Federal authorities say the case against Lee B. Farkas, former chairman of Florida-based Taylor Bean Whitaker, is one of the largest prosecutions arising from the nation’s financial crisis. The fraud put thousands of employees out of work and contributed to the collapse of Colonial Bank, which authorities described as the sixth largest bank collapse in U.S. history.

“He deserves to be punished severely in light of the enormity of his crimes. The losses from this case are, in fact, off the charts,” federal prosecutor Patrick Stokes said in urging a judge to send Farkas, 58, to prison for the rest of his life.

Farkas, who denied any wrongdoing when he testified at his trial, was convicted in April of all 14 counts, including securities fraud and conspiracy. On Thursday, he acknowledged taking risks and making errors in judgment to keep his company afloat. But did not directly apologize for any fraud.

“When faced with the prospect of Taylor Bean Whitaker sinking, I had to take risks,” said Farkas, who was taken into custody after the verdict and appeared in court Thursday in a green prison jumpsuit. “I let Taylor Bean Whitaker get out of control by letting it grow too fast.”

U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema told Farkas she detected no remorse as she sentenced him to 30 years – twice the 15-year sentence requested by his attorneys.

The fraud began in 2002 and took multiple forms until Taylor Bean collapsed in 2009 and the scheme unraveled, prosecutors said. Taylor Bean overdrew its main account with Alabama-based Colonial Bank by several million dollars and eventually double- and triple-pledged mortgages it held to a variety of investors. Prosecutors also alleged that Taylor Bean sold hundreds of million in worthless mortgages to Colonial.

They say Farkas was motivated by a lavish lifestyle, maintaining several dozen classic cars, a private jet and seaplane, and multiple houses, including one in Key West. The government is seeking to forfeit $38.5 million.

Farkas‘ lawyer, Bruce Rogow, said prosecutors had magnified Farkas‘ role in the fraud and said that while his client may have made naive or foolish business decisions, he was not a calculating criminal deserving of a life sentence. He said each of Farkas‘ co-defendants deserved blame for allowing the fraud to continue for years.

“He is not the ogre that the government makes him out” to be, Mr. Rogow said,

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Global markets hit a pocket of turbulence Wednesday as a year-old European bailout for Greece appeared to be unraveling, with deep and unpopular budget cuts triggering protests in Athens and threatening to topple the Greek government in a chain of events that investors fear will end in a globally destabilizing default on the nation’s debt obligations.

The Dow Jones industrial average was down more than 200 points at times in trading during a topsy-turvy day of Wall Street teetering in response to Europe’s woes.

The euro and European markets plummeted after leaders of the European Union and International Monetary Fund in intensive meetings with Greek leaders came no closer to agreement on further aid and a recovery plan for the struggling Mediterranean nation.

Thousands of protesters surrounded the parliament building, and riots broke out in Athens in response to a new round of austerity measures sought by the EU and IMF. George Papandreou, Greece’s socialist prime minister, at one point offered his resignation in a bid to quell growing opposition to the harsh measures, and said he would try to form a new government Sunday.

The Dow, having recovered some earlier this week from a rough spell induced in part by Greece’s woes, capitulated Wednesday and ended the tumultuous day down 179 points at 11,897.

Major stock indexes from Frankfurt to New York lost from 1.25 percent to 1.75 percent of their value.

With European markets plunging anew into turmoil, investors seeking safe havens sent the U.S. dollar and Treasury bonds soaring, despite the economic and debt woes also plaguing the United States.

“The Greece situation continues to deteriorate,” said stock market commentator Ned Brines, noting that global markets are reverberating as they did a year ago when Greece’s financial straits led to months of market turmoil and the first IMF bailout of a Western European country. “History may not repeat, but it certainly rhymes.”

Adding to Wednesday’s market turbulence, Moody’s Investor Service warned that it might downgrade three major French banks with large holdings of Greek debt.

The cloud over BNP Paribas, Credit Agricole and Societe Generale sent financial stocks plummeting in London, Frankfurt and New York as well as Paris.

Deep divisions have emerged in Europe over whether to sanction a default or restructuring of Athens’ debt as the price of additional aid.

Germany — the European nation shouldering the largest share of the bailout burden — argues that banks and other bondholders should be forced to sacrifice just like taxpayers.

But the powerful European Central Bank, which as part of the bailout is backing much of Greece’s debt, has stridently opposed any involuntary “haircut” imposed on investors.

The standoff has led to fear and uncertainty in financial markets that Greece will be forced into an uncontrolled and potentially devastating default as it is unable to roll over its massive debts at interest rates hovering around 20 percent.

“If a compromise cannot be reached, there is a chance that the second rescue effort disintegrates, leaving Greece at the mercy of the bond markets,” said Karl Schamotta, market strategist at Western Union Business Solutions. “One suspects that policymakers will avoid such a dire outcome, but the uncertainty is weighing” on markets.

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HONG KONG (AP) — Citigroup Inc. said Thursday that hackers accessed the credit card information of North American customers in an online security breach affecting about 200,000 accounts.

The bank said it recently discovered during routine monitoring that account information for about 1 percent of customers was viewed.

Citi has more than 21 million credit card customers in North America, according to its 2010 annual report. The New York-based bank didn’t say exactly how many accounts were breached.

The hackers were able to gain access to Citi’s Account Online service to view customer names, their account numbers and contact information including email addresses.

They weren’t able to gain access to Social Security numbers, birth dates, card expiry dates or card security codes.

The Citigroup online security breach comes on the heels of the high-profile hacker attacks against multiple Sony Corp. sites. An attack against Sony’s PlayStation Network site affected more than 100 million online accounts and forced the site to shut down temporarily.

Sean Kevelighan, a spokesman for Citi’s North America Consumer Banking division, said in an emailed statement that Citi is contacting customers who were affected and is putting in procedures to prevent the security breach happening again.

“For the security of these customers, we are not disclosing further details,” he said.

The hacker attack was first reported by the Financial Times.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

It seemed like an innovative way to buy a beer company: Start an online campaign to purchase the iconic Pabst Brewing Co. and sell shares on Facebook and Twitter to cover the $300 million cost.

Michael Migliozzi II and Brian William Flatow found 5 million people who said they would invest a total of $200 million. But the federal government halted the venture after it informed the two men of one major oversight: They had neglected to register the public offering with the Securities and Exchange Commission, a violation of federal law.

The SEC said Wednesday that it reached a settlement with the two advertising executives. The men, who never collected any money, agreed to stop selling shares to the public.

The case spotlights a growing challenge for regulators, who must patrol business ventures on the Internet and ferret out scams disguised as stock offerings.

Mr. Migliozzi, 45, and Mr. Flatow, 41, neither admitted nor denied wrongdoing in agreeing to the SEC’s “cease-and-desist” order. Their attorney in the case, Steven Berkowitz, didn’t return a telephone call seeking comment.

They launched their campaign to buy Pabst in November 2009, according to the SEC.

The company that sells Schlitz, Pabst Blue Ribbon and Old Milwaukee had been owned for about a decade by a charitable foundation and was seeking a buyer at the time.

Mr. Migliozzi and Mr. Flatow turned to “crowdsourcing,” the use of the Internet and social media to organize a large group of people, to raise capital. They also created the BuyaBeerCompany.com website, which included a countdown timer showing how much money had been pledged.

Prospective investors were told to hold off sending money until the company had $300 million in pledges, the SEC said. Once they reached that goal, promoters would contact the investors to collect the money and proceed to buy Pabst. In return, investors would receive a certificate of ownership and beer equal in value to what they had contributed, according to the SEC.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

For at least the foreseeable future, I intend to have an Apple Inc. iMac computer on my desk at home. The model I’m using, vintage 2009, has a 24-inch display screen that’s just right for my eyes, not to mention many other nice features.

One feature lacking on almost any computer today, desktop or notebook, is “enough” USB ports. If one can “never be too rich or too thin,” as the late Baltimorean Wallis Simpson once said, one also can never have too many USB ports.

Enter the $79 “Space Bar,” a combination pedestal/USB hub for the iMac sold via www.quirky.com, a website offering products developed by entrepreneurs and voted on by Quirky’s customers. If you do enough “influencing” to develop a product online or push its sales, you get a share of the revenue. (In writing about this product, I am not asking for, nor shall I accept, any revenue-sharing.)

The brushed-metal pedestal part – matching the iMac’s look – involves lifting the iMac base ever so slightly, about 2 inches, off a desktop to enable you to store a 1.5-inch-tall keyboard underneath. On the right and left side of the pedestal are two USB ports. Two more are in the rear, along with a power connector and a mini-USB port through which the Quirky connects to the iMac.

The piece is sturdy and attractive. I haven’t yet been able to park my keyboard under the pedestal – there’s too much stuff on my desk – but it is possible and is a very nice option for the fastidious among us. Raising the iMac doesn’t make viewing difficult, so that’s good.

USB performance is OK, however. I can sync and charge an Apple iPhone via one of the Space Bar’s ports, but not an iPad, though this probably is as much because of the higher power requirements of the iPad as to the Space Bar’s design. Other devices, including a recently attached Belkin memory-card reader (the ‘09 iMacs don’t have the built-in SD card readers later models do) work just fine.

