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A government-mandated report has confirmed what many Italians long suspected: The euro11,000 ($14,300) that Italian lawmakers earn each month far outpaces what their peers in some of Europe’s largest economies get.

Italy’s bloated public sector and the privileges of its political elite have come under fire as the country battles its debt crisis with tax hikes, labor market and pension reforms that are hurting ordinary Italians.

Premier Mario Monti has vowed to trim the cost of governing as part of his austerity measures, and has renounced his own salary as premier and economy minister.

The report, published Tuesday, looked at comparisons between labor costs for lawmakers in Italy compared to France, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium and Austria. It also considered 34 public agencies in Italy to see if there were analogous ones in the other countries. The commission’s president hopes the findings will provide “food for thought.”

International markets have punished Italy in recent months for failing to come up with a coherent strategy to deal with its euro1.9 trillion ($2.5 trillion) debt mountain. That drove up the borrowing rates for the eurozone’s third-largest economy and effectively forced Silvio Berlusconi from office.

His replacement, the well-respected economist, Monti, has formed a government of technocrats to grapple with the problems and has already undertaken a series of unpopular spending cuts and tax hikes.

The findings, which the authors freely admit are incomplete and provisional, showed that a lawmaker in Italy’s lower Chamber of Deputies earns euro11,283 a month followed by the euro8,503 for a Dutch lawmaker, down to as little as euro2,813 for one in Spain.

The Italian salary is fully taxed, but there are perks that are either more generous than, or similarly generous in other countries: euro3,503 a month tax-free in cost of living allowances and free travel on trains, plains, boats and Italian highways. Only German lawmakers have a higher cost of living allowance at nearly euro4,000, while Belgian lawmakers get none.

Adding to the strain on public coffers is the euro3,690 the government spends every month on secretaries and aides for each Italian deputy. Only France spends more at euro6,412.

The findings sparked a new round of calls for an end to the privileges of Italy’s political class, given that ordinary Italians are being asked to make sacrifices including a sales tax that has already increased one percentage point to 21 percent and is due to rise further to 23 percent in September.

“Parliament can no longer find excuses to not approve cuts to its privileges,” Antonio Di Pietro, head of the left-leaning Italy of Values party, wrote on his blog.

The study also set out to determine if 34 Italian public agencies had corresponding ones in the six other countries analyzed.

Much of the debate in Italy over cuts to public spending has focused on reducing the duplicative functions of Italy’s regional and provincial governments. The study though found that such divisions existed in other countries.

On the other hand, there were several Italian public agencies that had no counterparts elsewhere including the “independent commission for the evaluation, transparency and integration of public administration,” the authority overseeing public contracts and one making sure essential public services work during Italy’s frequent strikes.

While the findings imply possible areas for streamlining, the study’s authors note that many of those jobs may be being carried out in other countries, just not as independent commissions with their own administrative bureaucracies. And the study didn’t investigate whether there were agencies in other countries that had no counterparts in Italy.

Enrico Giovannini, the head of Italy’s national statistics bureau Istat and the president of the commission, said clearly each country has different needs. Italy, for example, is the only one of the seven that has an agency to administer assets seized from the mafia.

But he said the data, albeit provisional, should provide “food for thought” over the coming months.

“We have put all the data on the table, now it’s up to the politicians or government to make decisions, and the public opinion to assess,” he said in a telephone interview.

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Egyptian security forces stormed the offices of 10 human rights and pro-democracy groups on Thursday, including several based in the U.S., accused by the country’s military rulers of destabilizing security by fomenting protests with the help of foreign funding.

The raids on 17 offices throughout Egypt are part of the ruling generals’ attempt to blame “foreign hands” for the unrest that continues to roil Egypt since the 18-day revolt that ousted longtime leader Hosni Mubarak in February, but that activists say failed to topple his regime.

Among the offices ransacked were the U.S.-headquartered National Democratic Institute, Freedom House and the International Republican Institute, which is observing Egypt’s staggered parliamentary elections.

