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Central Bank Acts to Strengthen Brazilian Real

Similar moves have been made by central banks in Indonesia and Turkey. The action highlights growing fears on the part of policy makers in these countries that the recent slide in their currencies poses a serious economic threat given the high levels of dollar-denominated debt that their national banks and companies have taken on.

As local currencies weaken, dollar debts increase in value and become increasingly difficult to service.

The real has lost more than 15 percent of its value against the dollar this year as foreign investors as well as locals have sold their reals for dollars.

The Indian rupee, the South African rand, the Turkish lira and the Indonesian rupiah have also lost more than 10 percent against the dollar as the money that once poured into these economies returns to more developed economies in anticipation of higher interest rates in the United States.

“We are in the midst of a significant rebalancing, and the growth outlook for emerging market countries has deteriorated,” said Jens Nordvig, a currency strategist at Nomura in New York.

Earlier this week, the Turkish central bank increased interest rates in a bid to stop the fall of the lira, which is approaching the psychologically crucial hurdle of a dollar-lira rate of 2.00. Indonesia, which like Turkey and Brazil relied on foreign dollars to finance large current-account deficits, also announced on Friday a series of steps to increase the availability of dollars in the markets and the broader economy.

While the measures may have a short-term impact — the real was up more than 1 percent against the dollar on Friday — their long-term effect is uncertain. After years of heady growth, spurred in part by a commodity boom coupled with very low interest rates and stagnation in the United States and Europe, economic momentum is shifting slowly from emerging to developed economies.

Another concern is that as economies in Turkey, Brazil and Indonesia slow, it could become difficult politically for central banks to push rates ever higher.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister, whose ruling Justice and Development Party faces crucial local elections early next year, has been especially vocal in this regard.

European Central Bank Commits to Low Rate

FRANKFURT — The European Central Bank said Thursday it would keep interest rates low “for an extended period of time,” an unprecedented commitment for an institution that had steadfastly refused to offer guidance on its future policy.

With the promise of easy money, Mario Draghi, the president of the E.C.B., offered more certainty to investors at a time when tensions in the euro zone are rising again. So-called forward guidance is considered one of the tools available to central banks, but one the E.C.B. had never used before.

The E.C.B. kept its main rate at a record low of 0.5 percent, as expected. The relative calm in the euro zone has been threatened in recent weeks by a political crisis in Portugal, a rise in the risk premium that investors demand on bonds issued by Italy and other troubled countries, and reluctance by political leaders to take bold steps to build a stronger currency union.

The commitment to keep rates low may be intended to amplify the effect of the current low rate by reassuring investors that they can count on easy money for the foreseeable future. The statement may also be intended to counteract any effect in Europe from expectations that the U.S. Federal Reserve may gradually begin to tighten its monetary policy.

Mr. Draghi has in recent weeks stressed that policy makers were ready to take action if needed, but he and other members of the governing council have few obvious options left to stimulate the slumping euro zone economy.

“The bank has nothing more it can do within its institutional framework to help return the euro land economy to prosperity,” Carl Weinberg, chief economist at High Frequency Economics in Valhalla, New York, wrote in a note to clients Wednesday.

Mr. Draghi has often stressed that E.C.B. anti-crisis measures could only buy time for political leaders to take action, for example by removing barriers to entrepreneurship in countries like Italy or cooperating more closely to fix ailing banks.

But now that fear of a euro zone breakup has ebbed, political leaders seem to have lost the will to address flaws in the currency union. An agreement by national leaders last month on a so-called banking union, designed to make the euro zone less prone to financial crises, fell short of what economists say is needed to deal with weak lenders and restore the flow of credit.

In recent days market borrowing costs for Italy and Spain have risen again, after a political crisis in Portugal raised questions about whether governments will be able to withstand public discontent about budget cutting and joblessness.

Further increases in government borrowing costs could test whether the E.C.B. can deliver on its promise last year to buy bonds of troubled countries if needed to eliminate fear of a euro zone breakup. Some analysts doubt whether the program could be deployed quickly in a crisis, since it requires countries to request help and agree to economic reforms and other conditions.

The E.C.B. appears unwilling to take more radical steps to stimulate the economy, such as massive, broad-based bond purchases similar to the quantitative easing used by the U.S. Federal Reserve or Bank of England. Already, the E.C.B. faces a legal challenge in Germany’s Constitutional Court to the bond buying program and is probably reluctant to further alarm Germans fearful that they will wind up paying for problems in Italy and Spain.

The E.C.B.'s job is further complicated by signs that the Federal Reserve could begin to gradually roll back its economic stimulus in the United States. Expectations of tighter monetary policy in America have rattled financial markets in Europe, and Mr. Draghi may try to reassure investors that the E.C.B. is a long way from going in the same direction.

“President Draghi might note that contrary to market expectations the E.C.B. has not followed the strategy pursued by the Federal Open Market Committee in recent years,” economists at Royal Bank of Scotland wrote in a note to investors earlier this week, referring to the Federal Reserve’s policy-making panel.

2 Central Banks Promise to Keep Rates Low

The bid to reassure investors brought the two central banks into closer alignment with the Federal Reserve, which, under Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, has become more open about its intentions.

