The 2013 tournament commences on March 19, 2013 and should include a lot of action packed games. Many people will be skipping work or watching the tournament from their computers. Even non basketball fans will tune in to the tournament. A lot of non-basketball fans love to bet on the action.

Everyone knows the top ranked teams such as Duke, Michigan, and Arizona. In fact, Duke and Michigan are the two teams most heavily favored to win it all. There are also a lot of teams who have an outside shot to win it all. Though not traditional power house schools, the likes of New Mexico, San Diego State and UNLV all have a chance of becoming this year’s Cinderella story. Teams likes San Diego State and UNLV also have a geographical advantage as the west regionals are going to be hosted in Los Angeles.

Anyone who wants to get ready to bet on March madness should start getting ready now. Though most teams will be known beforehand, selection Sunday falls on March 17th, and the first round starts on Tuesday the 19th. Anyone wanting to watch the tournament up close has an excellent chance. Most of the locations are on the east coast, but there are a few locations out west including San Jose, Salt Lake City and Los Angeles.

Anyone interested in basketball or betting will love the 2013 tournament. With so many teams on the rise, there will be a lot of fun games to watch. If you love hard fought basketball games, you should call in sick and get ready to bet on March madness games. Just like 2013, this tournament will surely be enjoyable and entertaining to fans and gamblers alike.

Begin by choosing keywords that closely match your purpose. For example, if you want to purchase real estate in a thriving boomtown, use keyword phrases such as real estate boomtown, thriving cities, and properties for sale in boomtowns. If you know which state you want the property located in, be sure to include that to narrow your results.

If you already know the square footage you want, you can also add that to your search terms; however, by doing this you may not see some properties that are valuable buys and yet have more space. It is often better to search according to your price range and see what all is available.

Research the neighborhoods surrounding the property. Keep in mind that what you see on the web is likely the best aspects of the property. Important factors, such as the state of the surrounding area, may not be mentioned. Doing this research online will spare you from some disappointments and wasted time. If you do not do this ahead of time, you may end up visiting your potential dream home only to discover it is next to a noisy freeway, for example.

Keep track of your results — you can do this a number of ways. Create a file on your computer where you can save information on properties that interested you. Bookmark real estate sites that listed properties you are interested in looking at again. Compile data of all the real estate that looked promising. When you are finished with your initial searches, you can label the listings according to which look most promising. Work from this when you are ready to start calling or emailing owners or real estate agents about the properties.

The company said it expected that the Skippy acquisition would add $0.13 to $0.17 to earnings per share in its 2014 fiscal year.  Skippy reports sales of nearly $370 million annually, with $100 million of that figure earned from outside the United States.  Jeffrey M. Ettinger, chief executive of Hormel, said, “Outside the U.S., peanut butter is a growth story.  Skippy has a good franchise in Canada, it’s growing in Mexico, and we really see opportunity in Asia.”

The acquisition includes Skippy production plants in Little Rock, Arkansas, and in Weifang, China.  Ettinger said, “It will be our third facility in China producing on a daily basis.”  Mr.. Skippy is currently the leading peanut butter brand in China.  Skippy sales in China account for between $30 million to $40 million of the $100 million in international sales.

Hormel is the producer of canned and cured meats and Spam.  The company now has a growing stable of foods that are meatless, including Wholly Guacamole, a wide variety of Mexican foods, and several Country Crock side dishes.  Other brands owned by the company include Chi-Chi’s, Dinty Moore, and El Torito.  Nonfrozen grocery products account for 14% of the company’s annual revenue.

Many consumers are increasingly aware of the role that food plays in health.  Peanut butter’s high protein content was one attraction in the acquisition.  The company has also been targeting acquisitions that appeal to the growing ethnic diversity of American consumers.  Mr. Ettinger said, “We’re still very enthusiastic about our meat portfolio, but we have been making a very deliberate effort to become a bigger player in general packaged foods.”

Skippy is the biggest acquisition by Hormel to date. The last big purchase by Hormel was its 2001 acquisition of the Turkey Store Company for $334 million.  In August 2011, MegaMex Foods LLC, a joint venture between Hormel and Herdez Del Fuerte, spent an undisclosed amount to acquire Fresherized Foods, the maker of Wholly Guacamole and Wholly Salsa products.  Hormel is based in Austin, Minnesota.

