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South Korean President Lee Myung Bak said a new era in inter-Korean relations was possible if the North begins behaving sincerely, after the nuclear-armed nation accused Lee of

President Barack Obama will nominate Harvard economist Jeremy Stein and Jerome Powell, an investment banker and former Treasury official, to the two empty seats on the Federal Reserve’s policy-setting board of governors.

The White House’s pick of candidates, who have Democratic and Republican credentials respectively, may help speed their nomination through Congress amid a sluggish economic recovery that has failed to put a major dent in the unemployment rate, now at 8.6 percent.

While neither has laid out detailed views on monetary policy, Stein wrote a paper earlier this year suggesting he would back the Fed’s unconventional efforts to keep down long-term borrowing costs, which have been controversial in Washington. The Fed for over three years has adopted an array of radical measures to keep interest rates low and spur recovery.

Stein, who previously worked for the Obama administration as an adviser to the Treasury secretary and a National Economic Council staff member, specializes in stock price behavior, corporate investment and financing decisions, risk management and capital allocation inside firms. He declined to comment on his nomination.

The choice of Powell, who served at the Treasury during President George H. W. Bush’s term in the late 1980s and early 1990s, could be aimed at mollifying Senate Republicans. They blocked Peter Diamond, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist, saying the Nobel prize winner was not qualified for the job and was too sympathetic to government intervention in the economy.

Powell is a lawyer by training and worked at Dillon, Read and Bankers Trust Co. after leaving the senior Bush administration and before joining Carlyle Group. His knowledge of financial markets could help him fill the gap left by Kevin Warsh, a former Morgan Stanley executive who acted as Chairman Ben Bernanke’s point-man for crisis negotiations cash advance america.

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However, Powell’s financial industry background may also be a source of criticism from analysts who already see the U.S. central bank as being too cozy with Wall Street.

Powell is currently a visiting scholar at the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington, focused on federal and state fiscal issues. He was not immediately available to comment. Both Stein and Powell had already been flagged in various press reports as likely nominees.

In response to a deep recession and financial crisis, the Fed slashed interest rates to near zero and sharply expanded its balance sheet to $2.8 trillion to keep the economy afloat. Some analysts worry the Fed’s asset purchases could make it harder for the central bank to tighten monetary policy when it decides the time is right.

If Powell and Stein are confirmed, it would be the first time since April 2006 that all seven seats on the Fed’s board are filled. The term currently filled by Elizabeth Duke, the last remaining George W. Bush appointee on the board, is to expire at the end of January, though governors can choose to stay in office until a successor is confirmed.

Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Johnson, a Democrat, welcomed the most recent nominations.

“With the fragile state of the U.S. economy and a looming European debt crisis, Chairman Johnson believes it is imperative that our financial regulators operate at full strength,” his office said in a statement. “Chairman Johnson is committed to moving these nominations though the Banking Committee in a timely manner and is looking to schedule a hearing soon.”

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Lowe’s is planning to stick by its decision to yank its ads from a reality TV show about American Muslims despite the growing opposition the home improvement chain is facing over the move.

California Sen. Ted Lieu put a statement out on Sunday that he is considering calling for a boycott of Lowe’s Cos., sparking criticism of the chain from both inside and outside of the Muslim community.

On social media web site Twitter, actor Kal Penn is began directing people to a petition on signon.org in support of the TLC cable network show, “All-American Muslim.” By Monday afternoon, there were about 9,200 signatures.

On Monday, U.S. Representative Keith Ellison of Minnesota, who is Muslim, released a statement condemning Lowe’s for choosing “to uphold the beliefs of a fringe hate group and not the creed of The First Amendment.”

And Democratic state Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Detroit, the first Muslim elected to the Michigan Legislature, voiced her concerns directly with the company. She wrote a letter to Lowe’s CEO Robert Niblock.

“I told them I was extremely disappointed that you give credibility to these hate groups,” Tlaib said. “People of Muslim faith are being attacked. It’s disappointing, disheartening.”

Meanwhile, Lowe’s, based in Mooresville, N.C., said it stands by its Sunday statement that it pulled the ads after the show became a “lightning rod for people to voice complaints from a variety of perspectives - political, social and otherwise.” The company also said that “dozens” of other advertisers pulled their advertising from the show.

“All-American Muslim” premiered last month and chronicles the lives of five families who live in and near Dearborn, Mich., a Detroit suburb with a large Muslim and Arab-American population. TLC spokeswoman Laurie Goldberg said “All-American Muslim,” which airs on Mondays on TLC and ends its first season on Jan. 8, has garnered a little over a million viewers per week.

“We stand behind the show All American Muslim and we’re happy the show has strong advertising support,” she said.

