China shifts gears from inflation to growth

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Taming rapidly rising prices is so 2011.
In the new year ahead, China's top leaders will focus instead on slowly revving up the world's second largest economy.
At least, that's the message economists glean from reading in between the lines of an official government release Wednesday. Chinese leaders met behind closed doors for three days this week, to hash out their economic strategy for 2012 at their Central Economic Work Conference.

The end result was a lengthy concluding statement, diagnosing the outlook for the world economy as "extremely grim and complicated" and focusing a lot more on stabilizing China's growth, rather than last year's number one priority: curbing inflation.

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Indonesia - Unexpectedly Cuts Benchmark Interest Rate to Bolster Expansion

Indonesia’s central bank unexpectedly cut its benchmark interest rate for the first time in more than two years to spur growth as the global recovery weakens and inflation slows.

Bank Indonesia lowered the reference rate by a quarter of a percentage point to 6.5 percent, Governor Darmin Nasution said in Jakarta today. All of the 15 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News expected no change.

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Bank Capital Levels

European governments have discussed setting a deadline for banks to boost their capital, the German newspaper Die Welt said, citing an unidentified person involved in the talks.
Under the plan, governments would force banks to accept public funds to increase their capital once the deadline had passed, the newspaper said. European Union countries would have to act jointly for the plan to work, the newspaper reported.

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Jobless claims rise less than expected

More Americans filed for unemployment benefits in the latest week, but less than economists expected, raising some hopes for the nation's labor market.

The Labor Department reported that jobless claims rose by 6,000 in the week ended Oct. 1 to 401,000 from a revised 395,000 the previous week. Economists polled by Reuters had expected claims to jump to 410,000.

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European crisis could hurt US economy

'A severe crisis in Europe could cause significant damage by undermining confidence'
The Obama administration is urging European leaders to deal more forcefully with a debt crisis that could significantly damage the U.S. and global economy.

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