So why aren’t you doing it for home insurance? That’s right; just because an insurance provider quotes you a price on premiums doesn’t mean you have to pay that price. At least it doesn’t if you know to ask about discounts.

Most home insurance providers offer discounts for a number of things – some of which you already qualify for and others that you can get with just a little effort. Here’s the thing, though: You might have to ask for these price breaks in order to get them. One thing to remember, however, is that every carrier doesn’t offer every discount, and some discounts aren’t available in some states.

Confused? Even if you are, you can get the straight scoop on discounts when you buy a policy from a site such as IRED.com, which offers potential policyholders assistance from licensed independent agents who will get the best deal for you from multiple highly rated carriers, then search for every discount that you should get.

Some typical home insurance discounts

Following are some of the discounts typically offered by home insurance carriers:

Home/auto discount: This is an easy one. You need home insurance, and you need car insurance. Most home insurance providers also sell car insurance. You can get a 20% discount when you bundle home and auto policies with the same provider.

Deadbolts: Install deadbolt locks on your exterior doors – if you don’t already have them – and you could save up to 5% on your premium.

Alarm system: You could get a 10% price break if you have a monitored alarm system in your home.

Smoke detectors/fire extinguishers: If you don’t have these, you need them. And they can save you up to 5% on your bill.

Nonsmokers: If no residents of your home smoke cigarettes or use other smoking products, you could get a 20% discount.

There are more potential price breaks as well. Make sure your carrier understands that you know about discounts and you expect to receive every one to which you are entitled. After all, you wouldn’t want anyone to think you’re a sucker.

Microsoft and other companies that depend heavily on the computer business reported weak PC sales during this past holiday season.  Acer, the No. 4 PC maker in the world, said sales of the company’s Windows 8 PCs had been less than expected.  Emmanuel Fromont, president of the Americas division of Acer, said, “There was not a huge spark in the market.  It’s a slow start, there’s no question.”

Sales of Windows machines have decreased from a year ago, according to research firm NPD.  From late October, when Windows 8 made its debut, through the first week in December, stores in the United States sold 13% fewer Windows devices than in the same period last year.  Those figures do not include sales in Microsoft’s own stores

Now, the company’s PCs also have to compete with less expensive mobile devices bidding for a share of consumer’s wallets. Smartphones and tablets have become serious rivals in the technology market.  Tablets running Microsoft’s new, touch-friendly Windows have failed to emerge from the shadow of competing products from Apple, Amazon, and other device makers.

Stephen Baker, an analyst at NPD, said, “I think everybody would have hoped for a better start.  The thing is, this market is not the same market that Windows 7 or Vista or even XP launched into.”  A. M. Sacconaghi, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein, said, “What you’re seeing is not a retirement of PCs, but a push-out in the replacement cycle.  If people used to buy PCs every four years and are now buying them every five years, that could lower PC sales by 20% over time.  That’s substantial.”

The company attributed more than $5 billion of the write-off to a “willful effort on behalf of certain former Autonomy employees to inflate the underlying financial metrics of the company in order to mislead investors and potential buyers.”  The statement continued on to sat that, “These misrepresentations and lack of disclosure severely impacted H.P. management’s ability to fairly value Autonomy at the time of the deal.”

A statement released by a Hewlett-Packard spokesman said: “H.P.’s board of directors, like H.P. management and deal team, had no reason to believe that Autonomy’s audited financial statements were inaccurate and that its financial performance was materially overstated.  It goes without saying that they are disappointed that much of the information they relied upon appears to have been manipulated or inaccurate.”

Autonomy’s founder, Michael Lynch, has launched an unusually aggressive public relations counterattack and has denied the charges.  Mr. Lynch has also accused Hewlett-Packard of mismanaging the acquisition.  Last May, H.P. asked Mr. Lynch to step aside after Autonomy’s results fell far short of expectations.

