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In a move that has angered Republicans, President Obama on Wednesday announced he’s making a recess appointment of Richard Cordray to be the first director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, sidestepping the Senate confirmation process.

"Today, I’m appointing Richard as America’s consumer watchdog," Obama said in a speech in Ohio, where Cordray served as attorney general. "That means he’ll be in charge of one thing: Looking out for the best interests of American consumers."

Last month, the Senate failed to muster enough votes to take up confirmation of Cordray to run the consumer bureau, with all but one Republican voting against the move. At the time, President Obama hinted that was considering such a recess appointment.

"When Congress refuses to act and as a result hurts our economy and puts people at risk, I have an obligation as president to do what I can without them," Obama said. "I will not stand by while a minority in the Senate puts party ideology ahead of the people they were elected to serve."

With a recess appointment, Cordray can serve through the end of 2013.

News of the impending recess appointment spurred a flurry of angry statements from GOP leaders who have been trying to block a recess appointment for more than seven months.

"President Obama, in an unprecedented move, has arrogantly circumvented the American people by ‘recess’ appointing Richard Cordray as director of the new CFPB," said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in a statement.

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But White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer defended the move in a White House blog post, insisting the Constitution gives the president powers to make temporary recess appointments despite congressional moves.

"Gimmicks do not override the President’s constitutional authority to make appointments to keep the government running," Pfeiffer said.

At stake are vast new powers the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau can’t wield without a director. For example, the bureau can’t regulate financial products from non-banks, including student loan providers, debt collectors, payday lenders and check cashers.

Without a chief, the bureau also can’t regulate mortgage originators and servicers, which played a big role in the financial crisis by providing subprime mortgages to families who couldn’t afford them.

Cordray, who was traveling with the president on Wednesday, told reporters that the first thing on his list was to "begin working to expand our program to non-banks, which is an area we haven’t been able to touch up until now," he said.

The recess appointment has sharpened tension between the White House and Republicans, who have vowed since May to block confirmation of any director unless they get structural changes to the bureau, which was formed as part of the Wall Street reform law passed last year.

The nation’s founders stuck the power to make recess appointments in the Constitution to ensure government could continue to operate, back when Congress didn’t meet year-round. Over the years, presidents of both parties have used recess appointments for political purposes.

Since May, Republicans had been using a little-known procedure to keep the Senate in session — even as it wasn’t really conducting any business — in order to stop the president from making recess appointments. Their basis for the move comes from a non-binding Department of Justice brief from 1993 that states Congress should be in recess for more than three days before the president makes an official recess appointment.

Until now, Obama has not tried to challenge the GOP’s effort to block his recess appointments. However, legal experts have said they believed Obama had the authority to make such a recess appointment despite Congressional attempts to block him.

And Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he supported the move in a statement.

But GOP leaders say they don’t think Obama has the power to make a recess appointment, given their moves. McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, said in a statement that Cordray’s appointment is in "uncertain legal territory."

And House Speaker John Boehner went a step further, saying in a statement thathe expects "courts will find the appointment to be illegitimate."

Republicans say their objection to Cordray’s nomination has nothing to do with the nominee.

Instead, they want three big changes to how the bureau is overseen. They want to replace the director with a board; make the bureau ask Congress for money each year; and gain more power to overrule the bureau. Republicans vowed to block confirmation of any nominee to run the bureau until the president agreed to approve those structural changes to the bureau.

U.S. Chamber of Commerce CEO Thomas J. Donohue denounced the president’s move in a statement.

The new pup watching your money

"To say we are disappointed in the move by the President today would be a gross understatement," Donohue said. "This controversial appointment is unprecedented, constitutionally questionable, and puts the authority of the director and the validity of the bureau’s work in legal jeopardy."

Consumer advocacy groups ranging from Public Citizen to the Consumer Federation of America praised Obama’s move. So did Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard University professor and Democrat running for the Senate in Massachusetts. Warren came up with the original idea for the consumer bureau and was once a leading candidate to run it.

"President Obama’s decision to overrule the big banks and the Senate Republicans who are protecting them gives consumers a strong ally and advocate in Washington," Warren said in a statement.

–CNN’s Adam Aigner-Treworgy contributed to this report.  

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Don’t expect the economic problems dogging Europe to be solved any time soon. Economists sure don’t.

In a survey of 20 top economists by CNNMoney, half said the European economy won’t be back to a sustainable level of growth until 2013. Another seven say recovery won’t come until 2014 or later. Only three believe Europe will be pulling out of its current downturn in the second half of 2012.

