MADRID (AP) ― Spain’s government will approve further deficit-reduction measures this week, on top of the bombshell 15 billion euro ($19 billion) package of tax hikes and spending cuts they announced only days ago, ministers said Monday.They also said the 2011 budget deficit could be even higher than the 8 percent of GDP announced last week. That figure was already a major increase on the 6 percent forecast by the previous government.Treasury Minister Cristobal Montoro said the new measures woul

Global growth slows to 3.9 percent as BRIC nations diminished by populationA year ago, Catherine Liu employed more than 2,000 people at her five Shanghai luggage-making factories. Now, as the dwindling supply of low-paid young workers forces wages and costs higher, she has 1,200 left. “Local workers are getting much older,” said Liu, owner of Shanghai Worldwide Trading Co. “If you want to train them, they must be young. It’s very difficult to survive.” Aging and shrinking labor pools are also po

NEW YORK (AFP) ― Facebook co-founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has deflected talk of going public for years but it looks like it is finally going to happen in 2012.“The Facebook IPO will be the biggest financial event in the tech industry for 2012,” Forrester Research analyst Josh Bernoff said, and one of the biggest initial public offerings ever in the United States.Nick Einhorn, an analyst at Renaissance Capital, said he expects Facebook to file its IPO paperwork with the U.S. Securi

HONG KONG (AFP) ― Hong Kong looks set to retain its crown as the world’s biggest IPO market for the third year in a row, piping New York, but analysts warn of a tough 2012 as market volatility continues.The southern Chinese city overtook New York in 2009 to become the top venue for new listings, as a slew of companies turned to the Asian financial hub in a bid to tap mainland China’s explosive growth and cash-rich investors.Despite a choppy year, exacerbated by the eurozone debt crisis that saw

NEW DELHI (AFP) ― India announced on Sunday that it would open up its stock market to individual foreign investors for the first time, in a major economic reform designed to boost overseas investment.The Indian economy has grown strongly over the last 15 years and many foreign investors have been keen to enter the market in a fast-developing country of 1.2 billion people.However recent financial data has been disappointing, with the main Sensex index for the Mumbai market recording a 25 percent

European leaders return to work from Christmas holidays seeking to buy time for the Spanish and Italian governments to wrest control over their debt and rescue the single currency from fragmentation as the region’s crisis enters a new year. Some 157 billion euros ($203 billion) in debt will mature in the 17-member euro area in the first three months of 2012, according to UBS AG. By the end of that period, leaders have pledged to draft a stricter rulebook for controlling government spending. Germ

President Barack Obama, saying he’s “hopeful” for 2012 after a year that brought the beginnings of an economic recovery, called on Congress to extend a payroll tax cut for a full year to help Americans struggling to improve their lives. “I’m hopeful because of what we saw right before Christmas, when members of Congress came together to prevent a tax hike for 160 million Americans ― saving a typical family about $40 in every paycheck,” Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address from Hon