The Obama administration demanded Egyptian authorities immediately halt the raids on non-governmental organizations (NGOs), saying they are “inconsistent” with long-standing U.S-Egypt cooperation.

The U.S. State Department called on the Egyptian government “to immediately end the harassment of NGO staff, return all property and resolve this issue.” Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said the U.S. ambassador to Egypt and the top U.S. diplomat for the Middle East have spoken to Egyptian officials about the situation and “made very clear that this issue needs immediate attention.”

The raids on the NGOs were the first since Mubarak’s ouster, though Egyptian officials have been levying accusations for months that the civil society groups are serving a foreign agenda. Most recently this month, Justice Minister Adel Abdel-Hamid accused around 300 nonprofit groups of receiving unauthorized foreign funding and using the money for protests.

The Interior Ministry said the raids on 10 nonprofit organizations were part of the investigation into foreign funding of rights groups.

By far the largest recipient of foreign funding in Egypt is the military itself, which has for more than 30 years received about $1.3 billion in annual U.S. security assistance.

Freedom House said its staff were held incommunicado during the raids and that cell phones, laptops, funds and documents found during the interrogations were confiscated. The group said in a statement the raids came just three days after it formally submitted papers to register its offices in accordance with Egyptian law.

Troops and police sealed the doors of the civil society groups and banned anyone from entering or speaking with employees as they were interrogated.

“In the current fiscal environment, the United States must not subsidize authoritarianism in Egypt while the Egyptian government is preventing NGOs from implementing democracy and human rights projects subsidized by the U.S. taxpayer,” said Freedom House’s Charles Dunne.

The Cairo-based Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, which is not under investigation, said in a statement that the raids went beyond the type of Mubarak-era tactics that spurred hundreds of thousands of Egyptians to take to the streets demanding freedom and democracy during this year’s uprising.

“Mubarak’s regime did not dare to undertake such practices prior to the uprising,” ANHRI said, adding that the storming of the civil society organizations’ offices is part of “a systematic campaign against these organizations, which was prepared for in advance.”

The country’s military was cheered by protesters when it took over security from Mubarak’s hated police force in January during the uprising instant personal loans guaranteed. The military, long the country’s most powerful establishment and one that produced Egypt’s last three presidents, sought to portray itself as a key player in the revolt that toppled Mubarak’s 29-year rule.

However, in the eight months since Mubarak’s ouster, the military, led by a general who served for 20 years as Mubarak’s defense minister, has been methodically seeking to discredit the reformers, accusing them of illegally receiving foreign funds and being part of a plot hatched abroad to destabilize Egypt.

Egypt’s leading pro-democracy advocate, Mohamed ElBaradei, a Nobel peace laureate, denounced the raids.

“Human rights organizations are the guardians of nascent freedom. Efforts to suffocate them will be a major setback and will surely backfire,” ElBaradei wrote on his Twitter account.

An official with the Egyptian Attorney General’s office said at least one of the U.S.-based organizations being searched was operating without proper permits. He did not say which one.

Laws requiring local and foreign civil society groups to register with the government have long been a source of contention, with rights activists accusing the government of using legal provisions to go after groups critical of its policies. Offenders can be sentenced to prison terms.

A security official said “influencing public opinion in non-peaceful ways” is among the possible charges that could be brought against the 10 organizations being investigated. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters.

The security sweep on civil society offices comes on the heels of a military crackdown on protesters demanding ruling generals hand over power to a civilian authority. Soldiers attempting to end the protest last week beat women and dragged one half-naked while kicking her in the street. At least 17 protesters were killed, adding to the roughly 100 people killed in clashes with security since Mubarak’s ouster.

Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, Amnesty International’s deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa, told The Associated Press that the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces is trying to attack groups that have criticized the military’s human rights records.

“I believe SCAF is trying to find some scapegoat (for their human rights record),” she said. “Targeting civil society was a technique used by Mubarak, so it really is reminiscent of the worst tactics of the Mubarak era.”