Europe is not officially in a recession, but most think it’s unavoidable. Even Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank, conceded as much in early November.

The downturn in Europe poses risks to the U.S. economy. In the survey, 11 economists worried Europe’s troubles could choke off credit needed by businesses and consumers.

Another four economists worried about U.S. exposure to European bank losses if some countries default on debt. Only a couple cited the loss of exports to Europe as the most serious problem for the U.S. economy.

When it comes to solutions, there is far less agreement among the economists.

Six of the economists advocate setting up the ECB as the lender of last resort to troubled governments — a step Draghi says is outside of the ECB’s current mandate.

"Making the ECB a lender of last resort is the most important near-term step," said Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics. "Other steps are necessary to address the crisis longer-run."

Other economists would prefer to take those other steps first. Five want additional steps to set a common fiscal policy across the eurozone beyond the measures agreed to by European leaders in early December. Details of that pact won’t be hammered out until March.

Three of the economists advocate the more extreme step of working on way to break-up the eurozone without a meltdown in financial markets.

"They need an orderly, planned reorganization with fewer countries, and new governance with a central fiscal arm," said Allen Sinai of Decision Economics. 

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U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron pledged more action to deal with

New claims for unemployment benefits rose more than expected last week, a government report showed on Thursday, but the underlying trend continued to point to improving labor market conditions.

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits increased 15,000 to a seasonally adjusted 381,000, the Labor Department said. The prior week’s claims data was revised up to 366,000 from the previously reported 364,000.

Economists polled by Reuters had forecast claims rising to 375,000. A Labor Department official said that because of a public holiday on Monday, claims from seven states - including California and Virginia - had been estimated.

The four-week moving average - a better measure of trends - fell 5,750 to 375,000, the lowest level since June 2008.

“We’ve seen a pretty strong trend in claims recently. This finally shows they’re correcting to a sustainable downtrend,” said Gennadiy Goldberg, interest-rate strategist at 4CAST in New York.

U.S. stock index futures added modestly to gains, while prices for government debt were little changed. The dollar was up against the euro.

While the rise in initial claims last week interrupted three straight weeks of declines, the healing in the jobs market remains intact.

Claims remain below the 400,000 mark that is normally associated with an improvement in labor market conditions.

The better tone should feed into consumer spending, which slowed significantly in November, and support economic growth.

Already, firming employment — marked by a drop in the jobless rate to a 2-1/2 year low of 8.6 percent in November — is helping to buoy consumer confidence.

While much of the global economy is slowing and the debt crisis in Europe is expected to push the region into a mild recession next year, output in the United States has held up relatively well.

Fourth-quarter growth is expected to top a 3.0 percent annual pace, quickening from the July-September period’s 1.8 percent rate. The economy’s resilience, however, could be tested next year if the euro zone situation worsens.

The claims data showed the number of people still receiving benefits under regular state programs after an initial week of aid rose 34,000 to 3.60 million in the week ended December 17.

Economists had forecast so-called continuing claims rising to 3.56 million from a previously reported 3.55 million.

The number of Americans on emergency unemployment benefits fell 15,022 to 2.93 million in the week ended December 10, the latest week for which data is available.

A total of 7.23 million people were claiming unemployment benefits during that period under all programs, up 79,385 from the prior week.

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Facial recognition is a complex and controversial tool that can now be yours for the low, low price of free.

Face.com is an Israeli startup founded in 2008 that provides websites and mobile apps with code to implement face detection or recognition. The code has been used more than 35,000 times since the company released it into the wild in May 2010, and Face.com’s tools have recognized or detected 35 billion faces.

You can find Face.com’s technology running on hundreds of sites and apps, ranging from fun toys like CelebrityFindr, which scours Facebook and Twitter for photos of celebrities, to practical tools like Fareclock, which tracks when employees punch in and out by scanning their faces. The company keeps a running tab on its blog about who’s using its technology.

The code is given out for free and can be used without payment so long as the site or app comes in under a certain number of daily uses. The company doesn’t disclose the exact number, but CEO Gil Hirsch said he made that threshold purposefully very high to make the technology accessible to the masses.

Only "tens" of customers are paying Face.com for the service, Hirsch said, and those paying sites and apps are doing recognition on millions of photos each day. Still, from just those handful of paying customers, Hirsch the company is taking in "good money."

Like most startups in their early stages, Face.com is more focused on scale than sales. It wants to fine-turn its technology and make it ubiquitous.

