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WASHINGTON — U.S. consumers will get long-awaited relief from some of the most costly and deceptive credit card tactics when the sweeping provisions of the Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act of 2009 finally kick in Monday.

The CARD Act, which President Barack Obama signed May 22, dramatically changes the way card issuers can profit from plastic. Instead of arbitrary rate increases, exorbitant fees and murky calculations of interest charges, card companies must now be more transparent in establishing and disclosing the terms of their offerings, and, as a result, more prudent in the way they manage credit risk.

In response to the law, most issuers already have introduced a host of new fees and rate structures to recoup some of the revenue they will lose under the new rules. The changes will make credit not only harder to get, but also more expensive.

For example, 35 percent of the card offers mailed to U.S. households in the fourth quarter of last year carried annual fees. That’s the highest percentage in 10 years, according to the marketing research firm Synovate. Those offers had an average annual interest rate of 13.5 percent, the highest in five years.

The CARD Act won’t silence all consumer gripes about credit cards, but it will save cardholders billions of dollars and usher in, for many, a welcome new era of tougher industry scrutiny from lawmakers, regulators, consumer advocates and customers.

"What this says to the card industry is, ‘Look, Congress has reset the playing field. The rules of the game have changed. Some of these practices that we know were harming consumers have to stop,’" said Nick Bourke, the manager of the Safe Credit Cards Project at the Pew Charitable Trusts. "Now the ball goes back to the industry, and they have to decide how to evolve their product."

The first phase of the law took effect last August. It required card issuers to provide 45 days’ notice on interest rate increases and that billing statements be mailed at least 21 days before their due dates.

The changes that will take effect Monday are much stronger. With the exception of cards that have variable interest rates, the new rules ban rate hikes on existing balances unless the cardholder is at least 60 days past due.

If delinquent cardholders pay on time for six straight months, the law requires that their higher penalty rates be lowered to their previous interest rates.

This will save cardholders at least $10 billion a year, according to Bourke. It’s the most important change for consumers because it bans a number of punitive rate hikes on existing balances, including the infamous "universal default," in which a late payment on one account can trigger a rate increase on another one.

It’s important to note, however, that lenders can still impose universal defaults and other penalty rate increases on new purchases. The CARD Act exempts only existing balances from such increases.

The new rules also require that card payments above the minimum monthly amounts go toward balances with the highest interest rates. Consent from cardholders also is required before fees can be assessed on transactions that exceed cards’ credit limits. The law doesn’t affect fees for late payments, however.

The new law prohibits a practice called "double-cycle billing," using the current and previous months’ balances to determine the finance charge. For people with prepaid credit cards, typically those with poor credit histories, the law also limits fees in the first year to no more than 25 percent of the starting credit limit.

Most cardholders already have seen the effects of the law in their February statements, which now are required to show how much it will cost and how long it will take to pay off balances by making only the minimum payment, as opposed to paying them off in three years.

Statements also must provide contact information for credit counseling services.

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FirstEnergy announced plans Thursday to acquire electric utility company Allegheny Energy in an all-stock deal valued at $4.7 billion.

The proposed merger, which is subject to shareholder and regulatory approval, would create one of the largest U.S. electricity providers with an estimated $16 billion in annual revenue and $1.4 billion in annual net income.

Under the terms of the agreement, Allegheny shareholders would receive 0.667 of a share of FirstEnergy common stock in exchange for each share of Allegheny they own. Based on Wednesday’s closing stock prices for both companies, Allegheny shareholders would receive a value of $27.65 per share, a 31.6% premium, the companies said.

FirstEnergy will also assume roughly $3.8 billion in Allegheny net debt. The deal is expected to close in about 12 to 14 months business card.

"This combination supports our strategy of being a leading regional energy provider, focused on both regulated utility operations and our competitive generation business," said Anthony Alexander, chief executive officer of FirstEnergy, in a statement.

Akron, Ohio-based FirstEnergy (FE, Fortune 500) owns seven electric utility operating companies that serve 4.5 million customers in Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York.

