Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack at that time called the abuse “inexcusable,” and vowed to redouble efforts to enforce laws aimed at protecting farm animals.

A report by the Government Accountability Office released last week, however, found that while stringent animal protections may be on the books, the federal government is doing a lax job of enforcing them.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich, an Ohio Democrat who has held hearings on the issue, said animal treatment is key to food safety.

“How can the public have confidence in the safety of the food they eat if inspections at plants arent consistent or in some cases, if theyre not happening at all,” Kucinich said. “There is a direct connection between humane animal handling and food safety.”

The U.S. Department of Agriculture did not return calls from The Associated Press seeking further comment, but said in a written response to the GAO that it planned to use auditors findings and recommendations to improve efforts to enforce humane slaughtering laws.

In May 2008, the Agriculture Department banned the slaughter of cows too sick or weak to stand, because so-called “downer” cows pose an increased risk for mad cow disease, E. coli and other infections.

That change came in the wake of the nations largest beef recall, after the Humane Society of the United States released another video in early 2008 showing the abuse of downers at the Chino, Calif.-based Westland/Hallmark Meat Co.

Nearly two years later, the report released by the GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, found that the Agriculture Departments Food Safety and Inspection Service still has no standardized method for determining how many times a sick animal can be stunned before it constitutes “egregious” abuse.

Enforcement of humane slaughtering laws was so inconsistent that the two busiest meatpacking districts, in Des Moines and Chicago, did not suspend a single plant from 2005 through 2007, a period when 10 other districts together suspended 35, according to the GAO.

Meatpacking industry officials said leaving so much up to the discretion of individual inspectors and veterinarians also puts companies in a tight spot, because they cant anticipate how strictly the rules will be enforced.

“You want consistent enforcement in your everyday life and were no different,” said James Hodges, executive vice president of American Meat Institute, the nations oldest and largest meat and poultry trade association. “We were the first organization to develop animal handling guidelines in the plants, but that doesnt mean everyone in the system pays attention.”

Kucinich, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee that is monitoring USDAs oversight efforts, quizzed Obama administration officials at a hearing last week about how they planned to improve the agencys enforcement standards.

“We are deeply committed to the humane handling of livestock,” Agriculture Deputy Under Secretary Jerold Mande testified. “If (companies) dont have control of their humane handling processes it raises the question of how they can have control of their food safety processes.”

Dean Wyatt, a USDA veterinarian who witnessed the mishandling of calves at Bushway Packing in Grand Isle, Vt., said the two processes were intertwined, and that his supervisors should have listened to his warnings before the video recorded by the Humane Society of the United States surfaced.

Three times last year, he called for the plant to suspend operations for abuse of male veal calves, including an incident in which a weak and injured calf was dragged across a holding pen. But after each suspension his supervisors allowed the plant to reopen, he said.

An enforcement investigator from the Albany district office also found 23 violations of food safety laws there, including improper E. coli testing procedures and faulty sanitizing processes for slaughter knives, according to e-mails provided by Wyatt. But FSIS supervisors in Albany later ordered those noncompliance records to be rescinded even though officials “could not determine if the food produced and shipped by the establishment is safe,” the e-mails show. The USDA did not immediately comment on the incident.

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“NHTSA has been viewed by the motor vehicle industry for years as a lapdog, not a watchdog,” Joan Claybrook, a former NHTSA administrator under President Jimmy Carter, said in prepared testimony.

Congress is considering new auto industry reforms following Toyotas recalls to fix problems with accelerator pedals and brakes. NHTSA has tied 52 deaths to crashes allegedly caused by the accelerator problems, and the agency has received new complaints from owners who had their cars fixed and said their vehicles suddenly accelerated.

A panel of the House Energy and Commerce Committee was to hear from David Strickland, NHTSAs administrator; David McCurdy, president of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, a trade group which represents 11 vehicle manufacturers; Ami Gadhia, policy counsel with Consumers Union; and Claybrook, the former head of watchdog group Public Citizen.

The Transportation Department has defended its work in policing the auto industry, noting that it dispatched safety officials to Japan late last year to urge the company to take safety concerns seriously. Toyota president Akio Toyoda recently met with Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and told him the company would “advance safety to the next level.”

