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The American home is shrinking. Toll the bell for the McMansion.

After years of growth, the Census Bureau recently reported that median new home size fell to 2,135 square feet in 2009 after peaking at more than 2,300 earlier in the decade.

"Home buyers are asking for less, cutting back on options and reducing square footage," said Steven Pace of the North Carolina-based Pace Development Group, which builds both custom and tract houses ranging in price from below $250,000 to more than $2 million.

"They’re saying, ‘Maybe we don’t need that 5,000 square footage;" he said. "’Maybe our bath doesn’t need to be big enough for our whole family and all our neighbors to take a shower at the same time.’"

Kermit Baker, chief economist for the American Institute of Architects, pointed out that consumers don’t ask for as much for spaces devoted to single purposes, such as media rooms for watching videos and game rooms for shooting pool. Instead, the requests are for rooms with shared uses.

"We continue to move away from the ‘McMansion’ chapter of residential design," he said.

Now, the typical U.S. owner-occupied home has six rooms, with three of them being bedrooms, according to the Census Bureau’s annual American Housing Survey cheap business cards. The most common number of baths is two or more.

For those who remember the days of long, hot summers. Those are over, too. Nearly 90% of all new homes now have central air conditioning. And 63% of all homes are now cooled.

These are a big increases from even 10 years ago, when only 52% of owner-occupied homes — i.e. non-rental properties or second homes — boasted central air.

More than three-quarters of all homeowners now load up dishwashers, up from 65% a decade ago. And garbage disposals can be found in nearly half of owner-occupied homes, up from 46%.

On a broader scope, the survey revealed that, despite the recent hoopla about the new urbanism and return to cities, most Americans still lead a "Leave it to Beaver" lifestyle.

Of the more than 76 million owner-occupied homes in 2009, 63 million were traditional detached, single-family residences. And city dwellers, you’re outnumbered: Far more homeowners live in the suburbs than in cities.

Regionally, the South, held the largest number of owner-occupied units, followed by the Midwest, then the West and finally the Northeast.  

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Shares of BP Plc continued their slide this week as the company passed the $100 billion mark in market capitalization lost following the April 20 Deepwater Horizon rig explosion.

BP's stock hit a new 52-week low of $27.07 Friday after a series of setbacks in the company’s effort to cap the leaking oil will and the revelation that it has so far spent as much as $2.35 billion on well cap efforts and spill cleanup.

The stock had closed at $59.49 on April 20, the day of the explosion.

BP (NYSE: BP) has resumed siphoning operations after a remotely operated vehicles damaged the well cap earlier this week, although recovery is at a reduced rate.

Moreover, there are additional concerns about the sustainability of recovery operations as a tropical storm approaches the spill area.

The Houston Business Journal is providing continuous coverage of the Gulf oil spill.

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One unit of Duke Energy Carolinas’ McGuire Nuclear Station is likely to be out of service through this week following a problem with control rods in the reactor.

Duke reported the outage to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Saturday. The utility said the plant had been running at 44 percent of capacity because a control rod dropped in the reactor. Then operators received indications that a second rod had dropped, and the plant was shut down.

Duke says the plant is stable after the shutdown, and control rods have been inserted. The company could not say when the unit would return to operation.

Reuters quotes unnamed electricity traders as expecting the plant to return to service within a week bad credit payday loans.

The second unit at McGuire is unaffected and is producing power normally.

The McGuire station has two 1,100-megawatt nuclear units. The plant is on Lake Norman, north of Charlotte.

Duke Energy Carolinas is a subsidiary of Charlotte-based Duke Energy Corp. (NYSE:DUK), which operates utilities in the Carolinas, Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky.

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The global airline industry is expected to pull out of its slump and make its first profit in three years, according to an industry group report Monday.

The International Air Transport Association said that it expects to make a profit of $2.5 billion in 2010, its first since 2007.

This is in contrast to a loss of $10 billion in 2009. "Our resilience has been tested by disease, war, terrorism, spiking oil prices and even a volcano," said Giovanni Bisignani, Chief Executive of the IATA, providing a list of the industry’s troubles over the few years at a meeting in Berlin.

Going forward, Bisignani painted a picture of "cautious optimism." He noted that carriers in the Asia-Pacific region are expected to make the strongest recovery, with a profit forecast of $2.2 billion this year. Airlines in North America are also expected to do well, with a profit of $1.9 billion, and carriers in Latin America are projected to be in the black by $900 million.

"Global traffic is back to pre-recession levels," said Bisignani.

But he added that some areas are stronger than others. Carriers in the Middle East and Africa are expected to scratch out a total profit of $100 million in 2010, according to the IATA.

And Europe, which is particularly hard-hit by the recession, is the only region expected to suffer a loss, of $2.8 billion, said the industry group.

