The minutes echo the RBA’s statement after this month’s policy meeting where it unexpectedly held rates at 4.25 percent after two quarter-percentage-point reductions late last year. RBA Governor Glenn Stevens and his board noted in today’s minutes that the cuts “had been passed through to most lending rates in the economy, which were now around average levels.” 

Forever 21, which opened its first Hong Kong store in January, said it is paying $1.4 million a month -- its highest rent in the world, both in total terms and per square foot. It pays less in New York’s Times Square. 

An index tracking housing developers in the Shanghai stock exchange fell 18 percent last year as the government limited mortgages and restricted home purchases to rein in home prices that increased in the previous two years. The cooling market helped slow gross domestic product growth in 2011 to 9.2 percent, matching the smallest expansion since 2002. 

Japan’s economy shrank an annualized 2.3 percent in the fourth quarter, more than economists estimated, as slumping exports undermine a recovery from last year’s record earthquake. 

The 2,618-meter (1.6-mile) bridge, whose nickname derives from its shape, will bring 19 billion yen ($246 million) in economic benefits a year as it almost halves journey times to container terminals in Tokyo Bay, the government estimates. Built at an estimated cost of 113 billion yen, it’s forecast to carry about 32,000 vehicles a day between eastern Tokyo and a man-made island, where a new container terminal is being built.