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Stock markets in Europe and the U.S. recouped some of their previous day’s hefty losses Friday but investors remained skeptical about whether the world’s leading economies will come up with a coordinated plan to shore up the global economy.

Fears over another recession in Europe and the U.S. contributed to Thursday’s slide, which prompted the finance ministers of the Group of 20 leading developed and developing economies to say they will work together to stabilize markets.

Their pledge to “take all necessary actions to preserve the stability of the banking systems and financial markets” and to make sure banks have the cash they need to pay their day-to-day expenses, helped cushion markets from a repeat of Thursday.

But investors will be looking for more during the weekend meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

“I think many in the markets are no longer reassured by platitudes, we want to see action and not just words _ more walking the walk and less talking the talk,” said Louise Cooper, an analyst with BGC Partners. “The G20 communique was more eloquent on the problems facing the world than the solutions to be found.”

In Europe, France’s CAC-40 closed up 1 percent at 2,810.11 while the DAX in Germany rose 0.6 percent to 5,196.56. The FTSE 100 index of leading British shares ended 0.5 percent higher at 5,066.81.

Wall Street pushed higher too _ the Dow Jones industrial average was up 0.1 percent at 10,745 while the broader Standard & Poor’s 500 index rose 0.5 percent to 1,134.

Despite the modest gains Friday, the worries are piling up for investors: a U.S. Federal Reserve warning earlier this week that the American economy is in significant difficulty, a raft of downbeat European and Asian economic indicators, and the continued concern over Greece’s debt.

“The markets are eagerly awaiting a resolution or at the minimum, a more rigid strategy to reduce Greeces debt liabilities,” said Giles Watts, head of equities at City Index no checking account payday advance.

Bank stocks have led the way down in recent days as investors fret over their potential exposure to the debts of Greece. Those fears have become more acute as the markets increasingly price in the likelihood of a Greek default.

Athens has had a series of meetings with its creditors this week to try to avoid that, but it’s unclear whether it will be able to dig itself out of its debt hole, even with the help of billions from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund.

Even the normally tightlipped head of the French market authority, AMF, told France Inter radio Friday that “the situation is very, very worrying. We are in a worldwide situation of crisis,” pointing to debt in Japan, “imbalances” in the United States, and Europe’s sovereign debt troubles.

“We must take urgent measures on the international level,” said Jean-Pierre Jouyet.

Those concerns have knocked confidence in the euro over the past week or two. After Thursday’s plunge it was trading a little bit steadier, up 0.4 percent at $1.3522.

Joaquin Almunia, who runs the department in the EU’s executive Commission that has to clear bank bailouts, suggested earlier this week that one solution might be to extend crisis rules that make it easier for governments to rescue failing lenders. He also said that even banks that passed stress tests this summer may need to raise more money.

Earlier in Asia, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng fell 1.4 percent to 17,668.83 after losing nearly 5 percent the day before. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 index fell 1.6 percent to 3,903.20.

South Korean shares took a large hit, with the Kospi tumbling 5.7 percent to 1,697.44. Mainland China’s Shanghai Composite Index lost 0.4 percent to 2,433.16. Japan’s market was closed for a holiday.

Oil prices were down again alongside equities _ benchmark crude fell 27 cents to $80.24.

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Samsung Electronics cannot sell its new Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet computer in Germany after a court ruled Friday that its design “too closely” resembles Apple’s iPad2.

The ruling by a Duesseldorf state court, however, only applies to direct sales from the Seoul, South Korea-based company, meaning distributors who acquire the Galaxy Tab 10.1 from abroad could resell them in Germany.

Apple had taken Samsung to court over its Galaxy line, arguing their design is too close a copy of their own products.

Samsung said in a statement it will appeal the ruling, which it said “severely limits consumer choice in Germany.”

Already in August, the court ruled in favor of Apple, based in Cupertino, California, forcing Samsung to withdraw its tablet from the European market. It later determined the injunction only applied to sales in Germany, where it had not yet been launched faxless pay day loans.