To do that, Face.com’s team of 10 works with clients to tailor its software to each customer’s specific use cases.

For instance, Coca-Cola (, Fortune 500) worked with Face.com this year on its annual Summer Love festival in Israel to allow registered, opted-in participants to "like" the event on Facebook simply by going up to a kiosk that scanned their faces.

Face.com also recently worked with an eyeglasses merchant on a special implementation of its face detection technology. The company wanted customers to be able to see how different pairs of glasses would look on their faces, and it so happened that Face.com was working on a technology that would allow clients to do that. Face.com quickly finalized the code and brought it to market faster than it had planned.

"We’re in this space to remove friction," Hirsch said.

Your face is being tracked

Face.com got started on that premise. Hirsch hated how arduous the process of manually tagging friends in Facebook was, and he and three friends worked on a solution that eventually became Photo Tagger, a Facebook application that debuted in July 2009 payday loans.

Photo Tagger finds friends’ faces in photos and automatically suggests nametags for them — a solution that Facebook adopted in its Photo Tag Suggest feature in late 2010. Face.com declined to comment on reports that its technology powers Facebook’s feature.

After the release of Photo Tagger, demand for Face.com’s technology skyrocketed. The company realized it was sitting on something big, and it decided to open up its service.

But putting face recognition tools into the hands of the public potentially means giving that technology to bad actors.

Hirsch said the company has a key safeguard in place: Face.com built its technology so that it can’t scan faces across the entire Internet. It can only find faces that are connected within a closed network, such as a Facebook friends list, a dating site, or an office network. That means someone you don’t know or haven’t given permission to view your photo can’t use Face.com’s recognition software to identify your face.

If a company were to use the technology maliciously, Hirsch said Face.com can just flip a switch and shut that site down — a last resort that the company has only used once.

"We’re an anti-stalking company," Hirsch said. "The bad use cases of this, to us, are a nightmare."

Ads that analyze and target you personally

Face.com is playing in one of the Internet’s hottest technology spaces: Google (, Fortune 500) bought face recognition tool PittPatt this summer and recently launched its own "find my face" tool, and Apple (, Fortune 500) last year snapped up a startup called Polar Rose, whose technology made its way into Apple’s iOS 5 software.

Hirsch said his company has fielded a few takeover offers, but he’s in no rush to sell.

"We think the potential is much bigger," he said. "We’re just warming up."

He’s not saying never, though. Hirsch’s first job was at Xacct Technologies, which sold software that helped telecommunications companies bill their customers based on the amount of minutes and texts customers used on the network. It was a hot company that fizzled out with most other technology stocks in 2001. In 2004 it sold for $30 million — about a tenth of what it was once valued at.

"I learned some things after I went through the dot-com bust," Hirsch said. "I learned that if you get a good offer, take it." 

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Tentative economic reforms in North Korea may languish as its next leader focuses on consolidating support in the wake of Kim Jong Il’s death, experts said.

North Koreans are turning inward as they observe an 11-day mourning period following Kim’s death Saturday, with business and commerce largely at a standstill, according to reports from Pyongyang. The transition to a new era of leadership under son and successor Kim Jong Un could last longer if he extends his official period of mourning as his father did when his father, North Korea founder Kim Il Sung, died in 1994.

North Korea has inched toward reform in recent years, particularly since making the economy a priority in 2009 as part of a goal to build a “great and prosperous nation” befitting the April 2012 centenary of Kim Il Sung’s birth.

One sign of a shift in economic policy came in 2008 with a surprising decision to allow 3G cellphones in a deal with Egyptian telecoms company Orascom, which claims 809,000 subscribers in North Korea.

In other positive signs, a Chinese state-run company, Shangdi Guanqun Investment Co., agreed to invest $2 billion in building infrastructure, power plants and oil refining facilities in the Rason Free Trade Zone, near the border with China and Russia. China and the North also agreed to jointly develop Hwanggumphyong, an island along their border, into a tourism, logistics and manufacturing center.

If not derailed by Kim’s death, a proposed gas pipeline between Russia and the Korean peninsula would help form the basis for significant infrastructure development, says Kenneth S. Courtis, a former Goldman Sachs vice chairman who visited Pyongyang in May to assess business opportunities for clients of his private investment company.

The project, to pipe natural gas from Siberia to South Korea via the North, had stalled over the nuclear issue but regained momentum earlier this year, with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev reportedly saying, following a visit by Kim Jong Il, that the North would agree to a deal in exchange for receiving $100 million a year in transit fees.

