billion back to Latin America each year instead of spending it in the United States.

In fact, the approximately $2,000 per year sent home by the average working illegal migrant is less than 15 percent of what he earns in the United States and far less than what he contributes to the U.S. economy. A lesser known fact is that wealthy Latin Americans hold $1.9 trillion in U.S. assets and inject more than $100 billion in new investment each year into the U.S. market, more than all remittances, direct foreign investment and aid combined that flows from the United States to Latin America.

MORALITY has a business case .

As the tear gas and battle smoke in the streets of Burma begins to clear, for now, many who favour the status quo will be hoping everything returns to normal. Include among them multinational engineering and energy giants such as Total (France), Chevron (the US) and even a handful of small Australian companies. The fact that what passes for normality is persecution and suppression may well be lost on them. The leaders of those companies may be making one of the biggest mistakes of their lives.

In Burma and in Iran (Total again, Statoil, Petrochina, etc) there is considerable debate over how businesses should act. To paraphrase Joe Strummer, should they stay or should they go?

 There are some important rules on how not to invest - don't commit these sins. By Teena Lyons.
Do you do your homework before parting with your hard-earned cash or are you the sort of investor who chooses a stock because you like the sound of the company's name?

According to Justin Urquhart Stewart of portfolio manager Seven Investment Management, while everyone has firm ideas on how to invest using a range of techniques to select their stocks, there are also some important rules on how not to invest.

He calls them the seven deadly sins of investing - and failure to resist them could have a dramatic affect on your wealth.

These are difficult times . As one seasoned American observer said last week: "Things are ugly out there, very ugly." It is impossible to disagree.

Almost three months from the start of the global credit crunch that followed the slowdown in the US housing market and the resultant sub-prime mortgage crisis, the phoney war looks well and truly over.

The expected departure of Charles Prince from the helm of Citigroup, the world's largest bank, after the company said it had written down or lost $6.5bn (£3.1bn), comes hot on the heels of the ousting of Merrill Lynch boss Stan O'Neal for $8.4bn of losses there. Big banks, huge losses. All is not well.

....click the link to read more 

French President Nicolas Sarkozy's controversial economic reforms certainly struck a chord with the country's voters in this year's election.
But although he can claim a mandate for change after his victory in May, his plans to shake up the public sector pension system have provoked an all-out response from transport unions.

This level of militancy comes as little surprise to long-time observers of the French industrial scene. 

...click the link to read more 

 
European regulations are often of little use to the engineering industry, according to Thorsten Arnhold, Director of Marketing and Product Management at R Stahl

If not quite exasperated, Thorsten Arnhold is at least rueful about what the latest EU Atex directives have meant to his company. This is not really surprising given his role as Director of Marketing and Product Management at R Stahl, a company whose products are particularly affected by these new directives.

As trade grows in Central America the region needs to improve its ports infrastructure, shippers and port experts say. El Salvador leads the way.

Central America has engineered a free trade accord with the United States - an achievement larger economies like Colombia and Peru have yet to copy. And the region is now negotiating a free trade association agreement with the European Union. Combined, such free trade accords are expected to significantly boost Central America's international trade.

Yet, Central America has a major problem. Its ports are still in need of modernization. "Central American ports overall are not that efficient, and based on studies of international organizations we could say they are behind if compared to South American and Caribbean ports," says Julian Palacio, the Colombia-based Latin American Coordinator of the American Association of Port Authorities (AAPA).

 The lack of more advanced facilities has led shipping lines like Crowley to use ro-ro vessels , which allow cargo to be rolled on and rolled off without having to use cranes

From video games and engineering to consulting to IT, the top 20 companies on our annual European Hot Growth list are a diverse group of sprinters

You'd be hard pressed to find connections between a French call center operator, an Austrian utility, a British health software designer, and a German sportswear maker — except that they and 16 other companies top this year's BusinessWeek list of the fastest-growing small companies in Europe. Our annual ranking, based on numbers compiled by Brussels business advocacy group Europe's 500 — Entrepreneurs for Growth, tracks companies based on their job-creation prowess. The winners increased their staffs up to 80-fold between 2003 and 2006. But some, despite years of sizzle, have run into problems this year

In the midday heat, truckers hang out of the windows of their trucks or sit slumped behind their wheels, waiting.

Developing countries are deeply divided about how to advance troubled talks over a new global trade deal , and few ministers will attend a meeting this week meant to show their unity, diplomats said on Monday.

If Latin America is doing so well, why can’t it compete? A closer look at the reasons - and solutions.

 The first thing that strikes engineers and business travellers when they arrive in Warsaw is the cluster of glass-fronted skyscrapers around the dauntingly Gothic Palace of Culture and Science , Stalin’s 230m (755ft) “gift” to the Polish people.