Stunned H.P. investors are still reeling from the management upheavals, corporate blunders and disappointing earnings that have been occurring for more than a year.  Toni Sacconaghi, technology analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein, said that the acquisition of Autonomy “may be worse than Time Warner,” referring to AOL’s acquisition of Time Warner in 2000.  That deal holds the dubious title of worst corporate deal ever, as it destroyed shareholder value and ended careers.  The deal was considered so bad it seemed likely never to be repeated, rivaled or surpassed…until now.

Deutsche Bank decided to update investors on the unanticipated costs, but the bank did not know what the amount of those expenses would be.  Mr. Krause said, “The outcome is still open.  But there will be quite a large amount of things to consider, which could be substantial and could lead to a loss.”  The bank may need to record losses from debt or other securities that it owns.  Some of the other costs relate to an overhaul of Deutsche Bank’s Postbank unit, a division that offers banking services from German post offices.

Deutsche Bank has been trying to revamp its businesses in the face of a sluggish market and is moving to reduce risk as new regulations begin to take effect over the next few years. The bank will focus on winding down investments outside its main businesses, forming a new unit to handle the tasks.

Prosecutors recently raided the company’s headquarters in a tax evasion investigation.  Deutsche Bank disclosed that Mr. Krause and Jürgen Fitschen, a co-chief executive of the bank, were the focus of an investigation over the value-added tax on the trading of carbon emissions certificates. The inquiry resulted in raids by nearly 500 police officers, tax inspectors, and other officials at the bank’s Frankfurt headquarters, as well as offices and private homes in Düsseldorf and Berlin.

The two executives are subjects of the inquiry because they signed tax return documents.  Mr. Krause took note of the investigation in a conference call with analysts, but did not address the accusations in detail.  Mr. Krause said, “The criminal investigation is going on, and it is very difficult to predict when that will be over.”  The bank is also among the institutions under investigation by US and European authorities over the possible manipulation of benchmark interest rates, like the London interbank offered rate (Libor).  Deutsche Bank said it had set aside money for potential penalties related to the case.

The necessity of keeping all funds in a regulated and controlled environment is a must have in order to prosper and maintain everyday smooth flowing operations. Different lines of businesses require corporate structure like in a stock brokerage firm or financial institution. In order for a corporate funding account to be established, most will have a Board of Directors vote in on what kinds of assets are allowed and how they are to be handled once established. Most will designate a trusted individual, generally a Treasurer who can monitor and administer funds as needed.

A corporate bank account can have many added values and can differ quite dramatically than a typical business account. A business account is generally tied into one or several business owner’s personal ‘liability’ whereas a corporate account is not considered a personal asset and is totally separate from the shareholders as well as the business owner. This kind of protection allows the business owner to have limited amounts of liability that shields them from some forms of creditors. Credit ratings for this kind of corporate account do not affect the business owner’s personal credit rating. Rather there is a totally separate credit rating for the corporation.

The two companies also entered into an agreement for a seven-year program under which TD will underwrite, fund, and own future Target Credit Card and Target Visa receivables in the United States.  The agreement will not impact Target’s 5% REDcard Rewards program.  TD will control risk management policies and regulatory compliance under the program agreement.

Target will continue the current integration between its retail operations and its financial services operations.  All servicing for Target Credit Card and Target Visa accounts will continue to be provided by Target team members. The program agreement and portfolio sale were designed to have a minimal impact on Target’s current cardholders and the team members supporting the financial products and services divisions.

The transaction is subject to regulatory approval and other customary closing conditions.  Gregg Steinhafel, chairman, president, and chief executive officer of Target Corporation, said, “Target is very pleased to have reached this agreement with TD which is the result of extensive efforts by teams at both companies.  This transaction achieves all of Target’s strategic and financial goals for a portfolio sale.  We look forward to working with this premier global financial institution to continue Target’s long history of innovation in our guest-focused financial services strategy.”

Ed Clark, Group President and CEO of TD Bank Group, said, “Our agreement with Target will significantly expand our presence in the North American credit card business and will establish TD as a key player in this space.  We’re excited to be working with Target’s strong team and leading retail brand.  This asset acquisition aligns perfectly with our strategy, fits our risk profile and is a great complement to our high-growth credit card business.”

