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Growth in the number of people tweeting and friending from their mobile devices is keeping pace with increases in subscribers to social networks.

A new study by comScore shows that 4.7 million people accessed Twitter on their mobile phones in January 2010, up 347 percent jump compared to last year.

The number of Facebook users going to the site on their mobiles hit 25.1 million, up 112 percent.

MySpace's numbers actually declined 7 percent from last year, with 11.4 million mobile users free credit report.

Those numbers compare with an overall increase of 4.6 percent in the number of mobile phone users who accessed a social networking site via mobile browser.

ComScore said that In January, 11.1 percent of all mobile phone users went to social networks on their mobiles.

Smartphone owners were far more likely to do so compared to other cell phone users, 30.8 percent vs. 6.8 percent .

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Wednesday marks the one-year anniversary of the stimulus bill, and from here on out the pace of spending should pick up, according to administration officials.

The federal government expects to spend more money on projects — such as high-speed rail — rather than payments to states and individuals, according to Vice President Joe Biden, who released his annual stimulus progress report Wednesday.

On Feb. 17, 2009, Congress passed a $787 billion economic stimulus program — the largest in the nation’s history — and it has elicited both praise and scorn.

The White House is mounting an all-out campaign this week to tout the benefits of the Recovery Act, saying the package has largely lived up to its promises of stemming job losses and boosting economic growth. Administration officials are touring the nation to highlight stimulus-funded work and detailing where the money has been spent in the past 12 months.

Through the end of January, some $334 billion in spending has been approved, of which $179 billion has actually left federal coffers. Another $119 billion has gone to tax cuts.

"Our work is far from over, but we have rescued this economy from the worst of this crisis," said President Obama on Wednesday, though he noted many Americans may not feel the Recovery Act’s impact because they remain unemployed.

Detractors, however, counter that stimulus has been a waste of money and produced few jobs. And few Americans believe the stimulus program is really working. Only 36% of respondents said the Recovery Act is helping the economy, according to a recent CNN poll.

"In the first year of the trillion-dollar stimulus, Americans have lost millions of jobs, the unemployment rate continues to hover near 10%, the deficit continues to soar and we’re inundated with stories of waste, fraud and abuse," said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. "This was not the plan Americans asked for or the results they were promised."

Shifting the mix

In the coming months, the pace and mix of spending will change, senior administration officials said. Until this point, the bulk of the spending has been on tax relief and direct aid — such as unemployment benefits — in order to stop the economic freefall.

Going forward, the government will distribute $32 billion in Recovery Act funds per month, up from an average $27 billion a month over the past year, according to Biden’s annual report.

To date, only $31 billion has been spent on projects — such as infrastructure, high-speed rail, broadband and health technology. But in the second phase of the act, the amount of money going to these initiatives will more than double to $7 billion a month as the work ramps up. The administration views this spending as setting the stage for a lasting expansion.

"Many projects are just now getting underway, and will be creating jobs throughout 2010 and beyond," said Biden, noting that the administration will announce an additional $1.5 billion of surface transportation projects Wednesday. "Work on many Recovery Act projects will accelerate in the spring and summer months as weather conditions permit work on roads, bridges, water projects, and Superfund site clean ups."

Payments to states and individuals will fall to $11 billion, from $14 billion, per month. Much of this spending — such as Medicaid funding and additional unemployment benefits — was meant to stabilize the economy during the recession.

The administration will reach its goal to disburse 70% of the Recovery Act funds, or $551 billion, by Sept. 30, senior administration officials said.

The Congressional Budget Office recently hiked the cost estimate of the Recovery Act to $862 billion, though the administration still uses the original $787 billion figure.

Shortcomings highlighted

Republicans, however, were quick to point out stimulus’ shortcomings, stressing the nation’s stubbornly high unemployment rate, which stands at 9.7%.

"Taxpayers aren’t getting their money’s worth from the trillion-dollar ’stimulus’ and struggling families and small businesses are rightly asking, ‘Where are the jobs?’," said Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, the House’s top Republican.