I do wish the mini-USB port had been placed on the opposite side of the Space Bar, closer to the iMac’s USB ports. For now, this stretches the connecting cable just a bit.

Overall, I’m satisfied with my purchase, and I like the idea behind Quirky. But, guys, don’t send me any money. Donate it to the Salvation Army instead, please.

Raising a ruckus

For one of the best $200 purchases you’ll ever make, check out the Soundscience rockus 3D|2.1 speaker system from Antec.

Yes, I know, Antec is better known for computer system components (cases, power supplies and the like) than for speakers, but this product, which I’ve seen for about $150 online at merchants such as Amazon.com, might well blow the doors off of that one.

Whether it’s Mendelsohn’s “Reformation” symphony or “I’ll Fly Away” by the Charlie Daniels Band (and you haven’t lived till you heard that one, I believe) or the signature chords of Lady Antebellum – not to mention online radio stations streamed through iTunes – you will be astonished by the sound, just flat-out astonished. I’m listening to Mendelsohn as I write, and it’s just magical, transporting you to another realm. Ditto, in a far different genre, for the Romanian rockers Kal.

The system comprises a subwoofer, two desktop speakers and a dial-up remote that is not wireless, but powerful. The components are designed for use with a desktop computer, although I might want to try them out with my flat-screen in the family room.

Installation was quick and the directions clear. But no written words could prepare me for a sound that rivals that of components costing twice or three times as much. Sound, obviously, is what you want in speakers, and the Soundscience rockus 3D|2.1 delivers handsomely. The “3D” mode available via the remote produces even deeper sound.

Antec knows it has an uphill road in cracking this market: It’s offering customers who buy via mail order a 60-day refund, details of which can be found at www.antec.com/ rockuschallenge/. If you’re serious about the sound you hear, it’s a challenge worth taking.

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LAUSANNE, Switzerland — NBC retained its hold on U.S. Olympic television rights Tuesday in a four-games deal through 2020 worth nearly $4.4 billion, defeating rival bids from ESPN and Fox.

“I can say the Olympics are really in their DNA,” IOC President Jacques Rogge said, referring to the network, which has dominated the Olympic broadcast scene in the U.S. for 20 years.

Now controlled by Comcast, NBC won the bid despite last month’s resignation of longtime sports and Olympics chief Dick Ebersol in a dispute with the new owners. NBC has broadcast every Summer Olympics since 1988 and every Winter Games since 2002, and it was the network’s experience and familiarity with the IOC — as well as its money — which won over the Olympic body again.

NBC now will have exclusive rights to the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia, the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, as well as the 2018 Winter Games and 2020 Olympics, whose sites have not yet been chosen.

IOC TV rights negotiator Richard Carrion said the deal is worth $4.382 billion overall. That includes $2.01 billion for the 2014/16 Games and $2.38 billion for the 2018/20 Olympics.

Carrion declined to say how much the other networks offered. But executives with direct knowledge of the proposals told The Associated Press that Fox bid $3.4 billion for four games and $1.5 billion for two, while ESPN offered $1.4 billion for two.

The rights fees break down this way: $775 million for Sochi, $1.226 billion for Rio, $963 million for the 2018 Games and $1.418 billion for the 2020 Olympics.

“This secures the financial future for the next decade of the Olympic movement,” Rogge said.

It was the first U.S. rights auction since 2003, when NBC secured the 2010 and 2012 Olympics in a deal worth $2.2 billion. That included $2 billion in straight rights fees, plus a $200 million global sponsorship deal with NBC’s former parent company, General Electric.

The IOC had said it hoped to exceed that deal this time, and it did, slightly. The $4.38 billion figure for four games represents a small increase only in rights fees compared to the previous two-games package. Carrion said the IOC still hopes to reach a separate extension with GE as a top-tier sponsor.

Traditionally, the IOC awards the rights for two games at a time, but the networks expressed interest in going for a four-games package. They did so without knowing where the last two will be held. The IOC will select the 2018 host city on July 6 in Durban. The candidates are Annecy, France; Munich; and Pyeongchang, South Korea. The host of the 2020 Olympics will be chosen in 2013, and Rome is the only official contender so far.

“What was very important was the four-games bid,” Carrion said. “That is what put us over the line. NBC has proven its worth time and again over the years, and we’re very excited to continue working with them.”

Comcast CEO Brian Roberts said NBC would take Olympic coverage “to greater heights than ever achieved before.”

“The depth of coverage and accessibility to U.S. consumers will never be greater,” he said.

Comcast executives have made clear they’re not interested in a repeat of the 2010 Vancouver Games, when NBC lost more than $200 million in a rough economy. NBC also stands to take a similar hit from next year’s London Olympics.

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Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Google Inc.’s ambitious plan to supplant credit cards with smartphones has thrust the Internet search leader into a legal tussle with online payment pioneer PayPal, which contends Google stole its ideas by hiring away two key executives.

PayPal painted a picture of betrayal and corporate espionage in a lawsuit filed late Thursday in a California state court, just hours after the unveiling of the “Google Wallet” payment service in New York.

The 28-page complaint alleges the service evolved from research that eBay Inc.’s PayPal had been working on for the past decade.

PayPal fingers two central culprits in the intellectual heist — one of its former executives, Osama Bedier, and former eBay executive Stephanie Tilenius.

In its response Friday, Google contends it merely identified talented candidates to run its mobile payments service and then made them offers that proved too tempting to refuse.

“Silicon Valley was built on the ability of individuals to use their knowledge and expertise to seek better employment opportunities, a principle recognized by both California law and public policy,” Google spokesman Aaron Zamost said. “We respect trade secrets, and will defend ourselves against these claims.”

The civil complaint alleges Google spent more than two years discussing a partnership that would have relied on PayPal to process payments for an application market set up for Google‘s mobile phone software, Android.

Google cut off the Android talks earlier this year after it had poached enough PayPal employees to set up its own mobile payments service, according to the suit. The suit doesn’t directly connect the application markets system with the technology behind Google Wallet.

Google recruited Bedier, a PayPal executive for nine years, while the two companies were in talks about their alliance. After initially waffling, Bedier left PayPal to become Google‘s vice president of payments four months ago.

Before leaving, Bedier transferred some of PayPal’s secrets to his computer and also uploaded other sensitive information to an Internet storage locker called DropBox, the suit alleged. Bedier also began lobbying for Google to hire other PayPal employees working on mobile payments before he took the new job, the suit said.

Google wanted to hire Bedier so badly that Eric Schmidt, then Google‘s CEO, and company co-founder Larry Page got involved in the recruitment last fall, according to the suit. Page replaced Schmidt as Google‘s CEO last month.

Tilenius, now Google‘s vice president of commerce, began the wooing of Bedier with a Facebook message on July 15, 2010. As part of an agreement when she left eBay in October 2009, Tilenius had agreed not to recruit eBay employees until March of this year, the suit said.

Google, Tilenius and Bedier are all named as defendants in the suit filed in Santa Clara County. It seeks to a court order protecting PayPal’s trade secrets, punitive damages and royalties from any revenue generated by Google Wallet.

It’s not unusual for a company to go to court when a rival hires away a key executive. Google also was sued six years ago when it hired a top Microsoft Corp. executive to oversee its China operations. Before the case was settled, both companies filed documents that revealed colorful details about their rivalry.

Google, which is based in Mountain View, Calif., also was among six Silicon Valley employers who got into trouble with the U.S. Justice Department for agreeing not recruit each other’s top engineers and other workers with specialized skills. The companies settled the allegations last fall by agreeing not to enter into “no-solicitation” agreements for five years. Neither eBay nor PayPal were among the employers involved in that settlement.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

NEW YORK — To fly someone from New York to Los Angeles and back, airlines spend close to $330 these days — just on fuel.

That’s a 48 percent increase from last year and the main reason vacationers face record costs to fly this summer. To offset their single biggest expense, airlines have increased fares seven times this year and raised fees for checking bags and other services.

This has only added to the frustration of most casual fliers who see $59 fares advertised but are quoted prices well above $300 when they actually try to book. Americans’ expectations of a cheap vacation are being destroyed by the reality of $100-a-barrel oil.

“The passenger has to understand that the airline industry in the United States is not meant to be a low-cost mass transit system. The airlines are in business to be profitable,” airline analyst Robert Herbst says.

A decade ago, fuel accounted for about 15 percent of airline operating expenses. Five years ago, it was 29 percent. Today, it’s 35 percent.

During the first three months of 2011, the airlines spent $8.7 billion on fuel, 31 percent more than last year. In the current quarter, jet fuel expenses are even higher.

U.S. airlines burn an average of 22 gallons of fuel for every 1,000 miles each passenger flies. At $3.03 a gallon, airlines are currently spending $330 per passenger just on fuel for a 4,950-mile transcontinental round-trip. Some fliers might have paid less than that for their ticket while others could have spent more than $2,000.

