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Asian stock markets were mostly lower Thursday, hindered by falling commodity prices and worries about the extent of China’s economic slowdown.

But Japan’s Nikkei 225 index rose for a third straight day, basking in the ongoing retreat of the yen from record highs against the U.S. dollar. The Nikkei was 0.4 percent higher to 10,091.19.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng slipped 0.1 percent to 21,288.23 and South Korea’s Kospi shed 0.2 percent to 2,040.86. Benchmarks in mainland China fell while Indonesia and New Zealand rose.

Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 was down 0.4 percent at 4,270.80. Mining and resource-related shares that depend on Chinese demand were hurt after Premier Wen Jiabao said Wednesday that controls to cool surging housing prices would remain in place.

BHP Billiton, the world’s largest mining company, fell 1.7 percent. Newcrest Mining Ltd. plummeted 3.8 percent.

“Investors’ focus shifted to China growth concerns, after Premier Wen made some fairly negative comments about the property market,” said Stan Shamu, market analyst at IG Markets in Melbourne, Australia. “This is likely to see recent government curbs on property speculation stay in place payday loans for bad credit.”

In the U.S., markets are expecting a “very subdued number” when industrial production figures for February are released later in the week, analysts at DBS Bank Ltd. in Singapore wrote in an email. Production is “growing but not rapidly and it’s not accelerating.”

On Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrial average rose 0.1 percent to 13,194.10. The Standard & Poor’s 500 fell 0.1 percent to 1,394.28. The Nasdaq composite index rose 0.03 percent to 3,040.73.

Benchmark oil for April delivery was up 32 cents to $105.75 in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract fell $1.28 to settle at $105.43 per barrel in New York on Wednesday.

In currencies, the euro rose to $1.3027 from $1.3024 late Wednesday in New York. The dollar rose to 84.05 from 83.72 yen. The Japanese currency has been weakening against the dollar ever since the Bank of Japan increased its economic stimulus program in February.

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European Central Bank council member Jens Weidmann said policy makers are already discussing ways to withdraw some of the emergency cash they injected into the banking system to fight the sovereign debt crisis.

Australia recorded a trade deficit in January, its first in 11 months, on weaker exports of gold, iron ore and coal. The local currency declined.

Imports outpaced exports by A$673 million ($715 million), from a revised A$1.33 billion surplus in December, the Bureau of Statistics said in a report in Sydney today. The median estimate in a Bloomberg News survey of 24 economists was for a surplus of A$1.5 billion.

The data add to pressure on central bank Governor Glenn Stevens to end a two-month pause in interest-rate cuts after the economy slowed last quarter and payrolls fell in February. The currency has strengthened this year on a A$456 billion pipeline of resource projects driven by companies such as BHP Billiton Ltd. (BHP) even as concern remains that Europe

Dutch Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders said the Netherlands, the euro area

Last year, Jane Kuhl and her husband qualified for a state-run program that promised a 50 percent rebate to homeowners installing energy-saving insulation.

The couple spent more than $6,700 plugging holes and insulating their Harford County farmhouse, which was originally built in the late 1800s. For their work, they received a 35 percent rebate from the state, along with a 15 percent rebate from their utility. Happy at first, they were later surprised and disappointed to find out that they owe income taxes on the $2,461 received from the state.

“This is the first time I have heard of a rebate being taxable,” says Kuhl, 55, a retiree. “I have been getting rebates all my life, but no one has ever taxed it.”

Welcome to the confusing and quirky world of rebates and taxes. Some rebates are taxable; others aren’t.

And which is which is not always crystal clear — which can trigger some ugly surprises. Some Citi customers, for example, were shocked recently to discover that the frequent flyer miles they received for opening an account are taxable.

Basically, federal law says all income is taxable unless there’s an exemption, explains Wally Eddleman, deputy director of the office of Maryland comptroller.

And rebates have quite a few exemptions, which is why many of us don’t think of them as taxable.

A rebate isn’t taxable if it’s reducing the purchase price of an item or if it’s a reward for meeting certain spending goals.

So if a car manufacturer gives you a $2,000 rebate on a new auto, that’s a price reduction and not income. And you don’t have to pay taxes on cash awards, miles or points in exchange for making purchases with your credit card.

But Citi caused an uproar when it notified some customers that their air miles are taxable.