Lowe’s stopped running commercials during “All-American Muslim” after a conservative group known as the Florida Family Association e-mailed companies to ask them to stop advertising on the show. The group said the program is “propaganda that riskily hides the Islamic agenda’s clear and present danger to American liberties and traditional values.”

Florida Family Association, based in Tampa, Fla., said that more than 60 advertisers that it e-mailed, from Amazon to McDonalds, have also stopped advertising on the show. But so far, Lowe’s is the only major company to confirm that it pulled ads from the show.

Amazon and McDonald’s and other advertisers did not immediately return calls seeking comment.

Meanwhile, Atlanta-based Home Depot, which was cited by Florida Family Association as a company that stopped advertising, said Monday it never intended to run any ads during the show. But spokesman Stephen Holmes said one commercial ran “inadvertently and without our knowledge.”

The controversy highlights the fine line companies must walk when they select shows to advertise on.

Branding expert Laura Ries said Lowe’s made two mistakes. The first was advertising during a show that could be construed as controversial. The second was pulling advertising too quickly.

“For a big national brand like Lowe’s, they’ve always got to be incredibly careful when advertising during any show that could be deemed controversial,” she said. “Will it seriously damage the brand in the long term? Probably not. But it is a serious punch in the stomach.”

Overall, analysts said the furor is unlikely to damage Lowe’s brand in the long term.

“For a company that generates $50 billion in annual revenue, I don’t view this as something that will have a meaningful impact,” said Morningstar analyst Peter Wahlstrom. “I’m hopeful this blows over and I’m certain management is as well.”

Still, some worry Lowe’s ad flap could do damage to Muslims living in the Metro Detroit area.

Florida pastor Terry Jones held an anti-Islam rally earlier this year outside Dearborn City Hall after being barred from protesting outside a Muslim mosque in the city. A burning of the Quran in March at Jones’ church in Florida led to a series of violent protests in Afghanistan that killed more than a dozen people.

“Metro Detroit and Dearborn have been the focal point of a number of anti-Muslim movements,” said Dawud Walid, executive director of Council on American-Islamic Relations’ Michigan chapter. “There are organized forces in our society that want to marginalize American Muslims to the point where they don’t want to see any portrayals of Muslims that regular Americans can connect to.”

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Corey Williams in Detroit, Rachel Zoll in New York and Mitch Stacy in Tampa, Fla., contributed to this report.

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Asian stock markets fell Tuesday after Standard and Poor’s warned 15 countries using the euro currency that their credit ratings are at risk of a downgrade.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 dropped 0.8 percent to 8,628.73. South Korea’s Kospi dipped 0.7 percent to 1,908.75 and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng lost 1 percent to 18,988.82. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 shed 0.6 percent to 4,293.90. Benchmarks in Singapore, Taiwan and New Zealand also gave up ground.

The S&P announcement came only hours after French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Monday unveiled sweeping plans to change the European Union treaty in an effort to keep tighter checks on overspending nations.

The S&P warning left out only two of 17 countries that use the euro: Cyprus, whose bonds have near-junk status, and Greece, which already has ratings low enough to suggest that it’s likely to default soon anyway. The inclusion on the list of Germany, Europe’s strongest economy, was the biggest surprise.

The Franco-German plan, which would tie the 17 euro nations closer together, would likely also result in heavier financial burdens for Germany and other stronger economies that have already put up billions of euros to rescue Greece, Ireland and Portugal no fax payday loans.

Sarkozy and Merkel discussed several broad changes for the EU treaty, including the introduction of a penalty for any government that allows its deficit to exceed 3 percent of gross domestic product. The penalty would be automatic _ unless a majority of nations opposed it, a loophole that drew sharp criticism from analysts.

Andrew Sullivan, principal sales trader at Piper Jaffray in Hong Kong, said the sanctions were “subject to political control” and in reality represent no change from mechanisms already in existence.

The French-German proposal will be taken up at a summit of EU leaders on Thursday and Friday aimed at fixing a debt crisis so severe that it threatens the viability of the euro currency.

On Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrial average rose 0.7 percent to 12,097.83. The S&P 500 rose 1 percent to 1,257.1. The Nasdaq added 1.1 percent to 2,655.76.

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A new report says a record number of shoppers made purchases online on the Monday after the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, pushing sales up 33 percent.

The report from IBM Benchmark says the average order rose 2.6 percent to $193.24 on the day known as “Cyber Monday,” when retailers amp up online promotions. The data says about 80 percent of retailers offered online deals.

It says traffic peaked at 2:05 p.m. Eastern.