Republican Whip Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Va., said states have lost a total of 2.9 million jobs between the bill’s enactment last February through December, though the administration projected stimulus would save or create 3.5 million positions.

In the final quarter of last year, the Recovery Act funded 595,263 direct jobs, according to Recovery.gov. The figure is based on about 160,000 reports from state, local and corporate recipients who have spent $57.9 billion in stimulus money.

It does not tally jobs created indirectly through companies buying supplies for stimulus projects, people spending their tax cuts, increased unemployment benefits and the like.

In total, the economic stimulus program has boosted employment by 1.5 million to 2 million jobs, the president’s chief economic adviser said in mid-January. That number is derived from a mathematical formula based on how much money has flowed out the federal door.

A week ago, the president’s top economic adviser praised the Recovery Act, calling it the "great unsung hero of the past year." Council of Economic Advisers Chair Christina Romer reiterated that the program has funded up to 2 million jobs and helped turn the economy around. 

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China property sales jumped 75.5 percent to 4.4 trillion yuan ($644 billion) last year, led by the eastern cities of Zhejiang and Shanghai, as record new loans boosted buying.

The sales data follows last week’s announcement that December property prices rose 7.8 percent, the fastest pace in 18 months, adding urgency to government efforts to rein in speculation. China this month reimposed a sales tax on homes sold within five years of their purchase while the country’s cabinet on Jan. 10 urged strict application of a 40 percent down-payment requirement for second homes. The measures are likely to weigh on first-quarter sales, economist Lu Ting said.

‘We will see very bad transaction numbers, even though prices may not fall that much as the supply of new homes is still low,” Lu, a Hong Kong-based economist at Bank of America- Merrill Lynch, said by phone today. Today’s data more accurately reflect last year’s gain in asset values, he said

By floor area, sales rose 42 percent from 2008 to 937 million square meters (10 billion square feet), the National Bureau of Statistics said in a statement on its Web site today. That compares with a 53 percent gain between January and November, when sales value advanced 86.8 percent. December’s declining sales growth reflects the seasonally slow winter period, Lu said.

The December figure for property prices probably understated the size of the increase, the economist said. “In reality, the inflation in asset prices may be between 20 percent and 30 percent, and that is way too high for the policy- makers,” Lu said.

Shanghai Gain

Zhejiang topped the increase in sales value, with a 130 percent gain, the statistics bureau said today. In Shanghai, the gain was 126 percent.

Investment in property development in 2009 rose 16.1 percent to 3.62 trillion yuan, the statistics bureau said. That was less than the 17.8 percent gain in the first 11 months. Chinese banks extended a record 9.59 trillion yuan of new loans last year.

To counter property speculation, China is tightening lending. Chinese banks from Jan. 18 raised the share of deposits they must set aside as reserves, as the government seeks to rein in liquidity from record lending without stalling a recovery. China is targeting 8 percent growth this year, Industry Minister Li Yizhong said Dec. 21.

Developers Sales Surge

Shanghai Shimao Co., the local unit of billionaire Xu Rongmao’s developer Shimao Holdings Holdings Ltd., said today that 2009 profit may quadruple, partly due to higher sales from additional commercial property projects.

Earlier this month, some of China’s biggest developers said 2009 sales increased significantly.

China Overseas Land & Investment Ltd., owned by the country’s construction ministry, said property sales rose 80 percent to HK$47.8 billion. Evergrande Real Estate Group Ltd., China’s third-biggest developer by market value, said Jan. 5 that contracted sales jumped fivefold to 30.3 billion yuan.

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Oil prices rose above $79 a barrel Monday for the first time in four weeks as an extended cold snap triggered an end-of-year rally in energy futures.

Benchmark crude for February delivery added 72 cents to settle at $78.77 a barrel in light, holiday trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Prices rose as high as $79.12 earlier in the day, the highest since Nov. 18.

