http://finreporter.com Hot finance and business news. Sat, 13 Mar 2010 03:27:21 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Latvian elections this autumn threaten to hamper government efforts to push through austerity measures vital to its international bailout, burdening the country’s credit rating, Fitch Ratings said. A parliamentary election scheduled for October “weighs on the rating, the uncertainty that comes with the election, and I think ... http://finreporter.com/latvia-elections-likely-to-%e2%80%98weigh-on%e2%80%99-credit-rating-fitch-says/ Icelanders rejected by a massive majority a bill that would saddle each citizen with $16,400 of debt in protest at U.K. and Dutch demands that they cover losses triggered by the failure of a private bank. Ninety-three percent voted against the so-called Icesave bill, according to preliminary ... http://finreporter.com/iceland-rejects-icesave-depositors-bill-in-referendum/ American Railcar Industries saw its fourth-quarter profit rise 39 percent but booked less than half the revenue it saw in the prior year’s quarter as railcar shipments fell. For the quarter ended Dec. 31, the company reported net earnings of $10.5 million, up from nearly $7.8 million in the ... http://finreporter.com/american-railcar-q4-profit-rises-39/ Indonesia’s inflation held near the fastest pace since May 2009 amid rising commodity and food prices, putting pressure on the central bank to raise interest rates this year. The consumer price index rose 3.81 percent in February from a year earlier, the central statistics agency said in ... http://finreporter.com/indonesia-inflation-rate-holds-near-highest-since-may/ Despite lower revenue due to sharply lower commodity prices and power generation nationwide, Calpine Corp. on Thursday said it had reduced its losses in the fourth quarter of 2009 compared to the year-earlier period. Houston-based Calpine (NYSE: CPN) reported a net loss of $43 million, or 9 cents a ... http://finreporter.com/calpine-narrows-4q-loss/ President Obama issued an executive order on Thursday that formally creates a bipartisan fiscal commission, a first step to forcing painful decisions needed to get the U.S. debt load under control.Raising taxes, cutting spending and reforming Medicare and Social Security are all fair game, and thought to be ... http://finreporter.com/president-orders-debt-panel-names-chairmen/ WordPress.com, the fast growing hosting service for millions of blogs, including TechCrunch and GigaOm, crashed briefly Thursday afternoon. "WordPress.com will be back in a minute!" is the message that appeared shortly before 3 p.m. on some portion of the websites using the San Francisco blogging platform, which serves millions ... http://finreporter.com/wordpresscom-crashes-downs-major-blogs/ First, the good news: Foreclosure filings dropped nearly 10% between December and January. That's a total of 315,716 notices compared to 349,519 in December, according to RealtyTrac, which issues a monthly report on foreclosure activity.Now, the bad news: Filings rose 15% compared to a year ago, and the ... http://finreporter.com/foreclosures-drop-in-january-but-dont-get-excited/ January was a tough month for St. Louis-area casinos, as the recession and cold weather teamed up to tamp down business. Gambling revenue at the region's six casinos fell by 4 percent in the month compared to last year, according to figures out Wednesday from Missouri and Illinois ... http://finreporter.com/revenue-drops-at-all-local-casinos-except-the-beleaguered-president/ WASHINGTON — If the Democratic Party has an stronghold on Wall Street, it is JPMorgan Chase. Its chief executive, Jamie Dimon, is a friend of President Barack Obama’s from Chicago, a frequent White House guest and a big Democratic donor. Its vice chairman, William M. Daley, a ... http://finreporter.com/irked-wall-street-hedges-bet-on-dems/