The industry’s remaining expenses break down this way:

• Salaries and benefits account for 28 percent. Ten years ago, it was the biggest expense at 39 percent, but several major airlines filed for bankruptcy and that allowed them to renegotiate labor contracts.

• Aircraft maintenance, airport landing fees and travel agency commissions account for 18 percent.

• Aircraft lease payments, food and drinks and in-flight entertainment account for 5 percent. And that’s even with most airlines no longer serving peanuts.

• Another 14 percent goes to miscellaneous costs, such as updating reservation systems and marketing partnerships with other airlines.

The price of a domestic round-trip ticket this summer is forecast to be $430, on average. That includes taxes but excludes baggage fees and other services.

While airfares should break nominal records, they are not nearly as high as they were a generation ago once inflation is factored in. The average ticket in 1978, the year airlines were deregulated, was almost $650 in today’s dollars. Deregulation created more competition, which ultimately drove down prices for passengers.

With oil close to $100 a barrel, fuel has become the expense that preoccupies airline executives more than any other. It is the reason airlines started charging for checked baggage in 2008 and why they have raised fares more than 10 percent this year.

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The Food and Drug Administration would have more power to regulate toothpaste, deodorant, hair treatments and other beauty products under a bill proposed by an Illinois Democrat – a move critics consider regulatory overreach.

Rep. Janice D. Schakowsky said she will reintroduce the Safe Cosmetics Act of 2010, which would give the Food and Drug Administration more authority to regulate chemicals in the products and require manufacturers to disclose ingredients, among other things.

The bill is backed by salon industry workers worried about long-term health effects, and they shared those concerns at a congressional briefing last week.

“Why should hairstylists, such as myself, live in fear about our health?” Safiyyah Edley asked at the meeting. She owns a natural hair salon in California.

Thu Quach, a research scientist at the Cancer Prevention Institute of California who attended the briefing, said she would like to see a ban on what she calls the “toxic trio” – dibutyl phthalate, formaldehyde and toluene – three chemicals often linked with cancer, birth defects and developmental harm.

Ms. Schakowsky said she is convinced the legislation is needed.

“The increasing number of reports of serious health issues stemming from the use of dangerous chemicals in beauty products … proves that there is a need to protect both the safety of consumers as well as the safety of workers from harmful exposure,” she said in a statement. “Unfortunately, the FDA does not have sufficient authority to monitor and regulate the use of toxic chemicals in cosmetic products.”

However, business groups say this could raise prices for consumers and hurt the industry. Kayla Fioravanti, co-owner and chief formulator at Essential Wholesale in Clackamas, Ore., says most chemicals in cosmetics have proved to be safe over years of use and they are being misrepresented.

“Unfortunately, there’s been some misinformation that’s going out there that these things are unsafe and that they aren’t tested when actually they are,” she said, citing the industry’s Cosmetic Ingredient Review panel, which requires testing.

Ms. Schakowsky’s bill stalled in the Democrat-controlled House last year, and it will face even longer odds this year with the GOP in charge. Just this week, Republican budget writers called for a $285 million cut to FDA funding in fiscal 2012, 11.5 percent less than 2011.

“I think the chances of that are about zero,” said Kathleen Dezio, a spokeswoman for the Personal Care Products Council.

Still, the hair and nail stylists who are exposed to the chemicals daily say Congress needs to act.

Cosmetologist Van Nguyen, who immigrated to the U.S. more than a decade ago and works at a San Francisco nail salon, said she fears the chemicals at her job are responsible for two miscarriages and memory loss.

“We came here for a better life, but I didn’t know I’d end up working with harmful chemicals. My doctor has advised me not to work around these chemicals, but this is how I know to make a living,” she explained. “What can I do?”

Some salons are seeking healthier options.

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There are certain truths that are supposedly settled, among them the notion that anything Apple Inc. produces is not only better than its competition but also more expensive, sometimes almost prohibitively so.

Leave it to Apple, then, to disprove that assertion, and in a rather nice fashion. The recently released $1,199 “base” model of its iMac desktop computer, an all-in-one model containing display, disc drives, processor and electronics, all residing in a nice aluminum case on a tilt-stand, sells for about 13 percent more than the lowest price I found on a competitive Windows-based all-in-one PC. The Windows machine has a 23-inch screen versus the iMac’s 21.5-inch display (using diagonal measures for each), but it also had some shortcomings.

The Apple iMac I’m testing has almost no shortcomings. It is about as flawless a computer product as I’ve seen in nearly 30 years (yikes!) of writing computer reviews, going back to the now-ancient ATT PC-6300, a 1983 vintage machine some readers may recall.

The words “about as flawless” are not offered lightly: Out of the box, this computer has enough processing power (a 2.5 GHz Intel Core i5 processor, a “quad core” computer brain), RAM (4 GB) and graphics (an AMD Radeon HD 6750M card with 512 MB of dedicated RAM) to be more than adequate for most home, student and small-business tasks.

If, however, you’re a work-at-home engineer running advanced design software, or if your “small business” is involved in video editing or animation, this particular computer might not be for you. The rest of us, however, could get along quite well. (Those wanting more than a 500 GB hard drive would do well to spend an extra $300 for the next-higher model, with a 1 Terabyte hard disc and somewhat faster processor and video card.)

Users with even greater needs – the aforementioned engineers and home-based animators – will want to move toward the upper reaches of the iMac line, for units with 27-inch displays, the larger hard drives, more RAM and still-faster CPUs. Apple, in a briefing Monday, called such people “prosumers,” a cross between “professional” and “consumer.”

For this “base” model, however, I could see someone with more basic needs getting quite a bit of use out of the $1,199 version. Out of the box, it offers the Mac OS and the latest version of iLife, Apple’s photo/music/video/Web software. Add the $79 iWork package (word processing, spreadsheet, presentations) and you will be pretty much set for most tasks. If you must have Microsoft Office, add $120 for the “business” version of Office 2011.

So for somewhere between $1,280 and $1,400 (hardware and suggested software), you’re up and running with an elegant looking, smooth performing computer that has a bunch of neat features, such as a Gigabit Ethernet connection, capable of handling high-speed wired Internet connections, a bunch of USB ports, built-in wireless networking and Bluetooth connectivity. The audio quality is great, the display is visually stunning and the built-in video camera can shoot 720p high-definition video as well as support Apple’s FaceTime videoconferencing software. Even at the “low end,” this computer packs a multimedia wallop.

There’s also a new, Intel Corp.-developed Thunderbolt port to which a daisy-chain of external storage devices and certain display adapters can be connected. It’s nice, but there’s not much in the way of hardware available that the owner of the most-basic iMac will find that takes advantage of Thunderbolt’s specific speed features.

As mentioned here last week, I did have trouble milking every last megabit out of my wired connection to Verizon’s 150 megabits-per-second FiOS service, but a solution may yet be found to that dilemma. And, as they say on the car commercials, your mileage may vary.

All told, the new iMac is a very nice package. I’m seriously tempted to get one for a family member. Put one in your office or den. Send this model off to college with your newly minted high school grad and hope they bring it home safely in a couple of years for you to use in the kitchen. You’ll both be thrilled.

• Email mkellner@washingtontimes.com.

© Copyright 2011 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

Mesmerized by the Osama bin Laden drama, the world’s attention has swung away from economic issues.

That may not be for long. A three-ring circus of instability matching P.T. Barnum’s extravaganzas is in full swing. But unlike Ringling Bros., where only the viewers attention connects the acts, so intertwined are these convulsions that even the most astute market punter is having difficulty telling us what is going on — much less how to invest.

Ring No. 1 is the soap opera — to change my metaphor — playing out with Europe’s common currency. It is becoming increasingly clear, as some of us predicted at the beginning of the crisis, that the euro cannot survive in its present form.

With Greece near civil war, the markets are telling anyone listening that there is no confidence in bailouts, even as a new one is under way for Greece and one is just being put together for Portugal. Because default could come at any moment, borrowing rates are too high for recovery even where politicians have the courage to inflict the pain of austerity on voters. Along with Ireland and soon probably Spain, the fact that Greece and Portugal still cling to the euro vitiates the kind of belt-tightening their separate currencies once forced on earlier regimes.

The threat of a taxpayer revolt grows for German Chancellor Angela Merkels increasingly shaky federal coalition, wounded recently by an electoral loss in the country’s largest state — after 34 years of conservative rule — and facing four more state elections soon. Public opinion sees Berlin doing the heavy lifting for the EU’s spendthrifts, but ignores that it was those miscreants that gobbled up German exports. Unfortunately, the rescue stratagems of the Brussels EU-rocrats only invite a future dramatic euro crash. By procrastinating, they increasingly are making the common currencys fate synonymous with the whole “European project” of creating a united continent to avoid wars and preserve prosperity.

In another ring, Chinese delegates have decamped from Washington after another annual talkathon with a befuddled Obama administration, which is left trying to spin what is in reality a dismal impasse. Just as everyone was being lulled into the idea that Beijing was boosting consumption, April produced record Chinese trade surpluses. Even the combination of higher imported commodities, slackening appetite for its subsidized exports and growing concern about China’s real estate bubble did not stem the tide.