“Around this pipeline, North Korea could start to rebuild its industrial base, and chemical and particularly fertilizer plants,” said Courtis. He said he found North Korean officials “seem to want to engage.”

However, experts said the situation in the North, always unpredictable, has grown even more uncertain with Kim Jong Il’s sudden death.

His son, who is in his 20s, emerged as his father’s choice as successor only 15 months ago.

The leadership may want to continue or accelerate reforms started by Kim Jong Il but progress could be delayed, said Cai Jian, a deputy director of Korea Research Center under the Institute of International Studies in Fudan University.

Kim Jong Il observed a three-year period of mourning after his father died before formally taking control.

“It will be difficult for North Korea to focus on the economy in the short term, as they are in the midst of a transition. It will be almost impossible to have many dealings with other countries for at least several months,” said Cai.

Kim’s death came as the government was seeking to attract more foreign investment from China, Europe, Southeast Asia and the Middle East.

North Korea has struggled with decades of economic mismanagement, outdated farming methods and little arable land. Its determination to keep developing its nuclear and missile programs has also meant a loss of foreign aid from the West, South Korea and Japan, as well as strengthened sanctions fast cash advance.

Its per capita gross domestic product is $1,800, according to the U.S. State Department, compared with $4,400 in China and about $23,000 in democratic, capitalist South Korea _ though the two Koreas were on a par for two decades after their 1950-53 war.

For years, North Korea’s industries and other infrastructure were “nearly beyond repair,” according to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. Its latest report notes that less than 3 percent of its roads are paved and less than half its airfields have sealed landing strips.

The food crisis has deepened following several seasons of harsh weather, with a quarter of the 24 million North Koreans needing outside food aid, the U.N. said. The World Food Program called for help feeding the most vulnerable populations, saying malnutrition is surging, especially among children.

China, the North’s longtime ally and biggest source of food and fuel assistance, has often helped to water down or deflect sanctions, and its support remains vital for Pyongyang.

China has shown strong interest in gaining access to North Korea’s abundant mineral wealth, including the huge Musan iron ore mine. Trade through North Korea’s ports could help spur growth in China’s landlocked northeastern region.

North Korea’s main international investment entity, the Taepung International Investment Group, is led by a Chinese-born ethnic Korean, and Chinese companies often act as agents for European and other foreign investors in North Korea.

But while Kim Jong Il visited China several times to observe its economic transformation, during most of his rule he was suspicious that changes would bring ideological challenges, said Nicholas Eberstadt, an expert at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C.

Special economic zones along the country’s borders with Russia and China languished for 20 years before the most recent initiatives.

The North seized South Korean assets at Mount Kumgang after the South Korean government suspended a joint tourism project after a tourist was shot to death while wandering into a restricted military area in 2008.

Reforms have sometimes backpedalled: After allowing some markets in 2002, permitting farmers to trade produce to help bridge food shortages, the authorities recentralized those controls before again easing them.

A revamp of the country’s currency, the won, to curb inflation and reassert the government’s hold on the economy effectively confiscated the savings of many North Koreans, who faced limits on the amount of old North Korean currency they could exchange for new bills.

Such arbitrary changes in rules add to the risks of investing.

“The first thing to watch for is if North Korea decides it is not ‘treasonous’ for foreigners to make money and take it out of the country. The first decision has to be made to let foreigners make money,” said Eberstadt.

He does not rule out a possible major shift in policy if the leadership deems the transition a dangerous period calling for drastic measures.

“Before Kim Jong Il died there had been signs of a departure from previous standard operating procedures,” he said. “The problem with a closed society is you never know what’s happening from outside until afterward.”

___

Researcher Fu Ting contributed to this report.

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First Uranium Corp. says it may have to trim 1,850 jobs at its Ezulwini mine in South Africa

The chief executive of a company trying to build a pipeline to carry oil through six states from Canada to Texas said the national debate over the plan has “gone off on tangents” that touch on larger issues of U.S. energy and environmental policies.

TransCanada CEO Russ Girling said the proposed 1,700-mile Keystone XL pipeline has become mired in debates over topics ranging from global warming to U.S. presidential politics. The U.S. State Department delayed the $7 billion project last month largely because of concerns about its route, particularly though environmentally sensitive areas in Nebraska.

“It’s mushroomed into this debate about all these social issues, which I don’t deny we have to address,” Girling said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press from his office in Calgary.