The bank last year offered 25,000 or more in American Airlines miles to people opening a checking or savings account. And last month, Citi sent those new customers federal 1099 forms that listed the miles as miscellaneous income. (Businesses that pay $600 or more to taxpayers in income other than wages must report this on the 1099. A copy also is sent to the IRS.)

Citi’s move caused a panic among consumers, who feared that frequent flyer miles would now be taxed.

“When a customer receives a gift for opening a bank account, whether cash or a toaster or airline miles, the value of that gift is generally treated as income and subject to reporting,” said Citi spokesman Sean Kevelighan.

The Internal Revenue Service agreed.

According to the Tax Institute at H&R Block, whether a reward is taxable or not depends on why you were given it.

Cash back or other awards to customers for spending a certain amount of money are not taxable, the Tax Institute says. But gifts, such as an iPad or concert tickets, awarded upfront to get you to open an account are taxable.

And the tax bite on some gifts can be sizable. Based on the price of miles consumers can buy on American Airlines’ website, the value of 25,000 miles is $687.50. If this were taxed at the 25 percent rate, it would add about $172 to a tax bill.

“If I was going to respond to one of those ads to get 50,000 miles for opening a new credit card or other account, I would look at it really closely,” said Abe Schneier, senior technical manager with the American Institute of CPAs.

(Don’t worry: That mug your bank gave you for opening an account is too small to be taxworthy, according to the Tax Institute.)

In Kuhl’s case, the homeowner says there was no mention in the rebate terms that the money would be taxed when she applied for Maryland’s Home Performance program. The Maryland Energy Administration notified her that the money might be subject to taxes only after the insulation work was completed, she says.

Kuhl says she found out for sure the money was taxable last month, when she received a 1099 form from the state. She didn’t get a 1099 for the utility’s share of the rebate, which amounted to about $959.

The homeowner says she bought the insulation with money out of her own pocket — on which she had already paid taxes. To be taxed again, she says, ’significantly cuts down on the amount we saved.”

I asked Eddleman with the state’s comptroller office to explain what happened.

Eddleman says there is an exemption for utilities offering a rebate for energy conservation, and that’s why Kuhl’s rebate from the utility was untaxed. But there is no exemption, he says, for the state portion.

Marylanders who received a state rebate for less than $600 won’t receive a 1099. But Eddleman says they should report the income on their tax return.

This is all based on federal law, Eddleman adds. If state legislators don’t like it, they can always carve out an exception.

They have before. Several years ago, the state offered solar energy grants to homeowners that also turned out to be taxable, Eddleman says. Responding to complaints, Maryland legislators provided some relief by allowing taxpayers to subtract the rebate from the income reported on their state income tax.

Kuhl has her fingers crossed.

“If everybody complains,” she says, “maybe they will look into it.”

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Never before have the world’s central banks sent so much money sloshing through the global financial system.

From slashing interest rates and buying government debt to dangling cheap loans to banks and taking on their risky assets, central banks have taken extraordinary steps since the 2008 financial crisis to nurse the international banking system back to health.

Over the past 3 1/2 years, the central banks of the United States, Britain, Japan and the 17 countries that use the euro have pumped out so much money that their balance sheets have reached a combined $8.76 trillion. That’s a record, by far.

The infusion of money has eased borrowing costs and raised confidence in banks, governments and companies.

Critics counter that the flood of cash has made high inflation more likely. And they point to rising prices for oil, food, gold and other commodities as evidence. They warn that the easy money may allow investors to bid stock prices up to dangerous heights.

They also note that the crisis led central banks to accept high-risk investments that banks have wanted to unload. These investments have been collateral for money that central banks gave financial institutions.

Trouble is, the central banks must eventually unload the trillions in assets on their books. That carries risks, too.

A second round of low-cost loans that the European Central Bank gave banks Wednesday is the latest financial injection. The ECB issued $712 billion in loans to 800 banks, on top of $658 billion it lent 523 banks in December.

At times, the world’s leading bankers have coordinated their actions to maximize the punch. In December, for example, major central banks sought to shore up the global financial system by making it easier for banks to borrow U.S. dollars. It was the most significant joint effort by the central banks since they cut interest rates in October 2008.

The central banks feel compelled to take such far-reaching action because of their role as a nation’s lender of last resort. This function is in addition to their core task of managing interest rates and inflation through the money supply.

Each central bank’s balance sheet reflects assets it’s taken on, such as bonds and mortgage-backed investments. Their balance sheets have soared since the financial crisis exploded.