Allegheny (AYE) is an electric utility based in Greensburg, Pa., servicing 1.6 million customers in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Maryland and Virginia. 

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St. John’s Mercy Foundation recently appointed George Roman chairman of its board of directors. Roman is vice president of government operations and regional executive for Boeing’s St. Louis-based defense unit.

He takes the place of former foundation board Chairman Tom Gunn.

Roman is also a member of the board for hospital parent St. John’s Mercy Health Care.

St. John’s Mercy Foundation is a non-profit that supports St. John’s Mercy Medical Center, the second-largest hospital in St. Louis and a member of St. John’s Mercy Health Care and the Sisters of Mercy Health System. Denny DeNarvaez is chief executive of St. John’s.

St. John’s Mercy Health Care also operates St. John’s Mercy Hospital in Washington, Mo., St. John’s Mercy Medical Group, St. John’s Mercy Health Services and St. John’s Mercy Affiliated Physicians.

Chicago-based Boeing Co.’s (NYSE: BA) defense unit, Boeing Defense, Space & Security, is the second-largest employer in St. Louis with $32.4 billion in revenue in 2008 and 16,000 local workers.

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Investors scored big Sunday when the New York Jets lost to the Indianapolis Colts — at least according to the Super Bowl stock indicator.

Here’s how it works. If a team that had its roots in the National Football League wins, the Dow Jones industrial average should go up. If a team from the upstart American Football League wins, stocks should go down.

The AFL merged with the NFL soon after Super Bowl III, when the AFL Jets upset the then-NFL Baltimore Colts.

In the 43 years the Super Bowl has been played, the indicator has been correct 81% of the time. That includes last year’s game, when the win by the Pittsburgh Steelers correctly predicted the rebound in stocks before many investing professionals were willing to go out on that limb.

The two NFC teams playing this Sunday — the Minnesota Vikings and the New Orleans Saints — both have NFL roots. So the stock market had to dodge only a Jets win.

Of course basing investment decisions on the outcome of a game makes as much sense as playing football without a helmet. But according to a study by George Kester, a business professor at Washington & Lee University in Lexington, Va., an investment strategy driven by Super Bowl results has done quite well.

If you’d moved into Treasury bonds following wins by former AFL teams, and back into stocks following victories by teams from the old NFL, you would have performed more than twice as well as buying-and-holding an S&P 500 index fund over the same period payday loans guaranteed no fax.

Kester said while he doesn’t believe the indicator is a wise way to make investment decisions, the better return on the Super Bowl-driven fund was "a result that would be the envy of many portfolio managers."

Of course, the Super Bowl indicator has been wrong eight times, often spectacularly so.

The New York Giants’ upset win in 2008 over the New England Patriots was supposed to bring about a bull run for stocks. Instead the Dow crashed 33.8% that year as the credit markets and banking sector imploded.

Similarly, the back-to-back wins by the Denver Broncos, formerly of the AFL, in 1998 and 1999 did little to slow the rising bubble in tech stocks. The market didn’t cool off until 2000 — after the St. Louis Rams, a team with its origin in the NFL, won the Super Bowl.

So only the most superstitious of investors should really have been cheering against Gang Green. The Super Bowl indicator is fun to talk about, but not something to be taken too seriously. 

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More details of a bitter dispute between the publisher of Canada’s largest metropolitan newspaper chain and its lenders, mainly Canada’s big banks, have emerged in court documents.

The documents filed in Ontario Superior Court of Justice provide an unusual glimpse into the infighting that went on before CanWest Limited Partnership filed for bankruptcy protection last Friday, owing $1.5 billion.

In a frank exchange of letters, Leonard Asper, chief executive officer of CanWest Global Communications Corp. and CanWest Media Inc., accuses the newspaper group’s secured lenders of putting their interests ahead of other creditors.

Asper also pleads for more time, noting improving economic conditions can only benefit everyone involved.

