Financial Freedom. Best business news.

The U.S. economy needs to grow more quickly if it is to produce enough jobs to bring down the unemployment rate further, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said on Monday.

Bernanke said the recent decline in jobless rate, which dropped from 9.1 percent last summer to 8.3 percent in February, was “somewhat out of sync” with the rather modest pace of economic growth.

U.S. gross domestic product grew 3 percent in the fourth quarter, but is expected to have slowed to just below 2 percent in the first three months of this year.

“Further significant improvements in the unemployment rate will likely require a more rapid expansion of production and demand from consumers and businesses, a process that can be supported by continued accommodative policies,” Bernanke told a gathering of the National Association for Business Economics paydayloan.

Bernanke reiterated his concern about long-term unemployment, but argued against the notion that much of the problem is due to structural factors that monetary policy could not address.

“The continued weakness in aggregate demand is likely the predominant factor. Consequently, the Federal Reserve’s accommodative monetary policies, by providing support for demand and for the recovery, should help, over time, to reduce long-term unemployment as well,” he said.

Read more

ST. LOUIS • A developer is pouring $30 million into renovating a Cupples Station building downtown, while in the same complex of 19th-century warehouses a similar structure continues to sit empty and in danger of collapse.

It’s a tale of different buildings and different owners with starkly different approaches. Both buildings are within a city historic district and are on the National Register of Historic Places.

Cupples 9, a seven-story warehouse built in 1894, had been empty for years when an affiliate of the Koman Group, a Creve Coeur-based developer, bought the building out of foreclosure last spring. Clayco Inc. is Koman’s general contractor to restore the building’s red brick exterior and renovate the interior of heavy Douglas fir beams and columns as modern loft-style offices.

Koman already has two Cupples 9 tenants: Osborn & Barr, an agriculture-focused marketing firm, and Mackey Mitchell Architects, a St. Louis design firm founded in 1968.

Mackey Mitchell announced this week that it will leave its longtime home near Union Station and by late this year take over about half the fifth floor at Cupples 9, which is a block west of Busch Stadium.

The firm, begun in 1968 by Gene Mackey, plans to lease about 11,000 square feet of Cupples 9 space, about 4,000 square feet fewer than what it occupies now at Power House, an office building just south of Union Station. Mackey Mitchell designed that building, where it has rented space for 24 years.

Dan Mitchell, the firm’s president, said Mackey Mitchell plans to retain all 45 employees when it moves Cupples 9, which has 12-foot ceilings, large windows and exposed brick walls. The firm is planning “a more linear” seating arrangement to enhance employee communication, creativity and collaboration, Mitchell said.

“We’ll have a kind of bench-style configuration with more community space or team space dispersed through the studio,” he said.

Mackey Mitchell chose Cupples 9 after examining numerous buildings downtown, in the Central West End and near St. Louis University before opting to remain downtown, said Mitchell, adding that the firm’s Power House lease expires next February.

Osborn & Barr, as Cupples 9’s anchor tenant, will occupy floors two through four.

Dan Farris, Koman’s senior investments manager, declined Thursday to discuss details of the Cupples 9 redevelopment. He said more information about the project will be announced in about two weeks.

A block west of Cupples 9 on Spruce Street is Cupples 7, which has experienced only decay since 2005, when developer McGowan/Walsh bought the building and announced plans to convert it to lofts and commercial space. The project never got off the ground.

Ballpark Lofts III LLC, the building’s current owner, applied last year for a demolition permit, which the city’s cultural resources officer, Betsy Bradley, denied. The city’s Preservation Board upheld Bradley’s decision. Pending in St. Louis Circuit Court is Ballpark Lofts’ appeal of the Preservation Board’s ruling. A hearing on the appeal is scheduled for Thursday.

Joining the appeal is Montgomery Bank, which lent Ballpark Lofts more than $1 million to buy Cupples 7. The loan is in default. The bank has an agreement with the St. Louis treasurer’s office, which would pay off the loan, then work out a payback agreement with Ballpark Lofts. Such a transaction would occur only if Cupples 7 is demolished first.

The treasurer owns a parking garage next to Cupples 7 and is concerned the garage would be damaged if the old warehouse collapses. Barricades the city put up around the building in September impedes access to the garage, the treasurer office’s lawyer has said.

Much of the building’s roof has collapsed and most of the interior is in ruins. A structural engineer hired by the owner told the Preservation Board last year the brick walls are unstable. Bracing the walls and “mothballing” the building for possible redevelopment later could cost $8 million to $10 million, officials said.

Osborn & Barr’s move to Cupples 9 will result in a two-floor vacancy at Cupples 8, another of the old warehouses that McGowan/Walsh renovated as offices and condos.

Source

U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne will need to claw back about 5 billion pounds ($8 billion) a year, largely from the wealthy, to fund giveaways he

With more money sitting in their bank account than some companies are worth, Silicon Valley giant Apple finally decided it was time to pay a dividend.