At the same time, they appeared eager to signal that they would not follow the Fed in preparing for a gradual withdrawal of economic stimulus.

Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank, based in Frankurt, said at a news conference that crucial interest rates would “remain at present or lower levels for an extended period of time.” Until Thursday, the bank had steadfastly refused to pin itself down on future policy.

“It’s not six months,” Mr. Draghi said. “It’s not 12 months. It’s an extended period of time.”

Mr. Draghi also said that the central bank was signaling a “downward bias” in interest rate policy, meaning further cuts were possible or even likely.

Only hours earlier, Mark J. Carney, who became governor of the Bank of England on Monday, made a similar break with tradition. The British central bank said in a statement that any expectations that interest rates would rise soon from their current record low level were misguided.

With their promises of easy money stretching toward the horizon, the central bankers offered more certainty to investors at a time when tensions in Europe are rising again. So-called forward guidance is considered one of the tools available to central banks, but it was one the European Central Bank and the Bank of England had not used before.

European markets reacted positively to the announcements, with the FTSE 100 in London closing 3.1 percent higher and the Euro Stoxx 50, a benchmark of euro zone blue chips, climbing 3 percent. (Markets in the United States were closed for the Fourth of July holiday.) The euro fell sharply, a development that was probably not unwelcome at the European Central Bank, since a cheaper euro makes European products less expensive in foreign markets, feeding exports. The British pound also fell.

Mr. Draghi said it was a coincidence that his central bank and Bank of England introduced forward guidance on the same day. Both left their main interest rates at 0.5 percent and did not announce any other policy moves. It was a day for talk rather than action.

“Mr. Draghi did what he does best today: intervene verbally to great effect,” Nicholas Spiro, managing director of Spiro Sovereign Strategy in London, said in a note.

Mr. Draghi’s statement on Thursday came almost a year after he defused the euro zone debt crisis with a promise to do “whatever it takes” to preserve the currency union.

But after months of relative calm, Europe has been rattled in recent days by a political crisis in Portugal, which has raised questions about whether the region’s governments will be able to withstand popular discontent with their policies of cutting budgets to bring public debt under control. Investors have responded by pushing up the risk premium they demand on bonds issued by Italy, Spain and other troubled euro zone countries. Market rates on Italian and Spanish bonds retreated on Thursday after Mr. Draghi’s comments.

The commitment to keep rates low helps amplify the effect of rates that are already nearly rock bottom, by reassuring investors that they can count on easy money for the foreseeable future.

But some analysts saw Mr. Draghi’s statement as a bluff — a tacit admission that the central bank has run out of other ways to stimulate the euro zone economy.

“A change of a few words in the way he phrases the E.C.B.’s policy stance is an insufficient policy response to alter the — very troubled — course of the euroland economy,” Carl B. Weinberg, chief economist at High Frequency Economics in Valhalla, N.Y., said in an e-mail.

Jack Ewing reported from Frankfurt, and Julia Werdigier from London.

Markets Falter After Chinese Central Bank Statement

HONG KONG — In its first direct comment about a credit crunch last week that raised concerns about the health of the Chinese financial system, China’s central bank insisted Monday that there was ample cash in the banking system but stressed that the country’s commercial banks needed to be better managed.

Bank-to-bank lending rates, which had hit record highs last week, further eased Monday. But stocks slumped sharply in a sign that markets remained intensely nervous about China’s growth prospects and the uncertainties that surround the Chinese leadership’s efforts to reshape the economy.

The Shanghai composite index, which has been under pressure for months amid mounting evidence that the Chinese economy is cooling, plunged 5.3 percent, its biggest single-day drop in nearly four years, taking its decline so far this year to more than 13 percent. The Shenzhen composite index dropped 6.1 percent, while in Hong Kong, the Hang Seng Index fell 2.2 percent, sagging below the 20,000-point mark for the first time since last September.

Markets in Europe were down almost 2 percent in afternoon trading, while Wall Street shares were down 1 percent shortly after the opening.

Numerous analysts have revised downward their growth projections — HSBC, for example, cut its forecast for this year to 7.4 percent from 8.2 percent — amid signs that Beijing’s new leaders are willing to tolerate slower growth in the short term as they pursue stability for the long term.

The interbank lending market’s benchmark overnight rate, which serves as a gauge of liquidity in the financial market, stood at 6.489 percent Monday. That was down from 8.492 percent Friday and well below the record high of 13.44 percent it hit Thursday, but still elevated compared with the level of about 3 percent of most of the past 18 months.

In a statement dated June 17 but published Monday, the Chinese central bank, the People’s Bank of China, addressed some of the concerns about the cash crunch, saying that “currently, liquidity in our country’s banking system is overall at a reasonable level.” But, in a stern sign to Chinese lenders, it called on financial institutions to improve “awareness about preventing risks” and to "strengthen their analysis and forecasting about factors affecting liquidity.”

“Follow the requirements of macro prudence in allocating assets in a sensible fashion,” the central bank’s instructions to lenders went on, “and cautiously control the risks that the excessively rapid expansion of credit and other assets may lead to liquidity risks. When there is turbulence in market liquidity, swiftly adjust the structure of assets.”

The fact that the People’s Bank of China had allowed interbank lending rates to soar last week — rather than injected money into the financial system — was widely interpreted as a deliberate effort to rein in excessive lending and force banks to focus on prudent, low-risk loans.

