(Gold is the August contract on the NY Mercantile Exchange. Silver, copper and oil are the September contracts.)

NEW YORK - Wall Street ended modestly lower on Wednesday as the market consolidated recent gains, largely shrugging off a plunge in Chinese shares and weaker-than-expected data from the US factory sector. The Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 26 points, 0.29 per cent, to 9070.72. The Nasdaq composite dipped 7.75 points, 0.39 per cent, to 1967.76 and the broad-market Standard & Poor’s 500 drifted down 4.47 points, or 0.46 per cent, to a close of 975.15.

LONDON - European stock markets, resisting a slide on Wall Street, advanced, drawing strength from corporate earnings results. The London FTSE 100 index gained 18.69, or 0.41 per cent, to close at 4547.53 points.

FRANKFURT - Pharmaceutical group Bayer surged 5.44 per cent to 42.23 euros after reporting results that beat expectations. Despite a third

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(Gold is the August contract on the NY Mercantile Exchange. Silver, copper and oil are the September contracts.)

NEW YORK - US stocks finished narrowly mixed on Tuesday as the market’s strong momentum from a hefty two-week rally helped overcome an early wave of profit-taking. Markets reacted to a weaker-than-expected survey on consumer confidence that was mitigated by positive news from the housing sector and generally strong corporate news. The Dow Jones Industrial Average drifted down 11.79 points, or 0.13 per cent, to settle at 9096.72, retreating modestly from a two-week surge of nearly 12 per cent. The Nasdaq composite meanwhile rose 7.62 points, 0.39 per cent, to 1975.51 in a late recovery, while the broad-market Standard & Poor’s 500 index dipped 2.56 points, 0.26 per cent, to settle at 979.62.

LONDON - European stock markets closed with losses, with sentiment dented by profit-taking and a disappointing reading

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MORNING MARKET REPORT

Gold is the August contract on the NY Mercantile Exchange. Silver, copper and oil are the September contracts.)

NEW YORK - Wall Street shares drifted to a mostly higher close on Friday as investors mulled disappointing earnings reports. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 23.95 points, 0.26 per cent, to finish at 9093.24. The technology-heavy Nasdaq composite dropped 7.64 points, or 0.39 per cent, to 1965.96, snapping a 12-session winning streak. The broad-market Standard & Poor’s 500 index added 2.97 points, or 0.3 per cent, to close at 979.26.

LONDON - European stock exchanges closed narrowly mixed on Friday as a near two-week rally ran into profit-taking ahead of the weekend. In London, the FTSE 100 index of leading shares was up 16.81 points, or 0.4 per cent, at 4576.61 points.

FRANKFURT - The Dax fell 17.92 points, or 0.34 per cent,

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It’s Auckland Anniversary day in Auckland and I’m working, like many others in and around Auckland. That’s because our businesses service a national market and we simply can’t ignore the fact that the rest of the country is working today.

I’m sure the same thing happened last Monday to people in Wellington.

This is just plain nuts. We should be bringing together all of these itsy, bitsy little provincial holidays into one national day so we can all have a day off. It would no doubt significantly improve productivity on all these itsy, bitsy days and ensure we all still get a day off.

We could call it National Provincial Day Off. After all, does anyone really care or know why today is Auckland Anniversary Day and last Monday was Wellington Anniversary Day?

I’d love your ideas on what this day could be called.

Here’s 10 of my suggestions to get things cracking.

Go To Your

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I’m writing this from a hotel room in Santa Monica in California. I’m on holiday here with my lovely wife Lynn and our two equally gorgeous daughters, Eilish and Maddie, and am about to embark on an RV trip across America to Orlando in Florida.

Lynn will attend a conference on digital scrapbooking at Disneyland in Orlando in a fortnight if we make it. I’ll tell her story about how she came to be a digital design exporter (earning a lot more than me…) in this blog at a later date.  Suffice to say, this trip will more than pay for itself in US dollar earnings.

