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The Boeing Co., for decades the brand that helped support Wichita’s claim as the aviation capital of the world, announced Wednesday it will shut down facilities in the city by the end of 2013 and send work to plants in three other states as it deals with defense spending cutbacks.

The closure will cost 2,160 workers their jobs and end the firm’s presence in an area where it has been a major employer for generations.

The decision was not a surprise because Boeing said in November it was looking at closing the Wichita plant. But it still drew an angry response from Kansas lawmakers who helped Boeing land a lucrative Air Force refueling tanker project in February and had expected thousands of jobs to come to Wichita with it. Instead, the tanker work will go to Boeing’s facilities near Seattle.

“Boeing’s announcement is that things have changed,” U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran said. “Well, the only thing that really has changed in my mind in the last year is Boeing now has the contract. When they made the commitments, they didn’t.”

Mark Bass, a Boeing vice president, said the market for defense work has changed dramatically in the past 18 months and the Wichita facility wasn’t competitive because of its size and high labor costs. The site includes 97 buildings with 2 million square feet.

Bass declined to say how much the company expected to save by moving the work elsewhere.

Wichita had hoped the number of jobs at the facility would grow after Boeing won the contract worth at least $35 billion to build 179 Air Force refueling tankers. Modification work on the planes was expected to generate 7,500 direct and indirect jobs with an overall economic impact of nearly $390 million.

Boeing said 24 Kansas-based suppliers for the refueling tanker project will still provide parts as planned.

The first layoffs in Wichita are expected in the second half of 2012. While the Seattle area will build the tankers and handle their modifications, engineering work will move to Oklahoma City and future aircraft maintenance, modification and support will go to San Antonio, Texas.

The three states combined could pick up as many as 1,400 jobs, with Oklahoma City gaining 800 and San Antonio getting 300 to 400. The Seattle area will add 200 tanker construction jobs but about 100 support positions from there will move to Oklahoma City in the shuffle, Bass said. Wichita workers will be allowed to apply for jobs in the other locations.

Boeing said it will continue to have a significant impact on the Kansas economy and its aerospace industry. The Chicago-based company spent more than $3.2 billion with 475 Kansas suppliers last year. Kansas is the fourth largest state in its supplier network.

But that wasn’t enough for lawmakers like U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas, who said Boeing had promised as recently as February to remain in Wichita if it received the tanker contract. Roberts and others urged the company to reconsider.

Moran called Boeing’s move “a blow to our mental health as well as our pocketbooks.” Kansas officials are still willing to do what it takes to keep the Boeing plant open, but “it’s difficult to negotiate with someone who hasn’t kept their word,” he said instant payday loan.

Republican Gov. Sam Brownback promised Kansas will pursue opportunities in commercial aircraft manufacturing. Aircraft makers like Cessna Aircraft Co., Hawker Beechcraft and Bombardier still have plants in Wichita, which Brownback said remains “the best place in the world to build airplanes.”

Kansas Democratic Party chair Joan Wagnon said the decision shows that throwing money at wealthy corporations doesn’t guarantee loyalty or longevity.

“Despite all the economic incentives and tax breaks, of which there were many, and despite the loyalty of Boeing’s workers and its long history in Kansas, Boeing turned its back on a community and a state that supported the corporation generously through tough times,” Wagnon said.

But the news was welcomed elsewhere.

“The decision of the Boeing Company to move tanker work to Washington is bitter-sweet,” said Everett Mayor Ray Stephenson, noting Wichita Mayor Carl Brewer’s support for an American-made tanker. “I was grateful for his support and am saddened for the workers and families in Wichita. That said, Everett stands ready to support additional aerospace work in the Puget Sound region.”

Brewer, who once worked for Boeing, said the disappointment in Boeing’s decision to abandon its 80-year relationship with Wichita and Kansas “will not diminish anytime soon.” The city, county and state have invested too many taxpayer dollars in Boeing to take the announcement lightly, he said.