“We also believe that by imposing an injunction based on this very generic design right, this ruling restricts design innovation and progress in the industry,” Samsung said.

Judge Johanna Brueckner-Hofmann said in her ruling that Samsung, “did not keep the necessary distance” in its design, the news agency dapd reported. Apple patented its design in 2004, and Brueckner-Hofmann cited products from Asus, Acer and Toshiba as examples of tablet computers that nonetheless have a clearly different design.

Apple and Samsung are involved in a series of legal disputes in countries around the world over allegations that each copies the other’s technology.

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President Hugo Chavez signed a decree on Tuesday formalizing the nationalization of Venezuela’s gold mining industry, a move aimed at giving the government total control over gold produced in the South American country.

Speaking during a televised speech, Chavez also announced the repatriation of $11 billion in Venezuelan gold reserves currently held in U.S. and European banks would begin within several weeks.

Chavez did not offer details how the new decree differs from a 1965 law that nationalized gold mining. In 1977, the government granted itself exclusive rights to extract gold. But he suggested it would give authorities increased powers to evict wildcat miners from illegal mines.

The president said that officials have contacted representatives of the company Rusoro Mining Ltd., the one private company with significant mining operations in Venezuela, to continue joint gold mining operations.

Rusoro produces gold both at an open-pit mine and an underground mine that is a joint venture with the government. The company, based in Vancouver, British Columbia, has said it has had no indication from the government “of any changes to the company’s operations.”

In February, the government canceled the gold mining concession of a Canadian company, Crystallex International Corp.

In addition to repatriating gold reserves, the president of Venezuela’s Central Bank has said the government plans to move other international assets to buffer the country against economic woes in the United States and European countries payday loan online.

Some analysts have said moving Venezuela’s reserves will make investors see the country as riskier.

The government is looking at the possibility of transferring its non-gold reserves to banks in China, Russia, Brazil and other nations in Asia and Latin America, according to a recent report by Finance Minister Jorge Giordani that was leaked to the local news media.

The report said that about $3.7 billion of those bank reserves are at the Switzerland-based Bank for International Settlements. It said Britain-based Barclays Bank has about $1.1 billion and smaller amounts are held at France’s BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bank, J.P. Morgan Chase, the U.S. Federal Reserve and World Bank.

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro met with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, on Tuesday to discuss the possibility of transferring Venezuela’s non-gold reserves to Russian banks.

“It’s an issue that our government is considering,” Maduro said.

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Americans cut back on their spending in June for the first time in nearly two years and their incomes grew by the smallest amount in nine months, a troubling sign for an economy that is barely growing.

Consumer spending dropped 0.2 percent in June, the Commerce Department said Tuesday. Excluding falling prices for such items as energy and food, consumer spending would have been unchanged in June.

Incomes rose 0.1 percent. It was the weakest growth in income since September, reflecting anemic hiring this spring.

Stock futures were trading lower after the report was released.

High gas prices and unemployment have squeezed household budgets this spring, leading to tepid overall economic growth in the April-June quarter. The economy expanded at an annual rate of 1.3 percent in the second quarter after only 0.4 percent growth in the first three months of this year. The combined growth for the first six months of this year was the worst since the recession ended two years ago.

Many Americans are cutting back on purchases of cars, furniture, appliances and electronics. Consumer spending is closely watched because it accounts for 70 percent of economic activity.

Employers have responded by reducing hiring. The economy added just 18,000 net jobs in June, the fewest in nine months. The unemployment rate rose to 9.2 percent, the highest level this year.

The government issues its July employment report on Friday.

Declining growth and rising unemployment have raised concerns that the country could fall back into a recession faxless payday advance.

Many analysts are still hopeful that growth will rebound in the second half of the year. They expect auto production and sales to pick up once supply chain disruptions ease. Many auto dealers reported shortages of popular models after Japan’s March 11 earthquake limited production of parts. That cut into auto sales.