However there has been a large shift in online casino activity, namely the introduction and massive growth of mobile casinos that have been created to be compatible for a range of devices and operating systems. The explosion of Apple products into the market has created a demand for games that cater to the iOS and top sites like http://www.iPadcasino.com.au/  have become increasingly popular with users. Blackberry, Nokia and Android device users have also been targeted and a host of mobile sites are available at the touch of a button.

UIGEA dictates that placing bets through a mobile phone is illegal in the USA however it does not specifically decree that mobile gaming is unlawful and the actual context remains a grey area, although the expectation remains the same. Although the placing of bets is illegal, there has been much done to promote mobile gambling in the US and the market for free games and apps continues to grow on a rapid basis.

The UIGEA act specifically excludes fantasy sports meeting certain requirements and does not mention State lotteries or clarify whether inter-state horse racing is illegal, meaning that players can make use of the facilities without contravening the act in its entirety.

According to the legislation the act also excludes legal intra-state and inter-tribal gaming and in reservations across the USA gambling is an allowed activity. Social gaming has also become a continued source of revenue with Rock You, Zynga and Big Fish being major contenders in Facebook and other social media platforms.

There is expectation that UIGEA will be amended in the near future to allow regulated poker and other gambling activities in both the internet and mobile sphere and a number of companies continue to jockey for position in anticipation of a more relaxed mobile and online gaming legislation.

The merchandise is being shipped from Wal-Mart stores.  Wal-Mart has also been building up its e-commerce site by adding features that increases convenience for customers, such as allowing customers to pay for online purchases with cash.  Amy Lester, a Wal-Mart spokeswoman, said, “Connecting our Web site to our stores gives us a unique advantage, so customers can shop anytime, anywhere.”

Amazon, the world’s largest online retailer, has also said that the company was striving for same-day delivery in metropolitan areas.  Jeff Bezos, its chief executive, said that Amazon would soon be able to cut as much as a day off its shipping times.  Amazon’s web site now says that same-day delivery is available in limited cases.

Wal-Mart and Amazon are increasingly competing for the same customers and the same turf.  Sucharita Mulpuru, an analyst with Forrester Research, said, “Everybody in retail is terrified of Amazon, and they’re terrified of losing more wallet share to Amazon.”  Mulpuru continued, stating that the Wal-Mart move is “to try to get ahead of the curve if Amazon does introduce something like this.”

The first retailer to master same-day delivery on a wide scale could have a significant edge in the industry.  Wal-Mart’s expansion of same-day shipping could essentially transform the more than 4,000 Wal-Marts into distribution centers.  Amazon had fewer than 40 distribution centers in the United States at the end of last year.

Some retail analysts are questioning the expense and difficulty of same-day delivery.  Ms. Mulpuru said that same-day delivery might not make financial sense.  She said, “If you don’t care about losing a lot of money, sure, you can pull this off.  The question is: Can you pull this off profitably?  I’m not convinced.”

In a harshly worded opinion, the judge said that the bank had breached a series of fiduciary duties in its handling of the trust account.  Judge Morrissey concluded that in 2000, JPMorgan had breached its fiduciary duty when it sold variable prepaid forward contracts, a complex fee-rich product, to the trust, even though they were unsuitable investments for the trust.  The judge found that JPMorgan had not properly explained the product to its client and had failed to disclose that the bank was benefiting from the transaction.  The bank also breached its duty when it invested the proceeds of the contracts in its own investment products.

The judge wrote, “The bank provided incentives to its employees to generate revenue for the bank.  This created a situation in which the self-interest of employees managing and advising fiduciary accounts was placed in conflict with the interest of those to whom the bank owed fiduciary duties.”  The judge added that the misconduct in the case showed a serious disregard for customers of the bank, which was aware “or recklessly failed to be aware” of the conduct at issue.  Judge Morrissey wrote, “The court finds that beyond simply restoring the trust in the position in which it should have been maintained, it is appropriate to assess punitive damages for the sake of example and by way of punishing the bank for its conduct.”

Trust accounts require advisers to put the interests of clients ahead of the banks’.  Under the current law, some stockbrokers are required to act in a customer’s best interest, but brokers who handle trust accounts are held to a higher standard and have to do what is best for the client alone.  Erin Donovan, a lawyer for a Burford family member, praised the ruling, saying, “I think the judge was affronted by the fact that JPMorgan, which was in a position of trust, betrayed it for their own benefit.”