Boeing has had a facility in Wichita since it bought the Stearman Aircraft Co. in 1929.

Employment at the plant peaked during World War II, when its 40,000 workers included President Barack Obama’s grandmother Madelyn Dunham, who worked the night shift as a supervisor on the B-29 bomber assembly line.

The company remained Wichita’s largest employer for decades after the war.

It still had about 15,000 workers in the city in 2005, when it spun off its commercial aircraft operations in Kansas and Oklahoma. After the divestiture, Boeing kept 4,500 workers for its defense work in Wichita but layoffs have since slashed that number.

Spirit AeroSystems, which took over Boeing’s commercial aircraft operations, still makes parts for Boeing in Wichita.

Jeremy Hill, director of Wichita State University’s Center for Economic Development and Business Research, said most Boeing workers are likely to stay in the area and find other jobs. But the company’s departure is a psychological blow.

“It was something that was very important to people here, something they recognized, something they would tell other people when they came and visited,” Hill said. “Boeing has that name that’s household and recognized, and it had a value to people when they promote the area.”

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TORONTO

Policy makers are unlikely to raise borrowing costs in 2012, with benchmark rates to stay at or close to zero in the U.S. and Europe, according to Pacific Investment Management Co.

Global stock markets opened a risk-filled New Year still hung over from a rough 2011, with little direction to trading and many exchanges closed.

Germany’s DAX, which fell 14.7 percent last year, rose 1.4 percent Monday to 5981.79, while the French CAC-40, which ended 2011 17 percent lower, climbed 0.6 percent to 3,179.17. Stocks fell in South Korea and closed flat in Taiwan.

Trading was light with the New York, London and most Asian stock exchanges closed.

Germany steelmaker ThyssenKrupp led German shares higher with a gain of 3.9 percent and insurer Allianz SE rose 3.1 percent.

Many of the world’s leading indexes are coming off a down year. Britain’s FTSE was off 5.6 percent by year end, Japan’s Nikkei fell 17 percent to its lowest close since 1982, and the Standard & Poor’s 500 showed zero gain.

Data releases later in the week such as eurozone inflation on Wednesday and German factory orders and U.S. non-farm payrolls on Friday will give traders more grist.

For the moment, there was little to propel markets ahead of new market data later in the week, as well as major hurdles for eurozone leaders to surmount in the first few weeks of the year in their attempt to get control of the shared currency zone’s government debt woes that threaten to harm the global economy with another financial meltdown.

Much of the attention in coming weeks will center on Italy, the eurozone’s third-largest economy and the focal point of the eurozone’s struggle to deal with a crisis caused by heavy levels of government debt. Fears of default on those debts mean that bond investors demand ever-higher interest, making it a challenge for the new government of Prime Minister Mario Monti to roll over euro53 billion ($69 billion) in debt maturing in the first quarter. If a country can no longer borrow affordably to pay off bonds that are maturing, it faces eventual default or a bailout.

Debt woes may be compounded by at least a mild recession over the last quarter of 2011 and the first part of 2012.

A survey of European purchasing managers sounded a downbeat note about the economy, showing activity in the manufacturing sector contracting for a fifth straight month in December. The manufacturing PMIs indicate that eurozone industry are “finding life extremely challenging,” said Howard Archer at IHT Global Insight, which predicts a 0.4 percent shrinkage in the eurozone economy when fourth quarter figures come out next month.

In Asia, South Korea’s Kospi, which lost 11 percent of its value last year, closed nearly unchanged at 1,826.37. South Korea’s tech sector move higher, with Samsung Electronics up 2.1 percent and LG Electronics gaining 2.3 percent. Steel giant POSCO slid 1.1 percent and Korea Electric Power shed 1.8 percent.

Taiwan’s TAIEX, which was also open for business Monday, fell 1.7 percent to 6,952.21. Foxconn Technology, the world’s biggest contract electronics manufacturer, which makes iPads and iPhones for Apple Inc., fell 0.9 percent. Personal computer maker Acer Inc. shed 2.3 percent.