A buildup of debt by local governments, property developers and state-owned companies, while useful for supporting economic growth, bears substantial risk, including asset price bubbles and potentially destabilizing defaults if loans turn sour, analysts have cautioned. The rapid expansion of lending in unregulated and often opaque shadow banking activities, in particular, has worried many.

Last month, the International Monetary Fund cautioned that the growth in credit “raises concerns about the quality of investment and its impact on repayment capacity, especially since a fast-growing share of credit is flowing through less-well supervised parts of the financial system.”

Beijing has responded in recent months with efforts to address the potential risks. “Policy makers have taken measures to slow the rapid growth in credit and at the same time tightened rules about irregular and imprudent activity in the financial system, including interbank bond repo transactions,” economists at JPMorgan in Hong Kong wrote in a research note Friday, referring to bond repurchases. That “tough-line attitude,” they added, had caused the recent increase in interbank funding costs.

Although factors like a seasonal demand for liquidity and a crackdown on cash hoarding at banks also contributed to the rate increase, the JPMorgan team wrote, it seemed that the P.B.O.C. also “wants to use this as an opportunity to address” banks’ expectations that it is always there to provide backup.

Yiping Huang and Jian Chang, China economists at Barclays, said in a report that with “China’s credit-to-G.D.P. ratio at 200 percent, we believe that the P.B.O.C. is acting in line with the government’s efforts to deleverage, rebalance and position the economy towards a path for sustainable growth.” Though the central bank is likely to stabilize the interbank market in the near term, they added, “short-term rates are likely to remain elevated, at least for a while, possibly leading to the failing of some smaller financial institutions.”

Louis Kuijs, an economist at Royal Bank of Scotland and former China economist at the World Bank, said conditions in the interbank market were likely to remain “tight and nervous” in the coming weeks.

“We expect conditions on the interbank market to normalize gradually after that,” Mr. Kuijs added.

Chris Buckley contributed reporting.

Wall Street Ends Lower on Central Bank Fears

Stocks slumped on Tuesday after the Bank of Japan declined to take additional stimulus measures, a move that increased investors’ worries about the eventual decline in central bank support that has bolstered an equities rally.

At the end of Wall Street trading, the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index was down 1 percent in afternoon trading, the Dow Jones industrial average was off 0.8 percent and the Nasdaq composite was 1 percent lower.

The Bank of Japan kept monetary policy steady at the end of its two-day meeting, holding off on taking fresh steps to calm bond market volatility. Unhappy traders sent the Nikkei down 1.5 percent.

The lack of additional action rattled investors, underscoring worries about what would happen when the stimulus programs eventually go away. At the same time, nervousness remains over when the Federal Reserve may slow its measures, which have been a significant driver of this year’s stock market rally.

“This market has been fed by extremely supportive government policies around the world,” said Richard Meckler, president of the investment firm LibertyView Capital Management in Jersey City. “You’re getting to that period where investors have to recognize that these policies are beginning to wrap up.”

In Europe, the broad FTSE Eurofirst 300 index of top shares, which has shed 5 percent in the previous 12 trading sessions, ended Tuesday’s session 1.2 percent lower.

But United States Treasury prices turned higher on Tuesday, as the benchmark 10-year Treasury note, erasing a modest loss, was up 6/32 to yield 2.19 percent. The 30-year Treasury extended a gain to 24/32, allowing its yield to ease to 3.33 percent.

Shares of Lululemon Athletica slumped more than 17 percent after the company’s chief executive said she would step down.

SoftBank said it would raise its offer for Sprint Nextel to $21.6 billion from $20.1 billion. Sprint was up 2.4 percent.

The S.&P. 500 is up more than 15 percent since the start of the year, but markets have been bumpier since comments from the Fed chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, last month sparked uncertainty over the central bank’s timeline for slowing its $85 billion a month bond purchase program.

While the Bank of Japan left the door open to taking fresh steps to calm markets if borrowing costs spiked again, it did not appear to assuage investors. “The B.O.J. took some big steps and had some big changes but now that they’ve done that, the market is looking for even more,” Mr. Meckler said.

Seasonality was also playing a part in Tuesday’s weakness as equities tend to have less direction in the summer months, he said.

Shares in the Dole Food Company rose 22 percent after Dole received an unsolicited buyout offer from its chief executive.

The Catamaran Corporation climbed 11 percent after it signed a 10-year agreement with the Cigna Corporation.

Boeing raised its 20-year forecast for demand, saying airlines will need 35,280 new airplanes worth $4.8 trillion as the world’s fleet doubles. Boeing shares fell 0.5 percent.

The yen extended its rally after the Bank of Japan’s lack of action, and the dollar traded as low as 95.68 yen for a 3 percent loss on the day.

The euro briefly traded above $1.33, but gains were pared headed into Europe’s stock market close, with the euro last trading at $1.3274, up 0.1 percent on the day.

In the debt market, investors pulled out of the riskiest assets, sending Greek 10-year bond yields up 75 basis points, to 10.22 percent. Portuguese equivalent bonds rose 34 basis points, to 6.59 percent.