In another development likely to inflame protests, an Egyptian court on Thursday acquitted five policemen of charges of killing five protesters and wounding six others during the uprising. More than 800 protesters were killed in the demonstrations.

The court said three of the defendants were not at the site of the killings while the two others fired against protesters in self defense.

Protesters have demanded that security forces who killed demonstrators be brought to justice along with those who gave orders to open fire. Mubarak himself is on trial on charges he was involved in the killing of protesters in the uprising. He could face the death penalty if convicted.

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Well, that was painful.

The House and Senate on Friday finally approved and President Obama signed into law a short-term extension of the payroll tax cut and federal unemployment benefits, and staved off a steep cut in pay to Medicare doctors.

But, once again, Congress took a tortured path. And on legislation that, in the scheme of things, was a modest stopgap measure whose main provisions enjoyed bipartisan support.

After nearly a week of adamant House Republican opposition, Speaker John Boehner relented Thursday night, announcing that he and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had struck a deal on a bill that the Senate passed on Dec. 17.

The new law ensures that in January 160 million American workers do not see a reduction in their paychecks, the long-term jobless don’t see an interruption in their unemployment checks and Medicare doctors don’t suffer a drastic cut in their pay.

Many politicians and economists had pushed to keep the tax cut and unemployment benefits in place for fear of dragging down an already slow economic recovery.

The debate over the extensions aren’t over. Lawmakers will return in January to negotiate a full-year extension. There’s little reason to believe the negotiations will be any easier than they were in recent weeks, when the parties could not agree on how to pay for the longer-term extension.

Payroll tax cut extended: The law extends the payroll tax cut, set to expire on Dec. 31, through Feb. 29.

That means workers will only pay 4.2% on the first $110,100 of their wages into Social Security. That is 2 percentage points below the normal 6.2% rate.

Playing payroll tax roulette

If the payroll tax cut is extended for all of 2012 — which both parties say they want and will work to do when they return from their Christmas recess — workers would save anywhere from several hundred dollars if they’re low-income to more than $2,000 if they earn six figures.

Estimated cost of a two-month extension: $21 billion.

Jobless benefits extended: Emergency federal unemployment benefits, also scheduled to expire on Dec. 31, will be extended through February. Without that extension, an estimated 1.8 million jobless workers in January would have run out of benefits, which average $296 a week.

Those emergency benefits make it possible for the unemployed to get unemployment checks for up to 99 weeks of benefits in total low rates payday advance. Whether they can collect that maximum depends on their state’s unemployment rate and their work history.

Congress has extended the long-term emergency benefits several times since 2008.

Estimated cost: $8.4 billion.

Medicare doctors fed up with Washington

"Doc fix" extended: The new law prevents a scheduled 27% cut in payments to Medicare physicians for the first two months of next year.

Under the law, Medicare reimbursements to doctors must be reduced whenever those payments exceed a certain target. Since 2003, that target has been exceeded, but Congress has routinely prevented those pay cuts.

The American Medical Association has noted that even with the regular intervention by Congress, Medicare payments lag 20% behind the cost of caring for seniors.

Many in Congress would like to pass a permanent doc fix, but the biggest stumbling block to doing so is figuring how to pay for the estimated $300 billion cost over the first decade.

Estimated cost: $3.6 billion.

Faster push for pipeline: In a nod to Republican wishes, the law requires President Obama to expedite his decision on whether to allow construction of the 1,700-mile Keystone oil pipeline.

Paying for the extensions: The law calls on mortgage financing giants Fannie Mae (, Fortune 500) and Freddie Mac (, Fortune 500) to charge lenders more to guarantee repayment of new loans. Fannie and Freddie play a central role in the housing market by purchasing mortgages from banks and bundling them into mortgage-backed securities.

Estimated to raise: $36 billion.

What didn’t make the cut: Not every expiring tax provision is accounted for in the new law. Left out was any action on a host of other "temporary" tax breaks that expire this year. These include the research and development credit for businesses and a state and local sales tax deduction for individuals.