Futures contracts for oil, natural gas and heating oil have all become more expensive this month as snowstorms blanketed parts of the country and a sharp drop in supplies of crude and other fuels surprised traders.

More frigid temperatures are expected, with up to 4 inches of snow forecast for New England, and up to 7 inches of snow along the eastern shores of the Lower Great Lakes.

Spot prices are starting to perk up as a result.

According to the latest data from the Energy Information Administration, natural gas prices jumped earlier in December to the highest levels since January, and heating oil prices climbed during the middle of this month.

Still, the winter chill hasn’t boosted energy demand above last year’s levels. The U.S. is consuming less petroleum than it did at the same time last year, when oil and gas prices were cheaper and the economy was in recession.

American refiners have cut back on oil imports, which has helped reduce supplies and increase prices. But analyst Andrew Lipow said that oil prices also are rising as China and India expand their petroleum imports.

"That oil is finding a buyer somewhere," Lipow said.

At the pump, retail gas prices rose by less then a penny overnight to a new national average of $2.603 a gallon, according to auto club AAA, Wright Express and Oil Price Information Service.

Gas prices have edged up for three consecutive days, albeit slowly, for the first time since the beginning of the month. A gallon of regular unleaded is 2.4 cents cheaper than last month.

In other Nymex trading in January contracts, heating oil climbed 3.79 cents to settle at $2.0735 a gallon while gasoline added 2.88 cents to settle at $2.0184 a gallon. Natural gas increased by 34.7 cents to settle at $5.99 per 1,000 cubic feet.

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One year after he was restructured out of the telecom sector and into unemployment, Bruce Bracken got a full-time job again.

His ordeal started in November 2008, as Canada’s unemployment rate began to rise. It ended in November 2009, when Bracken got one of the 79,100 new jobs Statistics Canada said was created last month across the country, with Toronto and Ontario leading the surge.

The remarkable growth, which one analyst called "stunning," dropped the national unemployment rate down a notch to 8.5 per cent, the federal agency said on Friday, though many predict this number will rise in 2010.

During his year working contracts, spending time with his two children, and volunteering with Habitat For Humanity, Bracken heard it all, including: "If we could hire two, we would hire you."

"I got a lot of silver medals," joked Bracken, 45, from the office of his new employer, Toronto-based Upstream Works Software.

His company’s decision was part of a surge in private sector hiring across the county, which saw 27,000 jobs created in Ontario – 21,000 of them in Toronto.

The bulk of Canada’s new jobs were created in the services sector, the agency said.

"It’s certainly encouraging, an economy can’t live off the government alone," said Avery Shenfeld, chief economist at CIBC World Markets, referring to the government stimulus projects that will likely not last through the next year.

He also cautioned monthly statistics such as these can be misleading and that multiple-month analysis is more accurate. Shenfeld said that after July, Canada has gained a steady 25,000 jobs per month.

By anyone’s calculation, November’s job growth is nowhere close to employing all those who lost jobs during the entire recession.

The country has lost 321,000 jobs since October 2008 payday loans for self employed.

And by Statistics Canada’s calculations, even Ontario’s strong growth was not enough to dent the province’s 9.3 per cent unemployment rate.

Toronto managed to shave 0.1 per cent off its higher unemployment rate, bringing it to 9.5 per cent.

In Ottawa, Transport Minister John Baird said the federal government is pleased with the numbers, but added: "We can’t, you know, pop the champagne corks."

The majority of these jobs – more than 73,000 of them across the country – were in Ontario, Quebec and Alberta, and were mainly in the service sector, particularly education services.

However, this latter point could be what Shenfeld calls "statistical noise," or could reflect one of two things: either this is pickup from September’s academic hiring or it’s hiring to handle the surge of students fleeing the recession in postgraduate studies.

Full-time jobs increased by 39,000 and part-time unemployment grew by more than 40,000, all while the number of the self-employed dropped – which analysts said was positive, considering the self-employed are not as well paid.

On Dec. 1, Statistics Canada recorded third-quarter GDP growth of 0.1 per cent – 0.4 per cent at the annualized rate – which effectively put an end to the recession.