The Asian-Pacific region’s major benchmarks, including Japan’s Nikkei 225 index, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index and Australia’s S&P ASX 200, were closed.

Last year was one that traders would prefer to forget: most Asian equity indexes closed out 2011 deeply in the red. The Nikkei in Tokyo ended the year at 8,429.45 _ its lowest closing since 1982.

China’s benchmark Shanghai Composite Index, closed Monday, endured a 21 percent loss for the year as the impact of Beijing’s multibillion-dollar stimulus faded and the government tightened curbs on lending and investment to cool blistering economic growth.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index finished at 18,434.39 _ a precipitous slide of 19.7 percent from a year ago. Singapore’s Straits Times Index took a 17.5 percent dive when it closed at 2,646.35 on Friday.

Australia’s benchmark S&P ASX 200 ended the year at 4,140.4 _ 14.5 percent lower for 2011.

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Just three years ago, the euro was being praised as the can-do currency that had delivered unprecedented prosperity in Europe.

Now, it’s widely derided as a hugely flawed experiment in the wake of a debt crisis that’s threatening its very existence _ an uncomfortable backdrop as the currency’s notes and coins hit their first decade in circulation on Jan. 1.

The question is: Will it get to its 11th birthday, let alone 20th? In the euro’s tumultuous short history, it has already been heralded as the ultimate mark of a peaceful, united Europe; scoffed at as a giant act of hubris by a distant political elite; and credited with giving Europe a more influential voice in the world.

These days, as it faces its biggest crisis yet, the euro is a daily reminder to more than 330 million people of the dismal state of the economy in the 17-nation eurozone. Many countries seem headed back into recession, and policymakers are grappling with a spiraling debt crisis.

While few Europeans are prepared to scrap the euro _ in part because they fear a chaotic collapse more than the current muddle _ some are nostalgic for the money they counted on before it arrived.

Parisians waiting to exchange their old francs outside a branch of the Banque de France before a Feb. 17 deadline harked back to the “rosy” days.

“Life was better before,” said Mamia Zenak, a 52-year-old doctor. “It (the euro) is a misery for everyone.”

But it was not always so.

In 2009, fanfare accompanied the 10th anniversary of the euro’s “launch,” when it began floating on international exchanges and banks and governments started using it in their accounting. It was widely credited with briefly cushioning the countries that use it from the banking crisis sparked by the collapse of U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers in 2008, and for preventing proud euro member Ireland from descending into the economic chaos that befell non-euro Iceland.

“When the euro was launched there were plenty of people who thought it would crash and burn,” the BBC wrote in a story on its website at the time. “Ten years on, its role as a global currency is secure.”

It doesn’t look so secure now. Events took a dark turn in 2010, when the debt-fueled boom years finally caught up with Greece and the eurozone realized it didn’t have the tools to deal with its economic implosion.

Eventually Greece’s euro partners and the International Monetary Fund found the money to bail the country out but it wasn’t long before Ireland had to be rescued too after its property and banking sectors collapsed. In 2011, Portugal’s failure to deal with its chronically sclerotic economy meant it joined the bailout club too. Meanwhile, Iceland, which suffered terribly in the crisis of 2008 appears to be on the mend after allowing its currency to fall and its banks take big financial hits.

Now as 2012 dawns, the euro’s role as even a regional currency is uncertain as the crisis has spread to much-bigger Italy, with many skeptical about its ability to survive, at least in its present form.

Today’s pessimism, which saw the euro fall to a 15-month low against the dollar of $1.2857 on Dec. 29, recalls the early days, when consumers worried that the currency would do them in financially, as shopkeepers took advantage of the changeover to hike prices. Maria Esteban, a catering manager in Madrid, remembered the price of a beer jumping from 150 pesetas to euro1.50 _ an increase of 66 percent.

“People barely knew what they were paying,” said the 50-year-old.