Asper, whose late father Israel (Izzy) Asper founded CanWest Global, says in a Jan. 4 letter to the lenders that he "profoundly disagrees" with their decision to push the newspaper chain into an "early filing." He says the move could result in "undue and unnecessary harm" to some of the company’s long-time suppliers.

Asper said the court filing could end up costing CanWest LP (the entity that holds the company’s major newspapers) as much as $45 million in fees.

Those fees will go to the same "advisory groups that are driving the process," Asper says in the letter addressed to the Bank of Nova Scotia, which is acting as the agent for the secured creditors.

While Asper acknowledged that the newspaper chain ran into trouble last May and is in default on certain principal payments, he said the company has since "stabilized."

He asked for six months to come up with a plan "that is fair to all parties," citing employees, suppliers and other unsecured lenders.

"For the first time in 14 months, revenue for the most recent month was ahead of the same month last year," Asper noted.

In a sharply worded response, the Bank of Nova Scotia’s executive vice-president Jane Rowe questions Asper’s authority as chief executive at CanWest Media, owner of the Global TV network, to act on behalf of CanWest Limited Partnership, which owns the newspapers.

Rowe also points out that CanWest LP is behind on at least $100 million in payments on various loans since last May and that the secured lenders, which have the right to recall their loans at any time, have been more than patient.

"LP is insolvent," says the Jan. 6 letter signed by Rowe. "It is plain and obvious that it can not support its massive debt, and that a transaction will have to occur that fundamentally alters the balance sheet of the newspaper business."

The argument between the two parties became moot once CanWest LP filed for bankruptcy court protection two days later, a spokesperson for the company said. However, the exchange provides a glimpse into the factors that went into that decision.

CanWest Limited Partnership, which owns a string of 10 major dailies, plus the National Post, owes its lenders $1.5 billion, according to Dominion Bond Rating Services.

As part of the court filing, the newspaper company, whose papers include the Ottawa Citizen, Montreal’s The Gazette and the Calgary Herald, was put up for sale.

At current valuations it could fetch between $1 billion and $1.5 billion, DBRS analyst Chris Diceman estimates. But it has only one offer in hand, from the secured lenders, for $950 million, the amount those lenders are owed.

Other media and financial companies are expected to take a closer look at CanWest LP.

That could leave the unsecured lenders, such as the holders of CanWest’s 9 3/4 per cent bonds, out in the cold, Diceman said Monday.

"If you get to $1.5 billion, all the creditors get 100 cents on the dollar. But if it’s only worth a billion the banks have the secured debt, the banks get paid first. Anything that’s left over, assuming it’s being sold for cash, they would get very little," Diceman said. "I think that’s what he’s trying to say in his letter."

Diceman noted the secured lenders, a group made up of 184 different entities, was able to get agreement on the bankruptcy court filing from only 48 per cent of its members.

However, Diceman also noted the secured lenders have the right to demand repayment and may be under pressure to reinvest that money where it will generate a better return.

"This is a time where the banks are looking at their capital structures, and the value of their loans, given what’s happening in the financial world," he said, referring to the recent credit crunch. "They’ve got to make sure they can get their capital out."

Other industry insiders say a court-supervised sale process mitigates the risk the secured lenders may be sued by the bondholders.

In his letter, Asper estimates both the newspaper chain and CanWest’s broadcast assets, chiefly Global TV, could suffer combined revenue losses of $40 million due to the perception in advertisers’ minds that the two entities will no longer be doing business together.

The company that holds Global TV, CanWest Media Inc., entered bankruptcy protection last October.

The secured lenders reject Asper’s claim the business will be damaged by the process, with Rowe calling the assertion "unsupported."

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Arizona Public Service Co. has spent $8.5 million in the past four years on a program to help lower the cost of energy saving compact fluorescent lightbulbs.

Since 2005, the company has provided a discount of about $1 per bulb to retailers to help keep the cost low. Under the program, there have been more than 8.8 million lights sold through participating retailers.

The program is funded by fees charged to customers and approved by the Arizona Corporation Commission paperless payday loans.