Also left out was the usual fix to protect the middle class from getting hit by the Alternative Minimum Tax when they file their taxes for 2012.

Congress could extend the breaks next year and make them retroactive to Jan. 1. 

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Fighting to win over unhappy American voters, President Barack Obama and his Republican challengers are seizing on one of the most potent issues this election season: the struggling middle class and the widening gap between rich and poor.

Highlighted by the Occupy movement and fanned by record profits on Wall Street at a time of stubborn unemployment, economic inequality is now taking center stage in the 2012 presidential campaign, emphasized by Obama and offering opportunities and risks for him and his GOP opponents as both sides battle for the allegiance of the angst-ridden electorate.

For Obama, who calls boosting middle-class opportunity “the defining issue of our time,” the question is whether he can bring voters along _ while parrying GOP accusations of class warfare _ even though he’s failed to solve the country’s economic woes during his first term in office.

For Republicans, Obama’s potential vulnerability gives them an opening, but they also must battle perceptions that their policies favor the wealthy at a time when voters support Obama’s call to raise taxes on the very rich. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has already made clear he’ll resist Obama’s attempts to capitalize on the issue, adopting the language of Occupy Wall Street in an interview with the Washington Post this month where he called the president “a member of the 1 percent.”

For both sides, the question is how to find political advantage in light of a weak economy with unemployment above 8 percent. Since Obama is expected to run for re-election with higher unemployment than any recent president even if the economy continues to show signs of improvement, he must aim to set the terms of the debate in a way that helps him and hurts the GOP _ while Republicans will be working just as hard to deny him any advantage.

The president won a year-end victory Friday with the passage of a two-month extension of a payroll tax cut that had bipartisan support in the Senate.

The measure will keep in place a 2 percentage point cut in the Social Security payroll tax _ worth about $20 a week for a typical worker making $50,000 a year _ and prevent almost 2 million unemployed people from losing jobless benefits averaging $300 a week.

House Republicans had unsuccessfully attempted to push for further negotiations toward a yearlong extension, which allowed Obama to argue for the two-month extension of the tax cuts and prevention of a pending tax increase. The two sides resume discussions on the payroll tax cut early next year.

Obama’s campaign pressed its economic argument Friday in an op-ed by Vice President Joe Biden in The Des Moines Register where Biden, taking direct aim at Romney, wrote that the former Massachusetts governor “would actually double down on the policies that caused the greatest economic calamity since the Great Depression and accelerated a decades-long assault on the middle class.”

Romney, campaigning in New Hampshire, quickly countered that it’s Obama who is hurting the country and expressed astonishment that Biden would have the “chutzpah … the delusion” to write such a piece. “This president and his policies have made it harder on the American people and on the middle class,” Romney said.

It was a preview of an argument certain to carry through the 2012 race, as the Obama campaign, viewing Romney as the likely GOP nominee even before any votes have been cast, works vigorously to define him early on, and Romney does everything he can to resist.

And the dispute taps into a striking reality. After-tax income grew by 275 percent between 1979 and 2007 for the top 1 percent of the population, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found in a report this fall payday loan. But for the 20 percent of the population making the least money, income growth over the same period was only 18 percent.

Obama “is viewed as more likely to help the middle class than is the GOP, so he can capitalize on this by playing on concerns about inequality and contrasting his positions and the GOP’s on issues like tax cuts for the wealthy,” John Sides, political science professor at George Washington University, said by email. “However,” Sides added, “it’s an open question whether that strategy would enable him to overcome a weak economy and win.”

Aides say Obama has long been concerned with economic inequality given his background in community organizing. But he brought the issue into much sharper focus in a speech in Osawatomie, Kan., earlier this month, where he reprised a populist message delivered in the same town by Theodore Roosevelt decades ago, and decried a growing inequality between chief executives and their workers.