Beijing’s humongous and escalating dollar holdings show where big chunks of the Feds “quantitative easing” (i.e., printing dollars) have gone. Meanwhile, Chinese officials further tighten their political repression. China’s announced internal security costs are larger than its understated defense budget. On the eve of a generational transfer of power, there is paranoia about an “Arab Spring” contagion and much shin-kicking among leaders.

The Communist Politburo is in no mood for “experiments,” but keeps on digging its financial hole ever deeper. That is now leading to inflation (if paused for the moment), especially in food prices, the overwhelming concern for most Chinese. Thus, recruits to the tiny school of China-will-implode prognosticators, among them yours truly, are growing.

Back in Washington, our third ringmaster (or perhaps snake-oil salesman, to mix our metaphor again) proclaims that greedy oil companies are the cause of high gasoline prices. Mr. Obama’s own clamp on Gulf offshore drilling as well as on Alaskan oil production are the real culprits. Of course, as markets showed in mid-May, a sudden stronger dollar and lower commodities prices could at least temporarily sink notoriously unpredictable crude oil prices — but probably only as a sign of a descent into double-dip recession. For the moment, relief seems unlikely for Memorial Day weekend drivers, with Louisiana’s refining capacity threatened by the Mississippi River floods. And continued high prices at the pump, rather than the current concern for fiscal discipline, could just be the election-deciding lollapalooza for an American electorate burdened with joblessness and high home foreclosure rates.

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People planning their summer vacations will be relieved to know that top energy experts think regular gas prices have peaked for the year a hair above $4 a gallon.

High gas prices have been the top consumer complaint this year, and they have been zapping growth in consumer spending and the economy overall.

But relief appears to be on the way – albeit with a lagged effect owing to the threat of flooding in critical refineries along the Mississippi River. Some analysts say average pump prices could retreat by as much as 25 cents, thanks to a rout in global markets that has sent oil prices plunging to well below $100 a barrel.

“While we are not out of the woods, most experts seem to think we may have hit the peak,” said Frank Maisano, an energy consultant.

He noted that gasoline-price guru Trilby Lundberg predicted an 8- to 12-cent drop even before oil and wholesale gasoline prices tanked in global commodity markets in the last week on evidence that U.S. and global consumers are curbing their purchases of fuel because of high prices.

Ms. Lundbergs spot-checks around the country suggest the U.S. average pump price got to a likely peak of $4.01 around May 4 before the rout that took premium crude prices down from more than $114 a barrel to $98 in New York trading Thursday.

Now, Ms. Lundberg says she expects a decline of 12 cents or “far more” before Memorial Day if the drop in crude prices is sustained. That would mean the peak price this year would fall 10 cents short of the all-time high of $4.11 set in 2008.

Other reports, such as the weekly U.S. Energy Information Administration survey, put the current average gas price at $3.97 for the week that ended Monday.

Wholesale gasoline prices – the prices charged by refineries and paid by gas stations – have plunged in tandem with the drop of more than 15 percent in crude prices in the past week. Unbranded pump prices are already down by 21 cents.

Gasoline-futures prices experienced a particularly sharp fall of 8 percent in New York trading Wednesday after a report from the U.S. Energy Department showed that Americans have cut back on their driving, causing an unusual 2.4 percent drop in demand for fuel.

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Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and other regulators gave Congress an update Thursday on their efforts to implement the biggest overhaul of the nation’s financial rules since the Great Depression.

In testimony to the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, Mr. Bernanke said the Fed will announce regulations this summer designed to protect the U.S. economy from another meltdown of the nation’s largest banks and financial companies.

Congress directed the Fed to write the rules when it enacted the financial regulatory overhaul last year. The law aims to prevent a financial crisis like the one in 2008 that plunged the economy deeper into recession.

The rules will require big banks and others, such as Wall Street firms, hedge funds and insurance companies, whose failures could endanger the economy, to be subject to more strict requirements for the amount of capital and cash they must have on hand to cushion against potential losses in case of a financial crisis.

“Our goal is to produce a well-integrated set of rules that meaningfully reduces the probability of failure of our largest, most complex financial firms, and that minimizes the losses to the financial system and the economy if such a firm should fail,” Mr. Bernanke said in the testimony.

The Fed will allow the public, banks and other interested parties to comment on the proposed regulations before implementing them in January.

Mr. Bernanke also acknowledged that some small banks could be hurt if regulators allow them to charge more than big banks for processing debt card transactions.

The higher fees, paid by retailers each time Americans swipe their cards, could make debit cards issued by smaller banks less attractive to merchants.

“There’s good reason to be concerned about it,” Mr. Bernanke said. It could result in some smaller banks “being less profitable or even failing,” he said.

Current fees typically range between 1 percent and 2 percent of each purchase, averaging 44 cents. The Fed has proposed capping that at 12 cents, though smaller banks could charge more. Bankers want lawmakers to delay the change in hopes that it eventually will be killed or toned down.

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NEW YORK – Fixed mortgage rates have fallen to their lowest levels of the year, giving Americans more incentive to buy homes or refinance their loans.

Freddie Mac said Thursday the average rate on 30-year loans fell to 4.63 percent from 4.71. The average rate on 15-year fixed mortgages slipped to 3.82 percent from 3.89 percent. Both are at their lowest points since December, having declined four weeks in a row.

Rates track the yield on the 10-year Treasury note, which this week fell close to its lowest level of the year.

Low mortgage rates could boost the struggling housing market, which has dragged on the economy. Home sales are far below healthy levels. Most homebuilders reported a drop in new orders in the first three months of the year, an indication of future activity.

Job worries and strict lending standards have kept potential buyers on the sidelines. The high number of foreclosures is forcing home prices down as well, leaving some would-be buyers concerned that prices have yet to bottom out.

Fewer homeowners had their houses repossessed by banks in April than a year ago, the foreclosure listing firm RealtyTrac Inc. said Thursday. But that’s because it is taking lenders longer to take back homes already in the foreclosure process because of paperwork delays. Last fall, evidence surfaced that lenders pushed through foreclosures without properly reviewing each case.

The holdup threatens to push back a resolution to the foreclosure crisis and a meaningful recovery in housing.

Freddie Mac reported that the average rate on a five-year adjustable-rate mortgage fell to 3.41 percent from 3.47 percent. The five-year adjustable-rate loan hit 3.25 percent last month, the lowest rate on records dating back to January 2005.

The average rate on a one-year adjustable-rate loan fell to 3.11 percent from 3.14 percent. That marked the lowest level for the rate on the 1-year ARM in the last year.

The rates do not include add-on fees, known as points.

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As we head further into the second calendar quarter, I find the stock market to be increasingly at odds with the economic data we have been getting.

Despite the slowing growth rates in China, continued weakness in the domestic housing market, signs confirming that inflation has ticked up recently, slower consumer spending amid high gasoline prices and the increase in new jobless claims over the past few weeks, the stock market has continued to grind its way higher.

In my view, the latest rash of economic data has confirmed a soft patch in the domestic economy. Combine that with slower than expected growth in China and … well, let’s just say that when growth in the top two economies on the planet is slower than expected only a few months ago, expectations need to be adjusted.

Expectations for certain commodities, such as oil, corn, wheat, soybeans and others, are being readjusted from arguably overheated or frothy levels. Those expectations adjustments are behind the bumps in the stock market during the past two weeks.

Aside from the economic soft patch, what else is fueling the drop in commodity prices? The recent buildup in gasoline and oil inventories for one and better than expected commodity crops is another.

According to the U.S. Energy Administration, U.S. crude oil stocks rose by 3.78 million barrels last week and gasoline stockpiles increased by 1.3 million barrels; this was head and shoulders above the 1.4 million barrel consensus increase for oil and the 200,000 barrel drop in gasoline inventories that was expected, according to Reuters News Agency. That buildup combined with growing indications of the aforementioned economic slowdown resulted in oil prices falling earlier this week.

Also this week, the U.S. Department of Agriculture released its May World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates, which called for U.S. corn production to reach 13.5 billion bushels in 2011. Such a level would mark the largest U.S. crop ever, outdoing the record 13.1 billion bushel corn crop in 2009. Despite the favorable headlines associated with that production forecast and the ensuing price fall in corn and other commodities, deeper in the USDA’s forecast we find that despite the record production forecast corn stocks will remain in very tight supply.

The pullback in commodity prices and commodity players, such as Corn Products International, Archer Daniels Midland Co. and Bunge Limited, have taken the froth out of the commodities markets for now. At the same time, however, rising concern about the strength of the economy has caused investors to move from economically sensitive stocks toward more defensive ones.

In the last week, shares of companies such as construction equipment maker Caterpillar Inc., Parker Hannifin Corp. and engine manufacturer Cummins Inc. are all down mid-single digits. By comparison, shares of more classic safety, slower growth companies, such as Kraft Foods, McCormick Co., the Coca-Cola Co. and others are up nicely. Up even more are Boyd Gaming Corp., Ameristar Casino Inc. and others that fit into the “guilty pleasure” investing thematic I described a few columns ago.