APS officials estimate its customers will save about $350 million over the lifetime of the bulbs, which can last five years or more.

To further encourage people to switch their lighting habits, APS has rolled out an online calculator that can estimate the savings at homes that switch to CFLs.

For info: www.aps.com/MyCFL

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The euro zone does not risk the sort of debt problems plaguing Dubai, senior European Union officials said on Sunday.

Dubai was forced to seek a debt standstill last week, rocking global markets and reviving concerns about the fiscal health of some euro zone members, notably Greece.

Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, who chairs the Eurogroup of euro zone finance ministers, said he saw no risk of such a default in the euro area.

European Central Bank Governor Jean-Claude Trichet “entirely” confirmed what Juncker said.

The two were speaking at a news conference after a day of talks with Premier Wen Jiabao and other senior Chinese officials.

(Reporting by Simon Rabinovitch and Chris Buckley; Writing by Alan Wheatley; Editing by Mike Nesbit)

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A man who claims to be the "Godfather of Spam" has been sentenced to 51 months in prison by a federal judge in Detroit for his lead role in an e-mail stock scam scheme, according to court documents.

Alan Ralsky, 64, also faces five years probation and will have to forfeit $250,000 that was seized by the government in 2007.

U.S. District Judge Marianne Battani also sentenced three others Monday for their involvement in the scheme, including Ralsky’s son-in-law Scott Bradley, 48, who received 40 months in prison and five years probation.

Ralsky and Bradley were charged for conspiring to commit wire and mail fraud and violating the CAN-SPAM Act, which criminalizes large, commercial e-mail messages sent using an unauthorized computer or with the intent to hide the e-mail’s original source, according to the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan. They were also charged with committing wire fraud and engaging in money laundering.

Ralsky and Bradley, both of West Bloomfield, Mich., pleaded guilty to the charges in June.

Ralsky’s history as a prolific spammer dates back to 1997. Before the Bush administration passed a law to crack down on e-mail marketers in 2003, Ralsky reportedly sent 70 million messages a day from fake names.

In the operation that began in January 2004, the team sent billions of illegal e-mail advertisements to inflate the price of Chinese penny stocks and then reaped the profit, according to the prosecutor’s office. They raked in nearly $3 million during the summer of 2005.

The prosecution said Ralsky worked with How Wai John Hui, a resident of Hong Kong and Canada, to run the operation. Hui was also sentenced to 51 months in prison and 3 years of probation, and he agreed to forfeit $500,000 easy payday loans.

Hui was the CEO of China World Trade and served as the lead dealmaker representing companies whose stocks were being promoted in the spam e-mails. Hui plead guilty in December 2008.

John Bown, 45, of Fresno, Calif., was sentenced to 32 months in prison for his role in the scheme. He will face 3 years of probation and will forfeit $120,000.

"With today’s sentence of the self-proclaimed ‘Godfather of Spam,’ Alan Ralsky, and three others who played central roles in a complicated stock span pump- and-dump scheme, the court has made it clear that advancing fraud through the abuse of the Internet will lead to several years in prison," said U.S. Attorney Terrence Berg, in a statement Monday.

Though the government originally recommended that Ralsky receive up to 87 months in prison, it lowered the sentence recommendation range in November to between 35 and 43 months because of Ralsky’s cooperation.

Ralsky’s lawyer, Steven Fishman, said he believed the sentence was "excessive."

"It was the most disappointing event that I have ever experienced in 36 years as a lawyer," Fishman said. "The sentence was higher than even what the government recommended, and I never imagined that in a million years. Everyone in the court house was stunned."

The FBI conducted a 3-year investigation and indicted the 11 involved individuals in December 2007.

Five others, who also pleaded guilty, were to be given their sentence Tuesday. Cases for two other individuals that were indicted were still pending. 

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Detroit continued to lead the nation’s cities of 1 million people or more with the highest unemployment rate in September, according to government figures released Wednesday.