The Icelandic volcano that halted European travel earlier this year took much of Bisignani’s blame for the Continent’s projected loss. The erupting volcano caused a massive ash plume that grounded traffic across Europe, stranding 10 million travelers and costing the economy $5 billion, including $1.8 billion in lost airline revenue, according to the IATA.

Given the remaining challenges of the industry, Bisignani browbeat striking airline employees as "out of touch with reality."

He did not specifically mention British Airways (BAY), which is involved in a labor dispute with workers.

"Pilots and crew must come down to earth and strikes at this time are shortsighted nonsense," he said. "Labor needs to stop picketing and cooperate."

Another chief culprit is fuel price volatility, said Bisignani. He said the industry should "break the tyranny of oil" and switch to biofuels made from jatropha, camelina, algae "and even urban waste." This will also help the airlines to cut their carbon emissions by half over the next 40 years, he said.

He said that some carriers have made commitments to purchase biofuel planes. But he added that international governments should do more to spur the use of this new technology through stimulus funding, noting that they’ve spent "only" $600 million so far.

"Change is not to be feared but embraced," said Bisignani. 

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Main Street’s job hemorrhaging has slowed.

Companies with fewer than 50 workers added a net 1,000 jobs in April, according to a report released Wednesday from payroll processor ADP. But the upswing actually began last month: ADP (ADP, Fortune 500) revised its March data to reflect a gain of 4,000 positions, marking the first month in nearly two years that small companies expanded their payrolls.

But even as the pink slips have slowed, they’ve left behind a massive jobs shortfall. Small companies have shed 3 million workers since the recession began, by ADP’s count.

In a speech Tuesday before the Business Council, a group of CEOs from major companies, President Obama emphasized the need to rebuild the country’s decimated employee rolls.

"Last year, the economy was in freefall. Today, the economy is growing again," Obama said. "Now, by no stretch of the imagination can we declare victory. Not until the millions of our neighbors who are looking for work can find work. … Spurring job creation and economic expansion continues to be our number-one domestic priority."

But many small business owners say they’re still sitting tight and holding off on new hires. The economy’s still-tentative recovery — witness Thursday’s sharp stock-market selloff — has companies treading cautiously.

Jim Houser, co-owner of Hawthorne Auto Clinic in Portland, Ore., has kept headcount steady at the auto body shop he opened 27 years ago. One longtime employee retired, and an intern was brought on in his place as a full-time worker.

"I have not felt the need to lay anybody off," Houser says — but he isn’t hiring, either.

Like many business owners, he’s felt the downturn’s effects. Customers facing expensive repairs put them off more frequently. On the flip side, drivers are invested in keeping their vehicles running: "There was a time up until 2008 that if the repair was going to be expensive, they would just go buy another car," he says. "There has been much less of that, so that has been an advantage."

Houser has plans for how his business can grow when the economy strengthens. He’d like to make the equipment and staff investments to install larger batteries in hybrid cars, making them even more fuel efficient.

But the installation is expensive, and Houser won’t spend the money to upgrade until he’s more optimistic about the stability of the economy instant payday loan no telecheck. That’s a common tactic right now: Recent small business surveys show that few owners are currently making capital investments.

"If people start loosening up with their money on maintenance or these conversions, these upgrades, then I will hire someone," he says. "But I am being very cautious. I don’t want to make a big investment that I can’t fulfill, that I can’t get the returns I hope."

A thousand miles south, in Los Angeles, online marketing company Tesla Consulting opened its doors in October 2008 — just as the economy really headed off the cliff. Eli Gladden and his two co-founders used a credit card to fund their new firm, which grew fast enough that they’ve found themselves in the market for new employees. In September, they added a marketing assistant to their staff, and in February, they made their first executive hire, bringing on a business development officer.

Still, Gladden is proceeding slowly.

"A lot of companies that were in our space and didn’t succeed grew so quickly that they weren’t in a position to handle a downturn," he says. "No one really ever thought about building a business that could scale back down. We are being really careful about bringing in new people, because we want to build a stable company that can weather storms if it has to."

Itty-bitty companies hire fastest: A separate employment survey, conducted by payroll software provider Intuit, concluded that America’s tiniest businesses are already rebounding.

Using data from around 55,000 small businesses that use Intuit’s Online Payroll system, Intuit estimated that companies with 20 or fewer workers added 66,000 new jobs in April. Since June 2009, they’ve upped their payroll by 300,000 new positions, Intuit (INTU) says.

That estimate is wildly different from ADP’s, but both surveys point to signs that for the job market, the worst is past.

And Gladden points to one silver lining to the carnage of the past two years: Companies can scoop up talented, eager workers.

"There are all these people we have worked with that are available," he says. "If we need somebody, we know we can go out and get somebody who is going to add value right away." 

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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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