The agency has been investigating potential electronic problems in Toyota cars and trucks. Toyota has said it has found no evidence of problems with its vehicles electronic throttle controls but is also studying the issue.

Automakers point to declines in highway fatalities and the use of safety technology such as anti-rollover electronic stability control as signs of safety improvements on the road. “This is not an industrywide crisis,” McCurdy said in an interview.

Crisis or not, Congress is considering several reforms that could bring the biggest auto safety changes since the TREAD Act, which was approved in 2000 to help the government spot safety defects more quickly following the massive Firestone tire recall.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., who leads a Senate committee with oversight of the industry, has expressed interest in “strong legislative action,” including requiring brake override system on all vehicles. Toyota is bringing the system to new vehicles and many of the cars and trucks under recall to provide an additional safety precaution.

LaHood told lawmakers his agency may recommend every new vehicle sold in the United States be equipped with the brake overrides, something that would require a relatively inexpensive software upgrade.

Other potential reforms include raising penalties on automakers who fail to recall defective vehicles in a timely manner, requiring car executives to certify the information they provide to NHTSA and mandating car makers provide hardware that dealers need to read electronic data recorders. The “black box” information could help investigators make their own judgments about what has been going wrong.

NHTSA could also receive more funding. Many lawmakers question whether the agency has enough skilled engineers who can understand the complicated electronics of modern cars and trucks.

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“We are starting to see some blue skies ahead of us,” said IATA chief executive Giovanni Bisignani.

The group, which represents 240 airline companies worldwide, had predicted in December that 2010 losses would total $5.6 billion because of the “extraordinarily low” yields airlines are generating - the average price someone pays to fly one mile.

Yields are now expected to improve 2 percent for passenger planes, and 3.1 percent for cargo traffic this year, despite a glut of planes on the market and lower corporate travel budgets. Both key statistics dived 14 percent in 2009.

Passenger demand should grow 5.6 percent for the year, while cargo demand could jump 12 percent, IATA added. It said strong growth in Asia and Latin America was offsetting lagging demand in Europe and the United States.

“We are seeing a definite two-speed industry,” Bisignani told reporters. He noted that American and European travelers may take a longer time to return to higher-priced business class seats for short-haul flights, and said markets in their regions continued to contract.

European carriers are expected to post a $2.2 billion loss, the largest in the world, while North American airlines could lose $1.8 billion because of a jobless recovery and poor consumer confidence, the group said. By contrast, Asian-Pacific companies could make $2.7 billion and Latin American carriers another $800 million.

Bisignani said 2010 represents the halfway point in a recovery effort that could take three years - even if that still doesnt mean profits. Airlines should generate $44 billion in revenues more than last year, but that is still be $43 billion below the industrys 2008 peak, he said.

IATA warned, however, that higher fuel costs would hamper any industrywide rebound. It is now gauging an average oil price of $79 a barrel for the year, meaning $132 billion in costs for carriers. Thats over a quarter of all operating costs.

“Oil is a wild card,” Bisignani conceded.

Speaking on industry developments, he noted over 30 airlines were knocked out of business since the crisis began and that carriers have lost nearly $50 billion in the last decade. They now hold over $200 billion in debts.

“This is not the time for increases in salaries or prices for services,” Bisignani said, without mentioning specifically Lufthansas strike last month or similar action threatened at British Airways.

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AIGs Japan mortgage holdings were deemed a “more troubled asset” by MetLife, which is also indemnified from losses on one of the U.K. businesses it will acquire in the purchase of American Life Insurance Co. AIG said March 8 it is divesting Alico, which operates in more than 50 countries including Japan, to pay down bailout debts on a $60 billion Fed credit line.

“You have to ask yourself, does the American taxpayer have any hope of getting their money back any other way besides selling this business?” said William Cohan, a former JPMorgan Chase & Co. banker and author of “House of Cards,” about the financial crisis. An agreement for one side to retain some risk is typical in deals “when the buyer and seller have a difference of opinion about an asset,” he said.

The New York Fed agreed to the five-year, loss-sharing deal because it expects to be repaid on its $9 billion investment in the Alico vehicle, said one of the people familiar with the regulators discussions who declined to be identified because some transaction details are private. AIG will use $6.8 billion in cash from the Alico sale to help redeem the Fed stake and then repay the remaining $2.2 billion within 18 months after completing the deal by selling MetLife stock, the person said.

