Font ResizeBANGKOK -- Asian stock markets rose Friday, hours before President Barack Obama and key lawmakers were to meet at the White House to try to hammer out an 11th-hour budget compromise to avert the so-called fiscal cliff.
Lawmakers have until Monday night to hammer out a budget agreement before hundreds of billions of dollars in automatic tax increases and deep cuts to government spending kick in. Such a drastic reshuffling of money could throw the U.S. into another recession, economists have warned.
Failure to avoid the fiscal cliff doesn’t necessarily mean tax increases and spending cuts would become permanent, since the new Congress could pass legislation canceling them retroactively after it begins its work next year.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 index marched higher, hitting its highest level since March 20, 2011. The Tokyo benchmark rose 0.8 percent to 10,403.01.
Investors have been cheering newly named Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his calls for more public works spending to reinvigorate the economy. He also wants the Bank of Japan to raise its inflation target from 1 to 2 percent to drag the country out of two decades of deflation, or steadily declining prices that have deadened economic activity.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rose less than 0.1 percent to 22,653.86, while South Korea’s Kospi added 0.3 percent to 1,993.48. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 gained 0.6 percent to 4,675.40.
Markets
Worries over U.S. budget negotiations sent Wall Street slightly lower on Thursday. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 0.1 percent to 13,096.31. The Standard & Poor’s 500 fell 0.1 percent to 1,418.10, and the Nasdaq composite index fell 0.1 percent to 2,985.91.