Amid this near term sector rotation, my suggestion would be to do what a savvy and prudent investor does in times like this.

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TREASURY

Sources: GM shares won’t be sold before August

NEW YORK | The U.S. Treasury does not plan to start selling its remaining shares in General Motors Co. until August at the earliest, after the automaker’s second-quarter financial results, people familiar with the matter said.

The Treasury, which holds a 32 percent stake in the top U.S. automaker, will wait on a secondary offering in light of GM’s recent share performance, and the earliest possible time for its follow-on sale is August, these people said.

The U.S. government also is opposed to the idea of selling a portion of its shares directly to GM, although such a transaction was suggested as a possible option to help alleviate the overhang for GM’s stock stemming from roughly $16 billion worth of shares held by the Treasury.

AUTO

Automakers resist pressure for 62 mpg standard

Major automakers Thursday pushed back against congressional pressure to nearly double vehicle fuel efficiency through 2025, saying “overly aggressive” targets could hurt sales, employment and safety.

The lobbying group representing General Motors Co., Ford Motor Co., Chrysler Group, Toyota Motor Corp. and European manufacturers are chaffing at proposals for 6 percent annual efficiency requirements that would push fleet averages above 62 miles per gallon.

“The alliance believes it is inappropriate to be promoting any specific fuel economy/greenhouse gas at this point,” the group’s acting chief executive, John Whatley, said in a letter to Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and Lisa Jackson, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

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The massive new tax bill signed into law by President Obama is filled with all kinds of holiday stocking stuffers for businesses: tax breaks for producing TV shows, grants for putting up windmills, rum subsidies for Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.

There is even a tax break for people who buy race horses.

Millions of homeowners, however, might feel like they got a lump of coal. Homeowners who don’t itemize their deductions will lose a tax break for paying local property taxes.

The business tax breaks are part of sweeping legislation that extends Bush-era tax cuts for families at every income level through 2012. Mr. Obama signed the $858 billion measure a week ago. It also provides a new payroll-tax cut for wage earners and extends jobless benefits to the long-term unemployed.

Most of the business tax breaks about 50 in all are part of a package that expires each year, creating uncertainty for tax planners but lots of business for lobbyists. Many of these tax breaks have been around for years but expired at the end of 2009 because lawmakers couldn’t agree how to pay for them.

The new law extends most of them through 2011, some through 2012. They will be paid for with borrowed money.

Nearly 1,300 businesses and trade groups formed a coalition urging Congress to extend the business tax breaks. Others lobbied for specific provisions, including a generous tax credit for research and development and subsidies to produce alternative energy.

There is a generous tax break for banks and insurance companies that invest overseas, a tax credit for railroad-track maintenance, more generous write-offs for upgrading motor-sport racetracks, and increased deductions for businesses that donate books and computers to public schools and libraries.

Many of the tax breaks are designed to encourage economic activity. But passing them each year at the last minute, or skipping a year and passing them retroactively, isn’t terribly efficient, said Clint Stretch, a tax expert at Deloitte Tax LLP.

“It gives it a lot of dignity to call it a ‘system,’ ” Mr. Stretch said.

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COLUMBUS, Ohio | The Ohio Supreme Court has upheld a sales tax for satellite TV providers that cable competitors don’t have to pay, rejecting arguments from the satellite industry that the tax is unfair while maintaining a source of tens of millions of dollars in revenue for the financially struggling state.

In the 5-2 decision released Monday, the state’s highest court ruled that the 2003 tax does not violate the U.S. Constitution’s Commerce Clause because the tax is based on differences between the nature of the businesses and does not favor in-state interests at the expense of out-of-state interests.

Satellite companies had argued that subjecting them and not their cable rivals to the tax violates their rights to interstate commerce because their companies operate between states while cable companies operate within them.

But writing for the majority, Justice Terrence O’Donnell said the justices concluded that Ohio lawmakers “imposed a sales tax that makes no distinction between local and interstate commerce, but rather distinguishes based on the mode of distributing television programming.”

The 5.5 percent sales tax on satellite TV imposed as part of a budget-balancing tax package in 2003 generated about $54 million for the state in the fiscal year that ended June 30, John Kohlstrand, a spokesman for the Ohio Department of Taxation, said Monday.

The Legislature chose not to apply the tax to cable operators, which pay local franchise fees that range from 2 percent to 5 percent.

The lawsuit that reached the state Supreme Court was brought by DirecTV Inc. and Dish Network Corp., and the decision affirms an earlier ruling from a state appeals court.

The satellite industry has challenged similar tax discrepancies in other states but has been on the losing side of court rulings in North Carolina and Kentucky, meaning the Ohio high court ruling was no major surprise, Mr. Kohlstrand said.

When the case was argued before the Ohio Supreme Court in October, attorney E. Joshua Rosenkranz, who represented DirecTV and Dish Network, said the satellite operators were not looking for a refund but for fair competition with cable. The industry’s attorneys had indicated that a ruling either way would likely be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

El Segudo, Calif.-based DirecTV Inc. and Englewood, Colo.-based Dish Network Corp. said in a statement they were disappointed by the decision.

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PLYMOUTH | A steady stream of customers filled baskets and shopping bags with vegetables, cranberries, cheese, fresh-baked breads and pies while chatting with the dozen or so farmers selling goods in the visitor’s center of a local museum.

It was a bitterly cold, gray December day, but for many, it felt just right for the Plymouth Farmers Market as live music and a warm fireplace helped set a holiday mood.

A growing number of farmers markets are extending their operation into and through the winter months – even in cold-weather states like Massachusetts. The expansion comes as more farmers are prolonging their growing seasons with greenhouses and other methods. It’s also fueled by an increased number of people who aim to eat locally produced food year-round.

“It can’t be a five-month-long thing and then just stop and everybody go to Wal-Mart,” said Dave Purpura, a farmer who participates in the winter market at Plimoth Plantation, a living history museum dedicated to the Pilgrims. “If you want to be serious about promoting the local food economy, you have to go through the winter.”

Nearby, Donna Blischke sold potatoes, onions and squash that she stores in a root cellar at her small organic farm in Carver. The winter market also gives her a chance to sell jams, jellies and sauces made from produce left over from the fall harvest.

“It’s a way to earn a little extra money in the winter months, while still providing local foods,” she said.

There are at least 898 winter farmers markets running nationwide, a 17 percent increase from two years ago, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. A winter market is defined as one that operates between November and March.

Perhaps surprisingly, several northern states are among those with the largest numbers of winter markets, including Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Jersey, Connecticut and Michigan, the USDA said.

Chicago’s Green City Market expanded to year-round operations three years ago and draws an estimated 60,000 visitors during the winter months, said Lyle Allen, the market’s executive director. He recalled his anxiety before the first January opening.

“It was 2 degrees and the wind chill was 40 below,” Mr. Allen said. “I was worried. We were concerned about what kind of reaction we were going to get from the general public.”

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Industry economists say the U.S. economic recovery is gaining strength, with more firms expressing positive hiring plans than in more than a decade.

A new survey from the National Association for Business Economics finds that economists are more hopeful about overall economic growth, the job market and demand for companies’ products and services by many measures than they have been since the start of the recession.

The survey found that business decisions are now “being driven by the fundamentals of an improving economy,” said Shawn DuBravac, an economist with the Consumer Electronics Association who analyzed the findings.

The quarterly survey includes the views of 84 economists for private companies and trade groups who are NABE members. The data are reported by broad industry group. Many results are expressed as Net Rising Index, or NRI — the percentage of panelists reporting better outlooks minus the percentage whose outlook is bleaker.

The number of economists who saw hiring by their firms increasing over the next six months was 42 percent, compared with 7 percent who expected to lay off workers. The NRI of 35 was the highest in the 12 years that the question has been asked.

However, more layoffs were expected in the transportation, utility, information and communications sectors.

That optimism followed increased hiring by the economists’ firms during the quarter ended Dec. 31. About one-third of those surveyed said hiring had improved at their companies, compared with 6 percent who said workers were laid off. The NRI of 28 represented a 10-point increase over the previous quarter.

All major industry groups saw more demand for their products and services, the sixth straight quarter of positive results. Demand grew by slightly less than in the previous quarter but has held relatively steady since last spring, the NABE said.

Eighty-two percent of the economists expected the nation’s economy to grow by 2 percent to 4 percent in 2011, up from 54 percent in October. The latest government data had the economy growing at a 2.6 percent annual rate in the July-September quarter.

Economists who saw their companies’ profits grow in the final quarter of 2010 outpaced those who saw margins shrink by an NRI of 21 percent — the largest spread since 2005.

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MARQUETTE, Mich. (AP) — Saying tomorrow’s economy can’t thrive on yesterday’s infrastructure, President Obama on Thursday promoted his five-year plan to lure new industries and jobs to the United States by expanding high-speed wireless to 98 percent of the country.

“It’s just like that movie ‘Field of Dreams’: If we build it, they will come,” Mr. Obama said in this snowy, Upper Michigan university town, where many small businesses owe their success to high-speed Internet access.

