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Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke avoided saying anything yesterday at his first press conference that shocked or confused investors. In other words, economists said, his appearance was a success.

During 46 minutes answering questions, Bernanke commented on a broad spectrum of economic issues, saying he expected inflation in fuel costs to slow and the end of the central bank’s $600 billion bond purchase program in June to have little impact on markets. He veered away once from the business at hand to mention his “big mistake” to play chess against economist Kenneth Rogoff, a former professional player.

Bernanke’s success in avoiding a gaffe may help validate the Fed’s decision to open up more to the public after decades in which Fed chairmen limited their appearances largely to speeches and congressional testimony. The Fed has now joined central banks in Europe, Japan and the U.K. in holding regular press briefings.

“From the Fed’s point of view it was beautiful, brilliant,” said William Ford, a former Atlanta Fed president who teaches at Middle Tennessee State University. “He didn’t make any goofs and came away as knowledgeable and smart. It was wonderful PR for him,” Ford said.

Bernanke, 57, said the central bank decided to hold press conferences four times a year after judging that the benefits from providing more information and transparency outweighed the risks of potentially creating “unnecessary volatility in financial markets.”

Economic Projections

The press conference gave the chairman the chance to elaborate on a Federal Open Market Committee statement that was little changed from last month. He also discussed economic projections that were released concurrent with the meeting for the first time, instead of three weeks later.

Traders took Bernanke’s comments, and the FOMC statement released two hours earlier, as a signal the Fed is likely to maintain record monetary stimulus. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index rose to an almost three-year high, while long-term Treasury yields rose and the dollar tumbled.

The press conference contrasted with Bernanke’s rocky start with the media after he took office in 2006. In April of that year, he told CNBC reporter Maria Bartiromo at a Washington party that markets had misinterpreted his remarks to Congress that had suggested the Fed was finished raising rates. Bonds tumbled when CNBC reported the conversation. Bernanke later said the incident was a “lapse in judgment.”

Bernanke Lampooned

Bernanke was lampooned in December by U.S. comedian Jon Stewart for likening Fed loans in 2009 to “printing money” and then telling CBS Corp.’s “60 Minutes” program in December that the Fed wasn’t printing money by buying $600 billion in Treasury securities.

The Fed chief showed more control of the message yesterday, commenting on how the Fed may maintain stimulus and respond to any increase in inflation expectations. He tried to show compassion for the average American, saying the Fed has pursued record stimulus to help people facing long-term unemployment and that higher gasoline prices are “absolutely creating a great deal of financial hardship for a lot of people no fax payday loan.”

Bernanke’s body language betrayed his emotions and conveyed “hopelessness” over long-term unemployment, said Greg Hartley, a former U.S. Army interrogator and author of “The Body Language Handbook.” Bernanke also showed emotion when discussing Japan’s response to its March earthquake and nuclear disaster, Hartley said.

‘Natural Human Reaction’

“That’s a natural human reaction,” Hartley said on Bloomberg Television’s “Taking Stock” with Pimm Fox. “He got more comfortable as time went, and I think the next time we’ll see a more polished person, but he could use some coaching.”

Bernanke appeared at precisely 2:15 p.m., striding into a conference room at the central bank’s Martin Building, across the street and reachable via tunnel from the Eccles Building headquarters where he chaired the FOMC meeting.

The former Princeton University professor took a seat, to the clatter of camera shutters, at a mahogany desk on a platform in front of about 60 reporters seated classroom-style in five rows of tables. For 11 minutes, or almost one-fourth of the allotted time, Bernanke read a statement discussing the FOMC’s actions and its forecasts.

Michelle Smith, Bernanke’s chief spokeswoman, stood off camera selecting reporters for questions. Bernanke didn’t hesitate after a reporter suggested that the Fed has been “unsuccessful” in supporting the dollar. He said investors flocked to the dollar as a safe haven during the financial crisis, and its drop over the last couple of years reflects reduced “uncertainty.”

