T he people of Iceland will vote March 6 on whether to approve a deal to repay $5.7-billion to the U.K. and Netherlands for depositors’ losses in a collapsed online bank, the government announced Tuesday. The Ministry of Justice said in a statement it had agreed the date with the national electoral committee

T he Bank of Canada kept its benchmark lending rate at a record low 0.25 per cent Tuesday, and reasserted a plan to keep it there through the middle of the year depending on the outlook for inflation, saying slack remains in the economy and that the global recovery still depends on government spending and low interest rates. “Conditional on the outlook for inflation, the target overnight rate can be expected to remain at its current level until the end of the second quarter of 2010,” Governor Mark Carney and his rate-setting panel said in the statement accompanying their decision, echoing the wording in their December statement. The bank repeated that policy makers see inflation returning to their 2 per cent target in the second half of 2011 and risks to that projection “are tilted slightly to the downside,” a reminder to markets that unless this changes policy makers are unlikely to speed up a return to higher rates

T he Canadian dollar weakened Tuesday after the Bank of Canada repeated it will keep interest rates at a record low until June, provided its inflation outlook doesn’t change. The loonie has risen 3 per cent since the central bank’s last rate decision in December and 21 per cent over the past year. The continued strength of the currency, and weak U.S

S tories Report on Business is following today : Interest rates hold steady The Bank of Canada says the global economy is picking up steam, but that it’s effectively being kept on life support by massive government spending and extraordinary measures from central banks. The central bank also warned this morning that the “persistent strength” of the Canadian dollar and the slack U.S. demand are significant drags on the Canadian economy

Citigroup says it lost $7.58 billion during the final three months of 2009 as consumers still struggled to repay loans and the bank repaid its government bailout money. Citi on Tuesday said $6.2 billion of the loss was tied to paying back $20 billion in money it received from the government. The New York-based bank set aside $8.18 billion to cover soured loans during the quarter.

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S weden’s finance minister has called on his counterparts in Europe to follow U.S. President Barack Obama’s lead with a supertax on banks to recoup the costs of propping up the industry. Mr