And for Detroit’s painful unemployment rate to stabilize and eventually decline, economists say the jobless will just have to leave the Motor City.

The Labor Department said the metro area ravaged by the auto industry’s collapse reported a 17.3% jobless rate in September, up from 17% in August, and 8.9% last year.

Detroit also recorded the largest jobless rate increase from September 2008 with 8.4 percentage points, followed by Muskegon-Norton Shores, Mich., at 6.8 percentage points.

"Detroit’s labor market situation has deteriorated substantially from what was already a weak level," said John Lonski, a chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com.

He said that the suffering experienced by Detroit’s big three automakers — Ford (F, Fortune 500), General Motors and Chrysler — than what overall auto industry experienced, the slowest pace of auto sales since the 1960’s.

"The only way to contract the city’s unemployment rate is through migration," Lonski said. "The jobs that were lost aren’t coming back like they will in other cities after the downturn, so the unemployed individuals will have to go elsewhere to find jobs, and that will help shrink Detroit’s overall workforce."

The structural challenges and the shrinking of the auto giants in Detroit will force the entire city to downsize, Lonski said, as opposed to other areas where the housing market took a toll on unemployment but is bouncing back.

One place Lonski says Detroit’s jobless should consider relocating to is Texas, second to California as the most populated state and with an unemployment rate below the national average of 9.8%. Texas’ major metropolitan areas also boast relatively lower rates, with San Antonio at 7.1%, Austin at 7.2%, Dallas at 8.3% and Houston at 8.5%, according to the government report.

Optimism beyond

Despite the crisis in Detroit, severe unemployment eased overall in the nation’s metropolitan areas even while the nation’s unemployment rate climbed to a 26-year high in September payday advance online.

The report said 117 of 372 metropolitan areas surveyed suffered unemployment rates of at least 10% last month, down from 129 cities in August. The number of areas with unemployment rates higher than 15% fell to 13 in September from 16 metro areas in August.

The national unemployment rate rose to a seasonally adjusted 9.8% in September. Economists surveyed by Briefing.com expect that national rate to rise to 9.9% when the Labor Department releases its October jobs report on Nov. 6.

Overall, 133 cities in the Labor Department report had unemployment rates above the non-seasonally adjusted national figure of 9.5%, while 232 reported jobless rates below it, and 7 areas had the same rate.

Three areas in Michigan posted jobless rates higher than 15%, including Detroit.

Among other cities with populations of at least 1 million, California’s Inland Empire, including Riverside, San Bernardino and Ontario, ranked second to Detroit with an unemployment rate of 14.2% in September.

El Centro, Calif. continued to have the highest unemployment rate of any metropolitan area at 30.1%, down from a revised 33.1% in August.

The second highest rate was in Yuma, Ariz. at 24.2%, a slight drop from 26% in August. Both El Centro and Yuma are cities near agricultural areas where extreme heat impacts the workforce, the Labor Department said.

The metro areas with the lowest unemployment rates in September were all in North Dakota, with Bismarck at 2.9%, followed by Fargo at 3.7% and Grand Forks at 3.8%.

Large cities with the lowest jobless rates were Oklahoma City, at 5.9%, and the Washington, D.C., metro area at 6.2%.

A southern Louisiana metro area that includes Houma, Bayou Cane, and Thibodaux was the only one to experience a year-over-year declining jobless rate because it was impacted by Hurricane Gustav in September 2008.  

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Norges Bank will probably raise its benchmark interest rate tomorrow, becoming the first European central bank to reverse monetary support measures as policy makers steer the oil-rich economy through its recovery.

The Oslo-based bank will lift the overnight deposit rate by a quarter point to 1.5 percent, the first increase in more than a year, according to 19 out of 20 economists surveyed by Bloomberg. The other forecast an increase to 1.75 percent. The bank will announce its decision at 2 p.m.