More Troubled

MetLife will absorb the first $100 million of losses on the Japan portfolio, which it is acquiring in the Alico purchase, scheduled to be completed by year-end. Insurers invest premiums from customer policies in assets including bonds, equities and real estate and use proceeds to pay claims. Tokyo rents on Grade A office space fell 31 percent in 2009, according to real estate services firm CB Richard Ellis Group Inc.

“Those were sort of a more troubled asset class for them,” MetLife CFO William Wheeler said of the Japan mortgages on a March 8 conference call. “We and the Alico special purpose vehicle will share losses over and above” the first $100 million up to the face value, Wheeler said, “though obviously theyre not going to get wiped out.”

Highly Risky

Deborah Kilroe, a spokeswoman for the New York Fed, and Christina Pretto of AIG declined to comment. Christopher Breslin of New York-based MetLife had no immediate comment. AIGs $182.3 billion government bailout, which began in September 2008 and was revised three times, includes as much as $52.5 billion to buy separate mortgage-linked assets the firm guaranteed for banks or held through its securities-lending program.

“What does the Fed know about Japanese real estate?” said William Black, associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and a former U.S. bank regulator. “Commercial real estate is notoriously highly risky and was one of the causes of the twin bubbles in Japan, the other being the stock market.”

MetLife, the largest U.S. life insurer, will also be protected against losses tied to Alicos U.K. Premier Access Bond offering. AIG halted withdrawals in 2008 after clients took out more money in three days than they typically withdraw in three months. Assets backing the investments were put into a Protected Recovery Fund, which guarantees customers a specified sum by 2012 and will be managed by MetLife, the company said.

“For deal-pricing purposes, we have ascribed no value to the wealth management business” in the U.K. that ran the fund, William Toppeta, president of MetLifes international business, said in the call. “We will be indemnified against losses related to the Protected Recovery Fund.”

Toppeta didnt say how MetLife would be paid if there were losses, or identify the assets AIG purchased with the U.K. clients funds. Keith Mills, an entrepreneur who created the Air Miles International Group BV loyalty program, has said he invested 65 million pounds ($97 million) in AIG Premier Bonds because he believed hed have easy access to the funds. The investment was backed by risky assets such as U.K. subprime mortgages and credit-card debt, Mills has said.

The talks for Alico were stalled in February over uncertainty regarding potential taxes owed on retirement services products sold to non-U.S. customers. The deal proceeded after MetLife and AIG were told by the Internal Revenue Service that the unit didnt owe the taxes.

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“The bank does not believe that the stolen data has or will allow any third party to access any client account,” HSBC said in the statement. The accounts were all opened before October 2006, the bank said.

The willingness of governments to pay for stolen data is fanning tensions with France and Germany as Switzerland seeks to negotiate treaties implementing its commitment to cooperate with international tax probes. The Swiss government said in January it will draft a law barring officials from assisting foreign countries in cases involving theft of client details.

The French Finance Ministry said in December that it had data on Swiss bank accounts held by French taxpayers, including names provided by a former HSBC employee.

Switzerland suspended treaty negotiations with France in December because of the HSBC case. After talks in January, France agreed to return the original data to Switzerland and not ask for assistance from Swiss authorities based on the stolen information. France will continue to use the data to pursue tax evaders at home.

HSBCs private bank said today that clients withdrew 4.1 billion Swiss francs ($3.8 billion) last year and made deposits with rivals offering higher interest rates.

“Our competitors continue to overpay on deposits to attract funds,” HSBC said. “We made a decision not to compete on rates, which helped secure our net interest income, but contributed to an outflow of deposits.”

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“Home equity borrowing wont be the economic crutch it was a few years ago,” McBride, based in North Palm Beach, Florida, said in an interview. “This is not an economy in which consumers are going to be able to go nuts.”

As borrowers like Hale tap into the value of their properties, lenders will make about $36 billion in new home equity loans in the next 12 months, according to a forecast by Moodys Economy.com in West Chester, Pennsylvania. That will increase the outstanding balances of the loans by 4.2 percent to $903.5 billion from a two-year low of $867.3 billion this quarter.