Tim Cook, CEO of the maker of iPhones, iPads, iPods and Mac computers announced Monday the company would be using some of its $98 billion cash on hand to pay out a dividend for the first time since 1995, as well as buy back stock.

In an industry where paying out a dividend is sometimes seen as a sign that a company is past its innovative best, Cook insisted the $2.65 quarterly dividend will still leave plenty of cash for the company to develop new products, as well as giving it a war-chest to use for takeover opportunities.

News Corp. executive James Murdoch acknowledged Wednesday that he could have done more to investigate the phone hacking scandal that has rocked Britain and threatened his place as the likely heir to his father’s global media empire.

Murdoch’s admission came in a detailed, seven-page letter written to British parliamentarians investigating the scandal. In it, he repeated his insistence that he knew nothing about the criminality which had taken place at the now-defunct News of the World tabloid newspaper, saying that the extent of the wrongdoing had been hidden from him by members of his staff.

“It would have been better if I had asked more questions,” Murdoch said. “However the truth is that incomplete answers and what now appear to be false assurances were given to the questions that I asked.”

Murdoch has already appeared twice before lawmakers, who grilled him in detail about what he knew about the phone hacking scandal and alleged attempts to bury evidence of any illegal activity.

Murdoch was the one who signed off on a massive settlement to one of the first known victims of the practice, a deal which the company’s former in-house lawyer has acknowledged was aimed at keeping a lid on the scandal.

But the cover-up failed after the Guardian and The New York Times revealed that phone hacking was endemic at paper, an expose which has led to dozens of arrests and resignations. Murdoch’s father, Rupert, was forced to close the News of the World following an advertiser boycott. Lawmakers are now sifting through the scandal’s fallout in an effort to find out who was responsible.

In a separate development, police said that a 51-year-old man has been arrested Wednesday on suspicion of intimidating a witness.

Scotland Yard said the man taken into custody Wednesday had been previously arrested on April 5, 2011. Police did not identify the man, but The Associated Press had identified a man arrested that day as former News of the World reporter Neville Thurlbeck, who was 50 at the time.

Thurlbeck did not immediately return a text message seeking details about the arrest. His law firm had no immediate comment.

Wednesday’s developments follow the arrests Tuesday of six other suspects, including former News International executive Rebekah Brooks.

News International, the British newspaper arm of News Corp., has made cash settlements to 58 victims, including celebrities, politicians and the families of crime victims.

Source

The U.S., the European Union and Japan complained at the World Trade Organization today over Chinese limits on exports of rare earths that are critical to the world

TRAVELS WITH CHARLES: Our town’s low-profile, high-finance specialist, Charles Lowenhaupt, flew home from Sydney the other night on a flight loaded with such high-profile Aussies as Nicole Kidman and hubby Keith Urban, Tobey Maguire and Orlando Bloom.

Lowenhaupt, who is recognized worldwide for managing wealth for ultra-high net worth families, was there for meetings at his office, Lowenhaupt Global Advisors Australia.

When he flew home via Los Angeles on Qantas airlines, Lowenhaupt was in first class and found himself seated with the stars. He says all minded their own business while Kidman and Urban had dinner together with one of their children, Sunday Rose, 3. Their younger daughter, Faith Margaret, 14 months, was upstairs in business class with a nanny.

According to the entertainment mags, the family of four spent a stint in Australia visiting their families while Kidman was a judge at Tropfest, an annual festival of short films. Other judges were Cate Blanchett, Geoffrey Rush and Toni Collette.

Urban also had business there, filming an Australian version of “The Voice” with Joel Madden and Delta Goodrem.

On a side note, Bloom’s gorgeous model wife, Miranda Kerr, is an ambassador for Qantas.

Source

German business confidence probably rose to the highest in seven months in February as progress in taming Europe

Technology analyst John Kinnucan was arrested Friday on allegations of trading on information about many of the nation’s leading tech companies, resulting in illicit gains of nearly $110 million.

Kinnucan faces both criminal and civil charges. He was arrested at his Oregon home and is awaiting transfer to New York, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York, which is conducting an ongoing probe into insider trading. The Southern District includes the nation’s major stock exchanges and is taking the lead on insider trading probes nationwide.

In January, seven hedge fund managers and investment professionals were indicted in New York, charged with sharing insider information when making trades. Last year, Raj Rajaratnam, founder of the Galleon Group hedge fund, was found guilty and sentenced to 11 years in prison and fined a record $92.8 million. The SEC alleges the Galleon case resulted in $91 million in illicit gains, less than in Kinnucan’s case.

The Securities and Exchange Commission alleges that Kinnucan befriended and rewarded insiders at various technology companies, including Apple (, Fortune 500), Dell (, Fortune 500), Fairchild Semiconductor (), Marvell Technology (), and Western Digital (, Fortune 500), in order to gain information, which the SEC claims he then sold to clients, primarily portfolio managers and analysts at prominent hedge funds and investment advisers.