About 6.6 percent used a mobile device to shop, up from 2.3 percent in 2010. The Cyber Monday numbers point to Americans’ growing comfort with using their personal computers, tablets and smartphones to shop.

A clearer picture of how holiday sales are shaping up will come on Thursday, when major retailers report November sales.

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With winter fast approaching, the bailiffs of Budapest are in a race against the clock.

They have only days before temperatures plummet and evictions are frozen by law. Demand for their services is soaring, and in the last seven weeks at least three people in the capital have committed suicide over the prospect of losing their homes.

Ani Beres, a 58-year-old woman whose family farming business went bankrupt, sat on her bed and spoke of hurling herself out of the window as the debt men knocked on the door of her 9th floor apartment this week. Her last line of defense was a throng of angry family members and activists trying to get in their way.

Hungary’s eviction crisis has its roots in 2005, when hundreds of thousands of Hungarian families began taking out mortgages and other loans in foreign currencies _ overwhelmingly in Swiss francs _ to take advantage of lower interest rates and a strong Hungarian forint.

But the Hungarian currency has plummeted over the past two years as the economy, highly dependent on exports, spiraled downward in the global economic crisis.

Today, the currency is falling further as the economy teeters on the verge of recession. Hungary’s credit rating is threatened with downgrade to junk status. Investors are spooked by the government’s unorthodox economic policies. And exports to Western Europe are being buffeted by the eurozone’s own debt crisis.

In a sign of the depth of the currency shock, authorities said Thursday that state security services will investigate possible speculative attacks on the forint after it plunged to an all-time low against the euro this month.

While a Swiss franc was worth 150 forints in 2008, it has now risen to around 250 forints and the Beres family’s 8-million-forint loan ($34,500, euro25,700) has ballooned to at least 12 million forints ($69,000, euro51,400).

The family depends on welfare payments of 48,000 forints ($208, euro155), not enough to live on, much less to repay their loan.

“We get food from the neighbors to survive,” Beres said. “You can ask them!”

A bailiff backed by several police officers had come to evict her family, whose home was bought at auction by real estate investors after she was unable to repay a foreign-currency bank loan.

“We took out the loan to invest in our vegetable-growing business … but we went bankrupt and had to sell everything,” Beres said, as her husband, Laszlo, screamed at the bailiff in the stairwell and had to be restrained from attacking him.

“I’m hopeful we can sort things out. But I’ll do it, I’ll jump out right here in front of everyone!” she said. “How many people need to die in this country until a solution is found?”

Hungary was a favored destination for international investors during the years after the first post-communist elections in 1990. But in the 2008 global recession, it became the first EU country to receive a bailout from the International Monetary Fund to avoid defaulting on its loans.

Last year, Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government decided to forgo IMF support so it could apply its unconventional economic policies, including allowing people to pay back foreign currency loans at exchange rates much lower than current market rates, with banks forced to absorb the difference.

Last week, however, the government announced it would seek a “safety net” from the IMF and the EU but denied that the financial assistance would take the shape of a new loan, thereby giving the IMF undeniable say in Hungary’s economic policy.

Despite Orban’s intention of keeping a “free hand” in economic matters, analysts are skeptical lenders will be so considerate.

“The government would like to preserve its total independence … but it’s unlikely that the IMF would provide money without having some say,” said Zoltan Arokszallasi, a macroeconomic analyst at Erste Bank in Budapest.

A government ban on evictions in place during the first half of the year will return Dec. 1 because of the freezing weather, so the number of forced expulsions has risen greatly during the past weeks as lenders or the new owners attempt to take possession of their properties.

There have been at least three suicides during recent evictions in Budapest.

On Oct. 6, Eva Stiaszni, a 49-year-old subway conductor slammed the door when authorities came to throw her out, sent a farewell text message on her cell phone to her 21-year-old daughter and jumped to her death from her apartment window on the 9th floor of a low-cost housing estate.

“My daughter never asked for my help or anyone else’s,” said her 77-year-old mother, Ica Stiaszni. “How did she end up in a such a state that she was driven to her death?”

At the Beres home _ after much shouting, pleading and threats _ the bailiff agreed to the family’s request for a three-month stay of eviction.

But their problems are far from over.

“We’ve been looking for an emergency home for months and have not found anything,” Beres said. “We have no place to go.”

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Egyptian riot police firing tear gas and rubber bullets stormed into Cairo’s Tahrir Square Saturday to dismantle a protest tent camp, setting off clashes that killed one protester, injured hundreds and raised tension days before the first elections since Hosni Mubarak’s ouster.

The scenes of protesters fighting with black-clad police forces were reminiscent of the 18-day uprising that forced an end to Mubarak’s rule in February. Hundreds of protesters fought back, hurling stones and setting an armored police vehicle ablaze.