“This kind of inequality _ a level that we haven’t seen since the Great Depression _ hurts us all,” Obama said at the time.

“This kind of gaping inequality gives lie to the promise that’s at the very heart of America: that this is a place where you can make it if you try.”

The issue has become a rallying cry of the Occupy Wall Street movement that’s swept the country, with activists proclaiming “We are the 99 percent” _ as opposed to the “1 percent” at the top. And Obama advisers have identified this sense of inequality as the strongest current running through politics, one that they will be focusing on through Election Day.

But some polling suggests a note of caution for Obama in pressing the inequality argument. Gallup found this month that a majority of Americans don’t view the country as divided into haves and have-nots. The polling also found that more people thought it was important for the government to focus on growing and expanding the economy, (82 percent) and increasing equality of opportunity (70 percent) than on reducing the income and wealth gap between the rich and poor (46 percent).

“The middle class certainly believes that it’s in trouble and rightly so, because it is,” said Bill Galston, a former Clinton administration domestic policy adviser now at the Brookings Institution. “But they are yet to be convinced that going after the rich will go to the heart of the problems that now afflict them.”

That may suggest an opening for some GOP attacks against Obama. Romney charged in a speech in New Hampshire this month that Obama is pursuing an “entitlement society,” versus the “opportunity society” that the former Massachusetts governor said he wants to offer the country. Newt Gingrich, Romney and other Republicans also regularly accuse Obama of “class warfare.”

Obama senior adviser David Axelrod called such criticism the “Republican cartoon” of Obama’s argument.

“In some ways the race will be different depending on who the nominee is but in some ways the same because they largely subscribe to the same economic theory” of cutting taxes for the wealthy and paring back regulations, said Axelrod. He added that Obama’s speech in Osawatomie, Kan., “was a very, very good statement of his values and vision and will help frame much of what comes in the next year.”

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COLUMBUS, Ohio • The White Castle hamburger chain is sipping on the idea of selling alcoholic beverages at its restaurants.

The 90-year-old company is testing beer and wine sales at a location in Lafayette, Ind., that combines a traditional White Castle burger joint with a Blaze Modern BBQ, a new restaurant concept also being tried out.

“White Castle is currently testing beer and wine sales at one of its locations,” said Jamie Richardson, the company’s vice president, in a written response. “The sales are at Blaze, which is a barbecue restaurant that is one of three test concepts that White Castle has recently opened. There is one Blaze location, which is part of a White Castle in Lafayette.  We are constantly listening to our customers and innovating, doing everything we can to satisfy their cravings.” 

In other cities, Columbus, Ohio-based White Castle is testing an Asian food concept and a restaurant that serves grilled sandwiches. Customers in Lafayette can buy a glass wine for $4.50 or a domestic beer for $3.

Richardson tells The Columbus Dispatch that feedback from consumers has been better than expected. But he says the company hasn’t decided whether to expand alcohol sales or the new concepts.

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U.S. stocks closed sharply lower Monday as bank shares took a beating amid fresh concerns about the debt crisis in Europe.

The Dow Jones industrial average () fell 100 points, or 0.8%, to end at 11,766. The S&P 500 () sank 14 points, or 1.2%, to 1,205. The Nasdaq () slid 32 points, or 1.2%, to 2,523.

Bank of America (, Fortune 500) fell below $5 per share, its lowest level since the worst of the financial crisis in March 2009. Citigroup (, Fortune 500), Goldman Sachs (, Fortune 500), JPMorgan (, Fortune 500), Morgan Stanley (, Fortune 500) and Wells Fargo (, Fortune 500) were also down sharply.

"As soon as Bank of America broke five, it took the whole market down," said David Rovelli, managing director of U.S. equity trading at Canaccord Adams. "It’s still one of the biggest banks in the country."

The selling was driven by speculation that BofA and the other big U.S. banks will need to raise more capital, said Rovelli.