"The information he obtained and passed along to clients was not the result of research. It was inside information Kinnucan bought from company insiders," said Janice Fedarcyk, FBI assistant director-in-charge. "That kind of information beats research every time. The only problem is it isn’t legal."

In late 2010, Kinnucan took the unusual step of announcing on TV and in an e-mail to clients that he had been contacted by FBI agents, whom he mocked as "fresh-faced eager beavers."

He said he was approached at the end of October 2010 and asked to wear a wire in an insider-trading investigation targeting certain hedge funds. He shut down his Portland, Ore.-based firm, Broadband Research Corp., soon after that disclosure. Kinnucan and members of his former firm could not be reached for comment Friday.

The U.S. Attorney’s office and the SEC would not comment on Kinnucan’s actions in 2010. 

Source

The number has been repeated so often by presidential prognosticators that it’s an article of faith: No president has been re-elected since World War II with an unemployment rate higher than 7.2 percent.

But the stock market turns out to be a pretty good predictor, too.

The Dow Jones industrial average has soared 62 percent since President Barack Obama took the oath of office during some of the darkest days of the Great Recession. The Dow was just below 8,000 then and stands near 13,000 today.

If a recent study of stock markets and presidential elections is any guide, Obama can start preparing his second inaugural address.

“There’s something to this,” says Phil Orlando, chief equity market strategist at Federated Investors, the $370 billion investment firm.

There are plenty of other signs often consulted for their political forecasting power, like whether a team from the National Football Conference or the American Football Conference wins the Super Bowl.

This one makes a little more sense: When the economy picks up and unemployment falls, confident investors put money into riskier investments and stocks rise. Voters are likely to reward the sitting president with another four years.

“The stock market reflects trends in the economy,” Orlando says. And as any political operative can attest, in a presidential campaign, it’s the economy _ you know the rest.

The study was backed by the Socionomics Institute, a think tank studying how a shared mood among a group sways its members’ actions. Their researchers dug up data on economic output, prices, unemployment and stock-market performance and matched them to presidential elections.

They went all the way back to the first re-election in 1792, when George Washington beat John Adams and won a second term as the president.

The researchers found a solid connection between the stock market’s direction in the three years leading up to Election Day and the election results. Gains of 20 percent or more for the Dow nearly assured victories for sitting presidents. Drops of 10 percent or worse got them tossed out.

Voters returned Calvin Coolidge to the White House in 1924, just as the Roaring ’20s started roaring. They booted Herbert Hoover in 1932 while the stock market suffered through a three-year plunge.

The authors of the Socionomics Institute study say everything can be traced back to the prevailing optimism or pessimism. Their organization studies “the social mood.” But how do you read the mood of a whole country?

The authors say that the stock market is the best available gauge of how the country is feeling, “because investors can act swiftly to express their optimism or pessimism.” Bad day? Time to sell. Things looking up? Time to buy.

“An increasingly positive social mood produces a rising stock market as well as votes for the incumbent, and an increasingly negative social mood produces a falling stock market as well as votes against the incumbent,” they write.

To the authors, it’s the mood that determines the election, not the stock market. The stock market is just a reliable gauge of the national temper, an incredibly accurate mood ring.

In recent successful re-election campaigns, the connection appears clear. Ronald Reagan won re-election in 1984 following the Dow’s 41 percent surge and despite an unemployment rate of 7.2 percent. Bill Clinton was awarded a second term after the Dow gained 63 percent in the three years leading up to Election Day.

But there are misfires. James Madison, for instance, won re-election in 1812 despite a 34 percent drop in the market over three years. George H.W. Bush lost to Bill Clinton even though the Dow rose 51 percent over his term in office.

Doug Wead, a presidential historian who served in the elder Bush’s administration, says the stock market theory sounds suspect.

“The stock market isn’t even a good indicator of the economy,” he says. “You can have the stock market going up while the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.”

There’s also the danger of oversimplifying _ relying on one number, in this case the Dow’s performance, while ignoring everything from scandals and wars to third-party candidates.

In William Howard Taft’s last three years in office, the Dow lost 12 percent, and Taft lost the 1912 election to Woodrow Wilson. But if Theodore Roosevelt hadn’t split from the Republicans and run under the Progressive Party banner against Taft that year, Taft might have returned to office.

It was a similar story with the first President Bush in 1992. The independent candidate Ross Perot siphoned off votes from both candidates, but historians generally believe more came from Bush’s Republican camp. Clinton won with just 43 percent of the popular vote.

The economy also slipped into a recession during Bush’s second year in office, and as he campaigned for re-election, the unemployment rate hovered well above the dreaded 7.2 percent mark.

Orlando, of Federated Investors, says a change in any single statistic won’t guarantee a president gets re-elected. Analysts should consult a range of figures. One that looks less reassuring for Obama is his approval rating, he says.

No president has been re-elected with a Gallup approval rating below 48 percent approaching Election Day. Obama’s numbers are improving, and the election is more than eight months away, but for now he’s teetering on the edge _ 48 percent.

Source