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The Obama administration has detailed spending cuts that have been public for the last year, a White House spokesman said Tuesday, disputing House Speaker John Boehner’s earlier remarks that the president had yet to outline spending cuts. Spokesman Jay Carney added that House Republicans so far have not been specific on their proposals to raise revenue as part of the deal. He refused to characterize the talks seeking a fiscal-cliff deal, saying that limiting comment was the best way to help the negotiators reach an agreement.

U.S. Federal Reserve policymakers are expected to debate whether to keep their total monthly asset purchases steady at $ 85 billion in the new year when they next meet, on December 11-12. They are also discussing whether they should adopt numerical thresholds for inflation and joblessness to signal when they might hike rates. The following are recent comments from Fed policymakers (an asterisk denotes the person is a voting member of the policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee this year): BOSTON FED PRESIDENT ERIC ROSENGREN, December 3 “A strong case can be made for the Federal Reserve continuing to purchase the [...]

BRUSSELS Euro zone finance ministers and officials meet in Brussels on Monday to discuss the situation in Greece, but are not expected to authorize more money for Athens because there is still no agreement on how to make its debts sustainable. The Eurogroup meeting is, however, expected to give Greece two more years to meet its goals in talks about unfreezing lending. Following are comments ahead of the talks: IRISH FINANCE MINISTER MICHAEL NOONAN ON SITUATION IN GREECE: “Greece has made steady progress this week – two very important pieces of legislation have gone through. A lot of the earlier [...]

LUXEMBOURG Euro zone finance ministers met in Luxembourg on Monday to discuss Spain, Greece, Portugal and other issues related to the region’s debt crisis, including what needs to be done to establish a single supervisory authority for euro zone banks. Following are comments from Eurogroup Chairman Jean-Claude Juncker, European commissioner for economic affairs Olli Rehn and IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde at the final press conference after the ministers’ meeting: EUROGROUP PRESIDENT JEAN-CLAUDE JUNCKER: On Greece “We were happy to learn that substantial progress has been made over the last weeks. We called on the Troika and Greece to finalize [...]

The U.S. Federal Reserve launched a new round of monetary stimulus last month, saying it will buy $ 40 billion in housing-backed bonds each month until the outlook for the labor market improves substantially. The Fed has kept interest rates near zero since December 2008 and now says it expects to keep them there through at least mid-2015. The following are recent comments from Fed policymakers. An asterisk next to a name denotes the person is a voting member of the policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee this year. “These goals mean, basically, that we would like to see as many [...]

Facebook Inc Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has fired a warning shot that threatens to ignite a battle to marry social networking with one of the most valuable areas of the technology industry: search. Long dominated by Google Inc, the Web search market represents a “big opportunity” that Facebook is uniquely positioned to address, Zuckerberg said on Tuesday at a tech industry conference in San Francisco. Zuckerberg’s comments, the clearest signal that Facebook is eyeing one of the Internet’s most lucrative markets at a time when its own advertising revenue growth rates are slowing, helped shore up the company’s battered shares. [...]

MADRID Shares of social network Facebook Inc. climbed nearly 4% to $ 20.19 in premarket trading on Wednesday, on the heels of comments by Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg. Speaking at an event on Tuesday in San Francisco, Zuckerberg admitted being disappointed in the sharp fall in share prices since the company debuted on the stock market at $ 38. Zuckerberg said he was upbeat on the company’s ability to deliver revenue via mobile platforms and admitted to mistakes on the HTML5 coding platform. Shares had risen 3% in after-hour’s trading [...]

SAN FRANCISCO Facebook Inc. saw its shares rise in after-hours trading on Tuesday after CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he has been disappointed with the performance of the company’s stock, but touted the social network’s improving mobile ad business. In an on-stage interview at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco, Zuckerberg predicted that Facebook will someday “make a lot more money on mobile than we do on desktop,” referring to its core advertising business. But the company’s shares have fallen nearly by half since its May IPO at $ 38. “It doesn’t help,” Zuckerberg said in response to a question [...]

SAN FRANCISCO Shares of Zynga Inc. got a lift in after-hours trades on Tuesday after the CEO of Facebook Inc. called the social game maker “a fundamentally strong company.” Zynga shares were up nearly 3% in after-hours trades to about $ 2.87. In an on-stage interview at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Zynga “has had a rough few quarters,” and noted that the company is facing greater competition on the Facebook platform from rivals such as Kabam and Kixeye. “They’ve lost some share on our platform,” Zuckerberg said. Zynga’s shares have slumped hard [...]

LONDON Italian banks rallied in afternoon action on Thursday, after European Central Bank President Mario Draghi said the bank would initiate unlimited sovereign-bond purchases as an “effective backstop” to remove tail risk in the euro zone. Banca Popolare dell’Emilia Romagna Scarl jumped 8.3%, UniCredit SpA surged 7.6% and Unione di Banche Italiane SCpA rose 6.7%. The FTSE MIB index gained 3.6% to 15,675.26. Yields on 10-year Italian government bonds fell 15 basis points to 5.36%, according to electronic trading platform Tradeweb.