The Greek government has failed to find buyers for its state-owned natural gas company, threatening the privatization goal set under the country’s bailout.

Central Banks Act With a New Boldness

Central bankers, anywhere in the world, are a cautious lot. They prefer slow and steady over the dramatic gesture. And they rarely go public with criticisms of other central banks.

But the economic stagnation of the major developed nations has driven central banks in the United States, Japan, Britain and the European Union to take increasingly aggressive action. Because governments are not taking steps to revive economies, like increasing spending or cutting taxes, the traditional concern of central bankers that economic growth will cause too much inflation has been supplanted by the fear that growth is not fast enough to prevent deflation, or falling prices.

The Fed has announced plans to keep borrowing costs at historic lows until unemployment declines. The staid Bank of England has bought more than a half-trillion dollars’ worth of bonds to ignite British business activity.

Last month, Haruhiko Kuroda, the new chairman of the Bank of Japan, steered the central bank toward an audacious new policy of reinflating the Japanese economy by doubling the money supply. It is considered the boldest step so far by a central bank.

So far, the results of these activist central banks have fallen short of expectations. “I’m not sure why we’re not getting more response,” said Donald L. Kohn, a former Federal Reserve vice chairman who is now at the Brookings Institution. “Maybe we’ve made some progress in identifying some of the causes, but it’s not fully satisfying why we have negative real interest rates everywhere in the industrial world and so little growth.”

Certainly investors around the world watch for any sign that the central bankers are backing away from their bold steps. , Stock markets wobbled in Japan and elsewhere last week on fears that the Federal Reserve might start pulling back on its stimulus sooner than expected and that Japan’s effort might fall short of its goal of reviving the economy. A few central bankers’ reassurances seemed to calm the markets.

The lackluster results have provided cover for the European Central Bank, which has remained the most cautious of the major central banks. It is sticking to the more traditional formula of cutting interest rates — a string Japan ineffectually pushed for more than a decade — in the hopes that it will encourage banks to lend more money to businesses.

The Federal Reserve in the United States has been significantly more aggressive since December 2008, when the Fed reduced its benchmark short-term interest rate nearly to zero. Ever since, it has pursued a pair of experiments aimed at dragging other interest rates closer to zero, too.

The Fed has tried to bolster confidence that rates will stay low by talking more about the future. In December, it said it intended to keep short-term rates near zero at least as long as the unemployment rate remained above 6.5 percent, the first time it had tied policy to a specific target. That, and buying almost $3 trillion in Treasury and mortgage-backed securities, has helped to cut borrowing costs for businesses and consumers.

While the share of Americans with jobs has barely budged and other economic indicators remain weak at best, the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index has doubled since the Fed announced its first round of bond purchases in November 2008. Interest rates on mortgages and car loans are near the lowest levels on record. Average yields on junk bonds fell below 5 percent for the first time. Corporations with strong credit ratings, like Apple, also are borrowing vast sums at little cost.

Still, for all the daring, some critics argue that the Fed is not trying hard enough. “It’s as if we went to the biggest fire we’ve ever seen and we poured more water on it than we’ve ever poured, and the fire isn’t completely out,” said Joseph E. Gagnon, a former Fed economist now at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “Well, we should try more water.”

Officials in Britain, too, are debating its central bank’s ability to do more. Last month, the departing governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, gave a speech at the International Monetary Fund in which he said — a bit acidly — that there was a limit to what monetary policy could do to spur recovery in a country like Britain, where a small number of stingy banks dominate the economy and the government is tightening its spending.

Like other central banks around the world, the Bank of England, by far the oldest of them all, has done its part to ward off a depression. It has bought, to date, the equivalent of $569 billion worth of government bonds — a bold use of the printing press for an institution known for its hidebound ways.

This shock treatment, the professorial Mr. King pointed out, equaled 20 percent of the British economy, outpacing the central bank interventions of the European Central Bank, the Bank of Japan and the Federal Reserve.

And what does Mr. King have to show for his monetary exertions — beyond record stock market highs and bottom-scraping yields for British corporate bonds? An anemic recovery. Growth this year is expected to be 0.5 percent, according to the I.M.F., while Japan’s gross domestic product grew at an annualized rate of 3.5 percent in the first quarter and the United States’ is expected to grow a little more than 2 percent.

European and Japanese Central Banks Pledge Support, Boosting Shares and the Dollar

ECB Executive Board member Joerg Asmussen said on Monday the policy would stay as long as necessary. On Tuesday, BOJ board member Ryuzo Miyao said it was vital to keep long- and short-term interest rates stable.

Yields on U.S. Treasuries surged to their highest levels in over a year as prices skidded. A strong consumer confidence report underscored the notion that the Federal Reserve could soon trim its bond-buying program.

"The vicious selling once again materialized after the much-stronger-than-expected consumer confidence report," said Cantor, Fitzgerald Treasury strategist Justin Lederer.

Yields have jumped since Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said on Wednesday that the U.S. central bank may decide to decrease its bond purchases gradually in the next few policy meetings if data shows the economy is gaining steam.

"The path of least resistance is higher yields," said Sean Simko, portfolio manager at SEI Investments.

Benchmark 10-year notes fell more than a point to 96-7/32 while their yields, which move inversely to price, soared to 2.17 percent from 2.01 percent on Friday. Ten-year yields have surged from 1.61 percent at the beginning of May as optimism about the economy has grown.