The Federal Reserve’s has reached $2.94 trillion. That’s triple its size in August 2008, just before the crisis hit. The ECB’s is $3.58 trillion, nearly twice its level before the crisis. The Bank of England’s balance sheet has jumped three-fold. The Bank of Japan’s is up 28 percent.

“This is the first time in history that we have seen anything like this amount of liquidity from central banks flooding the system,” said David Jones, head of DMJ Advisors and the author of several books on the Fed.

Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, said the only period that even comes close would be the central banks’ efforts in the 1930s to fight the Great Depression. But many historians say the Fed prolonged the Depression by failing to provide emergency loans to banks or to take other steps that might have stemmed the damage.

“Ben Bernanke is a historian of the Great Depression,” Zandi said of the current Fed chairman. “That is why he has been so aggressive in using the Fed’s balance sheet to respond to the current problems.”

The central banks have revealed no plans to reverse course and tighten credit soon. The Fed has said it expects to keep short-term rates at record lows near zero until at least late 2014 payday advance. At a House hearing Wednesday, some lawmakers pressed Bernanke about the risks of keeping rates so low for so long.

“One of the problems with setting these horizons out so far is that the private sector starts to expect that, and if circumstances change, crawling back off that limb could be very difficult,” Rep. Melvin Watt., D-N.C., told Bernanke.

“The policy is a conditional policy,” Bernanke responded. “It’s based on what we know now. If there’s a substantial change in the outlook, we’d have to adjust accordingly.”

Bernanke hinted that if the U.S. economy continued to improve consistently, the Fed might have to consider raising rates sooner.

For now, following the Fed’s lead, other central banks have kept their benchmark short-term rates at super-lows. They’ve created low-rate lending programs for commercial banks, like the three-year loans the ECB is providing.

And they’ve bought bonds to try to drive down long-term rates.

The bond purchases are known as “quantitative easing,” or QE. The Fed has completed two such programs. Some hope it will announce a third. Supporters note that the U.S. economy remains less than robust, and unemployment is a still-high 8.3 percent. Further reducing rates on mortgages and other loans could energize the U.S. economy, they argue.

Critics counter that more bond purchases by the Fed could ignite inflation. They note that the U.S. economy has been steadily improving, and unemployment has dropped for five straight months. Remarks that Bernanke made at the hearing Wednesday suggesting a brighter economic outlook made further bond-buying appear less likely.

The ECB is legally barred from buying bonds directly from governments. But it’s bought 219 billion euros ($268 billion) in bonds on the secondary market to try to lower rates and reduce borrowing costs for Europe’s most troubled economies.

The ECB has also been cutting short-term rates and offering super-cheap loans to banks. In its second installment of three-year loans, the ECB is charging just 1 percent interest. The idea is to get banks to use the loans to buy government debt and further ease nations’ borrowing costs.

Earlier this month, the Bank of Japan announced an expansion of its own asset-purchase program. So did the Bank of England.

“Everyone is following the Federal Reserve’s example of printing money to get out of this economic slump,” Jones said.

The Fed’s expanding balance sheet reflects its ability to create money, use it to buy Treasurys and lower long-term rates. Lower rates make borrowing cheaper. And they typically cause some investors to shift some money out of bonds and into assets such as stocks. Stock prices tend to rise as a result.

A larger number of dollars in circulation lowers the dollar’s value compared with other currencies. That can help the economy by making U.S. exports cheaper overseas.

Central banks face a delicate task in deciding when and how to unload the assets on their swollen balance sheets without jolting the financial system.

Bernanke and other central bank officials have stressed their commitment to gradually tighten credit before inflation poses a major threat.

“Central banks around the world are making a bet that they will be able to handle inflation down the road,” said Diane Swonk, chief economist at Mesirow Financial.

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Zellipah Githui’s route to the research offices of Monsanto Co., where she was hired in early 2006, was not the typical one.

Growing up in a remote rural village in Kenya, Githui’s family members were (and are) subsistence farmers. But her parents urged their 17 children to pursue an education, and that eventually led Githui to Missouri, where she earned her MBA. Githui soon landed a job at the world’s largest biotechnology company, where she now coordinates field sampling at sites across the country.

After 14 years in the U.S., Githui recently decided to look homeward, where she has started a nonprofit group to help rural women farmers in Kenya — the people, she says, who are at the heart of her country’s food production. Last year, the organization helped 16 women farmers learn better growing practices via a Kenyan agronomist, using better fertilizers and hybrid seeds. The results were promising. Now in it’s second full year, the organization is growing.

