Price of Maine heating oil stays steady since last week

Maine energy officials say the statewide average cash price for No. 2 heating oil has remained steady since last week at $3.86 per gallon.

The Governor’s Office of Energy Independence and Security’s weekly price survey Monday found no change since the previous Monday.

Office Director Ken Fletcher said heating oil prices have been steadily climbing since January. But as spring and the end of the heating season draw closer, there are hopes of a downward trend.

Trouble in China, Greece pushes U.S. stocks lower

Two signs of trouble elsewhere in the world pushed U.S. stocks lower: slowing economic growth in China and a possible hitch in a deal to get Greece its bailout money.

The Dow Jones industrial average closed the day down 14.76 points to 12,962.81, or down 0.1 percent. The Dow closed above 13,000 last week for the first time since May 2008.

Monday was the 45th consecutive trading day without a loss of 100 points or more for the Dow. The last streak longer than that was 93 trading days from July 17 to Nov. 24, 2006.

Much of the pessimism in the market stemmed from China’s premier, Wen Jiabao, lowering China’s target rate for economic growth to 7.5 percent from 8 percent, where it has stood for years. That’s a negative sign because growth in China has been a key factor shoring up the global economy since the financial crisis of 2008.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 dropped 5.30 points, or 0.4 percent, to 1,364.33.

The Nasdaq composite index fell 25.71 points, or 0.9 percent, to 2,950.48. The technology-heavy Nasdaq index fell slightly more than the other indexes as its star stocks Apple fell 2.2 percent and Google fell close to 1.1 percent.

Mets must pay $83 million for Madoff’s investors

The New York Mets’ owners must pay up to $83 million to the trustee recovering money for Bernard Madoff investors, a judge said Monday, although he expressed doubt that the trustee will succeed in proving at a trial this month that he’s entitled to as much as $300 million more.

U.S. District Judge Jed S. Rakoff issued his four-page ruling to narrow the subject of a March 19 trial in Manhattan that results from Trustee Irving Picard’s effort to force the club’s owners to pay as much as $1 billion into a fund established to repay thousands of investors cheated of billions of dollars during Madoff’s decades-long fraud.

Last year, Rakoff ruled that the team’s owners wouldn’t owe more than $386 million to other Madoff investors. He made it clear then that they would likely owe up to $83 million but said the trustee must prove that the Mets’ owners “willfully blinded” themselves to Madoff’s fraud to get more.

His ruling Monday determined that the exact amount up to $83 million won’t be left to the jury but will be decided by him in a future decision.

Banks, insurers, investors will join debt relief plan

A dozen banks, insurers and investment funds holding Greece’s bonds will participate in a massive debt relief plan for the country, the group representing the private creditors said Monday in Brussels as the deadline for the deal draws near.

The statement from the Institute of International Finance comes amid concern that not enough investors will voluntarily swap their Greek government bonds for new ones with a much lower face value, longer repayment deadlines and lower interest rates.

Without the debt relief, Greece won’t get a second, $172 billion bailout from the other euro countries and the International Monetary Fund, and would face a messy default on its debts later this month.

Private creditors have until Thursday night to sign up for the bond swap, which could slice as much as $141.5 billion off Greece’s $460 billion debt pile.

Investors who participate would lose around 75 percent of the value of their overall bond holdings.

But without the bailout, they would likely face much bigger losses, not only on their Greek holdings but also on investments in other vulnerable eurozone countries as turmoil spreads across the region’s financial markets.

AIG plans to raise $6 billion to help repay U.S. bailout

American International Group Inc. is selling part of its stake in AIA Group Ltd. to raise $6 billion as it continues to repay the $182 billion government bailout that prevented the company’s collapse during the 2008 financial crisis.

New York-based AIG plans to sell a “significant proportion” of its 33 percent stake in AIA, the Hong Kong-listed company said Monday. AIG said in a separate statement Sunday the shares will be sold to institutional investors and proceeds will be used to pay off money owed to the U.S. Treasury.

The companies did not disclose details, but two people with knowledge of the terms of the share sale said AIG is selling about 1.7 billion AIA shares at 27.15 to 27.50 Hong Kong dollars each. That would raise $5.9 billion to $6 billion. The price is expected to be set today.

The insurance giant teetered near collapse in 2008. It received $182 billion from the U.S. government after suffering massive losses from investments in derivatives.