Thirty-year bonds fell more than two points in price while their yields rose to 3.33 percent, the highest level since March, and up from 3.18 percent on Friday.

Both the 10-year notes and 30-year bonds are on track for their worst monthly loss since December 2009.

U.S. STOCKS, DOLLAR RECOVER

U.S. stocks recovered from recent weakness, propelling the Dow to finish at yet another record closing high.

The Dow Jones industrial average gained 106.29 points, or 0.69 percent, to end at a record 15,409.39. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index rose 10.46 points, or 0.63 percent, to 1,660.06. The Nasdaq Composite Index climbed 29.74 points, or 0.86 percent, to close at 3,488.89.

The dollar rebounded against the euro and yen after data on U.S. consumer confidence and home prices suggested the world's largest economy was on a steady road to recovery.

The Fed's stimulus program is viewed as negative for the greenback because it floods the market with dollars.

A measure of U.S. consumer confidence rose in May to its highest level in more than five years. That private-sector report followed data showing single-family home prices rose in March, with their best annual gain in nearly seven years.

Higher Treasury yields have also boosted the appeal of dollar-denominated investments.

DOLLAR RISES AGAINST YEN AND EURO

The U.S. dollar rallied against the euro and yen as the stronger-than-expected U.S. economic data underscored views the Fed could reduce its bond purchases in coming months.

Against the yen, which tumbled broadly, the dollar rose 1.2 percent to 102.09 yen, rebounding from a two-week low of 100.68 set on Friday. The dollar rose to a 4-1/2-year high of 103.73 yen last week.

The euro rose 0.6 percent to 131.24 yen, pulling away from Thursday's trough of 129.94 yen.

The safe-haven Swiss franc fell, down 1.1 percent against the dollar at 0.9740 franc and down 0.6 percent against the euro at 1.2533 francs.

Currencies such as the yen and the Swiss franc, which rose sharply last week after a recent sell-off in stock markets, typically gain in times of financial uncertainty.

The dollar index, which measures the greenback versus a basket of currencies, rose 0.6 percent to 84.172.

Gold fell 1 percent as the stock market rally diminished bullion's safe-haven appeal. Strong buying of physical bullion, however, briefly reversed gold's fall.

Spot gold was down 1 percent to $1,380.81 an ounce by 3:25 p.m. EDT (8:25 p.m. British time), after trading as low as $1,373.14.

U.S. Comex gold futures for June delivery settled down $7.70 at $1,378.90 an ounce.

Among other precious metals, silver was down 1.7 percent to $22.25 an ounce. Platinum rose 0.6 percent to $1,455.74 an ounce, while palladium gained 2.1 percent to $751.22 an ounce.

Brent crude oil rose on increased Middle East risk and as stocks rallied. Brent crude oil for July rose $1.61 to $104.23 per barrel while U.S. crude rose $0.95 to $95.10 per barrel.

The promise of monetary support from the European and Japanese central banks was reinforced as French, German and Italian governments urged action to tackle youth unemployment. [ID:nL5N0E911M] Youth unemployment in countries like Greece and Spain has risen to 60 percent. [ID:nL3N0DY1IW]

In Europe, the broad FTSE Eurofirst 300 index closed up 1.3 percent at 1,246.44, while MSCI's world equity index rose 0.5 percent, reversing four days of losses.

Japan's Nikkei stock index, which last week reached a 5-1/2-year high before dropping 7.3 percent on Thursday, steadied on Tuesday, ending 1.2 percent higher.

(Additional reporting by Karen Brettell, Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss, Ryan Vlastelica and Frank Tang; Editing by Nick Zieminski and Dan Grebler)

Comedy Central to Host Comedy Festival on Twitter

But there will be no smoky comedy clubs. No lone microphones and stools positioned on stage. No two-drink minimum.

The festival will take place almost entirely on Twitter, with comedians posting video snippets of routines and round tables and posting jokes using the hashtag #ComedyFest.

The partnership between Comedy Central, a cable cannel owned by Viacom, and Twitter represents the evolving relationship between television and social media. Twitter is often incorporated into programming with viewers using the site as a second screen while watching live television. But slowly, Twitter is becoming an outlet on which to watch video.

In January, Twitter introduced Vine, a video-sharing service that lets users post six-second clips — brevity that matches Twitter’s model of 140-character messages.

On Tuesday, as part of the festival, the comedian Steve Agee will host a “Vine Dining” party, telling stories in six-second videos. The cast of HBO’s “Veep” shares “vines” from the set, as does the cast of ABC’s hit “Scandal.” A&E puts 30-second videos of “Duck Dynasty” on Twitter and the entire third season of Fox’s “Raising Hope” had its debut on the site.

“It’s not just hashtags appearing on your TV screen, but TV content appearing in your Twitter feed,” said Debra Aho Williamson, a social media analyst at eMarketer.

For Comedy Central, the Twitter partnership is a small part of a larger strategy to become a branded entertainment company that does not rely just on nightly television viewing. In a changing media landscape, the channel’s series like “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart” and “South Park,” and their young, mostly male audiences, have led the shift to online video viewing.