I’ll try to blog about the trip and what I learn from an economic and business point of view as often as I can. It should turn out a lot easier to do than in New Zealand. Free cable broadband or WiFi access

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EDF Scooping Constellation; Research in Motion Posts Tough 3Q; Legg Mason’s Miller Calls Market Bottom; Cyber Monday Sales Strong; Crude Stocks Drop; New Zealand Fights Recession

The world’s biggest nuclear utility company, Electricité de France SA will offer as much as $6.5 billion for assets of Constellation Energy Group, Inc (CEG), source familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal. A previous offer by EDF was turned down, with Constellation opting for a $4.7 billion bid from Warren Buffett’s MidAmerican unit of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK.A,BRK.B). Research In Motion Ltd.’s (RIMM) third-quarter subscriptions and profit fell short of forecasts, as it simultaneously faces increased competition and recession in its largest market. Profit for the Blackberry maker rose no more than 83 cents a share in the quarter ended Nov. ...

This wonderful mashup of polling booth results in Wellington and Google maps by the wellingtonista and some excellent statistics released today by the State Services Commission on staff numbers and salaries make for some interesting reading.Have a good look through these statistics. They show a few things.

First, this report should have been publicised last Friday, not a week after the election.

Second, it shows the Labour-led government’s line that public servant numbers were increasing at the coal face rather than in the office blocks of Wellington was simply wrong.

Numbers at the front line in the core public service, which includes social, health and education workers and contact centre workers, actually fell by 29 to 10,034 in the last year, while numbers of administrative, policy advice, HR, legal, managerial and support staff rose 1628 to 35,900.

So it’s not too surprising which way those

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I love Wellington. Really, I do. It’s where I met my lovely wife and where I’d live if I had a pure, unimpeded choice. Great people. Amazing landscape. Compact city. Great arts. Wonderful cafes such as my favourite, Midnight Espresso on Cuba St. It’s got it all. In fact, it’s got too much.

Wellington has become utterly dominated and powered by the most rapacious government in the history of New Zealand. This is not something I’m saying lightly or for the first time, although this is the most direct I’ve been.

Wellington has become a living, wheezing symbol of an economy where an all-consuming government is gobbling up resources and dragging down productivity in such a way as to transfer wealth and income from private employees and businesses to government employees while kneecapping economic growth.

This current government is eating the economy and it needs to be stopped

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I argued for bank deposit insurance scheme bank in March and at the beginning of last week. But I’m beginning to wish I hadn’t encouraged the politicians to get busy because this deposit guarantee scheme dumped on us is an unholy and dangerous mess.

I realise things had to be done in a hurry because Australia was about to announce its own deposit guarantee scheme and all hell was breaking loose on global markets, but the scheme proposed by Prime Minister Helen Clark in her re-election campaign launch on Sunday is a dogs breakfast. It  must be cleaned up before it putrifies into something so ugly and painful it could:

* Kill the stock market stone dead.

* Trigger a massive shift of cash from managed equity funds and corporate bonds to banks.

* Unleash a new generation of toxic finance companies.

* Vastly increase the cost of government borrowing.

* Mean deposit rates are all the same, or to be regulated to the same level, regardless of

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Headquartered in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, Granite City Food & Brewery Ltd. is an upscale, modern, and casual restaurant chain. Trading on the NASDAQ Global Market, the Company features affordable, high quality, family favorite menu items. In addition to food, they also have their own on-site brewery in each location. Founded in 1997, Granite City has a current market capitalization of $8.10 million.

The Company opened their first restaurant in St. Cloud, Minnesota in 1999. From there, they proceeded to open their next restaurant in Sioux Falls, South Dakota in December of 2000. Next in line was their Fargo, North Dakota location, which opened in November of 2001. Today, Granite City Food & Brewery Ltd. operates 25 restaurants in eleven Midwestern states.

The Company’s focus is on made-from-scratch recipes, which they serve to their patrons in generous portions. They also serve handcrafted beers in the moderate price point range. They produce unique

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