JPMorgan said in a statement, “We disagree with the court’s decision and will take all appropriate measures to respond, including appealing the decision.”

Because related data clusters may be stored in various locations, the accessibility of related data must be seamless. The integration of applications and operations regarding the recovery, performance of Oracle database management systems is a primary function of an individual certified by Oracle to perform Database Performance Tuning. Through the implementation of a multitude of data system diagnostics, maintenance measures, and performance testing, this OCE certification ensures that the operations of any or all related data clusters can be integrated, related, and accessed in their joint, whole form.

Upon registering with Testslive.com, individual test-takers are privy to not only the most authentic and consistently-updated materials, but also examination questions mirroring those on the Oracle OCE Database Performance Tuning examination. Don’t make the mistake of going into an Oracle Certification exam unprepared; Testslive offers the most direct, succinct, and focused preparation methodology to help you earn that certification.

The settlement ends an 18-month investigation into ties between the bank and Countrywide Financial and Option One, two of the most aggressive mortgage lenders during the housing boom. R.B.S. neither admitted nor denied the accusations in agreeing to the settlement.  R.B.S. agreed that, in the future, the company will finance or purchase subprime loans only if they comply with state laws and are not deceptive.

Officials working with Catherine Cortez Masto, Nevada’s attorney general, examined R.B.S.’s activities from 2004 to 2007.  They examined more than one million pages of documents during the investigation.  They also interviewed former R.B.S. employees and borrowers.  During that time period, the bank provided funding for more than $100 billion of risky loans made by Countrywide and Option One, along with others.  R.B.S. was the third-largest securitizer of subprime mortgages and adjustable-rate loans in 2005 and 2006.

The Nevada officials’ findings concluded that R.B.S. had essentially created joint ventures with Countrywide and Option One, using its financing to enable reckless loans by the lenders that were unlikely to ever be repaid.  Even though R.B.S. was supposed to review the mortgages bought from Countrywide, the bank limited the number of loans it reviewed at Countrywide’s request.  The attorney general also concluded that the bank bundled and sold loans even after identifying them as problematic.

Ms. Masto said in a statement, “I remain committed to enforcing Nevada’s laws against the players — including those on Wall Street — that contributed to and profited from reckless and deceptive mortgage lending in Nevada.  The payment from R.B.S. will alleviate some of the injury to the Silver State and its residents.  The changes to its securitization process should help make sure that we do not go down this road again.”

The decision opens Microsoft up to a substantial fine.  The European Commission can levy a fine totaling up to 10% of a company’s global annual revenue.  That would be a penalty of $7 billion in Microsoft’s case, but analysts say it is probably unlikely to reach that high.  The largest single fine ever levied by the European antitrust authorities was €1.1 billion, or $1.4 billion, against Intel in 2009 for abusing its dominance in the computer chip market.

Microsoft apologized for the latest infringement, calling it a technical problem it had learned of only recently.  Microsoft said, “We take this matter very seriously and moved quickly to address this problem as soon as we became aware of it.  Although this was the result of a technical error, we take responsibility for what happened, and we are strengthening our internal procedures to help ensure something like this cannot happen again.”

In order to honor the agreement, reached in 2009, Microsoft was to give users of its Windows software equal access to rival Internet browsers. Mr. Almunia put Microsoft on notice that its next-generation operating system, Windows 8, must include adequate access to rival browsers in European versions of the software. Mr. Almunia said that the move against Microsoft was “a very serious message not to infringe the commitments that have been agreed and have that been given status as legally binding.”

The agencies alleged that Discover’s telemarketing and sales strategies misled consumers about the additional products available when opening credit cards.  Discover telemarketers used deceptive language to convince cardholders to pay for identity theft protection, credit score tracking, wallet protection, and payment protection.  In some cases, sales representatives were paid incentives when they enrolled customers in these products.

CFPB director Richard Cordray said, “Discover’s telemarketing scripts contained many misrepresentations, implying that these products were free of charge and simply “added benefits.’  [Investigators from the CFPB and FDIC] listened to numerous recorded sales calls where Discover’s telemarketers spoke unusually fast when explaining the cost and product terms, and even processed purchases without the consent of consumers.”