“We’re obviously in a migration from fossil fuels to alternative energy, which is why we’ve invested in the largest wind farm in Canada and one of the largest wind farms in Maine,” he said, referring to a 132-megawatt wind farm in Maine with the capacity to serve about 50,000 homes and two similar projects in Canada. “But it’s not going to occur tomorrow. It’s going to take decades.”

Environmental groups have argued that tapping the vast tar sands in Alberta would lead to a vast increase in the burning of carbon-intensive fossil fuels at a time when it should be trying to reduce the release of gases that contribute to global warming.

“The one thing that has nagged me is how this debate has gone off on tangents,” Girling said. “Those aren’t the questions that need to be asked here. We should be asking, `Is the United States going to need fossil fuels for decades to come? Do you want to get it from Venezuela?’”

Members of Congress, especially Republicans, and GOP presidential candidates have criticized President Barack Obama for his administration’s decision to delay the project for a year. They argue that the pipeline would produce thousands of jobs and lessen the nation’s dependence on oil produced in nations that are often hostile to the United States.

Some also accused of Obama of intentionally delaying the project until after the 2012 elections.

The pipeline would pass through Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas.

Officials in most states support the project, but the pipeline ran into intense opposition in Nebraska from environmentalists, landowners, lawmakers and others who were worried because the pipeline would cross the Sandhills region. The expanse of sandy-soil hills sits atop the massive Ogallala aquifer, a major irrigation water source that sits beneath parts of eight states.

Girling predicted that resistance to the Keystone XL would ease once Nebraska approves a new route that avoids the Sandhills region, but he said some opponents would never be satisfied.

“Our intent is to work on alleviating those issues that were of primary concern to Nebraskans,” Girling said. “I do believe the opposition could dissipate. That said, there are going to be those opposed to the burning of fossil fuels who will continue to oppose the project on that basis instant payday loan. I would hope that opposition would dissipate as well, but I’m not hopeful.”

Nebraska lawmakers convened for a special session that Republican Gov. Dave Heineman called last month to address pipeline issues. Two laws were approved to provide greater state oversight of major oil pipelines, including the Keystone XL. TransCanada agreed to move the route away from the Sandhills and submit to a state environmental review.

Some environmental advocates remain skeptical.

Jane Kleeb, director of the anti-pipeline group Bold Nebraska, said research hasn’t shown the effects of the tar sands oil on land, water or human health if a pipeline were to leak. Kleeb noted that the state hasn’t enacted laws to shield landowners from oil-spill liability or dealt with the prospect of eminent domain if they oppose a company’s offer to buy land for a project.

“Our concerns have not been addressed, and the opposition is not going away,” Kleeb said. “We do not know the proposed route. We have no idea if the pipeline will cross the heart of the Ogallala aquifer, or areas where the pipe sits in the water table.”

Kleeb and others also have noted there is no guarantee that the oil extracted in Canada and refined in Texas would remain in the U.S.

Girling said companies expected to send oil through the line have no intention to deliver to anywhere but refineries in Texas. Some oil may go abroad once it’s refined, he said, but the U.S. remains a net importer and will trade on global markets whether the pipeline wins approval or not.

He said TransCanada has started talking with the State Department and the Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality about a new route. The review process is expected to last six to nine months.

Alex Pourbaix, TransCanada’s president of pipelines, told a congressional panel this month that the U.S. produces 5 million barrels of oil each day and consumes 20 million gallons a day of refined oil.

“The U.S. is by far the largest consumer of refined products on the planet,” he said. “It is natural that the vast majority of this product will stay in the region with the highest demand.”

Girling acknowledged that after last year’s oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico and Michigan’s Kalamazoo River, the public has grown distrustful of companies that produce and transport oil. He said TransCanada and the entire industry need to improve communication with the public.

Project opponents have “created this perception that we were going to poison drinking and irrigation water,” he said. “We would still say that’s inaccurate, but water is a very sensitive issue for some people. If someone said to me that this was going to be contaminating my water, I’d be concerned as well.”

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The Italian government faces a confidence vote over a package of austerity measures while a transport strike to protest the cuts is causing havoc for commuters across the country.

Premier Mario Monti is putting his package of new and higher taxes and pension reforms to a confidence vote in the lower Chamber of Deputies to speed up its passage.

The vote, which is expected by early evening Friday, will likely clear the measures, paving the way for final approval in the Senate within days.

The main political parties have said they would back the package despite disagreeing on some measures.

Monti says austerity is needed to save Italy from financial disaster, but unions are furious. Public transport workers idled buses and subways Friday. State railways were also on strike.

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