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Gold fell Friday, extending the prior session’s pullback, with technical selling and margin liquidation amid losses in other markets putting the metal on track for its largest weekly loss since September.

Bullion initially rose, tracking gains on Wall Street after news that euro zone and International Monetary Fund officials had discussed working together to provide sufficient resources to tackle the region’s debt crisis.

The metal later turned lower, pressured by persistent fears of European debt contagion and rising money market stress.

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CHEYENNE, Wyo.—Before he became a U.S. senator, Mike Enzi ran a shoe store and was mayor of Gillette, in the heart of Wyoming’s coal country.

Making payroll as a small businessman and sticking to a budget as a local government official drives Enzi now as he leads a bipartisan group of senators pushing legislation to help states recover billions in sales taxes they’re losing to Internet sales.

“We need to fix this so that the loophole doesn’t exist anymore, and that will take care of those local governments without the federal government having to raise more taxes for them,” Wyoming’s senior Republican senator told The Associated Press in an interview this week. <

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Shoppers look at the selection at the Gap store on Nanjing East Raod in Shanghai, China.

SHANGHAI — The jeans are stiletto-thin — you won’t find baggy pants on these racks — and the customers squeezing into them are looking for denim that makes a bold statement.

“She looks like she has attitude,” said Mike Dai, eyeing his girlfriend, Amy He, after she wiggled into a narrow pair of Levi’s on a September afternoon in a high-end mall.

The brand is all-American but the San Francisco-based jeans-maker is offering up clothes that are all-Asian — pants designed in Hong Kong with an edgy, worn-and-torn finish that can sell for as much as $149 a pair.

As the American market continues to sputter, and China’s continues to boom, U.S.

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Asia-Pacific leaders will call on countries on Sunday to do what they can to prop up economic growth, rallying around the common threat from Europe’s debt crisis despite divisions over trade and currency policies.

Fresh off a rare success in securing agreement on the outlines of a regional trade deal, the heads of the 21 nations that make up the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum will turn their attention to the more immediate problem of preventing contagion from Europe.

After talks on Sunday, leaders are expected to release a statement expressing concern that Europe’s unresolved debt troubles will spill over into the Asia-Pacific region.

Unlike the US, where the Federal Reserve has already cut interest rates to near zero, many Asian economies have room to reduce benchmark borrowing costs to try to spur faster growth. Full Post…

I tweeted earlier that my cell phone bill was lower than it has been in over 10 years. My friend said “hey, that’d be a great blog post”. When Janet says that, I listen. Check out her or follow her on . She’s a great resource.

Anyhow, on to how my cell phone bill has gotten much lower. I am ecstatic to see this industry getting jumbled. Notice I didn’t say disrupted. Two reasons. One, that word is overused and two, I don’t think it’s to the point where the word ‘disrupted’ is merited. I believe we are on our way there but we certainly haven’t arrived yet. So, how did my bill get lower? I’ll tell you.

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