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NEW YORK — A federal bankruptcy judge approved the sale of most of Chrysler LLC’s assets to Italy’s Fiat, moving the American automaker a step closer to its goal of a quick exit from court protection.

But a trio of Indiana state pension and construction funds filed an appeal, saying that the ruling sets aside the rights of the company’s secured lenders while doling out the company’s assets to others.

Judge Arthur Gonzalez said in his ruling late Sunday that a speedy sale — the centerpiece of a restructuring plan backed by President Barack Obama’s automotive task force — was needed to keep the value of Chrysler from deteriorating and would provide a better return for the company’s stakeholders than if it had liquidated.

"Any material delay would result in substantial costs in several areas, including the amounts required to restart the operations, loss of skilled workers, loss of suppliers and dealers who could be forced to go out of business in the interim, and the erosion of consumer confidence," Gonzalez wrote in his ruling.

As a result, the proposed sale must be approved in order to preserve the value of Chrysler’s business and what is ultimately left for its stakeholders, Gonzalez said.

"While this has been an extremely difficult chapter in Chrysler’s history for all involved, the new company and its customers, employees and suppliers can now begin on a fresh page," Robert Nardelli, Chrysler’s outgoing chairman and chief executive, said in a statement guaranteed approval payday loans no teletrack.

Nardelli is slated to leave Chrysler once the sale is final. The ruling came ahead of fellow U.S.-automaker General Motors Corp.’s government-backed bankruptcy protection filing on Monday.

President Barack Obama released a statement Monday saying that Gonzalez’s decision "paves the way for the new Chrysler to successfully emerge from bankruptcy as a new, stronger, more competitive company."

Gonzalez’s ruling came after three days of testimony last week, during which everyone from the automaker’s outgoing chief executive to dealers slated to lose their franchises took the stand.

Chrysler has maintained that selling the bulk of its assets to Fiat Group SpA is the only way it can avoid selling itself off piece by piece.

With the approval of the sale, Chrysler could emerge from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as soon as this week, defying observers who said that the company could linger under court oversight for years.

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Global consumer confidence is stabilizing after falling for 18 months, providing a glimmer of hope for a shattered world economy in which three quarters of households cut spending, a survey showed on Tuesday.

Some 40 percent of consumers blame the banking and finance industry for the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, while 19 percent also hold former U.S. President George W. Bush’s administration and their own governments responsible, the Ipsos/Reuters poll of 23 countries found.

The survey of 23,000 people, conducted between April 14 and May 7, showed 29 percent thought that the economic situation in their country is very good or somewhat good, only a slight dip from 31 percent in November 2008, but well down on 43 percent in April 2008 and 54 percent in October 2007.

“It looks like we have hit bottom and so there are glimmers of hope,” said Clifford Young of Ipsos Global Public Affairs, the international market research and polling company that carried out the online poll.

“What we’re seeing is that consumers for the most part have been scared, they have cut expenditures and increased savings,” he said. “The uptick won’t be as fast as the decline, but if the United States is stabilized that’s really important in the global sense.”

Ipsos polled people in the United States, Canada, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, South Korea, China, Japan, Australia, India, Russia, Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Turkey, Sweden, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, France, Spain, and Britain.

“The stabilization is basically happening in the United States, India and China and that has staunched a bit the bleed around the world,” Young said no teletrack cash advance. “That being said Europe is still dicey as well as Brazil and Russia.”

In the United States, which sparked the global economic downturn, consumer confidence rose two percentage points to 13 percent, while in China it jumped to 61 percent from 46 percent and in India it increased five points to 70 percent.

The effect of the financial crisis has lagged in Brazil, but consumer confidence in Latin America’s largest economy dropped to 56 percent from 61 percent in the past six months, while Russian optimism fell to 35 percent from 52 percent and Europe dropped nine points to 23 percent.

“It’s an issue of confidence in institutions,” Young said of the continued fall in Europe. “For better or worse in the United States the people saw the government taking extreme actions. Though this happened in Europe it happened less so.”

The 23 countries polled make up 75 percent of the world’s gross domestic product.

Cuts in household spending have remained constant during the past six months with entertainment, vacations and luxury items the first to go for nearly three quarters of families followed by clothing for 61 percent, energy consumption for 53 percent and gasoline/driving for 42 percent.

Respondents in the online poll were recruited and screened, the survey said. The results are then balanced by age, gender, city population and education levels. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.1 percent.

(Editing by Jackie Frank)

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NEW YORK — With decent monthly gains in stocks countering traditional expectations for May, when as the saying goes, investors tend to sell and go away, a tired market now might be positioned to give back some gains, some analysts believe.

"I’m having a good year so far, but I don’t want to give it back," said Paul Mendelsohn, chief investment strategist at Windham Financial Services. "In June, we normally see less volumes, and the market is basing a lot of hopes on an economic recovery."

The broad market, as defined by the Standard & Poor’s 500 index, gained 5.3 percent in May. The Dow Jones industrial average was up 4 percent for the month, while the Nasdaq Composite gained 3 faxless payday loans.3 percent. May was just the latest in a run of monthly gains. The S&P 500 has rallied more than 36 percent since hitting lows in early March.

"Granted, at the beginning of new bull markets investors are driven more by faith than fundamentals," wrote Sam Stovall, senior investment strategist at Standard & Poor’s, in a note. "But a skeptic might now say that as a result of this recent strength we are due for a swoon in June."

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