The world’s fifth-largest oil exporter came out of recession in the second quarter after investment in its petroleum industry, a stimulus package equivalent to 4.7 percent of gross domestic product and record-low borrowing costs fueled domestic demand. Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, whose coalition government was re-elected last month, has pledged to raise next year’s spending in excess of national fiscal guidelines even after recovery took hold.

“They are going to raise this month and I think they will raise interest rates to about 4 percent by the end of next year,” said Sunil Kapadia, an economist at UBS AG in London.

Housing, Inflation

The only Scandinavian country outside the European Union needs higher borrowing costs to offset the effect of government stimulus. The registered unemployment rate dropped to 2.7 percent in September, Europe’s lowest, and annual retail sales have grown for three consecutive months. House prices, not taking inflation into account, have returned to their pre-crisis peak from the summer of 2007, the Finance Ministry estimates.

Inflation has hovered close to the bank’s 2.5 percent target and was 2.4 percent last month, adjusting for the effect of taxes and energy. This year, the rate has exceeded the central bank’s target in six out of nine months.

“Better consumer confidence and strong government stimulus are contributing to a quicker recovery than expected,” Bjoern- Roger Wilhelmsen, senior economist at First Securities ASA in Oslo, said in a note to clients.

The krone was little changed at 8.3664 at 8:42 a.m. in Oslo. The krone has gained 7.9 percent since the end of June, making it the second-best performer of the 16 major currencies tracked by Bloomberg in the period after the New Zealand dollar.

Gains in the krone will limit the scope of rate increases, according to DnB NOR ASA, as policy makers try to balance the needs of the domestic economy against the task of supporting the country’s exporters.

Struggling Exporters

“The export sector is still struggling and a stronger krone will only weaken the sector further,” said Maren Romstad, a currency strategist at DnB NOR ASA, Norway’s biggest bank. This “will limit the room for the central bank to hike.”

Erik Bruce, Oslo-based senior economist at the biggest Nordic lender, Nordea Bank AB, expects the central bank to move “gradually,” and increase rates at every second meeting to 2.75 percent within 12 months. “They will move much more cautiously.” If the bank “moves too fast, we will surely see an even stronger krone and that will lead to a too tight monetary situation, too low inflation.”

Former Finance Minister Kristin Halvorsen on June 22 warned mortgage holders against basing home purchases on an assumption that interest rates will remain at the current record low. Central bank Governor Svein Gjedrem said on Sept. 30 that asset prices “have risen sharply and probably excessively,” characterizing policy rates as “extremely low.”

‘Warning Shot’

A rate increase tomorrow will be “like a warning shot,” Kapadia said. “They will start raising rates and try and encourage people to be a bit more cautious in their borrowing. I think it is the right thing to do.”

The country’s oil wealth has shielded it from the worst of the economic crisis, and mainland gross domestic product, which excludes oil, gas and shipping, grew 0.3 percent in the second quarter, ending six months of recession. The government expects the economy to grow 2.1 percent next year after contracting 1.1 percent this year. The jobless rate will average 3.2 percent this year and 3.7 percent in 2010.

After spending a record amount of its oil wealth this year to jolt the economy out of a trade-led recession, the government on Oct. 14 announced plans to spend even more in 2010. It will transfer 148.5 billion kroner from its $450 billion oil fund to cover the so-called structural non-oil budget deficit.

Exceeds Limit

Norway, which is also the world’s second-largest natural gas exporter, puts most of its revenue from oil and gas in a pension fund that invests abroad to avoid stoking inflation in the domestic economy. The Government Pension Fund - Global is Europe’s largest equity investor.

Expenditure guidelines stipulate the government should limit spending to the expected return of the fund, which is estimated at 4 percent. In 2010 the government will exceed the spending limit by 44.6 billion kroner, overspending for a second consecutive year.

A Norges Bank rate increase would make it the third central bank to raise rates since the global credit crisis started to ease after the Bank of Israel lifted its lending rate a quarter point in August and Australia’s Reserve Bank raised its overnight cash target rate by 0.25 point earlier this month. The bank will also publish a new set of forecasts for the economy and interest rates.

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