But the turnaround may not come for a while. Manufacturers had their weakest growth in two years in July, according to the Institute for Supply Management.

The private trade group of purchasing executives said Monday that its index of manufacturing activity fell to 50.9 percent in July from 55.3 percent in June. The reading was the lowest since July 2009 _ one month after the recession officially ended.

And gas prices remain high, even after coming down from their peak of nearly $4 a gallon in early May. The average price for a gallon was $3.70 on Tuesday _ 14 cents higher than a month ago and almost a dollar more than the same month last year.

Some economists have begun to trim their forecasts for the second half of the year. Economists at Capital Economics said they had cut their outlook for second half growth to 2 percent, down from a previous forecast of 2.5 percent growth in the second half of this year.

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The head of the Libyan rebel armed forces was shot and killed Thursday just before arriving for questioning by rebel authorities, their political leader said in a carefully worded statement to reporters that gave few details on who was behind the killing.

Adding to the confusion, the rebels had said hours earlier they had already detained the commander, Abdel-Fattah Younis, on suspicion his family might still have ties to the regime of Moammar Gadhafi, raising questions about whether he might have been assassinated by his own side.

Such a scenario would signal a troubling split within the rebel movement at a time when their forces have failed to make battlefield gains despite nearly four months of NATO airstrikes against Gahdafi’s forces. It could also shake the confidence of the United States, Britain and several dozen other nations that have recognized the rebel council as Libya’s legitimate leaders.

Announcing the killing at a press conference where he did not take questions, Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, head of the rebels’ National Transitional Council, called Younis “one of the heroes of the 17th of February revolution,” a name marking the date of early protests against Gadhafi’s regime.

He said two of the commander’s aides, both colonels, were also killed in the attack by gunmen and that rebels had arrested the head of the group behind the attack. He did not say what he thought motivated the killers.

Younis was Gadhafi’s interior minister before defecting to the rebels early in the uprising, which began in February. His abandoning of the Libyan leader raised Western hopes that the growing opposition could succeed in forcing out the country’s ruler of more than four decades.

Rebel forces, however, held mixed views of the man, with some praising him for defecting and others criticizing his long association with Gadhafi.

Hours before the commander’s death was announced, rebel military spokesman Mohammed al-Rijali had said Younis was taken for interrogation from his operations room near the front line to the de facto rebel capital of Benghazi in eastern Libya payday loans.

Later, Abdul-Jalil presented a different scenario, saying Younis had been “summoned” for questioning on “a military matter,” but that he had not yet been questioned when he was killed.

He also called on all rebel forces to intensify their efforts to find the men’s bodies, but did not explain how the deaths were discovered.

Further complicating matters, another security officer, Fadlallah Haroun, told The Associated Press before Abdul-Jalil’s announcement that security had found three badly burned bodies. Two of them were dead and one was unconscious, Fadlallah said, adding that one was known to be Younis, though they didn’t know which one.

“We formed a fact-finding committee to go the scene because we found three bodies that were burned so badly we couldn’t tell from the faces who was who,” he said.

U.S. and British officials said they were unable to confirm details of the reports but were looking into them.

Abdul-Jalil never clearly said who he thought was behind the attack, but he called on rebel forces to ignore “these efforts by the Gadhafi regime to break our unity.”

He also issued a stiff warning about “armed criminal gangs” in rebel-held cities, saying they needed to join the fight against Gadhafi or risk being arrested by security forces.

Since the uprising’s start, rebels have gained control of Libya’s east and pockets in the west.

In the western Nafusa mountain range southwest of the capital, Tripoli, hundreds of rebels launched a broad offensive against government forces Thursday, seizing three small towns and advancing on others to secure a major supply route near the Tunisian border, rebel spokesmen said.

