Economy Briefs

OIL

Price climbs to highest since 2008

NEW YORK | The price of oil rose to a 30-month high on Thursday as fighters loyal to Col. Moammar Gadhafi pushed back rebels from key areas in eastern Libya.

Benchmark West Texas Intermediate crude rose $2.45, more than 2 percent, to settle at $106.72 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. At one point it hit $106.83, the highest it’s been since September 2008. In London, Brent crude rose $2.10 to $117.05 per barrel.

Battles between Col. Gadhafi’s troops and rebels have seesawed back and forth in Libyan ports and towns since mid-February, with the price of oil rising more than $20 a barrel since then. Energy consultants Cameron Hanover said traders are beginning to view the Libya uprising as a standoff for now.

FEDERAL RESERVE

Banks that drew loans during crisis are named

For the first time in its 98-year history, the Federal Reserve on Thursday identified banks that borrowed from its oldest lending program, naming those that drew emergency loans during the financial crisis.

The Fed was forced to make the information public after the Supreme Court rejected a bid by major banks to keep it secret.

The central bank lent up to $110 billion through its emergency “discount window” at the height of the crisis. At the time, banks were turning to the Fed as a lender of last resort because their credit had frozen up. The Fed argued then that naming banks that used its discount window could cause a run on them, endangering the institutions and defeating the program’s purpose.

The documents released Thursday provided details about which banks borrowed from the program from August 2007 through March 2010. Big U.S. banks, such as Wachovia and Morgan Stanley, took out short-term loans of $6 billion and $1.25 billion, respectively, in the fall of 2008, the documents showed.

WTO

U.S. aid to Boeing ruled ‘illegal’

GENEVA | The World Trade Organization has ruled that Boeing Co. has received at least $5.3 billion in illegal U.S. subsidies and must either withdraw them or make up for the harm caused.

The EU had alleged that Boeing received almost $24 billion in illegal subsidies, such as research grants and free use of technology, from NASA, the Department of Defense, and the states of Illinois, Kansas and Washington.

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