As early as next month, Comedy Central will introduce a free, ad-supported app, called CC: Stand-Up. Designed to look and feel like a cable channel devoted to stand-up, the app will offer videos of comedians performing routines.

A recommendation algorithm (similar to the one used by Amazon) will allow users to discover new comedians. If you watched Jeff Ross, for example, a web of other comics would pop up based on routines with similar topics (like mass transit), style (like dark humor) or other relationships (both like marshmallows).

“One of these days we will be ambivalent about where people watch Comedy Central,” said Steve Grimes, the channel’s senior vice president for programming and multiplatform strategy.

At least for now Viacom makes the vast majority of its revenue from cable subscribers who watch television the old-fashioned way and the advertisers who pay to reach them there. The company must adapt to the changing ways viewers watch video, but they must also preserve profits.

Last year, Nickelodeon’s ratings dropped, partly because shows like “Dora the Explorer” and “SpongeBob SquarePants” had been too readily available on streaming platforms like Netflix.

Nickelodeon’s predicament has served as a cautionary tale for Comedy Central as it extends its programming onto other devices. Comedy Central’s total prime-time audience has fallen to a nightly average of 816,000 viewers in the current season to date, from 1.1 million in 2008, according to Nielsen.

Of those viewers, 258,000 are men ages 18 to 34, a demographic that disproportionately uses social media while watching television. In a study conducted by Nielsen in September and titled “How Chatter Matters in TV Viewing,” 54 percent of 18- to 34-year-olds said they had started watching a TV show because of Facebook, and 21 percent credited Twitter.

Fred Graver, head of TV at Twitter, said partnering with Comedy Central and others was not about turning the service into a television distribution platform, but developing deeper relationships with programmers that eventually lead to more people joining Twitter. The relationship, he said, can be mutually beneficial.

Indian Central Bank Cuts Rates

MUMBAI — The Indian central bank lowered its benchmark policy rates by 0.25 percentage point Tuesday for the second time this year in an effort to help revive economic growth.

The rate cut was overshadowed by a political crisis when a major ally in the governing coalition quit, raising fresh doubts about Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s ability to push through changes and regain investors’ confidence.

In its midquarter policy review, the Reserve Bank of India lowered its benchmark rate to 7.5 percent, as expected, and reduced another important number, the reverse repo rate — the rate at which it borrows from banks — to 6.5 percent.

It also left the cash reserve ratio for banks unchanged at 4 percent, in line with expectations.

The Indian economy is on track to grow at its slowest pace in a decade, about 5 percent in the fiscal year ending this month, and had been expected to experience modest improvement in the coming year. A recent uptick in wholesale inflation, rising consumer inflation driven by food prices and a record current account deficit limit the central bank’s ability to stimulate the economy, despite pressure from a government that is facing elections in 2014.

“Even as the policy stance emphasizes addressing the growth risks, the headroom for further monetary easing remains quite limited,” the bank said in its statement.

That caution reinforced market expectations that the Reserve Bank of India, which left rates on hold for nine months before cutting them in January, will only lower them a further 0.25 or 0.5 percentage point in the fiscal year that begins in April.

After an initially muted reaction to the widely expected rate cut, Indian stocks and the rupee fell on news that a political party leader, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, would leave the governing coalition because of differences over the government’s stand on war crimes accusations in Sri Lanka. Bond yields rose slightly.

The withdrawal leaves Mr. Singh’s coalition at the mercy of smaller parties that are skeptical of changes like land-acquisition legislation aimed at increasing investment in infrastructure.

“As the coalition becomes more fractured and depends on outside support from parties that have a narrow agenda, the very act of policy making gets diluted,” said Abheek Barua, chief economist at HDFC Bank.

The current account deficit reached a record 5.4 percent in the quarter that ended in September and is expected to end the 2012-13 fiscal year at its highest level ever.

“Although capital inflows, mainly in the form of portfolio investment and debt flows provided adequate financing, the growing vulnerability of the external sector to abrupt shifts in sentiment remains a key concern,” the central bank said.

In the government’s budget announced at the end of February, Finance Minister P. Chidambaram said the fiscal deficit would fall to 5.2 percent of gross domestic product in the current fiscal year and 4.8 percent in the next year, targets intended to help stave off a sovereign credit rating downgrade to “junk” status.

Hungary's New Central Bank Chief Tightens Grip

BUDAPEST — Gyorgy Matolcsy, the new governor of Hungary’s central bank, tightened his grip on power during his first day in office Monday, issuing new rules that curb the powers of the bank’s deputy governors.

The bank’s Web site indicated that Mr. Matolcsy issued new articles of association on Feb. 28, when he was still the government’s economy minister, requiring that deputy governors represent the bank only jointly with a new chief director. The deputy governors previously had the right to represent the bank in their own field of expertise.

Prime Minister Viktor Orban on Friday put Mr. Matolcsy in charge of the bank, choosing him over a critic of the prime minister’s go-it-alone economic policies. The appointment is seen as Mr. Orban’s latest move to increase the Fidesz Party’s influence over independent state institutions.

Two of the three deputy governors at the bank were appointed by a previous Socialist-dominated administration, in contrast to the rest of the bank’s policy council, who were nominated by the Fidesz majority in Parliament.

