By Angela Moon NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stock index futures edged lower on Wednesday as a provisional budget deal reached in Washington compounded expectations the Federal Reserve will start scaling back its stimulus program soon. * A bipartisan budget deal announced in the U.S. Congress late Tuesday, though modest in spending cuts, would end three years of impasse and fiscal instability in Washington that culminated in October with a partial government shutdown. * While the agreement removed a key uncertainty hanging over markets, it strengthened a view that the U.S. ...

Two more Swiss banks said they would work with U.S. officials in a crackdown on wealthy Americans evading taxes through hidden offshore accounts, a trickle that could rise to about one third of the country's private banks. The number that participate in the government-brokered scheme is important for larger banks facing criminal investigations in the United States, such as Credit Suisse, Julius Baer and Pictet & Cie. These banks' talks with U.S. justice officials to settle their cases have been frozen pending a solution for the wider Swiss banking sector. Bank Coop and Migros Bank said on Tuesday they would participate in the U.S. scheme. They join Valiant Holding and Berner Kantonalbank, two mainly retail banks, and Zurich-based private bank and securities firm Vontobel Holding AG, which have also said they would take part.

By Sinead Carew NEW YORK (Reuters) - Cisco Systems Inc Chief Executive John Chambers is facing growing pressure from investors to exit its television set-top box business, where revenue has been plummeting and profit margins trail the rest of the company. The problem is that there are few obvious buyers for the unit - the former Scientific Atlanta that Cisco bought for $6.9 billion in 2005 - so Chambers might have no choice but to close the business, analysts said. Cisco stunned the market on November 13 by warning that revenue would fall as much as 10 percent this quarter and keep declining for several quarters. It blamed everything from emerging economy weakness and political backlash in China to company-specific problems, such as market share losses in network equipment and declining sales in set-top boxes.

(Reuters) - The union representing Boeing Co's Seattle area machinists said its leaders had met with top executives of the airplane maker on Tuesday about restarting talks that could see the new 777X jetliner built in Washington state, where the current 777 is built. The meeting came after union members last month roundly rejected a labor contract offer by Boeing that would have ensured the new jet was built in the Seattle area. On its website, the International Association of Machinists District 751 said its president, Tom Wroblewski, and other union representatives had met on Tuesday with Boeing Commercial Airplanes Chief Executive Ray Conner and other executives from the company. "No proposals were exchanged." Boeing officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

By Gabriel Wildau SHANGHAI (Reuters) - The price gap between bitcoins trading in Chinese yuan and those sold for other currencies has evaporated in recent days, highlighting the porous nature of China's capital controls. Chinese bitcoin chat rooms buzzed last month as investors noticed that the digital currency as sold on China's biggest exchange was more expensive, in dollar terms, than bitcoins traded abroad using dollars, creating a tempting arbitrage play. Traders could earn profits by buying bitcoins using dollars on a foreign exchange such as Mt. ...

By Huw Jones LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's financial watchdog imposed a record 28 million pound ($46 million) fine on Lloyds Banking Group for the way it encouraged staff to sell 2 billion pounds of products that customers did not need. Lloyds sales incentives included the chance to win a one-off payment of 1,000 pounds, known as a "grand in your hand". "The findings do not make pleasant reading," said Tracey McDermott, the Financial Conduct Authority's (FCA) director of enforcement. The FCA was launched in April to try and end Britain's litany of mis-selling scandals in financial products spanning over two decades.

There is no shortage of ECB-eligible collateral in any euro zone country meaning that banks could easily increase their use of its funding if they so wished, ECB Vice-President, Vitor Constancio, said on Wednesday. Money market rates and the euro have both risen in recent weeks as the amount of spare ECB cash that has long kept borrowing costs pinned at record lows has continued to dwindle. "I can tell you, there is eligible collateral in all countries, in all banking sectors right now that they could use to come to us and get very cheap funding," Constancio said at an event at the Goethe University Frankfurt. He added that it was very difficult for the ECB to influence how banks used the cash, but said he hoped lending to the economy would pick-up once the recovery gathered momentum.