Prices that had been set for their ease _ 10 francs, which was one coin, for a cone of roasted chestnuts in Paris, for instance _ saw some of the most egregious markups. Overnight, those chestnuts rose by a third _ to euro2, also a single coin.

A European Central Bank analysis found that while the perception that prices skyrocketed after the euro is generally exaggerated, 0.3 percentage point of 2002’s 2.3 percent inflation was due to the introduction of the new notes and coins.

But, after that first uneasy year, an EU survey found that just over half of respondents thought the euro was “overall advantageous,” while nearly a third thought the opposite. By 2007, at the height of an economic boom and with calls for the euro to become the world’s reserve currency, 72 percent thought the currency was a “good thing” for Europe.

In the EU’s latest survey, that figure has fallen to around two-thirds of respondents, and the economic downturn has renewed complaints about the squeeze exerted by the single currency.

While public affection for the euro vacillates frequently, Europeans have remained convinced of one thing: Few believe the currency has achieved one of its more lofty goals, forging a common European identity from Dublin to Tallinn.

The European Commission most recently asked citizens last year if the euro had made them feel more European. More than three-quarters said it had “no effect.” That number has remained fairly intractable over the years; it was 80 percent in 2002.

Dutchman Patrick Plomp, who collects and trades rare bank notes, said the bills’ design is partially responsible for their failure to instill a connection to Europe.

Whereas his country’s guilders carried pictures of the sunflower, Austrian schillings depicted a Lipizzaner stallion and Greece’s drachma bore Apollo’s head, the drawings on euros are merely examples of different types of European architecture: They don’t represent real monuments.

“If you look at a euro, you’ll see that it’s made with buildings that don’t exist, bridges to nowhere,” said Plomp, 44. “The effect that this has is that people feel alienated from the money. It’s something that comes from far away.”

Taina Kovamaki, a 40-year-old nurse, added that a feeling of alienation from the note leads to worries about the currency in general.

“After all the Finnish markka was Finnish _ it was our own,” Kovamaki said as she lined up at the Bank of Finland counter in Helsinki, where the markka can be changed until Feb. 29. “The financial crisis scares me. I’m just not sure those people in Brussels know what they’re doing.”

But as with all things euro, how people feel about it depends largely on what they had before.

While many deride their generic look, stationery store owner Yiannakis Ioannides compares the notes to the flimsiness of the old Cypriot pound.

“It’s better quality than the pound, which wasn’t as good,” the 52-year-old said.

The view from outside the currency union has also been just as fickle. Once seen as a sign that eastern European countries had “made it,” joining the euro is now a far more sensitive subject. Poland, for one, is carefully measuring its words, calling for reforms before it joins.

Pauline Frommer, the managing editor of the Frommer’s travel guides, recounts the glee of the currency’s early days, when an Italian shopping spree could be had on the cheap by Americans because of the favorable exchange rate and the eventual dismay as the rate turned around in recent years.

Now, the euro has moved into a new phase, she said.

“The euro has come to symbolize something that may not have been fully thought through and may come back to bite us,” said Frommer. “I think we’re all very worried about the future of the euro, that maybe its 10th anniversary will be its last.”

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Online:

European Commission’s surveys on the euro: http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/topics/euro_en.htm

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The year couldn’t end without a final word about the nation’s debt ceiling.

President Obama plans to ask Congress this week to raise the debt limit by $1.2 trillion, an increase that should get the government through most of next year, a Treasury department official said Tuesday.

Fortunately, though, the increase should come without the fireworks that accompanied this summer’s debt battle, as it comes in line with the deal struck back then.

That deal, signed into law in August, authorized a phased increase of the debt ceiling by up to $2.4 trillion, with $400 billion of that kicking in immediately and another $500 billion coming in September.

This final request would increase the debt limit from its current level of roughly $15.2 trillion to $16.4 trillion. The government is expected to come within $100 billion of the current limit by the end of this week, the Treasury official said.

