U.S. markets slide Wednesday
NEW YORK, March 23 (UPI) -- U.S. equities fell Wednesday after the Commerce Department said the housing market remains in a depression.
Commerce said sales of new single-family homes in February dropped 16.9 percent from January, falling to an annual rate of 250,000 sales. The median sales price also dropped sharply in February to $202,100 from $246,000 the previous month.
On Wall Street in early afternoon trading, the Dow Jones industrial average shed 11.36 points, 0.09 percent, to 12,007.27. The Standard & Poor's 500 index lost 0.39 percent, 5.11, to 1,288.66. The Nasdaq composite index lost 0.23 percent, 6.24 points, to 2,677.63.
The 10-year treasury note rose 12.32 to yield 3.284 percent.
The euro fell to $1.4133 from Tuesday's $1.4199. Against the yen, the dollar fell to 80.86 yen from Tuesday's 80.91 yen.
In Tokyo, the Nikkei 225 index lost 1.65 percent, 158.85, to 9,449.47.
Quake cost estimated up to $310B
TOKYO, March 23 (UPI) -- The earthquake-tsunami crisis caused up to $310 billion in economic cost in the seven worst-hit prefectures, a preliminary Japanese government estimate said.
The government Wednesday also warned about the disaster's negative impact on the country's export and industrial output recovery, the Kyodo news service reported.
The economic loss estimate ranged from 16 trillion yen or $198 billion to 25 trillion yen or about $310 billion, resulting from the destruction of social infrastructure, housing and corporate facilities in the regions worst-hit by the March 11 disaster in northeast Japan, the government said.
Those losses could bring down Japan's growth rate by 0.5 percent, the government said, while warning the actual result may be worse as the current estimate did not take into account any negative effect from power supply shortages resulting from the damage at the nuclear plant in Fukushima Prefecture.
However, the government also noted the economic pressures could be offset to some extent by reconstruction work which would boost domestic demand.
"We provided the number based on data available so far, and cannot help having certain ranges in our estimate," Economic and Fiscal Policy minister Kaoru Yosano told reporters.
Earlier this week, the World Bank estimated the economic cost of the disaster may reach up to $235 billion. The country's recovery was expected to pick up in the fourth quarter.
Egypt market reopening with trading curbs
CAIRO, March 23 (UPI) -- The Egyptian stock exchange's Wednesday reopening after a seven-week closure comes sooner than the post-revolution government wanted, an Egyptian official said.
The country's situation has "not reached the improvement that we were imagining, even though matters are improving every day," Finance Minister Samir Radwan said.
In addition, the government wanted to stop anyone under investigation for alleged corruption or other crimes during the toppled Mubarak regime from shifting funds abroad, the BBC said. After postponing the reopening five times since Jan. 27 -- and losing exchange Chairman Khaled Serry Seyam, who resigned to protest the market's continued closure -- Egyptian Cabinet officials decided it was "safe" to open the exchange Wednesday, a Cabinet representative said.
The opening comes a day before a deadline that would have removed Egyptian companies from a key emerging-markets index. MSCI Inc., formerly Morgan Stanley Capital International Index, had warned that the Egyptian Exchange, which operates in Cairo and Alexandria, risked being excluded from MSCI's Emerging Markets Free Index if the exchange did not reopen by Thursday.
If the deadline had been missed, Egyptian companies would have been automatically excluded from the index, forcing many investment funds, which tie their holdings to the index, to sell their stakes automatically, the BBC said.
One of Egypt's biggest investment banks, CI Capital Holding, which manages $1.7 billion dollars in Egyptian assets, forecast last week the exchange's benchmark EGX 30 stock index, previously known as the CASE 30 index, could fall 19 percent to 29 percent once the market reopened.
The index fell 16 percent in the two days before it was closed Jan. 27 at 5,646.50.
When the exchange opens at 10:30 a.m. local time (4:30 a.m. EDT), it will have in place trading curbs, also known as "circuit breakers," to halt trading for 30 minutes if the broad EGX 100 index falls 5 percent, the exchange said. Price movements would be limited to 10 percent in one session.
Trading was to end an hour earlier than normal, at 1:30 p.m., for one week. A $42 million government fund was waiting in standby to pump up the market if needed, officials said.
Before the crisis in January, Egypt was one of the world's hottest emerging markets, drawing foreign investment that helped push up the EGX 30 index 15 percent in 2010, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Nuclear plant utility may get huge loans
TOKYO, March 23 (UPI) -- Tokyo Electric Power Co., operator of the quake-ravaged Fukushima nuclear power plant, may get massive loans from Japanese banks, Kyodo News reported Wednesday.
Citing sources close to the issue, Kyodo said the loans, under consideration by some of the major banks, could go as high as 2 trillion yen ($25 billion), could be approved by month's end.
The loans would help the utility increase its electricity supply in the wake of the March 11 Fukushima plant disaster inflicted by the 9-magnitude earthquake and the killer tsunami it set off.
The sources said the banks considering the loan package include the Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp., Mizuho Corporate Bank , Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, Chuo Mitsui Trust and Banking Co. and Shinkin Central Bank.
The report said the utility had used mostly corporate bonds to raise money so far, but has decided to go for bank loans as bond market conditions tighten.
The report said Moody's Japan K.K. and Standard & Poor's ratings agencies have downgraded their long-term credit ratings for Tokyo Electric.
The utility may have to refurbish its thermal power plant to boost power supply but that would involve substantial sums for items like heavy oil and other materials, Kyodo said.