Stricter international banking rules are costing German lenders around 9 billion euros ($12 billion) annually, a study of the sector by auditing firm KPMG estimated. Following the financial crisis, regulators have forced banks to boost their capital and liquidity buffers better to withstand future market shocks. KPMG's study, which seeks to tally banks' costs in complying with the new rules over 2010-2015, comes amid sparring between German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble and Deutsche Bank Co-Chief Executive Juergen Fitschen over whether regulation of the sector has gone far enough. It was based on data from 20 German banks, from large lenders to regional and private banks, representing about 60 percent of the total assets of the German banking sector.

Southwest Airlines Co plans to bid aggressively for takeoff and landing rights at Reagan National Airport near Washington, as it looks to bring more competition to the nation's capital, a senior company executive said. The slots are coming up for sale as American Airlines Group Inc makes divestitures required under a settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice that allowed AMR and US Airways to merge. "We are very interested in picking up as many DCA (Reagan National) slots as we can," Robert Jordan, Southwest's executive vice president and chief commercial officer, said in an interview at the carrier's Dallas headquarters on Tuesday. He said Southwest needs a critical mass of slots to have an effect on fares at the airport.

Banks and asset managers scored some small victories after U.S. regulators narrowed the scope of a provision in the Volcker rule that restricts banks' ownership stake in hedge funds and private equity funds. The final version of the Volcker rule, required by the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law, strives to draw a much clearer line for what qualifies as a hedge fund or private equity fund. Regulators decided to exempt certain funds after Wall Street complained that an earlier draft would have applied to an unnecessarily broad swath of the industry, including many commodity pools, foreign registered mutual funds, securitized loans and corporate structures such as joint ventures.

WASHINGTON (AP) — About 75 percent of young women believe the U.S. needs to do more to bring about equality in the workplace, a new study finds, despite a narrowing pay gap and steady employment gains for women at higher levels of business and government.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Recognizing that deeper problems may lurk behind the botched rollout of the health care website, President Barack Obama's top health official Wednesday called for an investigation into management and contracting decisions.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The 15-year search for a pill that boosts sexual desire in women has hit another roadblock, raising questions about the future of efforts to develop a female equivalent to Viagra.

LONDON (AP) — Financial markets were sluggish Wednesday as investors remained focused on the prospect of a reduction in the U.S.'s monetary stimulus.

DETROIT (AP) — Kettering University President Robert McMahan was traveling in China a few months ago when he bumped into one of the university's board members at an airport in Shanghai.

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — General Motors Co. said Wednesday it will stop making cars and engines in Australia by the end of 2017, with nearly 2,900 jobs to be lost, because of high production costs and competition.

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. regulators have taken a major step toward reining in high-risk trading on Wall Street, banning the largest banks from trading for their own profit in most cases.

Critics tell fast-food workers to stop complaining about their extremely low pay because that's just the reality of an entry-level job. Get a better job, the critics say, and you'll make more. The trouble is, there aren't any better jobs available. Since the recession, low-wage work has made up an increasingly large share of new jobs in the U.S. economy, according to a new study from the Alliance for a Just Society. That’s due to a troubling recession and recovery trend of middle-wage jobs disappearing and low-wage jobs filling in the gap. ...

After the global financial crisis, students were devastated. Many wallowed in unemployed misery, bemoaning that there just weren't enough jobs to go around. Those who landed jobs felt that they were settling for less, accepting positions they didn't want at employers that weren't a great fit. This wasn't just a short-term problem: research suggests that when people start their careers in an economic downturn, they earn less money over the next two decades--and despite earning more advanced degrees while the economy is bad, they end up in less prestigious jobs. ...

Recent drops in interest rates have prompted millions of households to refinance their mortgages. Borrowers who refinance need to familiarize themselves with tricky tax rules on what is or isn't deductible for interest payments. Here are some reminders on how the rules work.

Half of small businesses fail within five years. Couple that with additional biases women face in obtaining critical capital to get them started, and it's astounding that women-owned businesses are outpacing the national average.

Would you pay nearly $10 for a plain ol' cup of coffee? At a particular cafe in France, that's how much a cup of joe will cost you -- unless you say the magic words: "Hello" and "please." According to a sign posted in La Petite Syrah, the French cafe charges extra for rudeness. A reporter for local newspaper Nice-Matin spotted the humorous sign and shared a photo of the various coffee prices on Twitter. A typical cup of coffee with a "Bonjour" and "S'il vous plaît" runs 1.40 euros (around $2), but customers must fork over nearly $4 more