*NEWS*103,000+ U.S. JOBS LOST IN JAN 2006

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High Energy Prices Threaten World Economy, Snow Says
U.S. Secretary of Treasury John Snow told world leaders on Saturday that high energy prices could hurt the global economy.
MOSCOW
feb 06 – U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow said Saturday that high
energy prices are a risk to the global economy, as finance ministers
from the Group of Eight countries focused on ways to defuse the threat
from persistently high oil and gas prices.
Volatile energy prices
have preoccupied the finance ministers in their meetings over the past
few years. Past statements have emphasized raising investment in
production, curbing consumption and making oil market data on reserves
and inventories more transparent.
In remarks to be delivered to
reporters after the meeting, Snow said Russia’s Finance Minister Alexei
Kudrin was right to put a heavy emphasis on energy prices in the
meetings in Moscow – the first to be hosted by Russia as the G-8’s new
chairman.
“There are many sides to energy security, but, as finance
ministers, we emphasized market-based solutions, transparency, and the
institutional framework necessary to encourage a friendly investment
climate in energy development and infrastructure,” Snow said.
Snow
said he briefed ministers on President George W. Bush’s plans for
increasing investment and research in clean-burning fuels. He also
noted that costly energy is a particular problem for developing
countries.
Snow also alluded to another long-standing risk faced by the world economy: large-scale trade imbalances.
Last
week, the U.S. government reported its trade deficit grew to a record
US$725.8 billion (euro606.3 billion) in 2005 and many economists worry
the deficits are unsustainable and could lead to volatility of currency
and bond markets.
The Bush administration has blamed diverging
growth rates between the U.S. and its major trading partners over the
past decade for the chasm.
“Relative growth performance, especially
among the larger economies, continues to be uneven,” Snow said. “All
countries, including the United States, but also the countries of
Europe, Japan, developing Asia and even the oil exporters, bear a
responsibility to help effect global adjustment in a way that maximizes
and sustains global growth.”

Trade Deficit Hits All-Time High of $725.8 Billion
WASHINGTON
FEB 06- The U.S. trade deficit soared to an all-time high of $725.8
billion in 2005, pushed upward by record imports of oil, food, cars and
other consumer goods. The deficit with China hit an all-time high as
did America’s deficits with Japan, Europe, OPEC, Canada, Mexico and
South and Central America
Consumer demand for cars, foreign food products, and other goods drove imports up 12.9 percent to a record $2 trillion.
The
Commerce Department reported Friday that the gap between what America
sells abroad and what it imports rose to $725.8 billion last year, up
by 17.5 percent from the previous record of $617.6 billion set in 2004.
It
marked the fourth consecutive year that America’s trade deficit has set
a record as American consumers continued their seemingly insatiable
demand for all things foreign from new cars to televisions and
electronic goods.
The increased foreign competition has helped to
keep the lid on prices in this country, but critics say the rising
trade deficit is a major factor in the loss of nearly 3 million
manufacturing jobs since mid-2000 as U.S. companies moved production
overseas to lower-waged nations. Many economists believe those
manufacturing jobs will never come back.
“Such a huge trade gap
undercuts domestic manufacturing and destroys good U.S. jobs,” said
Richard Trumka, secretary-treasuer of labor’s AFL-CIO. “America’s
gargantuan trade deficit is a weight around American workers’ necks
that is pulling them into a cycle of debt, bankruptcy and low-wage
service jobs.”
Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., said the new deficit
figure showed that “our trade policy is an unbelievable failure that is
selling out American jobs and weakening our economy.”
Last year’s
deficit reflected the fact that imports rose by 12.9 percent to an
all-time high of $2 trillion, swamping a 10.4 percent increase in
exports, which reached a record high of $1.27 trillion.
For December, the trade deficit edged up a slight 1.5 percent to $65.7 billion, the third highest monthly figure on record.

January job cuts in U.S. top 100,000
CHICAGO: U.S. employers announced 103,466 job cuts in January, up 12 percent from January 2005, when job cuts totaled 92,351.
“It
was the second consecutive month in which more than 100,000 planned job
cuts were announced,” Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc., a Chicago
outplacement consultancy, said Thursday in a statement.
January was down slightly, 4 percent, from December, when 107,822 job cuts were announced.
The
auto industry saw the largest number of planned job cuts during
January. The 36,299 announced cuts, most of which came from Ford Motor
Co., were nearly three times higher than the second-ranked government
and non-profit sector, the firm said. Employers in the government and
non-profit sectors announced plans to cut 13,527 jobs, due in part to
continued fallout from Hurricane Katrina.
The third-ranked retail
sector eliminated 13,430 jobs in a post-holiday purge of seasonal
workers and several major store closings by OfficeMax and Toys “R” Us

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February 13, 2006 at 9:09 AM