Reinhart, Rogoff Book

The final question, about a book on the history of financial crises by Carmen Reinhart and Rogoff stoked Bernanke’s memory about Rogoff, a graduate school classmate of Bernanke’s at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the late 1970s who is now at Harvard University.

“I’ve known him for a long time,” Bernanke said. “I even played chess against him, which was a big mistake.”

Charles Lieberman, former head of monetary analysis at the New York Fed, said Bernanke parried well questions that put him in a “no-win situation.”

“He refused to answer hypothetical questions or get distracted by weak arguments,” said Lieberman, chief investment officer with Advisors Capital Management LLC in Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey.

The central bank chairman succeeded in “being informative and clarifying and not making a lot of news,” said Diane Swonk, chief economist at Mesirow Financial Inc. in Chicago, who has tracked the Fed since 1987.

Rogoff in an interview today declined to comment on his chess game against Bernanke, other than to say Bernanke played as black using an opening strategy known as Petrov’s Defense.

As for the press conference, “I thought he gave, speaking of chess, a masterful performance,” Rogoff said.

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For nine days, miners more than a mile underground burrowed around the clock to reach one of their own caught in a cave-in _ never wavering from calling the effort a rescue mission.

That changed Easter Sunday as officials announced the death of 53-year-old Larry Marek. His body was discovered in a collapsed portion of the Lucky Friday silver mine were he had been working with his brother.

“Words cannot express the deep sorrow we feel at the tragic loss of our friend, colleague and 30-year veteran of the mining industry. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family, loved ones and friends,” a Hecla Mining Co. statement said.

Marek, a 12-year company employee, and his brother, Mike, had just finished watering down blasted-out rock and ore April 15 in northern Idaho mine when the ceiling of a 6,150-foot deep tunnel collapsed. Mike Marek escaped unharmed.

Rescuers worked on the hope that not all of the 75-foot section of tunnel collapsed and the missing miner had perhaps survived in an open space amid the tons of fallen rock and debris.

Efforts to reach that possible area included an attempt to dig through the collapsed tunnel and building a second intersecting tunnel. But dangerous conditions halted the first effort, and work on the second tunnel slowed as crews encountered increasingly difficult obstacles that required a special tunneling technique to prevent the new tunnel from collapsing.

Then drill holes sent forward Saturday to probe conditions at the end of the tunnel _ where they hoped to find an open area where Marek was working _ found only sand and rubble. Officials said that indicated the entire tunnel collapsed, leaving no space in which the miner might have found refuge.

A company official and a representative of the Federal Mine Safety and Health Administration told the family late Saturday that the rescue mission had changed to a recovery operation.

Sunday morning, the company said it believed Marek was dead. His body was discovered a short while later.

The family declined to comment Sunday.

The company said Sunday it was beginning an in-depth investigation to discover how and why the collapse occurred.

Hecla spokeswoman Melanie Hennessey said the last fatality at the mine occurred in 1986.

The mine employs roughly 275 workers, about 50 of whom were underground in various parts of the mine when the collapse occurred.

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Ontario will continue to relay heavily on nuclear power in the future despite the nuclear crisis in Japan, says energy minister Brad Duguid.

Duguid

Location-based social networks Foursquare, Gowalla, and Loopt have collectively raised almost $50 million in funding from investors, and racked up around 13 million users.

Now it’s time for Act 2: making those users pay off.

South by Southwest (SXSW) is the ideal testing ground for these so-called "geosocial" apps. With events every hour at the city’s jammed bars and restaurants, show attendees often rely on check-in apps to find out where their friends are flocking. Last year, New York-based Foursquare and local startup Gowalla went head-to-head at SXSW in a battle for attention.

This year, they’re using the show as a testing ground for business models. For inspiration, they’re eying Groupon, the daily-deals wunderkind that reportedly has annual sales topping $1 billion.

Foursquare has in the past experimented with sponsored promotions and exclusive deals. At SXSW, it teamed up with American Express to offer card holders discounts at local merchants.

"We basically built a way for you to load deals onto your AmEx card," says Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley. "You sync your Amex card with your Foursquare account, and when you do that you start to see additional specials."