“For our families and businesses, high-speed wireless is the next train station, the next offramp,” Mr. Obama said at Northern Michigan University, a wired campus where the students telecommute. “It’s how we’ll spark new innovation, new investments and new jobs.”

Mr. Obama’s goal is lofty considering that such technology only now is being built in major cities by ATT, Verizon and other companies. The project also will cost billions of dollars that Republicans are unlikely to want to spend.

Rep. Fred Upton, Michigan Republican, who is chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said he wanted to review whether some $7 billion in stimulus money already dedicated to Internet broadband is having an effect “before we target any more of our scarce taxpayer dollars.” His committee is holding hearings on the issue.

Military personnel salute President Obama as he boards Air Force One at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington on Thursday, Feb. 10, 2011, en route to Marquette, Mich., where he is promoting high-speed wireless Internet access for almost all Americans. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Mr. Obama’s wireless plan involves nearly doubling the space available on the airwaves for wireless high-speed Internet traffic to keep up with ever-growing demand. This improvement would be accomplished in part by auctioning off space on the radio spectrum to commercial wireless carriers. The White House says the sales would raise nearly $30 billion over 10 years, and the money could be spent on initiatives that include $10 billion to develop a national broadband network for public safety agencies and $5 billion for infrastructure to help rural areas access high-speed wireless. Additional money could be used to reduce the deficit, the White House says.

It’s all conditioned on congressional approval, and the proposals may get the cold shoulder by Republicans, who now control the House and have made clear they want to decrease spending in most areas, not go along with the targeted increases in areas such as infrastructure, education and innovation that the president is pursuing as a pathway to jobs and “winning the future” — the newest White House mantra.

Portions of the plan will be included in the 2012 budget proposal Mr. Obama is set to release Monday.

At the university, Mr. Obama saw a demonstration of the “wimax” technology that lets the school connect with classrooms elsewhere. He addressed a chemistry class at a high school 20 miles away after students popped up on big video screens near the president and waved at him.

“It’s like ‘Star Trek,’” Mr. Obama said. “I’m being beamed!”

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@Text.normal:PARMA, Ohio | The Girl Scouts were selling their cookies the old-fashioned way, pulling a creaky-wheeled red wagon laden with Thin Mints and Samoas down a suburban street. But the ritual took a decidedly 21st-century twist when, with a polite smile, one of the girls pulled out a smartphone and inquired: “Would you like to pay with a credit card?”

The girls are part of about 200 troops in northeast Ohio who are changing the way Girl Scouts do business. For the first time, the girls are accepting credit cards using a device called GoPayment, a free credit card reader that clips onto smart phones. Girl Scout leaders hope that allowing customers to pay with plastic will drive up cookie sales in a world where carrying cash is rapidly going the way of dial-up Internet. Keeping pace with changing technology is a priority lately for the historic Girl Scouts, an organization preparing to celebrate its 100th anniversary next year.

“Normally, I think a lot of customers would love to buy cookies, but they have to walk by the booth because they’re not carrying cash,” said Marianne Love, director of business services for the Girl Scouts of Northeast Ohio. “I know I never carry cash when I’m out shopping.”

If all goes well, Ms. Love plans to roll out the device to all 2,700 troops in northeast Ohio. Ten troops in San Diego, Calif., also are testing the device this month.

“I know there’s a lot of interest across the country with other Girl Scout councils,” Ms. Love said. “So I wouldn’t be surprised if you see it everywhere this time next year.”

GoPayment is just one of several mobile payment devices that took off in 2010, with hundreds of thousands of people signing up to use them, said Todd Ablowitz, president of Double Diamond Group of Centennial, Colo., a consulting company focused on the mobile payment industry.

“Everyone from delivery drivers to Girl Scouts to baby sitters are swiping cards on their phones to take a payment,” Mr. Ablowitz said. “I mean, this barely existed before 2010. The numbers are staggering.”

The technology has existed for years, but it wasn’t until San Francisco-based Square Inc., began offering its card readers for free that the industry really gained momentum, Mr. Ablowitz said.

Intuit, the Mountain View, Calif.-based company that manufactures GoPayment, charges a small fee per transaction and offers various pricing plans to customers based on sales volume. GoPayment has been on the market for about two years. Intuit charges the Girl Scouts its lowest rate, at 1.7 percent plus 15 cents per transaction. Most customers pay 2.7 percent per transaction.

“We saw people that wanted to take electronic payments and just didn’t have a way to do it,” said Chris Hylen, vice president of Intuit’s payments business. “It’s been the fastest-growing part of our business.”

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TRANSPORTATION

Airline: Most flights on time

Alaska Airlines and its Horizon Air affiliate say they have resolved a computer outage that led to the cancellation of 150 flights on Saturday, disrupting travel plans for more than 12,000 passengers of the regional airline.

The company says most flights are now operating on time, though about a dozen have been delayed due to crew scheduling issues. The company recommends passengers check their flight’s status online.

Passengers are boarding the next available flights at no charge, and in some cases are flying with other airlines, the company says.

Alaska Airlines spokeswoman Bobbie Egan said the outage occurred when a transformer blew and knocked out the company’s computer system for booking flights. Technicians had been trying to install a back-up power supply for the system.

UNEMPLOYMENT

Uneven job growth seen across states

U.S. companies have added jobs for 12 straight months, but the gains across the country have been uneven and a little surprising.

California and Michigan, which each suffered some of the worst job losses during the recession, are adding jobs again. California last month had its single best month for job creation in more than two decades. Still, six states lost jobs from February 2010 through last month, including Kansas and New Jersey, states that weren’t considered troubled spots.

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ANALYSIS/OPINION:

The numbers click upward rapidly at the pump. Thats why gasoline prices are now competing with missing jobs and the president’s limping “Obamacare” reform as an issue for the 2012 presidential campaign. But Mr. Obama has evidently decided that most of the people can be fooled most of the time on what the government can do about the problem.

Instead of pivoting away from his disastrous energy policies, the president called an Ides of March press conference to boast of booming domestic crude production. In fact, from 10 million barrels a day, U.S. production has fallen to 7 million barrels and is heading toward 6 million.

With worldwide energy consumption rising despite the still-bleeding wounds of the 2008-2009 financial crisis, supply has maxed out. Our friends the Saudis promise more production, but nobody has seen it yet. (Payback for Mr. Obama ignoring their advice on Hosni Mubarak and Bahrain?) Anyway, increase output would bring its own quality and delivery complications.

Truth be told, most experts privately admit the energy muddle defies immediate solution.

True, we are nowhere near “petroleum peak” — that long-prophesied moment when unstoppable infinite energy demand meets immovable finite fossil-fuel supply. Recent deepwater drilling has turned up humongous new sources of fuel. A good example is Brazils South Atlantic finds, which Mr. Obama proudly acknowledged helping to finance during his recent visit. Then theres vast deposits of North American shale.

But government regulation — which Mr. Obama intensified after the BP Gulf spill — has throttled U.S. production. (Curiously, China will soon be pumping oil from fields off Castros Cuba, near Florida’s beaches!) In their defense, the Obama-ites did inherit some restrictions put in place by local environmentalistas.

Cheap energy has been a hallmark of Americas incredible record of job creation for over a century. But Mr. Obamas self-righteous ideologues want this reversed, citing what they say is mankind’s key role in global warming. Its never easy to get into others minds, certainly not the elite dominating this administration. But their “green” religion envisages an early end to fossil fuels, vast government subsidies to speed their demise, and higher prices — including more taxes — to help push us toward expensive, unproven alternatives.

High priest of this manmade global warming gospel is John Podesta, who was chief of staff under President Clinton. Mr. Podesta’s Center for American Progress provides a hallelujah chorus for Mr. Obama’s energy secretary, Steven Chu. Mr. Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, has a messianic solution to the nation’s energy woes: growing and trading tropical glucose as a petroleum substitute. It’s the very stuff of science — science fiction, that is.

Nor do these fanatics tell us where the money to preserve the environment will come from, if not from increasing energy-market efficiencies. Nowhere in this crew is there anyone who ever produced a single Btu, except when gassing before captive audiences. And as in the Gulf disaster, they are proving deaf to pragmatic arguments, as deaf as the muezzin calling the faithful to prayer over the cacophony of Cairo’s traffic.

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Christine Kwapnoski hasn’t done too badly in nearly 25 years in the Wal-Mart family, making more than $60,000 a year in a job she enjoys most days.

But Miss Kwapnoski says she faced obstacles at Wal-Mart-owned Sam’s Club stores in both Missouri and California: Men making more than women and getting promoted faster.

She never heard a supervisor tell a man, as she says one told her, to “doll up” or “blow the cobwebs off” her makeup.

Once she got over the fear that she might be fired, she joined what has turned into the largest job discrimination lawsuit ever.

The 46-year-old single mother of two is one of the named plaintiffs in a suit that will be argued at the Supreme Court on Tuesday. At stake is whether the suit can go forward as a class action that could involve 500,000 to 1.6 million women, according to varying estimates, and potentially could cost the world’s largest retailer billions of dollars.