About $34 billion of home equity loans were made at the peak, in 2008, according to Moodys Economy.com. The difference this time around will be how the money is spent, said Frank Nothaft, chief economist of Freddie Mac, the government-run mortgage buyer based in McLean, Virginia. Borrowers are less likely now to use their homes equity for luxury purchases.

Consumer Spending

Consumers spent about $677.3 billion, or about $113 billion a year, from home equity loans on purchases such as cars or televisions during the 2000 to 2005 real estate boom, according to a 2007 paper by former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and Fed economist James Kennedy. Another $376.2 billion, or about $63 billion a year, went toward home renovations.

“Consumers are better managing their own personal balance sheet as a result of the difficult recession we went through,” Nothaft said in an interview. “Many households had taken on too much debt and were overextended, and now people are focused on paying that off.”

Any growth in equity lending during 2010 will necessarily be limited to homeowners whose properties are worth more than what they owe. More than a fifth of U.S. homes with mortgages had negative equity in the fourth quarter, according to Zillow.com, a Seattle-based real estate data provider.

Modest Growth

“There is a lot of distress out there, but initial claims for unemployment insurance are coming down, most of the home price declines are behind us, and banks are pretty much done tightening their lending standards,” said Chris Lafakis, an analyst at Economy.com. “Thats going to enable modest growth in 2010″ for home equity lending.

The jobless rate held at 9.7 percent in February, down from a 26-year peak of 10.1 percent in October, and employers cut fewer jobs than economists estimated in the month, the Labor Department said March 5. The U.S. economy expanded at a 5.9 percent annual rate in the fourth quarter, the biggest gain in more than six years, the Commerce Department said Feb. 26.

Loan Opportunities

“Lenders are always going to be looking for opportunities for home equity lending in areas where they think prices will go up,” said David Berson, chief economist for PMI Group Inc., based in Walnut Creek, California.

U.S. home prices fell 13 percent last year to a median of $172,500, the largest annual drop since the 1930s, according to the National Association of Realtors. The decline followed a 9.5 percent drop in 2008, NAR said.

“The people who bought in 2006 and 2007 have seen their equity wiped out because of falling prices, but if you bought in 2003 or 2004, you probably still have enough of a stake” to qualify for a home equity loan, said Economy.coms Lafakis.

Hale, the homeowner near Seattle, has seen the value of his property double since he bought it in 2000. He said he plans to use the funds from his home equity loan to renovate his living room, kitchen and bathroom. Three lenders turned him down before he was approved last month by US Bancorp of Minneapolis.

“It took far longer than I ever imagined,” said Hale, 65, who owns a business development company called J Link in Issaquah, Washington. “For people in my situation — with equity — it should be a no-brainer.”

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Obama is trying to rally public support for the biggest changes to U.S. health care in 45 years in the face of unanimous Republican opposition. He said his proposals show there are ways to pay for expanding insurance coverage to tens of millions of Americans without running up the federal budget deficit.

“So much of the money currently in our health-care system is being misspent,” he said. “If we can have a smarter health- care system, then yes, we can provide help to middle-class folks who need it and, at the same time, actually reduce the burden on taxpayers.”

The president earlier signed an order authorizing government agencies to use private auditors to uncover fraudulent claims and payment errors, a step the White House says may save $2 billion over three years. The order, along with pending legislation, will help keep the Medicare health program for the elderly solvent, Obama said.

Time to Vote

Obama urged Congress to take action, saying “its time to vote” on the health legislation. “Now is the time, now is the moment,” he said. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid yesterday both said the Democrats were making progress.

At stake is a plan that would give insurers such as Indianapolis-based WellPoint Inc. millions of new customers while requiring them to accept all who seek coverage and imposing new regulations on the industry. Americans would also have to buy insurance, with new purchasing exchanges and government aid to help them afford coverage.

WellPoints chief financial officer said the bill will force healthy people out of the market while doing nothing to control medical costs. Those, he said, are just the conditions that led the insurer to plan a rate increase in California, a move that became a rallying point for Democrats seeking the overhaul.

California “is a preview of what health-care reform is going to look like,” CFO Wayne DeVeydt said yesterday at an investor conference in Boston.