Spending $5 at a participating merchant automatically credits $5 to the Amex account. The program isn’t generating any revenue for Foursquare, but could serve as a model for future business deals.

Loopt — older than Foursquare, but with a smaller user base — is also eying discounts and rewards as a way to monetize its members.

"I think the big trend with location is about value," Loopt founder Sam Altman said.

Like Foursquare, Loopt launched a feature that allows businesses to send location-specific offers directly to consumers’ phones. The company didn’t take a cut of the deals, but plans to on future promotions.

"The key for all of us is to provide a better experience of the real world," Altman says.

"We’ll be successful to the degree we can make users’ lives better/more interesting, and also based on how much we can increase the revenue of local businesses.

Gowalla also got into the discounts game at SXSW, launching its pilot test for Gowalla Rewards, another local-merchant daily-deals campaign.

Fine-tuning their core offerings is still critical for the geolocation services if they want to reach a mass audience. Just 4% of online adults use sites like Foursquare, according to a recent Pew Research Center study.

The companies hope they can increase that tally by enhancing their applications. Virtual prizes — like badges advertising "achievements" such as checking in to 100 places — won over early adopters, but the holdouts need more to lure them in.

At SXSW, Foursquare rolled out a new recommendations engine, drawing on the mine of data it has collected. Last year, the company — which now has 50 employees — recorded 382 million check-ins from its 7 million members.

"Every check-in that we do, every piece of information that we put into the system, we recycle back and we get smarter and help you figure out things in the city," Crowley said of the new feature. 

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The head of the Securities and Exchange Commission said Thursday she erred in allowing a former agency official who benefited financially from Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme to play a key role crafting policy on how Madoffs’ victims should be compensated.

SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro told a House hearing she should have gone beyond the agency’s ethics requirements in her handling of David Becker, the agency’s former general counsel. She said she now wishes Becker had stayed away from the policy. Earlier this week, she told lawmakers in a letter that she didn’t see a conflict in Becker having inherited a Madoff account from his mother.

In hindsight, it would have been “appropriate” for Becker to be excluded from any SEC work on the Madoff policy, Schapiro said in testimony to two panels of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Republican lawmakers said the incident erodes the public’s trust in an agency already battered from its failure to detect Madoff’s scheme.

The Becker affair “could be the greatest challenge to the SEC” since the Madoff scandal, said Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the full oversight committee. “We’re not willing to accept that this can ever happen again.”

The SEC inspector general is investigating the agency’s handling of Becker, who is being sued because a federal court-appointed trustee says he inherited money his mother made from Madoff’s scheme. Madoff pleaded guilty in 2009 after conducting a multibillion-dollar investment fraud scheme.

“From where I sit now … I wish that Mr. Becker had recused himself, absolutely,” Schapiro said

Republicans are questioning Schapiro’s judgment at a time when the SEC is seeking more money from Congress to implement new financial regulatory rules. Many GOP lawmakers voted against the sweeping financial overhaul law and now say the SEC has been rushing out the rules.

Schapiro said the agency needs the $1.4 billion for the budget year beginning Oct. 1 to hire new staff and to invest in new technology to police sprawling markets.

Schapiro said the agency is making a “top-to-bottom” review of its conflict-of-interest and other ethics policies.

“We will learn from this experience and we will take all actions necessary to earn the trust the public places in us,” she said.

Becker, who was appointed by Schapiro in February 2009, left the SEC last month. His tie to Madoff became public late last month, when the court-appointed trustee sued Becker and his brothers, saying they earned more than $1.5 million in profits from their deceased mother’s investments with Madoff.

Schapiro says she left it to Becker to get a judgment from the agency’s ethics officer on whether he had a potential conflict of interest.

Becker did that. The ethics officer told him that “a reasonable person with knowledge of all of these facts would not question (his) impartiality.”

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Asian stock markets mostly fell Monday, pressured by worries over a slowing global recovery as oil prices rose to their highest level in more than two years after the conflict in Libya escalated.

Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 stock average dropped 141.73 points, or 1.3 percent, to 10,551.93. Sentiment in Tokyo was downbeat on growing political uncertainty after Japan’s foreign minister resigned Sunday over illegal political donations, dealing a blow to Prime Minister Naoto Kan’s embattled administration.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index was up 0.2 percent to 23,443.57, while the Shanghai Composite index was up 1.1 percent at 2,974.77.

Elsewhere, South Korea’s Kospi shed 0.6 percent to 1,993.62. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 index declined 1.2 percent to 4,806.20. Shares in Taiwan were lower, but those in New Zealand and Singapore were marginally higher.

Investors were worried that soaring oil prices could stifle global economic growth by increasing transportation and production costs.

Benchmark crude for April delivery was up 75 cents at $105.17 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract gained $2.51 Friday to settle at $104.42 a barrel, the highest level since September 2008, after fighting in Libya intensified.

Soaring oil prices spooked investors on Wall Street Friday with the Dow Jones industrial average losing 88.32 points, or 0.7 percent, to 12,169.88.

In currencies, the dollar rose to 82.31 yen in Tokyo Monday from 82.27 yen in New York late Friday. The euro slipped to $1.3978 from $1.3984.

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Fighting inflation is China’s top economic priority this year as the government aims to limit the risk of social unrest, Premier Wen Jiabao said in his state-of- the-nation speech.

“We cannot allow price rises to affect the normal lives of low-income people,” Wen said in a report to the annual meeting of the National People’s Congress in Beijing today. “This problem concerns the people’s well-being, bears on overall interests and affects social stability.”

Wen, 68, confirmed targets of 4 percent for full-year inflation and 8 percent for economic growth, as the Communist Party seeks to maintain support for its 61-year rule. In the past two weekends, the government has deployed hundreds of police in Beijing and Shanghai after Internet calls for so- called Jasmine protests, inspired by revolts in the Middle East and North Africa.

“Inflation is a potential trigger point for social discontent,” said Liu Li-Gang, an economist at Australia & New Zealand Banking Group in Hong Kong who formerly worked for the Hong Kong Monetary Authority and the World Bank. The government needs to boost lending and deposit rates by 0.75 percentage point by year-end, as well as raising wages and giving subsidies to the poor, he said.

Land Seizures, Food

Wen identified illegal land seizures, food safety, house- price increases and corruption as top public concerns and said institutional changes are needed to end the excessive concentration of power. The government will “decisively” counter inflation and make it the “top priority in macroeconomic control,” he said.

The budget deficit may be 900 billion yuan ($137 billion), or 2 percent of gross domestic product, 150 billion yuan less than targeted for 2010, Wen said. He confirmed that the nation is maintaining a “proactive” fiscal policy and a “prudent” monetary stance.

The Shanghai Composite Index rose to a four-month high yesterday as investors anticipated moves to boost consumption. The government aims to cut dependence on exports and investment and raise consumer spending, a shift that could help to ease global economic imbalances blamed for the financial crisis.

“Expanding domestic demand is a long-term strategic principle,” Wen said in the report. Subsidies for urban low- income earners and farmers and continued incentives for rural purchases of home appliances may boost spending, he said.

Private Investment

Wen also pledged to encourage private investment, including in infrastructure, public utilities and financial services.

The premier had already disclosed an annual growth target of 7 percent for the five-year plan running through 2015, down from the previous 7.5 percent. Based on 2010 prices, gross domestic product should exceed 55 trillion yuan ($8.37 trillion) by the end of the period, Wen said. The U.S. has a more than $14 trillion economy.

China’s growth goals are routinely surpassed, with the economy expanding an average 11 percent over the past five years, adding jobs and boosting incomes.

Wen read his report to more than 4,000 delegates gathered at the Great Hall of the People, alongside Tiananmen Square, a meeting first held in 1954 to approve government policies. Members of the congress include Zong Qinghou, the billionaire chairman of Hangzhou Wahaha Group and China’s richest man.

Inflation Risks

The world’s second-biggest economy faces heightened inflation and asset-bubble risks and banks may be saddled with more bad loans after a record expansion in credit drove China’s economic recovery no teletrack payday loan.