But the case’s potential importance issue goes well beyond the Wal-Mart dispute, as evidenced by more than two dozen briefs filed by business interests on Wal-Mart’s side, and civil rights, consumer and union groups on the other.

The question is crucial to the viability of discrimination claims, which become powerful vehicles to force change when they are presented together, instead of individually. Class actions increase pressure on businesses to settle suits because of the cost of defending them and the potential for very large judgments.

Columbia University law professor John Coffee said that the high court could bring a virtual end to employment discrimination class actions filed under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, depending on how it decides the Wal-Mart case.

“Litigation brought by individuals under Title VII is just too costly,” Mr. Coffee said. “It’s either class action or nothing.”

Illustrating the value of class actions, Brad Seligman, the California-based lawyer who conceived of and filed the suit 10 years ago, said the average salary for a woman at Wal-Mart was $13,000, which he said was “not enough to hire a lawyer and bring a case.”

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Congressional Republicans are moving to shut down President Obama’s $30 billion program to help struggling homeowners pay their mortgages, but the White House appears to have already found a substitute plan.

The administration has proposed requiring the nation’s largest banks to spend $20 billion modifying loans of delinquent borrowers to make them more affordable as part of a deal settling charges that the banks botched the paperwork on thousands of foreclosures.

If the plan succeeds, the president would attain a key goal sought by community groups and Democratic grass-root constituencies whose support will be critical for his re-election without having to spend further federal dollars on the program.

But House Republicans are also seeking to make good on campaign promises to unwind the unpopular housing bailout programs set up in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.

On Tuesday, they will unveil bills to try to phase out government assistance to mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and are moving on plans to scrap the $30 billion program Mr. Obama set up in 2009 to help homeowners who are underwater or behind on their mortgages.

Legislators are motivated not only by their drive to eliminate what they view as unnecessary spending but to kill what remains of the bank bailout program or TARP targeted by tea party groups, which is the source of funding for the homeowner assistance program.

Some conservative Republicans are concerned that the program sets a bad precedent by helping a minority of deadbeat borrowers who have stopped paying their mortgages even as the majority of homeowners struggle to keep making payments despite financial strains.

Legislators say such debt-forgiveness programs can create a kind of “moral hazard” that could encourage more of the one in four homeowners who are underwater to stop paying their mortgages in hopes of receiving federal help and forgiveness.

“Congress should move swiftly to end the presidents disastrous mortgage program,” said Sen. Jim DeMint, South Carolina Republican and co-sponsor of a bill to end the administration’s Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP).

But even as Congress moves to cut off funding for the program, the White House has teamed up with the state attorneys general in offering a proposed settlement regarding charges of foreclosure irregularities that would essentially require banks to step in and pay for the homeowners’ aid.

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OMAHA, Neb. | Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett says the sovereign debt issues in Europe pose a greater threat to investors and the world economy than to the health of U.S. banks, to which he said poses only a slight risk.

“My personal view is the chances of a banking crisis of any sort in the United States is very low,” he said, adding that European banks could have problems if those nations are unable to resolve their debt problems.

At the Sunday news conference that concludes Berkshire Hathaway’s annual shareholder events, the company’s vice chairman was even more critical of the European Union’s debt-ridden members.

Charlie Munger compared the situation in Europe to a business partnership with six productive partners who decide to add a seventh partner who then wants to do nothing but sit around, get drunk and live off the other six. It’s a question of how long the six will tolerate the seventh.

He said most of the measures taken so far to avert government bankruptcies and debt defaults in Greece, Ireland and Portugal have been inadequate.

“I think people are still thinking they can stop this elephant with a little bigger peashooter,” Mr. Munger said.

The two men also endorsed investment in the world’s emerging markets, with Mr. Buffett saying Berkshire would be crazy not to look for investment opportunities in a country with the economy or population of India.

“It’s of enormous interest to us as a market,” he said.

However, Mr. Munger cautioned that India seems to have adopted more of the Western world’s vices than its virtues. He said India’s bloated bureaucracy and widespread bribery are slowing the country’s economic growth.

“That is a country with a lot of dysfunction in it,” Mr. Munger said.

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NEW YORK | It’s starting to feel like an all-you-can-eat buffet on the newsstand lately. And that has some food magazines mixing it up a bit.

As many magazines continue to struggle, food magazines show strength. For a third year in a row, launches of new food magazines topped all other categories, said Samir Husni, director of the Magazine Innovation Center at the University of Mississippi School of Journalism.

And some, such as Food Network Magazine, which debuted in 2009, have enjoyed tremendous success.

That’s putting pressure on established food titles. Two of the larger-circulation magazines – Every Day with Rachael Ray and Bon Appetit – this month launched splashy overhauls with new editors at the helm, efforts to attract advertisers and keep readers in the increasingly crowded market.

“Those established magazines that come on a regular basis are finding it harder and harder to compete on the newsstand because of how many food titles we have crowding that marketplace,” Mr. Husni said. “They need a story to take to the advertisers – they’re refreshed, they’re redesigned – because they have a big competitor called the Food Network Magazine.”

The market for food magazines has become more competitive since Food Network Magazine’s launch, which came the same year Bon Appetit owner Conde Nast closed the grand dame of food magazines, Gourmet.

Last year, more than 100 out of about 800 new magazines were food titles, Mr. Husni said. Plus, a majority of food titles boosted advertising revenue in the first quarter of 2011, compared with the same period a year earlier, according to the Publishers Information Bureau.

The timing of the dual revamps of Bon Appetit and Every Day is coincidental – the two titles have different owners and aim for slightly different readers. But they operate in the same environment and have taken similar paths.

Both have new editors mixing things up, yet sticking with their magazine’s core identity – for Bon Appetit, that’s being a smart but not snooty food authority; for Every Day, it’s being a distillation of Miss Ray’s bubbly spirit on the page.

“The magazine that we remade absolutely puts back energy into the pages,” Miss Ray said in a phone interview. “It has an energy to it on top of a youthfulness.”

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Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

FINANCIAL SERVICES

Dubai fines E-Trade for anti-laundering laxity

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates | A Dubai market regulator has fined a division of online discount broker E-Trade Financial at least $200,000 over what it described as deficiencies in its anti-money laundering system.

The Dubai Financial Services Authority said Sunday the Dubai branch of E-Trade Securities agreed to pay the fine. It faces another $100,000 in penalties if it fails to take steps to address the financial watchdog’s concerns.

The DFSA says a 2010 assessment found E-Trade failed to obtain sufficient documentation on the source of clients’ funds and did not have adequate procedures to address clients’ money laundering risk, among other concerns.

E-Trade said in an emailed statement it is cooperating fully and is “pleased to be working toward a resolution.”

TREASURY

Pass on new rules given to some companies

Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner has decided to let companies continue to trade certain contracts used to guard against swings in currency values outside regulators’ view.

New rules require that many such trades occur more transparently, on exchanges where regulators can see them. But Mr. Geithner is exempting certain contracts used by companies to hedge currency rates.

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Obscured by the earthquake-tsunami-nuclear-threat tragedy and the crises in the Middle East, there have been subtle geopolitical shifts in the Western Pacific.

With little publicity in the U.S. media (or, for that matter, in the left-leaning Japanese mainstream press), American military forces played a magnificent role in the rescue and early cleanup efforts following the March tsunami.

Grotesquely incompetent Japanese politicians – at any moment there may be another revolving-door prime minister – have obscured this phenomenon, along with their studied refusal to honor their own high-performing Self-Defense Force. The core of the ruling Japan Democratic Party (JDP) was recruited from a ‘60s generation vociferously opposed to the American alliance and the reconstitution of a civilian-led Japanese military. Its taken three years of provocation by Beijing – now seemingly at least temporarily abated – to force full recognition of the growing threat posed by a rapidly arming China and its obstreperous North Korean ally.

In sharp contrast was the publics stoic response to the loss of 30,000 lives and the destruction of whole towns and villages. But now a 15.3 percent drop in factory output has imperiled Japans “just-in-time,” internationally linked export assembly operations. Already a $50 billion boost to the budget has been approved. Japans central bank has doubled its asset purchases, injected record amounts into money markets and unveiled a one-year lending program.

Its early to know whether the tragedy will reawaken “Yamato damashii” – that remarkable “Japanese spirit” ethos to overcome adversity characterizing the country since its rapid emergence as a world power beginning only 150 years ago. But recuperating from the $300 billion loss might reinvigorate the worlds third-largest economy, one that has been suffering from two decades of deflation.

Working against this hope, of course, is the rating agencies downgrading of Japan’s huge and growing government debt, the most rapidly aging population in the industrialized world and a lack of dynamic leadership.

Much depends on whether growing internal strife within the JDP will produce a long-hoped-for political realignment, introducing younger blood and new ideas. Luckily, the campaign against Japans powerful bureaucracy has been mostly talk. In fact, the legendary bureaucrats performed well in this unprecedented emergency – certainly compared with the corrupt management of the country’s utilities, in bed with the politicians.

