economy To faster change

European banks Societe Generale, UniCredit and Intesa Sanpaolo, which suffered heavy losses in August, will be removed from the region's blue-chip STOXX Europe 50 index, the index complier STOXX said.
Finnish phonemaker Nokia, which has lost more than 40 percent of its value this year, will also be deleted from the top pan-European index with effect on Sept.
Italian banks were also weighed by worries that the currency's bloc debt problems were spreading to Italy.
UniCredit and Intesa Sanpaolo, the two biggest banks in the country, shed 25 and 30 percent in August.

Texas Instruments said its third-quarter earnings and revenue would be worse than already low expectations as concern about an economic slowdown is stifling demand for products that use its chips. Its shares extended Thursday's slide in pre-market trading Friday.
"Macroeconomic weakness is resulting in lower demand from consumers and enterprises," Ron Slaymaker, TI's head of investor relations, told analysts on a conference call.
He ruled out any inventory adjustments as a reason for slowing demand.
The executive noted that TI is cutting expenses such as variable compensation to stop profits from falling as quickly as sales. Because the shortfall is economy related, Slaymaker said he had no way of knowing when demand would improve.
"The only solace to take away from this is that it's not TI specific," said Williams Financial analyst Cody Acree who cited warnings about weak demand across the semiconductor industry.
It forecast revenue of $3.23 billion to $3.27 billion compared with its earlier target for $3.4 billion to $3.7 billion. The new forecasts missed Wall Street expectations for earnings of 59 cents per share on revenue of $3.5 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
"It's probably a bit lower than people were thinking," said MKM Partners analyst Daniel Berenbaum. "Demand is slow."
TI shares fell just 25 cents or just under 1 percent to $25.55 in extended trading after closing at $25.80 on the New York Stock Exchange. Its stock has already fallen about 18 percent since it reported its results in late July.

US President Barack Obama has laid out a jobs package worth $447bn, staking his re-election hopes on a call for urgent action to revive the economy and challenging Republicans who have consistently opposed his initiatives.

Addressing members of Congress on Thursday, Obama said the plan, which he called the "American Jobs Act", would "jolt" the country's ailing economy - which is currently experiencing an unemployment rate of 9.1 per cent.

"It will create more jobs for construction workers, more jobs for teachers, more jobs for veterans, and more jobs for the long-term unemployed. It will provide a tax break for companies who hire new workers, and it will cut payroll taxes in half for every working American and every small business.

"It will provide a jolt to an economy that has stalled, and give companies confidence that if they invest and hire, there will be customers for their products and services," Obama said.

Describing the plan as bipartisan, Obama urged Congress to pass it without delay.

"There should be nothing controversial about this piece of legislation. Everything in here is the kind of proposal that's been supported by both Democrats and Republicans – including many who sit here tonight. And everything in this bill will be paid for," he said.

Surprisingly weak jobs data has heightened fears that the US economy, the world's largest, may be headed for another recession. The Federal Reserve, the US central bank, is considering ways to bolster demand but has said the onus for recovery mainly lies with legislators who control spending.

Eyeing re-election

If his jobs plan is deemed a success, it might provide a boost in time to help Obama's re-election prospects next year. If it fails, his strategy will be to paint congressional Republicans as obstructionist and blame them for the stagnating economy.

Already on Thursday morning, White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley criticised Obama's opponents over what he described as a do-nothing climate on Capitol Hill.

"It's time for Congress, after a five-week vacation, to come back and do something and not just say 'no' to everything that gets proposed in this town," Daley said on CBS news channel.

The bruising battle in July over the country's debt levels that led to a Standard & Poor's ratings downgrade highlighted a wide chasm between Obama's Democrats and Republicans, who control the House of Representatives.

Republicans see a $800bn economic stimulus package Obama pushed through in 2009 as wasteful and want immediate cuts in the deficit. Democrats say while long-term deficits must be trimmed, the economy needs a fiscal boost.

The White House has said the jobs package will be paid for with future cuts but has not offered details. Obama will urge the congressional "super committee" that convened on Thursday to find more than $1.2tr in budget savings, but not unveil his suggestions until next week or later.

House Republican leaders John Boehner and Eric Cantor have signalled they are open to some infrastructure spending and to a programme Obama will pitch to help train unemployed workers.

"The proposals the president outlined tonight merit consideration. We hope he gives serious consideration to our ideas as well," Boehner said on Thursday.

But Mitch McConnell, the top Republican in the Senate, said the president's readiness to accuse those who don't support his ideas of being overly partisan was a political smokescreen.

"There is a much simpler reason to oppose the president's economic policies that has nothing whatsoever to do with politics - they simply don't work," he said. "This isn't a jobs plan, it's a re-election plan."

Harry Reid, the Democrats' leader in the Senate, meanwhile, said that Republicans also had their eyes squarely on the 2012 vote.

The Swiss central bank's decision to set a limit on how much the Swiss franc can appreciate against the euro is "a huge mistake," investor Jim Rogers, chairman of Rogers Holdings, told CNBC.com on Wednesday.
On Tuesday, the Swiss National Bank set a minimum exchange rate of 1.20 Swiss francs for the euro, pledging to buy other currencies in unlimited amounts to defend the target.
Analysts said this was an endurance contest by which the SNB wanted to take the shine off the Swiss franc's safe haven status, in a move that roiled markets.
The move "will work for a while, but the market will have more money in the end than the SNB," Rogers, who was the co-founder of the Quantum Fund with George Soros,
The Swiss central bank risks losing "a lot of money buying up lots of foreign currencies which they will eventually sell at a loss," he explained.

The US investigation into alleged manipulation of interbank lending rates is focusing on possible violations of a commodities law that has previously been used to send financial executives to prison.
According to people familiar with the probe into the setting of London and Tokyo interbank offered rates, U.S. authorities are modeling their investigation on an earlier prosecution of three energy companies for violations of the Commodity Exchange Act, which resulted in criminal settlements and prison terms of up to 14 years. Under the act, it is illegal to transmit a false report that would affect the price of a commodity.
The interbank lending probe, led by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Department of Justice, is examining possible collusion between traders and bank treasury departments in 2007 and 2008. It has also drawn in investigators from the UK, Japan and the European Union.
In its seven-year investigation into US energy trading companies, the DoJ filed criminal charges against nearly two dozen traders from numerous oil companies. Prosecutors alleged that they submitted false trade data to Platts and other publishers – whose indices are used to price and settle physical and financial derivative natural gas transactions – to benefit their positions.
American Electric Power, Mirant Energy Trading and Williams Power agreed to deferred prosecution agreements in 2005-07, while the criminal trials extended into 2008. Under the deferred prosecution agreements, the federal government agreed not to file criminal charges provided the companies complied with settlement terms and paid a total of $91m

National Australia Bank's potential exit from Britain through the sale of its UK operations is not imminent, The Australian Financial Review reported on Thursday citing sources close to the bank.
The paper said a source close to National Australia Bank denied any agreement with NBNK was imminent.
The source said Australia's biggest bank had held exploratory talks with NBNK and others but discussions had not progressed beyond it.
"Nothing has changed apart from these reports in the UK media and NBNK being forced to suspend their shares because of them," the paper cited a source as saying. It said the source added NAB remained comfortable holding the UK assets.
National Australia Bank owns 330 branches in the United Kingdom under the Yorkshire and Clydesdale brands with analysts estimating a book value of 2.8 billion pounds ($4.46 billion) for the assets.
A NAB spokeswoman declined to comment beyond what the bank had said earlier on the media reports.
NAB on Tuesday said the bank's priority was to grow the business organically but in the current climate it was natural for the bank to look at other options available