Consumer prices rose an annual 4.9 percent in January and food prices jumped, even after the central bank increased interest rates and banks’ reserve requirements. Wen pledged a “comprehensive audit” of local-government debt, after a surge in borrowing linked to the stimulus program from late 2008.

To control inflation, the government will manage liquidity, ensure agricultural production and use price controls when needed, Wen said. Officials will curb real-estate speculation and “adjust and improve” property tax policies, he added.

“The main challenge for controlling inflation is the property-price bubble stemming from overly loose monetary conditions relative to asset prices,” economists led by Peng Wensheng at China International Capital Corp. Ltd. said in a March 2 report.

Public Security

On Feb. 27, Wen pledged to punish abuse of power by officials and narrow the wealth gap. His comments coincided with public security operations in Beijing and Shanghai to prevent protests after an open letter called for “jasmine” rallies, named after the January uprising in Tunisia that overthrew President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

China’s leaders are seeking to maintain stability as the world’s most populous nation shifts from a predominantly rural to mostly urban society. During the five years through 2015, the level of urbanization will rise to 51.5 percent from 47.5 percent, Wen’s report said.

“Private companies will have huge business opportunities during the process,” Wang Jianlin, the billionaire chairman of property developer Dalian Wanda Group, said at the congress.

The divide between rich and poor is at levels not seen outside of Africa, Credit Suisse Group AG said in an August report. The average full-year income in the countryside last year was 5,919 yuan ($900), according to the statistics bureau.

Spending Power

The nation’s Gini coefficient, an income-distribution gauge used by economists, has climbed to near 0.5 from less than 0.3 a quarter century ago, according to Li Shi, professor of economics, School of Economics and Business at Beijing Normal University. The measure ranges from 0 to 1, and the 0.4 mark is used as a predictor by analysts for social unrest.

Government moves to boost incomes and spending power may include raising the threshold for income tax from 2,000 yuan per month, a plan already approved by the State Council.

A stronger Chinese currency would also bolster consumption, the U.S. government says. Wen’s report said the government will improve “the exchange-rate mechanism,” while Yi Gang, the head of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, told reporters at today’s meeting that the yuan’s rate “has never been closer to equilibrium.”

Chinese companies can accept annual yuan appreciation of 3 percent to 5 percent, Bank of China Ltd. President Li Lihui said at the meeting. The yuan closed at 6.5686 per dollar on March 4. Li also said lending growth will cool this year because of government constraints.

–Zhang Dingmin, Zheng Lifei, Michael Forsythe, Sophie Leung, Kevin Hamlin, Michael Wei, Eva Woo. Editors: Paul Panckhurst, Peter Hirschberg.

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Sales at U.S. retailers rose less than forecast in January, depressed by a drop in demand at building material stores and restaurants that may reflect the influence of harsh winter weather.

Purchases increased 0.3 percent, the smallest gain since a drop in June and followed a 0.5 percent December gain that was less than previously estimated, Commerce Department figures showed today in Washington. The median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News called for a 0.5 percent rise.

Sales at retailers like Gap Inc., Limited Brands Inc. and Macy’s Inc. topped analysts’ estimates last month as merchants used promotions to lure post-holiday shoppers before storms blanketed much of the U.S. mid month. Federal Reserve policy makers are among those saying bigger gains in employment are needed to ensure American consumers sustain spending.

Whole Foods Market Inc., the largest U.S. natural-goods grocer, last week raised its annual profit and revenue forecasts after the Austin, Texas-based company’s first-quarter earnings beat analysts’ estimates.

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Polish policy makers shouldn’t rush another interest rate increase after lifting borrowing costs last month for the first time since June 2008 because it may damp economic growth, central banker Andrzej Kazmierczak said.

The Narodowy Bank Polski in Warsaw raised its seven-day reference rate to 3.75 percent on Jan. 19 from a record-low 3.5 percent. Policy makers previously kept borrowing costs unchanged for 18 months, helping Poland avoid a recession in 2009 and expand 3.8 percent last year.

