The European Commission is inviting comments from interested parties on commitments offered by the French energy company EDF which seek to address the Commission's concerns that EDF may be abusing its dominant position in France and therefore infringing Article 82 of the EC Treaty.

The European Commission has opened under EC Treaty state aid rules an in-depth investigation into support measures for the German savings bank Sparkasse KölnBonn and has invited Sparkasse KölnBonn to submit a restructuring plan.

In September 2009 compared with September 2008, industrial producer prices dropped by 7.7% in the euro area and by 7.3% in the EU27. These figures come from Eurostat.

Between 2000 and 2008, EU27 trade in goods with India more than doubled in value: exports rose from 13.7 billion euro to 31.6 bn, while imports increased from 12.8 bn to 29.5 bn. ... the EU27 trade balance with India moved from a surplus of 0.8 bn in the first half of 2008 to a deficit of 0.2 bn in the same period of 2009. ... On the occasion of the 10th European Union - India summit, which will take place on 6 November in New Delhi, Eurostat issues data on trade and investments between India and the EU.

A spokesman for Vladimir Putin, the Russian Prime Minister, said Magna, the Canadian car parts maker that was days away from buying GM's Vauxhall and Opel operations, and Sberbank, its Russian bid partner, planned to conduct a "deep legal analysis of the situation."

However, sources close to Magna said that, despite the months spent on the bid, which was in its advanced stages, the group was unlikely to take legal action as GM is one of its biggest customers.

Magna and Sberbank had been working since May on their plans to acquire a 55 per cent stake in GM's European business after the American car giant went bankrupt. But last night GM abandoned the planned sale in favour of a restructuring of the business.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The EU's 36 regulatory agencies are prone to financial errors, as they are remote from Brussels and report only to their own managing board, audit officials said on Tuesday (3 November).

"[The number of] regulatory agencies is mushrooming. They are independent legal entities and it's up to give them discharge [sign off their accounts], just as you do with the European Commission," EU audit commissioner Siim Kallas told MEPs in the budgetary control committee.

IRVINE, Calif. -- Goldman Sachs was one of the last Wall Street giants to enter the subprime lending world, but when it did, it quickly climbed into bed with profligate, highflying firms -- companies such as New Century Financial Corp.

In at least nine deals from 2002 to 2007, Goldman sold bonds backed by more than $5 billion of New Century's mortgages, one even after the California lender's underwriting criteria all but disintegrated and a cash squeeze paralyzed its operation. Goldman also marketed at least three secret offshore deals bearing New Century's name. Goldman has yet to explain why it risked its blue-chip reputation and financial health to buy and repackage at least $135 billion in loans mostly originated by companies that have since gone bust.

For $100 million in mortgages, New Century could command fees from Wall Street of $4 million to $11 million, ex-employees told McClatchy. The goal was to close loans fast, bundle them into pools and sell them to generate money for the next round. Inside the mortgage company, the former employees said, pressure was intense to increase the firm's share of an exploding market for mortgages that depended almost entirely on Wall Street's seemingly unlimited hunger for bigger, faster returns.

Michael Missal, a federal bankruptcy examiner who investigated New Century's operations after it sought Chapter 11 protection on April 2, 2007, reported last year that the firm's lax lending and accounting standards "created a ticking time bomb" as it pushed for ever-higher loan production.

The incentives for high-risk behavior reached all the way to Manhattan. Goldman and other investment banks could put $20 million in the till by taking a 1 percent fee for assembling, securitizing and selling a $2 billion pool of mostly triple-A rated bonds backed by subprime loans -- and that was just stage one. Goldman entities earned millions of dollars more by servicing many of the loans and arranging sophisticated interest-rate swaps to guard against inflation.

The Federal Reserve made clear Wednesday that it isn't planning to raise short-term interest rates soon. But the central bank also got more specific about the conditions that would spur it to lift its key rate from the current zero-to-0.25% range. Here's how the critical paragraph in the Fed's post-meeting statement reads:

    "The Committee will maintain the target range for the federal funds rate at 0 to 0.25% and continues to anticipate that economic conditions, including low rates of resource utilization, subdued inflation trends, and stable inflation expectations, are likely to warrant exceptionally low levels of the federal funds rate for an extended period."

The bolded type is what was added to that paragraph since the Fed's last meeting on Sept. 23.

Fedbuild "In citing these three conditions, the Federal Reserve has provided a road map by which market participants can gauge with greater precision the evolution of monetary policy, in particular the exit strategy for the Fed's current stance," Tony Crescenzi, a bond market strategist at Pimco in Newport Beach, wrote in a note to clients.

"This will make the implementation of the Fed's exit strategy more a process than event," Crescenzi said. "It will also give the Fed an `out' because incoming data related to the three conditions mentioned will take on greater weight than the Fed's own words, allowing the Fed to simply rubberstamp the conclusions drawn by market participants regarding the incoming data."

The part of the post above seems like a press release for the Fed with chearleading by an analyst. But then it turns more critical:

Crescenzi noted that the Fed's statement specifically referred to longer-term inflation expectations as being "stable" at the moment.

But are they?

"It is intriguing that the Fed would label inflation expectations `stable' when the amount of inflation expectations embedded in 10-year inflation-protected Treasuries reached its highest point of the year -- 2.14%, indicating that 10-year inflation-protected Treasuries are priced for the consumer price index to increase at a 2.14% [annualized] rate over the next 10 years, Crescenzi said."

Gold, hitting record highs this week, also could be signaling rising inflation expectations. But gold's new bull run also could be pointing to something more visceral -- increased distrust of all paper currencies -- rather than heightened concern about inflation.

J. P. Morgan Securities will forfeit hundreds of millions of dollars in fees on derivatives contracts that it sold an Alabama county, under a settlement announced Wednesday that could offer hope to other governments staggering under similar deals.

The Securities and Exchange Commission charged in a lawsuit on Wednesday that J. P. Morgan had made unlawful payments to friends of Jefferson County's commissioners in a scheme to win lucrative business from the county to sell bonds and trade in derivatives.

The lawsuit also named two former J. P. Morgan employees. One of those men has already served a short prison term for manipulating similar bond deals in Philadelphia.

To settle the lawsuit, J. P. Morgan will drop its claims for $647 million in termination fees it had been trying to make Jefferson County pay on the derivatives. The settlement also calls for J. P. Morgan to pay a $25 million penalty to the commission and $50 million to the county.