Mr. Matolcsy, the architect of a government policy that has seized private-sector assets for the state and increased taxes on big businesses, will also have direct rights over the hiring, dismissal and pay of all central bank employees and can delegate this power to the new chief director.

Investors fear the appointment will lead the bank to take risky steps with monetary policy to lift the recession-hit economy, which could threaten the country’s already-volatile currency, the forint.

During questioning in Parliament on Friday, Mr. Matolcsy said he supported “conservative, responsible” monetary policy. He said the bank would stay independent and would examine new tools to spur economic growth.

But he added that it must strive for a “strategic partnership” with the cabinet, while also maintaining price stability.

Mr. Orban also nominated a third deputy governor, Adam Balog, to the bank when he appointed Mr. Matolcsy on Friday. In addition, parliamentary documents showed that the economic committee on Monday would hold a confirmation hearing for a new nominee, Gyula Pleschinger, state secretary at the Economy Ministry, to the central bank’s rate-setting Monetary Council.

Japan Leader Keeps Up Pressure on Central Bank to Stimulate Economy

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Manko Gold Opens Central Pa. Office Despite Region's Drilling Lull

Bala Cynwyd, Pa.-based environmental, energy and land use firm Manko, Gold, Katcher & Fox has opened a new office in Williamsport, Pa., with an eye toward better serving its North Central Pennsylvania client base, which has grown in conjunction with the rise of the natural gas industry in the region.

Central Bank Actions Have ‘Alleviated Tensions’ in Euro Zone, President Says

“So, not bad,” Mario Draghi said, with an air of distinct satisfaction, at a press conference in the Slovenian capital of Ljubljana following a meeting of the bank’s governing council.

But, perhaps wary of seeming too optimistic and encouraging complacency by elected officials, he added that the state of the euro zone remained tenuous. Early this year, Mr. Draghi also called a turning point in the crisis, only to see tensions return with a vengeance later on.

After a period of intense activity to calm the euro zone crisis, the E.C.B. had not been expected to announce major new policy actions Thursday. And, as expected, the bank left its benchmark interest rate at a record-low 0.75 percent.

Instead, the focus has been on elected leaders, and particularly whether Spain will meet conditions for the E.C.B. to start buying its bonds as a way of restarting bank lending in the country.

Mr. Draghi asserted that the E.C.B.’s promise to buy bonds in so-called Outright Monetary Transactions had “helped to alleviate tensions” in the markets.

He added that the bond purchases, once they begin, “will enable us to provide, under appropriate conditions, a fully effective backstop to avoid destructive scenarios with potentially severe challenges for price stability in the euro area.”

But he also called on governments to do their part to continue to make progress on overhauls of national economies and the structure of the euro zone.

And he warned that, if the E.C.B. began buying bonds to help a euro zone country hold down borrowing costs, the bank would cut off aid if countries failed to meet agreed conditions.

Last month, Mr. Draghi set out the terms for the central bank to begin buying euro zone government bonds. One of the conditions was that countries must request help from the euro zone bailout fund. Until Spain takes that step, the E.C.B. is not likely to take action.

The E.C.B. promise last month to intervene in bond markets, as well as Mr. Draghi’s vow to do “whatever it takes” to preserve the euro, has calmed tensions considerably. But market interest rates for Spanish bonds have been creeping higher in recent weeks as Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy delays asking for relief, a move which would require him to accept restrictions on how he manages the economy.

On Thursday, the Spanish Treasury successfully auctioned €4 billion of debt, the maximum amount that it had aimed to sell, amid strong demand and paying lower interest rates than when it last sold such bonds.

Analysts cautioned, however, into reading too much into the positive result.

Nicholas Spiro, managing director of Spiro Sovereign Strategy, a research concern, wrote Thursday in a note that investors were “taking an overly optimistic view” of the eventual effectiveness of the E.C.B. bond-buying program.

“Spain’s debt market is currently in a state of limbo,” he wrote. “It is being propped up by an E.C.B.-backed bond-buying scheme that has yet to be put into practice.”

In his remarks Thursday, Mr. Draghi presented a somewhat rosier picture of the situation in the euro zone, saying that “significant progress” has been made in countries like Spain and Portugal. He also noted that weaker banks in the euro zone had bolstered their capital cushions.

“When I said there has been significant progress, I included the repairing of the banking system,” Mr. Draghi said. “The capitalization gap that was pretty wide a couple of years ago has been significantly reduced.”

Mr. Draghi ticked off a number of signs that the crisis has eased, including inflows of bank deposits to Italy and a rise in bond sales by banks and corporations, which should help investment and lending. He also said that Spanish banks had become less dependent on lending from the E.C.B., a possible sign they are able to raise funds on markets.

But he added, “We also have to express a note of caution. Volatility is still relatively high. And governments will have to persevere on their reform action.”

Mr. Draghi also reiterated his view, which some euro countries have questioned, that the central bank’s actions to shore up the euro fall squarely within its purview.

“Let me repeat again what I have said in past months,” he said. “We are strictly within our mandate to provide price stability over the medium term, we act independently in determining monetary policy, and the euro is irreversible.”

From the E.C.B.’s point of view, there would have been little point in further cutting the main interest rate from 0.75 percent. Rates are already probably too low for stronger countries like Germany, while the official rate is no longer having much effect on borrowing costs for business and consumers in the troubled countries.