Four rebel fighters were killed and several wounded while taking the small towns of Jawsh, Ghezaya and Takut, Abdel-Salam Othman said. He said rebels captured 18 government soldiers, as well as weapons and ammunition.

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The tax-credit bill unveiled this week by House and Senate lawmakers would cut $1.5 billion in spending through 2016. Here’s how:

(Numbers in millions)

Spending cuts

Eliminate renters from Senior Citizen $855.0 Property Tax credit

Tighten caps on Historic Preservation tax credit 664.6

Tighten caps on Low Income Housing tax credit 190.9

End Neighborhood Preservation credit 72.8

Tax Amnesty (in 2012 & 2013) 46.4

End Rebuilding Communities credit 20.1

End Self-Employed Health Insurance credit 17.1

End Small Business Incubator credit 2.6

End Brownfields Jobs credit .825

New spending

Aerotropolis tax credits 309.7

Amateur sports tax credits 36.0

Total savings $1,523.8

Source: Joint Committee on Tax Policy

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The Federal Reserve is set to limit the fees that banks charge retailers for swiping debit cards to 21 cents, a higher cap than initially proposed.

Banks succeeded in convincing the Fed that its initial proposal of 12 cents was too low after a six-month lobbying blitz. They currently charge an average of 44 cents per swipe.

The Fed will formally adopt the rule Wednesday, which was required under the financial regulatory law enacted last year. The rule takes effect Oct 1, later than expected.

In addition to the 21-cent cap, the rule will also allow banks to charge a fraction more to cover the costs of fraud prevention.

The move to limit swipe fees pitted the nation’s largest banks and payment processors like MasterCard Inc. and Visa Inc. against Wal-Mart and retailers of all sizes. The decision to settle on a higher cap pushed up bank and network stocks in late afternoon trading on Wall Street.

Banks said roughly $16 billion was at stake if the 12-cent cap took effect. That would be more than 80 percent of the $19.7 billion in debit transaction fees paid by merchants in 2009, according to the Nilson Report, which tracks the payments industry.

The banks warned that they would have to make up for some revenue lost by shifting costs to consumers. Many already eliminated unrestricted free checking accounts, and some ended debit card rewards programs. Other potential actions include annual fees for using debit cards, which are already being tested in some markets.

The higher cap may lead some to avoid taking such action.

Merchant groups said that their savings would be passed on to customers in the form of lower prices. But many questioned whether retailers would simply pocket the difference. Some big retailer stocks declined late in Wednesday’s trading session no fax payday loan.

Banks and credit unions with assets under $10 billion are exempt from the rule, under the premise that they rely more on swipe fees, also known as interchange fees. But those smaller institutions argued that the exemption won’t help. That’s because it invites merchants to discriminate against their cards. It also leaves the decision on which network to use to process the transaction in the hands of merchants, who could choose to bypass networks that charge higher fees.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke acknowledged small banks’ concerns during a May 12 hearing by the Senate Banking Committee. He said allowing them to charge more than big banks for processing debt card transactions could make debit cards issued by smaller banks less attractive to merchants.

“There’s good reason to be concerned about it,” Bernanke said. It could result in some smaller banks “being less profitable or even failing.”

Separately Wednesday, a federal appeals court in South Dakota ruled that a lower court judge was correct to deny a preliminary injunction against the fee limits taking effect.

The case challenging the regulations’ constitutionality was brought in October by Minnesota-based TCF National Bank, the unit of TCF Financial Corp., considered the first bank to offer free checking accounts. TCF is among the banks that no longer offer free checking without requirements such as using direct deposit or maintaining minimum balances.

In a twist, TCF’s attorneys argued that the provision of the law exempting small banks and credit unions gave those unaffected banks an unfair advantage.

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Debit cards, a gleam in bankers’ eyes 30 years ago, have become the preferred method for people to tap their bank accounts, a free and easy alternative to paper checks, live tellers or cash machines.