How did you come up with the idea for your project?

I struggled with how I can help my community in a way that they can be independent and can do it for themselves. I thought about a school for orphans, or a primary school. But I woke up one morning in September 2010, and I just had the idea to do something with farming…. In Kenya, mainly the women do the farming, by virtue of the fact that there’s not much employment, and historically, not much education. In Kenya land is inherited, but it’s to the men, and the plots are getting small. So a farm we used to grow food on, we can’t anymore. The land is tired, so to speak. But we come from a productive area; we know it can be productive.

How did you start?

I went to an educated woman – a friend of the family. I knew she was a good fit, a go-getter. I said: let’s get a group together…. I said: You guys do this every day, you have the experience. You provide me a piece of land and labor, I’ll take care of the rest – the seed, the fertilizer, the manure.

How did the first year go?

They planted maize, planted bananas payday loans no faxing. Some did potatoes, some did tomatoes. The corn was very good, until the reproductive stage, when the rains failed. So there was not much harvest. It went to the cows, so they had a good season. But more importantly was the change – the ‘Ah’ that this can happen on their own farm. The farmers who weren’t part of the group, they saw the obvious changes. They learned proper planting, proper inputs. They were guided by the agronomist I hired. They learned to grow one crop at a time – they normally practice inter-cropping… They’re seeing big, big differences.

How do you fund the project?

The agronomists give them the guidance – how much seed, fertilizers, spraying they need. They give me a dollar figure, in Kenyan shillings, and I send it to them…. When I started, I had no model. I just said: I can do this, I’m going to do this. I sell jewelry at craft fairs; I’ve had garage sales.

What’s the next step?

The goal was to start small, but I want it to get bigger, too…. Right now we have a good problem: People want this. So how can I keep doing this? The next step is to find the resources. I would like this to keep growing, and changing the lives of people in my area. Personally, it’s been a very fulfilling journey, knowing where I’ve come from and where I am. It’s been very fulfilling to give back.

ZELLIPAH GITHUI

Title: Metabolite Analysis Platform Logistical Coordinator, Monsanto Co., Founder Project Gold Finger/The Rural Women Development Initiative of Kenya.

Education: Bachelor’s degrees from Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, and Pittsburg (CQ) State University. MBA from Southwest Missouri State University.

Home: Florrisant

Family: Nine-year old son, 16 brothers and sisters

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The federal deficit was lower through the first four months of the budget year than the same period last year. Still, the deficit is expected to top $1 trillion for the fourth year in a row, putting more pressure on Congress and President Barack Obama in an election year.

The deficit totaled $349 billion through January, the Treasury Department said Friday. That’s $70 billion less than at the same point last year. January’s monthly deficit was $27 billion, roughly half of the deficit in January 2011.

The White House later confirmed a report that President Obama’s new budget predicts a $1.3 trillion deficit for the full fiscal year, which began on Oct. 1. The figures were first reported in The Wall St. Journal, which viewed leaked draft budget documents.

If the administration is correct, the 2012 deficit would be the same as last year’s imbalance. The government ran an all-time record deficit of $1.41 trillion in fiscal 2009, and a $1.29 trillion imbalance in 2010.

This year’s deficit is running lower in part because of higher corporate tax receipts, the department said. That has boosted government revenue to $790 billion from October through January.

Spending fell to $1.14 trillion in the same period, though excluding the accounting changes it was largely flat.

Still, the picture hasn’t improved as much as the Congressional Budget Office had estimated it would last year bad credit pay day loans. In August, the agency projected that the deficit would come in at $973 billion this year. But last week, it boosted its estimate, citing lower than expected tax revenues.

Congress has shown little ability recently to make difficult changes to tax levels or spending programs to reduce the deficit. They will face another big challenge at the end of this year, when tax cuts that were first enacted in 2001 and 2003 are set to expire. And a set of automatic spending cuts totaling about $1.2 trillion over 10 years is also scheduled to kick in.

Those changes, along with several other provisions that will automatically take effect under current law, would substantially reduce the deficit in future years.

But the CBO estimates that if Congress extends the tax cuts, as many observers expect, and if they block the spending cuts, the deficit will remain near $900 billion or higher for the next 10 years.

President Obama is set to release his annual budget proposal Monday. It will include a set of economic projections, including that unemployment will average 8.9 percent this year. White House officials dismissed the figure Thursday as outdated. The rate fell to 8.3 percent in January.

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