In addition, a rate cut now would have left the E.C.B. with few policy options if the situation in the euro zone deteriorates further.

“While a rate cut could easily be justified by the economic outlook,” analysts at ING wrote in a note Wednesday, “we think that the E.C.B. is not yet willing to fire this very last shot.”

Raphael Minder contributed reporting from Madrid.

Strategies: Central Banks’ Moves Are Giving Global Stocks a Lift

The overall economy is sluggish at best, and unemployment has remained above 8 percent since early 2009. Yet despite a decline last week, stock investors have been on a roll. In the three months ended on Friday, the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index rose 5.8 percent. In Europe, stocks fared even better for the quarter, with the Euro Stoxx 50 index up 8.4 percent. Japan was a laggard, as the Nikkei index dropped 1.5 percent, but in Hong Kong the Hang Seng index rose 7.2 percent.

During much of this period, the Federal Reserve and other central banks have been flooding the planet with money. Cause and effect is hard to prove, but it seems reasonable to assume that the central banks have had something to do with the markets’ buoyancy. “Clearly central bank actions have been a major factor in the market rally,” Ethan Harris, chief North American economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, wrote in a recent report. News reports of “super dovish” announcements by the Fed and the European Central Bank correlated neatly with stock market climbs, he found.

On Sept. 6, for example, Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank, said that under certain conditions it would buy unlimited amounts of government bonds, a move that could lower borrowing costs for Spain and other troubled countries in the euro zone. Stocks immediately rose around the world.

The next week, the Fed met the market’s expectations, and then some. It extended its plans for maintaining near-zero short-term interest rates into the middle of 2015. And it announced that it would increase its bond-buying to a total of $85 billion a month for the rest of the year, with a focus on mortgage-backed securities, a program aimed at giving the housing market another lift. What’s more, the Fed linked the duration of its loose policies to the state of the job market. As long as the unemployment rate remained unacceptably high, the Fed planned to maintain its expansionary monetary policy, Ben S. Bernanke, the Fed chairman, said in a news conference.

“We will be looking for the sort of broad-based growth in jobs and economic activity that generally signal sustained improvement in labor market conditions and declining unemployment,” Mr. Bernanke said.

Last week, however, the markets gave up ground. The central banks aside, it’s easy to see why the bullish mood might darken quickly. A partial list of dangers includes rising tensions in the Mideast, a contentious election campaign and a looming “fiscal cliff” in the United States, an unresolved and multifaceted financial crisis in Europe, and a global economy that is far from robust.

Little of this would appear to augur well for stocks, except that the central banks have tilted the odds on the bullish side, at least for now, some analysts say.

“A modestly growing economy with the cyclically sensitive sectors at still-depressed levels is a relatively stable and safe, if not exciting, environment,” said Larry Kantor, head of research at Barclays, in a recent report. “When this is combined with a central bank committed to aggressively supporting growth through higher asset prices, it amounts to a very attractive environment for taking risk.”

In fact, Barclays calls the current version of its flagship quarterly research publication “Global Outlook: Don’t Fight the Fed.”

OF course, no one knows where the markets are going day to day. After their recent run upward, and even without the emergence of any nasty news, stocks could easily “consolidate,” that is, decline for a while before moving upward again. And because the global economy is already rather weak, an external shock — a disruptive geopolitical event — could alter perceptions abruptly.

Some analysts are not upbeat even now. The Economic Cycle Research Institute, an independent forecasting organization with an excellent record, says it believes that the United States is already in recession, and that action by the Fed won’t change that. “Unfortunately, the economy is just going to have to ride out the business cycle,” Lakshman Achuthan, chief operations officer of the institute, said recently. “The Fed’s actions have been increasingly ineffective.” The relationship between the economy and the stock market is complex, he said, and it’s not always clear whether the market is predicting the direction of the economy, reacting to it or responding to other factors.

Robert Rodriguez, managing partner and chief executive of FPA, an asset management firm in Los Angeles, says it’s possible that fund managers, seeking to bolster their returns, will “continue to pile into stocks in the remainder of this year and push them to even higher levels.” But he says he believes that the market is already overextended, and his firm has begun to reduce its stock exposure.

Mr. Rodriguez anticipated the subprime mortgage crisis and the financial crisis. But, as he acknowledged ruefully in an interview, he “was early, and got out of the market too soon, and could well be doing so again.” Still, he says he fears what he calls “the unintended consequences of the expansionary activities of the central banks.”

Another credit bubble is likely if the banks persist in trying to prop up the global economy, he said. As he sees it, the fundamental problem in the United States can’t be solved by the Fed. “We must get our fiscal house in order,” he said, “and we have only a limited amount of time to do it.”

For the next several months, though, he suspects that Wall Street’s fascination with the Fed may well keep stocks rising.

Manko Gold Opens Central Pa. Office Despite Region's Drilling Lull

Bala Cynwyd, Pa.-based environmental, energy and land use firm Manko, Gold, Katcher & Fox has opened a new office in Williamsport, Pa., with an eye toward better serving its North Central Pennsylvania client base, which has grown in conjunction with the rise of the natural gas industry in the region.