Reconciliation Measure

Obamas plan relies mostly on a Senate bill passed in December. Hes pressing House Democrats to approve that bill while passing another measure that would make negotiated changes. The changes would be passed under a budget procedure called reconciliation that would require a simple majority vote in the Democratic-controlled, 100-member Senate, rather than the 60 that often is needed for major legislation.

All 41 Senate Republicans signed a letter to Reid, a Nevada Democrat, saying they would vote as a bloc to uphold any provisions the Senate parliamentarian rules out of order because they arent related to the budget.

Arcane Process

“The misuse of the arcane process of reconciliation — a process intended for deficit reduction — to enact substantive policy changes is an undemocratic disservice to our people and to the Senates institutional role,” the senators wrote.

Senator Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican, also posed the threat of legal challenges unless Obama signs the Senate bill into law before reconciliation measures are considered. House Democrats want to pass the changes in tandem with the Senate bill because they dont like many of its provisions.

“I see a court case being filed immediately if in fact that happens,” Coburn said. “You cannot reconcile something that is not law.”

Pelosi, a California Democrat, told reporters that House and Senate Democrats are “very close” to producing the package of reconciliation changes.

Differences are being “resolved because we have defined a solution and because we have no more time to think about it,” Pelosi said. “The decision time is here and thats it.”

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If rivals are supportive, regulators said they would move to make the three airlines offer legally binding and drop an antitrust case that could have racked up millions of euros (dollars) in fines.

One rival, Virgin Atlantic, said the airlines offer was “woefully inadequate in counteracting the anticompetitive harm of a combined BA/AA,” claiming that it would hurt consumers by raising prices and destroying competition.

The three airlines currently coordinate how they sell and operate flights between the 27-nation EU and the United States. They now want to expand their oneworld alliance to jointly manage schedules, capacity and pricing on flights from Canada, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Norway and Switzerland as well.

That triggered antitrust investigations in the EU and the U.S. as regulators worried that combining the services into new territories would limit competition and hike fares on lucrative trans-Atlantic routes.

BA, American and Iberia claim that the planned new alliance would reduce fares and give passengers more convenient connections and better access to some 500 destinations.

Virgin said BA and American would have a monopoly or be dominant on some of the busiest and most profitable routes between the U.S. and London Heathrow, where they would control 47 percent of slots.

From Heathrow, the two would control all flights to Dallas Fort Worth, 80 percent of capacity to Boston, 70 percent to Miami, 68 percent to Chicago OHare, 62 percent to New York JFK and 48 percent to Los Angeles.

The EU has long been suspicious about how airline alliances such as oneworld and Star Alliance affect prices for flying between Europe and the United States. It is still investigating the Star Alliance run by Lufthansa, Continental, United and Air Canada as well as SkyTeam, which combines Air France/KLM and Delta/Northwest.

Airlines do not compete directly against other alliance partners on some routes and instead may share a code for the same flight and pool some staff and services to lower costs. Such alliances emerged because many national rules discourage airlines from merging for fear of losing exclusive rights to flying routes.

American Airlines and BA have tried twice in the past decade to form a closer alliance, but the carriers withdrew those bids after regulators insisted that they give up sought-after landing and takeoff slots at Londons Heathrow Airport, Europes largest air hub.

The airlines seem to have soothed antitrust concerns this time with their new offer to give up slots at key airports.

They also said they would help new services to connect with airlines on their own networks and would regularly tell regulators about their cooperation to help the EU evaluate how the alliance is affecting competition. A trustee will be appointed to monitor the offer.

The EU executive said it has been in “close contact” with the U.S. Department of Transportation, which is also investigating the airlines deal.

The Department of Justice said in December that the tie-up would cause competitive harm and hike prices unless the airlines surrendered some takeoff and landing slots.

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For the full year, Northern Rock reported a pretax loss of 257.5 million pounds ($384 million), down from a loss of 1.355 billion pounds in the previous year.

Loan loss impairments rose to 1.05 billion pounds from 894 million pounds in 2008.

“Loan loss impairment charges are expected to remain high during 2010, relative to historic norms, but below the level recorded in 2009,” the company said.

The results were the last for the old company, which on Jan. 1 was split into two units.

Northern Rock PLC, which expects to return to profit, holds 10 billion pounds in mortgages, 5 billion pounds cash, 5 billion pounds of the government loan to Northern Rock and 19 billion pounds in retail deposits.