Backed by public appreciation of American efforts and repeated Chinese provocations – the latest an attempt to corner the rare earths markets on which Japans movement toward advanced technology so heavily depends – muffled calls have arisen in Japan for strengthening the U.S. alliance.

Tokyos concern is enhanced by Taiwans new formal economic integration with mainland China and the possibility that political domination could follow, despite Taiwanese President Ma Ying-Jeous protestations to the contrary. (Ironically, Taiwan, whose native islanders have fond memories of the relatively benign Japanese 50-year occupation, made the largest contributions after the U.S. to the recent disaster relief efforts.) Tokyo has always seen Taiwan as strategically critical to its defense. And the Obama administrations continued foot-dragging on weapons for Taipei has certainly been noted, an issue long a major source of friction between Washington and Beijing.

Any expansion of Japanese-U.S. military collaboration will come up against both countries budgetary constraints. Rapid American technological progress – with Japan as a junior partner, especially in anti-missile defense – could compensate partially for more cutbacks likely in military spending under Secretary of Defense-designate Leon E. Panetta, noted for his dovish views.

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The White House’s better-late-than-never approach to three trade agreements doesn’t cut it for trade groups that say American businesses are quickly losing ground to global competitors.

Within months, the Obama administration could complete free trade deals with South Korea, Colombia and Panama. But conservatives argue they are five years overdue and the delays paved the way for the growing economies in China, Brazil, Argentina and Canada to cut their own deals with these nations and leapfrog the United States.

“Time is of the essence,” said Chuck Dittrich, vice president of the National Foreign Trade Council. “Once a trade agreement with another country kicks in, then products from that country become cheaper, and even cheap enough that they replace us and American companies lose out.”

To make matters worse, even if these trade deals pass and U.S. companies lower their prices, it won’t necessarily convince customers in these countries to do business with them because they may choose to stick with the supplier they already found, said Eric Farnsworth, vice president of the Council of the Americas.

Nevertheless, Mr. Farnsworth said these agreements should help level the playing field.

Under the South Korea agreement, nearly 95 percent of bilateral trade in consumer and industrial products would become duty-free within three years. Most remaining tariffs would be eliminated within 10 years, according to the Office of the United States Trade Representative.

The Colombia deals would meet those standards, but also eliminate tariffs for more than 80 percent of U.S. exports of consumer and industrial goods from the get-go. The Panama deal is similar.

Former President George W. Bush originally negotiated and signed free trade deals with all three countries in 2006 and 2007. The Democrat-controlled House at the time blocked a vote, in large part because of human rights and labor issues, but those concerns appear to have eased.

That sent the bills to the backburner until last year when President Obama picked up the cause. He successfully renegotiated with South Korea, and is doing the same thing with Colombia and Panama. The White House has yet to send any of the bills, which would likely receive bipartisan support in both the House and Senate, to Congress. The new delays continue to irritate trade groups.

In Colombia, more than $3.4 billion in tariffs have been levied against American exporters since the agreement was signed five years ago, according to the Latin America Trade Coalition.

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Americans earned a little more and spent a little more in February, thanks to a tax cut. But a big part of the extra money went to cover higher gas prices.

Consumer spending jumped 0.7 percent last month and personal incomes rose 0.3 percent, the Commerce Department said. Both gains reflected a Social Security tax cut, which boosted take-home pay.

Still, high gas prices soaked up much of the spending increase. Once inflation was removed, the rise was a more moderate 0.3 percent.

After-tax incomes were also hampered by inflation. Once accounting for higher prices, incomes fell 0.1 percent.

Economists are concerned that if energy costs keep going up, that will leave consumers with less disposable income and that would lead to slower economic growth. Consumer spending accounts for 70 percent of economic growth.

The National Association of Realtors said separately that more people signed contracts to purchase homes in February, but the gains weren’t enough to signal a rebound in the housing market.

Higher gas prices and the persistently weak housing market are two of the biggest challenges facing an economy that is trying to gain momentum nearly two years after the recession officially ended.

Paul Dales, senior U.S. economist at Capital Economics, said the latest data on incomes and spending provided “yet more evidence that higher prices are denting economic growth.”

He said it was likely that consumer spending will grow 2 percent to 2.5 percent in the January-to-March quarter. That would be down sharply from the 4 percent increase in consumer spending in the October-to-December period, the fastest pace in four years. Higher oil prices are threatening to sap that momentum this year.

In February, spending on durable goods rose 1.7 percent. Much of that strength came from purchases of new cars. Still, spending on nondurable goods rose 1.5 percent, reflecting higher prices for gasoline.

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Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

OLYMPIA, Wash. | Drivers of electric cars may have left the gas pump behind, but there’s one expense they may not be able to shake: paying to maintain the roads.

After years of urging residents to buy fuel-efficient cars and giving them tax breaks to do it, Washington state lawmakers are considering a measure to charge them a $100 annual fee — what would be the nation’s first electric-car fee.

State lawmakers grappling with a $5 billion deficit are facing declining gas-tax revenue, which means less money to maintain or improve roads.

“Electric vehicles put just as much wear and tear on our roads as gas vehicles,” said Democratic state Sen. Mary Margaret Haugen, the bill’s lead sponsor. “This simply ensures that they contribute their fair share to the upkeep of our roads.”

Other states are trying to find solutions to the same problem, as cars become more fuel-efficient and, now, don’t use any gas at all.

In Oregon, lawmakers are considering a bill to charge drivers of electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles based on the number of miles they drive. In Mississippi, lawmakers briefly considered a similar plan. In Texas, significant opposition scuttled an electric-vehicle fee.

In Washington state, some electric-car drivers and lawmakers are against the fee, saying they prefer paying based on how much they actually drive.

“The Legislature saw electric vehicles are coming and thought, why not just put a fee on them?” said Dean West, an electric-vehicle owner who expects to receive a pre-ordered Leaf Nissan’s new, battery-powered sedan this summer.

“I’m always in favor of a user fee,” he said. “The more you use it, the more you pay.”

Plug In America, a California-based electric-car advocacy group, has come out against the proposed flat fee and has urged the state to consider one based on odometer readings that owners would self-report each year.

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It seems simple enough. Small businesses in need of cash look online for investors willing to contribute as little as a buck. It’s called “crowd funding,” and many entrepreneurs love the idea. The problem? It’s against SEC rules.

“It could help me, and it could help many other entrepreneurs,” said Miami businessman Sherwood Neiss. “People are getting behind ideas, and they’re actually happening.”

Mr. Neiss and other entrepreneurs are lobbying the Securities and Exchange Commission to update decades-old rules to make it easier for them to raise small amounts of money online. As part of the group Startup Exemption, Mr. Neiss will testify in front of the House Committee on Government Oversight and Reform in May. He already met with the SEC early this year.

Proponents say crowd funding could provide new avenues for entreprenuers to launch ideas, as financing from banks and venture capitalists dries up.

The current SEC rules, which were written in the 1930s, limit a company to 35 regular investors before it has to file expensive paperwork with the agency. The legal fees involved in the process are too costly for many startups, forcing them to operate within the investor limit.

Startup Exemption is proposing a plan built around “micro-investors” that it thinks would minimize the risk of fraud. They want the SEC to allow small businesses — with fewer than 50 employees and less than $5 million in annual gross sales — to raise up to $1 million through crowd funding. Regular investors, defined as people who make less than $200,000 a year and have a net worth below $1 million, would be capped at $10,000 or 10 percent of their adjusted gross income. But the average investor will only give about $50 to $500, they say, shielding them from large losses if fraud occurs.

“It’s not going to cause the end of their retirement,” Mr. Neiss said. “It’s not going to cause them to lose their savings.”

Websites, such as Kickstarter and IndieGoGo, already use crowd-funding techniques to raise money under the guise of donations. The group argues the SEC should open the “funding window” so donors could receive a return on investment.

“Silly that if you want to ‘donate’ $5 to a company without the SEC scrutiny that you can’t also ‘invest’ the same amount without the SEC overseeing what you are doing,” Mr. Neiss said. “This is what we are trying to change.”

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BOEING

CEO says poor riveting caused hole in Southwest jet

The CEO of Boeing Co. said a “workmanship issue” and not poor design led to a hole ripping open in a plane that the company built for Southwest Airlines Co.

Jim McNerney said Wednesday that signs do not point to a problem affecting large numbers of the Boeing 737.

A Boeing 737 operated by Southwest developed a 5-foot rip in the roof while cruising 34,000 feet above Arizona on an April 1 flight.

Federal investigators found problems with riveting work performed when the plane was built 15 years ago. The National Transportation Safety Board said in a preliminary report this week that holes drilled in the plane’s skin were too big for the rivets and were not properly lined up.

Independent analysts said such problems would increase stress on the plane’s aluminum skin panels, leading to metal fatigue.

TECHNOLOGY

Wait is over for Apple’s white iPhone 4

CUPERTINO, Calif. | Apple said the long-delayed white iPhone 4 will go on sale Thursday in the United States, the United Kingdom and 26 other countries for $199 or $299, depending on the model.

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