U.S. shoppers used them 37 billion times last year, making them more popular than credit cards (19 billion transactions) and checks (18 billion), according to the newsletter Nilson Report. Another estimate puts the figure at 45 billion debits.

But big changes are afoot that could make it much more expensive for consumers to use the cards. For years, banks subsidized most debit card holders by levying heavy fees on retailers and overdrawn consumers. Merchants paid a processing fee averaging 44 cents every time a shopper swiped a card. And careless cardholders at major banks typically got dinged $35 every time the bank covered an overdraft my credit score.

Last year the nation’s banks collected more than $50 billion from merchant fees and overdrafts. That’s likely to decline, however, thanks to rules Congress mandated after the financial crisis. Starting next month, merchants will pay just 12 cents for debit processing, unless bank lobbyists persuade the Federal Reserve to tack on a surcharge for fraud prevention. Even then, the fee would probably not exceed 18 or 20 cents.

Banks stand to lose more than $10 billion a year in merchant fees and more than $6 billion in overdraft fees. They’ll be looking to make it up somewhere.

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A prickly feud over money between Express Scripts Inc. and Walgreen Co. could force thousands of St loan for people with bad credit. Louisans to switch drugstores beginning in January.

Walgreens

Regulators on Friday shut down small banks in Georgia and Florida, lifting to 47 the number of U.S. bank failures this year in the wake of economic distress and mounting soured loans.

The pace of closures has slowed, however, as the economy improves and banks work their way through the bad debt. By this time last year, regulators had closed 83 banks.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. seized McIntosh State Bank, based in Jackson, Ga., with $339.9 million in assets and $324.4 million in deposits. The agency also shuttered First Commercial Bank of Tampa Bay, in Tampa, Fla., with $98.6 million in assets and $92.6 million in deposits.

Hamilton State Bank, based in Hoschton, Ga., agreed to assume the assets and deposits of McIntosh State Bank. In addition, the FDIC and Hamilton State Bank agreed to share losses on $242.1 million of McIntosh State Bank’s loans and other assets.

Stonegate Bank, based in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., is assuming the assets and deposits of First Commercial Bank of Tampa Bay.

The failure of McIntosh State Bank is expected to cost the deposit insurance fund $80 million. That of First Commercial Bank of Tampa Bay is expected to cost $28.5 million.

Georgia and Florida have been among the hardest-hit states for bank failures.

Sixteen banks were shuttered in Georgia last year. The shutdown of McIntosh State Bank brought to 13 the number of bank failures in the state this year. Regulators closed 29 banks in Florida last year. First Commercial Bank of Tampa Bay is the sixth Florida lender shut down this year.

California and Illinois also have seen large numbers of bank failures easy payday loans.

In 2010 regulators seized 157 banks, the most in a year since the savings-and-loan crisis two decades ago.

The FDIC has said that 2010 likely would mark the peak for bank failures.

There were 140 bank failures in 2009, costing the insurance fund about $36 billion. The failures last year cost around $21 billion, a lower price tag because the banks that failed in 2010 were smaller on average. Twenty-five banks failed in 2008, the year the financial crisis struck with force; only three were closed in 2007.

From 2008 through 2010, bank failures cost the fund $76.8 billion. The deposit insurance fund fell into the red in 2009. With failures slowing, its deficit narrowed in the first quarter of this year and stood at about $1 billion as of March 31.

The FDIC expects the cost of resolving failed banks to total around $52 billion from 2010 through 2014.

Depositors’ money _ insured up to $250,000 per account _ is not at risk, with the FDIC backed by the government. That insurance cap was made permanent in the financial overhaul law enacted last July.

The number of banks on the FDIC’s confidential “problem” list edged up to 888 in the January-March quarter from 884 as of Dec. 31. The 888 troubled banks is the highest number since 1993, during the savings-and-loan crisis. But that doesn’t mean the pace of bank failures is likely to accelerate again because, historically, only 19 percent of the banks on the “problem” list actually fail.

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