A recession is defined by at least two consecutive quarters of GDP decline.

In September, the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development said Canada’s unemployment would only worsen throughout 2010.

With files from Susan Delacourt

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The U.S. Treasury on Monday set long-awaited guidance on a plan for mortgage companies to speed “short sales” of homes and other loan modification alternatives to stem a rising tide of foreclosures.

The Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternatives Program provides financial incentives and simplifies the procedures for completing short sales, a growing practice in which a lender agrees to accept the sale price of a home to pay off a mortgage even if the price falls short of the amount owed, according to an announcement on the Treasury’s website.

Guidelines address barriers that have often sidelined short sales by setting limits on the time it takes a bank to approve an offer, freeing borrowers from debt and capping claims of subordinate lenders.

The incentives, first announced in May, expand on the government’s Home Affordable Modification Program, known as HAMP, that has seen limited success in lowering payments for distressed homeowners. The Treasury earlier on Monday stepped up pressure on mortgage companies to make permanent the 650,000 trial modifications they have started.

“While HAMP program guidelines are intended to reach a broad range of at-risk borrowers, it is expected that servicers will encounter situations where they are unable to approve” or offer a modification, the Treasury said in its announcement.

Financial incentives for completing short sales or similar deed-in-lieu transactions — in which the deed is simply transferred to the lender — include a $1,000 payment to servicers, and a maximum of $1,000 to go to investors who sign off on payments to subordinate lien holders, the Treasury said. Borrowers would receive $1,500 in relocation expenses.

Short sales are favored by real estate agents and community groups over foreclosure because they can preserve the borrower’s credit rating and leave the property in better condition than when a homeowner is evicted. While primary lenders typically realize steep losses, their recovery is typically far better than under foreclosure.

But short sales have been frustrating for borrowers and real estate agents, often hung up by negotiations with multiple lien holders and mortgage insurance companies. Real estate agents have complained that sales fall through as lenders bicker over the sales price, what they should receive from the proceeds, and whether the borrower will be held accountable for the debt in the future.

Among requirements, mortgage servicers have 10 days to approve or disapprove a request for short sale, and when done the transaction must fully release the borrower from the debt.

It also prohibits mortgage servicing companies from reducing real estate commissions on the sale, a practice that has dissuaded many agents from taking short sale listings.

In one of the most contentious issues gumming up negotiations between lenders, the guidance caps the aggregate proceeds to subordinate lien holders at $3,000.

Second lien holders in recent months have begun demanding more money from the first lender, seller, buyer or agent in exchange for releasing their claim, agents have said. Because primary lenders would face larger losses in a foreclosure, some subordinate lenders have felt empowered, the agents said.

The largest second-lien holders are Bank of America Corp, Wells Fargo & Co, JPMorgan Chase & Co and Citigroup Inc.

Second lien holders may proceed with a short sale outside of the Treasury program, if they felt the cap was too low, a Treasury official said in October.

“If there was a short sale program that didn’t recognize the second lien holder position, it could have pretty damaging consequences for the industry,” Sanjiv Das, chief executive officer of CitiMortgage, said in an interview last week.

(Editing by Leslie Adler)

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Perhaps Barack Obama’s trip to China this month was not such a flop after all.

Obama was criticized for kowtowing to the Chinese and apparently returning empty-handed, but movement from Beijing last week on Iran’s nuclear program and climate change suggests the U.S. president got further than it seemed at first.

Obama went to China with three major issues on the table — economic relations, climate change and denuclearization — and seems to have made progress on at least two of them.

But analysts said it was unclear exactly how much the U.S. leader had actually influenced the Chinese, or what the long-term impact would be of what was announced last week.

“The Chinese were pressed in a very focused fashion on both of those issues,” said Kenneth Lieberthal, director of the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

“I think their position does reflect, in fact, the impact of the Obama visit and of American diplomacy,” he said.