The violence raised fears of new unrest surrounding the parliamentary elections that are due to begin on Nov. 28. Public anger has risen over the slow pace of reforms and apparent attempts by Egypt’s ruling generals to retain power over a future civilian government payday advance lenders.

Witnesses said the clashes began when police dismantled a tent camp commemorating the hundreds of protesters killed in the uprising and attacked about 200 demonstrators who had camped in the square overnight in an attempt to restart a long-term sit-in there.

Police fired rubber bullets, tear gas and beat protesters with batons. A 23-year-old protester died from a gunshot, said Health Ministry official Mohammed el-Sherbeni. At least 676 people were injured, he said.

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Stock futures are rising as borrowing costs for Italy and Spain decline, a signal that the European debt crisis might be easing.

Spain and Italy have had to pay high interest rates because bondholders fear that that they will default. Holders of Greek bonds have had to take steep losses.

The Conference Board reports at 10 a.m. on its index of leading economic indicators. Economists expect the index to rise 0.4 percent after September’s 0.2 percent gain.

H payday loans no faxing.J. Heinz Co. slipped in premarket trading after its second-quarter net income fell almost 6 percent.

S&P 500 futures are up 11 points, or 0.9 percent, at 1,225 at 8 a.m. Dow futures are up 84, or 0.7 percent, at 1,823. Nasdaq 100 futures are up 14, or 0.6 percent, at 2,282.

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The International Monetary Fund says China’s banks face growing risks due to a credit boom and it urged Beijing to reduce the government role in lending decisions.

The report Tuesday adds to warnings by industry analysts that China’s banks face a possible rise in bad loans and other problems after a flood of lending helped it rebound quickly from the 2008 global crisis.

The IMF cited possible risks from a fall in soaring real estate prices, a rise in bad loans due to crisis-related lending and growing imbalances in an economy that relies heavily on exports and investment direct payday lenders.

The IMF urged Beijing to move further toward using interest rates instead of direct orders to regulate lending.

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ATHENS—Greece’s prime minister launched efforts to form a coalition government to run the country for the next four months, arguing Saturday the move is vital to securing a mammoth new debt deal and demonstrating commitment to remaining in the eurozone.

George Papandreou won an early morning confidence vote in the Socialist-led parliament on a pledge that he was willing to step aside and form a cross-party caretaker government. But it remains unclear whether the main opposition conservatives and other parties will take part in the talks and drop a demand for an immediate general election.

Hours after winning the vote, Papandreou met with President Karolos Papoulias.

“Cooperation is necessary to guarantee — for Greece and for our partners — that we can honor our commitments,” Papandreou said at the start of Saturday’s hourlong meeting.

“I am concerned that a lack of cooperation could trouble how our partners see our will and desire to remain in the central core of the European Union and the euro,” he said.

Papandreou, midway through his four-year term, was forced into the move by his austerity-weary Socialist party after he abandoned a disastrous proposal to hold a referendum on a new European debt deal. The idea was quickly scrapped this week after throwing world markets into renewed turmoil and drawing an angry reaction from European leaders.

Frustrated with Greece’s protracted political disagreements, the country’s creditors have threatened to withhold the next critical 8 billion euros ($11 billion U.S.) loan installment until the new debt deal is formally approved in Greece.

Greece is surviving on a 110 billion euros ($150 billion U.S.) rescue-loan program from eurozone partners and the International Monetary Fund no fax cash advances. It is currently finalizing a second mammoth deal: to receive an additional 130 billion euros ($179 billion U.S.) in loans and bank support, with banks agreeing to cancel 50 percent of their Greek debt.

“My immediate aim is to do everything I can to create a broad cooperation government … I am not tied to my post,” Papandreou said.

“Cooperation is required for the country. We must not go to elections at this moment because it would have catastrophic consequences for the Greek economy and the livelihoods of Greek citizens,” he said. “The (new debt) agreement is very significant and will relieve much of the burden on the Greek citizen.”

Socialist party officials insisted any new government would need until late February to secure the second deal, warning that a snap poll could scuttle it. They insisted Saturday that Papandreou’s offer to step aside was sincere, and called on Antonis Samaras, leader of the conservative New Democracy party, to urgently reconsider his party’s position.

“If Mr. Samaras were willing to back a new government, the prime minister would resign today,” Yiannis Magriotis, a deputy public works minister, told private Skai television.

Prominent political analyst Ilias Nicolacopoulos argued it would be difficult for Samaras to avoid the coalition talks altogether — even if he remains reluctant to share power with Papandreou.

“There will be a tough game of poker — all of last week was a poker game — to determine what type of government can be formed,” he told AP television.

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