LON­DON-World stock mar­kets rose yes­ter­day, heart­ened by Fed­er­al Re­serve chief Ben Bernanke's call for the gov­ern­ment to help the econ­o­my and up­beat fig­ures on US con­sumer spend­ing. While Bernanke an­nounced no new stim­u­lus mea­sures-as some in­vestors had hoped-in his speech in Jack­son Hole, Wyoming, he did leave open the pos­si­bil­i­ty of more ac­tion if an­oth­er US re­ces­sion looked like­ly.

He al­so em­pha­sised the strengths of the US econ­o­my, said the job mar­ket will re­cov­er in the long run and called on gov­ern­ment poli­cies to sup­port growth more. "Peo­ple came to re­alise that Bernanke is very con­fi­dent about the econ­o­my," said Jack­son Wong, vice pres­i­dent at Tan­rich Se­cu­ri­ties in Hong Kong. "Peo­ple were re­luc­tant to get in­to the mar­ket. Now they are jump­ing back in."

Of­fi­cial da­ta on US per­son­al spend­ing-which rose by a bet­ter-than-ex­pect­ed 0.8 per cent in Ju­ly-sup­port­ed stocks in ear­ly trad­ing. The fig­ures sug­gest the world's largest econ­o­my is not slow­ing as rapid­ly as some had feared. US mar­kets were al­so re­lieved by the fact that Hur­ri­cane Irene wound up be­ing less se­vere than many an­a­lysts had an­tic­i­pat­ed, de­spite the fact that it killed two dozen peo­ple, caused wide flood­ing and dis­rupt­ed pow­er lines along the US East Coast. Ger­many's DAX end­ed the day 2.4 per cent high­er at 5,672.37, while France's CAC-40 rose 2.2 per cent to 3,155.61. Britain's fi­nan­cial mar­kets were closed for a na­tion­al hol­i­day.

Asia closed high­er and Wall Street rose on the open. The Dow in­dus­tri­als rose 1.6 per cent to 11,460.42 while the S&P 500 gained 1.9 per cent to 1,199.30. De­spite yes­ter­day's gains, an­a­lysts warned mar­ket sen­ti­ment will re­main frag­ile as eco­nom­ic in­di­ca­tors this week are ex­pect­ed to show slow­ing glob­al growth and the eu­ro­zone's debt cri­sis is gen­er­at­ing un­cer­tain­ty in Eu­ro­pean mar­kets again. Talks are con­tin­u­ing on Fin­land's re­quest for col­lat­er­al in ex­change for res­cue loans to Greece, and oth­er coun­tries have de­mand­ed sim­i­lar con­di­tions if Fin­land's deal goes through. That would eat in­to the val­ue of Greece's &eu­ro;109 bil­lion (US$157 bil­lion) sec­ond res­cue pack­age and un­der­mine the gov­ern­ment's ca­pac­i­ty to get the coun­try back on its feet.

Bench­mark oil for Oc­to­ber de­liv­ery was up $1.71 to $87.08 in elec­tron­ic trad­ing on the New York Mer­can­tile Ex­change. Crude rose 7 cents to set­tle at $85.37 on Fri­day. In Lon­don, Brent crude for Oc­to­ber de­liv­ery was up $.121 at $112.57 on the ICE Fu­tures ex­change. (AP)