While Obama still has to put the latest increase to Congress, it can only be blocked if both the House and Senate pass a resolution against it, which, with the Democrats in control of the Senate, is extremely unlikely.

In September, the Republican-controlled House passed a resolution against Obama’s request to increase the debt limit, but the Senate did not. Even if a joint resolution were passed, Obama could veto it.

With Congress out of session until Jan. 17, lawmakers may not even get to introduce resolutions against the increase within the 15-day window they have once the president’s request is made. The increase goes into effect after the 15 days are up.

At the very least, though, it should give Republican candidates one more talking point out on the campaign trail in the coming weeks.

In November, the Congressional committee tasked as part of this summer’s deal with cutting the deficit by $1.2 trillion over the next 10 years announced that it could not come to an agreement. As a result, some $1.2 trillion in automatic spending cuts are set to kick in in 2013, though lawmakers may choose to scale back these cuts between now and then. 

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ALBANY, N.Y. • Seven companies based in Asia will pay $553 million to settle claims by officials in eight states that they conspired to inflate prices for liquid crystal display screens used in televisions and computer monitors, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said Tuesday.

The agreement provides $501 million for partial refunds for consumers in 24 states and the District of Columbia who purchased products with the companies’ LCD panels from 1999 through 2006.

In a group of lawsuits that eventually were consolidated into one federal case in the Northern District of California, officials in the eight states alleged that the Japanese, Korean and Taiwanese companies conspired along with certain affiliates of each corporation to fix prices on their thin-film transistor LCD panels.

The settlement by Chi Mei Innolux Corp., Chunghwa Picture Tubes Ltd., Epson Imaging Devices Corp., HannStar Display Corp., Hitachi Displays Ltd., Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. and Sharp Corp. and their U.S. affiliates addresses antitrust claims brought by attorneys general in Arkansas, California, Florida, Michigan, Missouri, New York, West Virginia and Wisconsin cash advance payday loan.

The companies denied responsibility and said in the pact that they settled to avoid the expense of protracted litigation. They did not immediately reply to requests for comment Tuesday. But Schneiderman declared victory.

“This price-fixing scheme manipulated the playing field for businesses that abide by the rules and left consumers to pay artificially higher costs for televisions, computers and other electronics,” Schneiderman said.

The state of New York could get more than $11 million, while consumers are eligible for partial refunds on millions of panels sold in New York, he said.

The Missouri Attorney General’s office couldn’t be reached late Tuesday for comment. Illinois was not part of the settlement.

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Volkswagen

Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke told Republican senators on Capitol Hill on Wednesday that he’s concerned about European sovereign debt problems spilling over to the U.S. economy, according to senators.

The Senate Republican caucus invited the Fed chief to brief them on problems in Europe. Sens. Orrin Hatch of Utah and Mike Johanns of Nebraska both said that Bernanke warned that the economic unraveling of Europe would have a negative impact on the U.S. economy.

"He’s very concerned," Hatch told CNN. "He did say that if they can’t get their things in order, it could affect us. A collapse over there would be detrimental to us."

The European sovereign debt crisis has been raging on for more than 18 months.

Last Friday, European leaders hashed out a ‘fiscal plan’ aimed at resolving the crisis payday loans. All 17 eurozone members signed on, with the bulk of the remaining European Union members indicating they were interested as well.

But various parliaments still need to give their approval, and cracks in the plan have started to emerge.

A key part of Friday’s deal calls for eurozone members to contribute €200 billion more to the International Monetary Fund. But some government leaders have voiced their reluctance to sign on.

Furthermore, the overall plan would require a number of treaty changes and, once again, some countries are balking. According to news reports, opposition leaders in Ireland are calling on Prime Minister Enda Kenny to hold a public referendum on the deal. 

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For nearly three years, real estate developer Paul McKee hasn’t paid property taxes on several parcels of his stalled industrial park in Hazelwood. But St. Louis County officials say they were unaware of the delinquency when they recently approved multimillion-dollar refinancing for another county project of McKee’s