Philadelphia Best

President Barack Obama says his pick to head the Small Business Administration understands what small businesses need and how they can lift up the nation’s economy. Obama is nominating Maria Contreras-Sweet to head the agency. Contreras-Sweet has a history of working with small businesses as the founder of a Latino-owned community bank and a former California cabinet secretary. He says she also understands that a lack of access to capital often means a lack of opportunity for Americans. If confirmed, Contreras-Sweet would become the second Hispanic in Obama’s second-term Cabinet.
Scores of factories in China’s manufacturing heartlands have closed earlier than usual for the country’s biggest annual holiday, due to weak orders and rising costs, workers and owners say, suggesting a rocky outlook for a key sector of the economy. While official trade data remains mildly positive, visits to five factory towns in coastal industrial hubs found that in some areas, perhaps a third of manufacturers had already begun closing weeks before the Lunar New Year break coming in late January. In some cases, anemic orders from key markets such as the United States and Europe were blamed. Other factories were being forced to curtail production because of labor shortages: a symptom of shifting demographics that has afflicted manufacturers for several years–and many say is getting worse.
NYSE Euronext offered on Wednesday to take over the data processor at the center of the massive Nasdaq trading outage last August after Nasdaq OMX Group indicated it would stop running it. NYSE Euronext “would be happy to” run the Nasdaq securities information processor that provides investors with stock quotes and last sale prices, Duncan Niederauer, chief executive of NYSE Euronext, told CNBC on Wednesday. The IntercontinentalExchange Group unit operates its own SIP. Nasdaq recently gave the committee that governs the SIP that provides data for Nasdaq-listed stocks a two-year notice that it will stop running the system, Reuters reported on Tuesday.
A Federal Reserve survey shows economic growth remained healthy in most U.S. regions in late November and December, helped by gains in consumer spending and factory output. The Fed says nine of its 12 banking districts described growth as moderate, up from seven in last month’s report. Two of those districts said growth had accelerated since the previous report. Only two districts — Boston and Philadelphia — said growth was modest, while Kansas City said it “held steady.” And all but Kansas City said manufacturing production grew. PNC’s senior macroeconomist Gus Faucher says 2014 will bring all sorts of good tidings:

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