China offered rare backing on Friday to a vote by the U.N. nuclear watchdog to rebuke Iran for building a uranium enrichment plant in secret, the first such vote against Tehran in almost four years.

China, like Russia, backed the measure, smoothing its 25-3 passage through the International Atomic Energy Agency and departing from an earlier pattern of blocking global attempts to isolate trading partner Iran.

Obama stressed in Beijing that Iran’s nuclear program could disrupt the Middle East and world energy supplies, experts and administration officials said.

The Washington Post reported that U.S. officials had argued that Israel saw Iran’s nuclear ambitions as an existential threat, and implied Israel could one day attack Iran to disrupt those ambitions. That argument helped bring the Chinese on board to take a firmer line on Tehran, it reported.

“Obama pressed very hard with the Chinese,” Lieberthal said. “And they went the right way today.”

On Thursday, Beijing said Premier Wen Jiabao would go to U.N.-led climate talks in Copenhagen next month and offered its first firm carbon intensity target, pledging to cut the amount of carbon dioxide produced for each yuan of national income by 40-45 percent by 2020, compared with 2005 levels.

‘THESE THINGS ARE INCREMENTAL’

Washington gave only a guarded welcome to China’s emissions announcement, saying the world would watch progress by the top greenhouse gas emitter. Observers said measuring and verifying implementation would be central going forward.

Bonnie Glaser, a China expert and senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said China’s 40-45 percent reduction target was disappointing, but it was a good sign that they made an announcement at all. 

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The U.K. inflation rate rose more than economists forecast in October, climbing for the first time in eight months as fuel costs and air fares climbed.

Consumer prices gained 1.5 percent from a year earlier, compared with 1.1 percent the previous month, the Office for National Statistics said today in London. The median forecast in a Bloomberg News survey of 30 economists was 1.4 percent. On the month, prices rose 0.2 percent.

Bank of England policy maker Andrew Sentance said in an interview yesterday that there may be “volatility” in inflation, which risks exceeding the 2 percent target after two years. He said it is still too soon to consider tightening policy after the central bank expanded its bond-purchase plan to 200 billion pounds ($336 billion) to combat deflation.

“This is the first of a period of sharp increases in headline inflation over the next few months,” James Knightley, an economist at ING Financial Markets in London, told Bloomberg Television. “Given the spare capacity in the economy, there’s no real need to tighten monetary policy any time soon. Inflation is likely to move quite sharply lower again through the back end of next year.”

The yield on the two-year government bond slipped 1 basis point to 1.32 percent. The pound fell 0.1 percent to $1.6788 as of 11:36 a.m. in London.

Bond Purchases

Policy makers decided this month to increase their program to buy bonds with newly created money by 25 billion pounds as they left they key interest rate at a record low of 0.5 percent. Bank of England Governor Mervyn King said last week that he has an “open mind” on whether to expand it further installment payday loans.

The inflation rate increased as prices of fuels and lubricants fell less this year than they did in the same month a year earlier, the statistics office said. The cost of second- hand cars increased by a record on the month because of a shortage of stock, while air fares climbed this year compared with a drop in 2008.

EasyJet Plc, Europe’s second-biggest discount airline, said today revenue per seat at constant currency, a proxy for ticket prices, rose 4.1 percent in the year ending Sept. 30 as the recession buoyed demand for low-cost carriers.

The Bank of England published new quarterly growth and inflation forecasts Nov. 11 showing the inflation rate won’t return to the 2 percent target until 2012, though will rise above the goal around the turn of the year as a temporary cut in value-added tax expires.

Inflation Pressure

“In the short term, inflation is likely to be below target, though we’re also likely to see a bit of volatility,” Sentance said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. “As the recovery develops, there will be some upward pressures on inflation.”

By contrast, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said yesterday that inflation “seems likely to remain subdued for some time” as reduced bank lending and a weak labor market restrain the pace of growth. The Fed’s preferred inflation gauge, which excludes food and energy prices, rose 1.3 percent in September from a year earlier, below the 2 percent goal preferred by the majority of Fed policy makers.