The settlement will affect more than 3.5 million cardholders.  Cardholders who purchased credit protection products over the phone from December 2007 to August 2011 will be given a share of the $200 million settlement, with customers receiving an average refund of roughly $57 for the fees they paid.  Fees for Discover’s credit products varied, with the identity theft protection costing $9.99 a month and the credit score tracker costing $7.99 a month.

According to the CFPB and FDIC, all customers should receive their refunds by early 2013.  The amount each customer will be refunded depends on what the product was, how long the customer had it, and when it was purchased.  Customers will be refunded at least 90 days’ worth of fees, automatically credited to their accounts.  Customers that have an outstanding Discover balance will have the balance reduced by the refunded amount.  Customers who no longer have a Discover account will receive checks in the mail.

MetroPCS will send $4.09 per share ($1.5 billion) to its shareholders and then perform a 1-for-2 reverse split of stock.  This means that the number of outstanding shares would be halved and the value of each share would double.  MetroPCS will then purchase all of T-Mobile USA’s assets by giving T-Mobile parent company Deutche Telekom 74% of its common stock.  Deutche Telekom will remain in control of the combined company and will provide financial support through debt and credit offerings.

The deal will not be a seamless transition.  Industry analysts expect complications from T-Mobile’s subsidiary status and the two companies’ incompatible wireless technologies, which means that MetroPCS’ phones are incompatible with T-Mobile’s network and vice versa.  Both companies have struggled recently, though each remains profitable.  The companies are also far behind the curve on network technology, their smartphone offerings are lackluster, and their customers are leaving in droves.

The new company plans to deploy a 4G-LTE network that will work across both customer bases and upgrade all customers to the new technology over several years.  Company executives said they expect all MetroPCS users to be migrated to T-Mobile’s network by the end of 2015.  The complex migration will be expensive and is “a major risk for derailing the benefits of the deal,” according to Informa Telecoms & Media analyst Mike Roberts.

For now, customers will continue to deal with two distinct brands operating separately. Combining the companies’ wireless spectrum, customers, and finances will help give the new company the resources and scale needed to succeed in a market dominated by their competitors.  The combined companies will have an estimated cost savings of up to $1.5 billion per year and a much easier path to 4G-LTE network deployments.

Practice trading “on paper” before investing real money. Forex offers a wide variety of educational services on currency trading. Opening a Forex account is a good first step to take. Resources such as investopedia.com also offer concise and valuable explanations of the many aspects of currency trading.

Whereas stocks or consumer purchases are defined in dollars, currency trading involves a pair of currencies defined in terms of each other. For example, a dollar/euro (USD/EUR) index may be 1.2 today and 1.3 tomorrow. This means that it takes $1.20 to buy one Euro today, and $1.30 to buy the same Euro tomorrow.

As with stocks, metals, and other securities, currency indexes have to be traded with liquidity in mind. Exotic (to the US population) currencies may land a great profit in theory, but only if someone else “completes” the exchange when you want to close the deal and seal in profit (or cut losses). When starting in currency trading, stick to pairs of major currencies such as USD (US dollars), EUR (Euros), and JPY (Yen). Volume is a key metric to research when deciding which currency pair(s) you want to trade.

A currency pair index is often displayed in candlesticks. A candlestick has four components: high price (or index value), low, opening and closing values. The high and low prices are displayed as “whiskers” or “shadows” extending above and below the “candle” height. If the high or low price matches the opening or closing prices, respectively, the “whisker” simply isn’t there. If a candle is white or green, the index increased over the trading span of each candle — meaning the closing price marks the top of the candle. If the candle is black or red, it decreased — the closing price would be the candle bottom.

Candlesticks add information about index movement that line graphs do not capture. In fact, an entire school of technical analysis focuses on candlestick patterns to predict future index movements.

Any company’s online site should collect email addresses at all times. Building this list is vital for announcing sales and upselling products to existing or potential customers. This list becomes even more important during the frantic holiday sales season. You might have sent out monthly newsletters before with sales, coupons or special offers, but the holidays are a time to ramp that up, without resorting to spam.