The second unit, Northern Rock (Asset Management) PLC, holds 80 billion pounds of Northern Rocks riskiest assets, the rest of the residential mortgage book, the bulk of the existing government loan to Northern Rock plus the banks wholesale funding instruments. It will not accept deposits and will not issue new mortgage loans.

During 2009, Northern Rock increased gross residential lending to 4.2 billion pounds, up from 2.9 billion pounds in 2008.

Northern Rock said it would pay 13.4 million pounds to managers who met their targets, plus 1.5 million pounds in extra taxes on bonuses, but Chief Executive Gary Hoffman waived his entitlement for the year.

Northern Rock, once the countrys fifth biggest lender, suffered the first run on a British bank since 1866 after the Bank of England announced in September 2007 that it had provided emergency funding.

The government pumped 27 billion pounds in loans and assumed contingent liabilities of 29 billion pounds in an effort to keep Northern Rock afloat, before resorting to nationalization on Feb. 22, 2008.

The government gauranteed 100 percent of customers deposits in Northern Rock, and that guarantee remains in place.

Since Northern Rock was taken over, the government also took control of mortgage lender Bradford & Bingley, an 84 percent stake in Royal Bank of Scotland and a 43 percent stake in Lloyds Banking Group.

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On the Net: http://www.northernrock.co.uk/

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Its a hard reality for a generation that views home ownership as a given after reforms more than a decade ago created a housing market open to the masses. Its also a challenge for leaders whose reliance on rising property values and land sales to property developers risks letting the market spiral out of control.

“I sigh at every fancy apartment building I see on the way to work everyday, but that wont change anything,” says Yang, whose train ride to work at a trading company takes her past legions of high-rise apartment blocks. “My salary increases but it cant catch up with rising housing prices.”

The issue is getting top billing at Chinas annual legislative session, the partys main forum for explaining its policies and responding to public complaints.

“We will resolutely curb the precipitous rise of housing prices in some cities and satisfy peoples basic need for housing,” Premier Wen Jiabao pledged in his annual address to lawmakers, Chinas equivalent of the State of the Union speech.

The government has raised taxes and required downpayments - now a minimum 30 percent for even first-time home buyers - and warned big state companies and banks against speculative, risky investments. But no major immediate changes are expected.

“Chinese top leaders have become more and more sensitive to strong nationwide voices on issues, but the sensitivity is only at the PR level,” says Ding Xueliang, a China expert at Hong Kongs University of Science and Technology.

Rising property prices have underpinned economic growth rates, benefiting local governments that tend to be heavily invested in property development and other related businesses. Land sales often help finance construction projects that are also a lucrative source of income for many officials.

“The central government will say things to please the popular mood, but local governments have way too many vested interests in the property market to make major changes,” said Ding.

Property prices have risen almost constantly since China set up a commercial housing market in the late 1990s, allowing families to buy, at deep discounts, the low-rent government-owned apartments they were living in.

Since then, real estate has burgeoned into one of the countrys biggest drivers of growth, a creator of vast numbers of jobs in construction and related industries and - as elsewhere - a source of much of the countrys wealth.

Rising housing prices have benefited many. But younger Chinese hoping to replicate their parents homeowner lifestyles, and the legions of rural Chinese now moving to the cities, are priced out of the market.

A flood of bank lending meant to fend off recession pushed property sales up 75 percent to 4.4 trillion yuan ($644 billion) last year, making China the worlds biggest property market, by some estimates.

“I really have no idea of what to do about housing prices. Unless you get help from your parents or earn more than 500,000 yuan ($73,000) a year, you cant afford to buy,” said Shen Junlong, a 29-year-old IT manager at a company affiliated with Shanghais Baosteel Group.

“Living costs are always higher than what you can put in the bank,” said Shen, whose 160,000 yuan ($23,530) annual income is about four times the national urban average.

Sales volume has slowed in recent weeks following the governments latest market-cooling measures but prices continued to rise. Real estate agent Century 21 reported deals in Shanghai averaging 15,000 yuan ($2,200) per square meter in February.

In Beijing and Shanghai, residential prices soared to an average of more than 12,000 yuan ($1,700) per square meter, double the level three years ago, according to a December report by U.S. bond manager Pimco.

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