(Reuters) -

U.S. wholesale inventories rose to a record high in July partly due to higher stocks of unsold computer equipment, machinery and apparel, a government report said on Friday.

Total wholesale inventories rose 0.8 percent to $462.4 billion, the Commerce department said, in line with analysts' forecasts and following a 0.6 percent rise in June.

Wholesale inventories in July were supported by a 3.7 percent rise in computer equipment and a 1.3 percent increase in machinery. Apparel stocks rose 2.9 percent.

Sales at wholesalers were unchanged at $396 billion after reaching an all-time high in June.

(Reporting by Rachelle Younglai; Editing by James Dalgleish)

(Reuters) - The top German official at the European Central Bank is to quit early in disagreement with the bank's policy of buying euro zone government bonds to combat the currency bloc's debt crisis.

After Reuters exclusively reported that Executive Board Member Juergen Stark, the central bank's chief economist, would quit, the ECB confirmed that he would leave before the end of the year once a replacement had been found. Stark's departure, almost three years before his term is due to expire in May 2014, would deepen a gulf between the ECB, which manages the currency of the 17-nation European currency area, and German guardians of central bank orthodoxy. Former Bundesbank President Axel Weber, who had been the frontrunner to succeed ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet when he retires at the end of next month, resigned and withdrew from the race in February in protest at the same policy.

"Stark held the same view of the bond-buying as Axel Weber and the current Bundesbank president," said Manfred Neumann, emeritus economics professor at Bonn University and former thesis adviser to Bundesbank chief Jens Weidmann. "It is a position that all the Germans have. This is a sign of huge problems within the central bank. The Germans clearly have a problem with the direction of the ECB."

Trichet made an emotional defence of the bank's performance against German criticism at a news conference on Thursday, angrily telling a German questioner that the ECB's record of inflation fighting in Germany over the last 12 years had been better than the Bundesbank's.

Stark was one of four members of the ECB's policymaking governing council who sources said voted against last month's controversial decision to revive the dormant bond-buying programme and start buying Italian and Spanish debt after the two countries' borrowing costs ballooned amid market fever.

Early bond market action was on the weaker side and mostly tracking stock futures, perhaps waiting to see how equities would trade last night's Obama speech. 10's shot up all the way from 1.975 at 5pm last night to 2.018 a few times this morning, each time seemingly waiting for stocks to make a move over yesterday's closing levels. After failing for the 2nd time, stocks sold off fairly quickly and bond markets rallied back past yesterday's 5pm marks. 3.5's are actually 10 ticks better at the moment at 101-30. 4.0's are 6 ticks better at 104-19. 10yr notes are 2.6 bps lower at 1.95, after having just rallied abruptly and continuing on in high volume and fast trading. We'll have to keep an eye on the "ceiling" levels for MBS discussed in the following link. Today is the first day of MBS settlement and next week's trading of newer MBS coupons could be our chance to break those ceilings.

(Reuters) - U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said on Friday that the Obama administration's new jobs bill would have a substantial positive impact on the U.S. economy if passed by Congress. "If Congress were to act on this bill, it would have a substantial powerful effect on strengthening the economy that has slowed quite a bit and that would translate into jobs for hundreds of thousands of American workers at a time when we need that," Geithner told National Public Radio in a telephone interview. He also said that the administration did not need an act of Congress for new initiatives to boost refinancings of federally supported home mortgages. He said more details on how refinancings would work would be announced in the next three weeks. (Reporting by David Lawder and Rachelle Younglai, editing by W Simon )