U.S. banks have been hit by concerns about their exposure to bonds issued by fragile governments in the eurozone. In addition, traders pointed to reports that tougher regulations on banks could come to pass sooner than expected

The European Central Bank warned that "contagion effects" have intensified as borrowing costs have risen for larger euro area governments, according to its latest Financial Stability Review.

The government debt and banking problems in the eurozone represent "systemic crisis proportions not witnessed since the collapse of Lehman Brothers three years ago," the ECB said.

Speaking to members of the European Parliament, ECB president Mario Draghi welcomed plans to increase fiscal discipline and strengthen market "backstops." But he said "tensions" in financial markets continue to cloud the outlook for the eurozone.

European finance ministers announced plans for euro area governments to contribute €150 billion into the International Monetary Fund.

The goal is to reinforce a financial "firewall" to prevent Italy and Spain from being burned by the crisis that engulfed Greece. But the amount announced Monday falls short of the €200 billion target European Union leaders agreed to earlier this month.

The United Kingdom apparently declined to contribute additional funds to the IMF. The U.K. will "define its contribution" to the anti-crisis effort early next year "in the framework of the G20," according to the statement.

Meanwhile, European finance officials continue to finalize the details of an intergovernmental pact to ensure budgetary discipline overnight pay day loans.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il died Saturday after suffering from a heart attack, according to a state media report. The ruling Worker’s Party proclaimed his youngest son, Kim Jong Un, "the great successor," indicating he would assume his father’s post.

Europe on downgrade watch

Traders said it was too soon to say how the transition could impact the stock market. "If you can find someone who knows anything about the son, I’d love to talk to them," said Peter Boockvar, chief market strategist with Miller Taback & Co.

Trading volumes were light Monday as many market players have already closed their books for the year. As a result, the major indexes are expected to be prone to dramatic swings this week.

Stocks ended Friday mixed, after a roller-coaster week in which all three indexes each lost more than 2.5%.

Companies:Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal and his investment company, Kingdom Holding Company, announced a combined investment of $300 million in Twitter, a social media website.

Shares of Winn Dixie (, Fortune 500) rose after the food retailer agreed to merge with Bi-Lo to create an organization of 690 grocery stores throughout the U.S. Bi-Lo will acquire the outstanding Winn Dixie shares.

Research in Motion () shares fell slightly, after the BlackBerry maker offered a disappointing outlook for the current quarter and next year in releasing its earnings results.

Shares of Zynga () eased one day after the company made its public debut on the Nasdaq Friday. The maker of popular Facebook game FarmVille priced shares at $10 apiece in its initial public offering late Thursday.

Payroll tax: Congress on vexing path

World markets: European stocks closed mostly lower. Britain’s FTSE 100 () eased 0.4%, the DAX () in Germany slid 0.5% and France’s CAC 40 () closed little changed.

Asian markets ended lower, amid fears the death of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il could lead to instability on the divided Korean peninsular. The Shanghai Composite () shed 0.3%, the Hang Seng () in Hong Kong dropped 1.2% and Japan’s Nikkei () fell 1.3%.

Currencies and commodities: The dollar gained strength against the euro, the British pound and the Japanese yen.

Oil for January delivery rose 58 cents to $94.11 a barrel.

Gold futures for February delivery fell $4.90 to $1,593.00 an ounce.

Bonds: The price on the benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury rose, with the yield easing to 1.82%.  

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Industrial output declined in November for the first time in seven months as manufacturing activity slumped, countering recent signs of improvement in the economy.

Production in the industrial sector eased 0.2 percent last month, the first drop since April, following a 0.7 percent gain in October. Analysts in a Reuters poll had been looking for a 0.2 percent rise.

A measure of how fully firms are using available resources, capacity utilization, eased to 77.8 from 78.0.

The pullback in factory activity was led by a 3.4 percent decrease in motor vehicles and parts. But even excluding that drag, manufacturing output was still down 0.2 percent.

Mining production rose 0.1 percent, and there was a 0.2 percent rise for utilities.

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Bea Crowder’s pop-up store sale

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