Kazmierczak’s view is at odds with other policy makers, including central bank Governor Marek Belka, who signaled policy may be tightened further. Higher rates may fail to curb price increases, which are driven by external forces including growing oil costs, while potentially harming growth, Kazmierczak said.

“Drawing a vision of rate increases in the longer term is ungrounded,” he said in an interview in Warsaw yesterday. “We should avoid any nervous moves that could turn out to be more harmful to economic growth than helpful in fighting inflation.”

The zloty weakened to 3.914 per euro at 3:30 p.m. in Warsaw from 3.8992 per at noon, ending two days of gains after a 1.6 percent decline last week, the biggest weekly decline in two months. The yield on the government’s five-year bond dropped to 5.56 percent from 5.65 percent yesterday.

Forward-rate agreements used to lock in interest costs in a year’s time indicate Polish rates will increase by 1.17 percentage points by year-end, while two weeks ago they predicted 1.33 percent.

Growth Concern

Central banks in east Europe, the region hardest hit by the global financial crisis, will raise interest rates less than other emerging markets as policy makers signal greater concern about growth, according to Commerzbank AG, Capital Economics Ltd. and Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

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China needs to extend interest-rate increases and allow the yuan to gain by about 5 percent annually to combat inflation and avoid fuelling asset bubbles, said Li Daokui, a central bank monetary policy committee member.

“We should gradually increase rates in the first and second quarter,” Li said in an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos yesterday. Rising real-estate prices are the “biggest danger,” he said.

China has raised benchmark lending rates twice since mid- October and the State Council last night expanded a crackdown on real-estate speculation by increasing minimum down-payments for second homes. Citigroup Inc. forecasts that the central bank may raise rates and reserve requirements for lenders before or during a Lunar New Year holiday starting Feb. 2. The one-year lending rate is 5.81 percent.

The yuan non-deliverable forwards traded at 6.4475 at 2:42 p.m. in Hong Kong, near its 2 1/2-year high. The forwards reached 6.3920 per dollar on Oct. 18, the strongest level since July 18, 2008.

Asian countries are battling inflation pressures as food and commodity costs climb and foreign capital inflows spur asset-price increases. China’s currency reserves swelled to a world-record $2.85 trillion last year and domestic bank lending breached a government target, pumping more money into the fastest-growing major economy.

China may allow more gains in the yuan to contain consumer prices and ease trade tensions. The Chinese currency closed at 6.5819 per dollar yesterday, after President Barack Obama said last week that it remains undervalued.

‘Excessive’ Yuan Gains

While an annual gain of 5 percent to 6 percent in the yuan is acceptable, any “excessive” appreciation would hurt Chinese exporters, said Li, who’s an academic adviser to the People’s Bank of China overnight pay day loans.

Most global investors see a bubble in China, a Bloomberg poll shows. Fifty-three percent of respondents held that view in a quarterly survey of 1,000 Bloomberg customers who are investors, traders or analysts.

One area of concern is the property market, with an International Monetary Fund study last month indicating that luxury home prices in Beijing and Nanjing and mass-market prices in Shanghai and Shenzhen have become “increasingly disconnected from fundamentals.” Premier Wen Jiabao said Dec. 26 that curbs on the housing market “were not well implemented” last year.

‘Aggressive’ Policies

The State Council yesterday increased the minimum down- payment for second-home purchases to 60 percent from 50 percent and said local officials will be held accountable if they fail to set and meet targets for limiting house price gains.

The latest measures were “more aggressive than expected,” Deutsche Bank AG said in an e-mailed note today.

Consumer prices rose 3.3 percent in 2010, breaching a government target of 3 percent. Across 70 cities, property prices rose 6.4 percent in December from a year earlier.

China won’t suffer a “hard landing,” Li said. Its economy will grow about 9.5 percent this year and the average inflation rate will be 3.8 percent to 4 percent, he forecast.

China’s economy expanded 10.3 percent in 2010, the fastest pace in three years, after growing 9.2 percent in 2009. The nation’s standing as the No. 2 economy may be confirmed on Feb. 14 when Japan reports fourth-quarter gross domestic product.

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