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A senior Citigroup Inc executive said the bank is comfortable with its valuation for an asset that one accounting expert expects to be written down.

Citigroup has a roughly $38 billion deferred tax asset, which essentially represents expected cash flow from future tax benefits. Accounting expert Robert Willens said on a conference call late last month that he expects the bank to write the asset down by about $10 billion in the fourth quarter. That would represent about 7 percent of the bank’s net worth as measured by the reported value of the company’s shareholder equity.

Any writedowns would sting Citigroup, which has taken $45 billion of government help in three separate rescue efforts. Taxpayers now hold about a third of the bank.

Speaking at a conference on Wednesday, Citigroup Vice Chairman Ned Kelly said the bank stands by its deferred tax asset valuation.

“We are comfortable with the valuation,” Kelly said, adding that the bank looks at its deferred tax asset at the end of each quarter quick cash advance. About $16 billion of the deferred tax asset must be realized by around 2016, and the rest has a much longer time frame, Kelly added.

Kelly was chief financial officer at Citigroup but stepped down over the summer soon after he was quoted in The Wall Street Journal describing the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp as the bank’s “tertiary regulator.” The newspaper article described how the FDIC was pushing for new leadership at the bank.

On Wednesday, in response to a question about whether U.S. regulators would be as harsh to banks receiving government aid as European regulators have been, Kelly pointed to Citigroup’s successful efforts to reduce its assets and said the bank is working well with the government.

“I think we have a very constructive relationship with all of (our regulators),” Kelly said.

(Reporting by Dan Wilchins; editing by John Wallace)

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Major U.S. auto dealerships see only a grudging recovery in demand in 2011, a cautious outlook at odds with the consensus view that the battered industry could see a double-digit percentage rebound.

“We can feel that there is demand, but it is very cautious demand,” Asbury Automotive Group Chief Executive Officer Charles Oglesby said in an interview on Thursday.

Asbury, which ranks sixth in sales among U.S. dealerships, said it was basing its own planning decisions on the view that 2010 U.S. auto sales would be only flat with the 10.5 million vehicles projected for this year.

“While that may prove to be conservative, we feel that’s the prudent way to run the business,” Asbury Chief Financial Officer Craig Monaghan also told Reuters.

That view echoed the line taken earlier this week by Sonic Automotive. The No. 3 U.S. auto retailer also set its 2010 industry sales forecast at 10.5 million vehicles.

That is sharply lower than most industry forecasts, including those from major auto manufacturers.

CSM Worldwide has forecast industrywide U.S. sales of 11.8 million cars and light trucks for 2010, while J.D. Power is expecting 11.5 million.

Ford Motor Co, the only U.S. automaker to avoid bankruptcy and the most bullish in its projection for a recovery, has forecast sales of more than 12 million.

General Motors Co GM.UL has said it expects sales of about 11.5 million vehicles in the United States next year low fee payday advance.

The gap between the outlook of auto retailers and major manufacturers could be an issue for the industry as dealerships look to restock inventories that plunged to record lows this summer in the wake of the brief boom touched off by the U.S. government’s “Cash for Clunkers” sales incentive program.

Automakers are in the process of setting production plans for next year. If the industry fails to see the stronger growth expected, it could force automakers to discount more heavily, a step that those based in the United States have vowed to avoid.

Both GM and Chrysler went through government-funded bankruptcies this year to slash their operating costs and give them flexibility to run factories at lower volumes.

AutoNation CEO Mike Jackson said he believed the industry’s crisis this year and the changes made under pressure from U.S. officials had killed a failed “push” model in which automakers set output targets without regard to demand.

Jackson expects U.S. auto sales to recover to above 11 million vehicles in 2010, a level that he said was still deeply depressed by historical standards.

He said he was encouraged by “signs of life” in the market for financing near-prime and subprime borrowers and for underwriting vehicle leases. Last year’s credit crisis had shut down those riskier areas of the auto market. 

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