Tweak your email or newsletter template to reflect the holiday season. Think winter instead of holidays to avoid putting off certain religions or non-religious people. Snowflakes, snowmen and winter scenes put people in the mood for holiday shopping, but it is the content of your holiday email marketing that will make the most difference in profits.

Offer discounts and sales. Holiday shoppers looking for gifts are looking for bargains. Send sales announcements to your email list weekly during the holiday season or even more frequently if you offer daily sales. This keeps your website or business shop in the minds of potential customers without annoying them by mailing the same information. Sell more products to existing customers by recommending similar products in your line or grouping products in virtual gift packs. Holidays are hectic and people often shop by price range. Reflect that in your sales email messages.

The holiday season is also a great time to expand your business’s email list. Instead of including a basic link to the products on your site, also include a “mail to” link that recipients can click to send information about the product to someone on their own email list. Word of mouth advertising increases profits with limited effort on your part.

While shoppers rush about trying to find the perfect gifts for everyone on their list, they search online offers on their cell phones or laptops. Emails from their favorite retailers with exciting sales offers and new products get extra attention. Offers from shops they forgot about since last season can revitalize their interest and rebuild your customer base, leading to more profits throughout the year.

Sprint’s revenue totaled $8.84 billion, an increase of 6% from a year earlier and higher than analysts’ estimates of $8.72 billion.  Sprint increased its forecast for adjusted operating earnings for the year by 18%, excluding interest expenses and writing down asset values.  The results cheered investors, sending Sprint’s stock to its highest level in nearly a year.

Sprint’s service revenue climbed as the company was successful in persuading smartphone subscribers to pay more for their “unlimited data” service.  Customers using contract-based Sprint plans paid $63.38 a month on average in the quarter, a record high for the company.  Sprint is the country’s third-largest wireless carrier and has been struggling to compete with its two bigger rivals, AT&T and Verizon Wireless.

Sprint intends to complete the shutdown of Nextel by the middle of next year.  Sprint has been saddled with the cost of maintaining the Nextel network as subscribers have abandoned it in droves.  Dan Hesse, Sprint’s chief executive, said that the company was ahead of schedule in deactivating Nextel antennas and is using the freed up airwave space to make data service faster.

Sprint activated 1.5 million iPhones in the quarter, the same number as in the first quarter.  Sprint offers unlimited data service and Mr. Hesse said that was a major reason Sprint continues to attract iPhone subscribers.  AT&T and Verizon had a drop in iPhone activations from the first quarter to the second.

Even though working in a place that raises cattle and other animals for food might not be a great job for a squeamish person, there are a lot of tasks that need to be performed. The first link in the chain is the person who is responsible for feeding all of the animals. This crew is important because without the proper amount of food, the animals will never get to be big and strong and amount in more meat mass. On their way out of the farm each and every animal will have to step onto a livestock scale. This is a special scale that has been designed for an animal to walk onto and it can easily tell their body weight even if the animal is still moving.

After that is where things get a little more intense so we will leave out the gory details for you. When that step is over though, the meat should be cut up into large chunks that can then be cut down smaller or shipped off as they are. There will be a crew that will be responsible for the proper and sanitary handling of the meat before it goes out. Things like proper refrigeration and packaging all come into play here in this step.

After being shipped out in trucks the meat will arrive in your local store or supermarket. It may need to be cut down smaller, have the fat trimmed off or just made to be more presentable. Either way it will be presented to you more than likely on a white styrofoam tray that will be wrapped in plastic to preserve freshness. For most people, they never think about the process that most meat goes through on the journey from the farm to their dinner plates but it is definitely a complicated one.

In the past year, AT&T has made a number of controversial changes to its policies.  The company has raised the costs of its data plans, throttled the speeds of customers with unlimited data plans, and doubled its upgrade fee for new phones.  The company said it was “encouraging” that most of its customers had remained loyal despite rising costs and other policy revisions.  The rate at which subscribers are leaving the carrier was at a record low of 0.97%.

Strong mobile device sales, new customers, and revenue from subscribers drove growth during the quarter.  The company sold 5.1 million smartphones and added 320,000 contract subscribers.  The company activated 3.7 million iPhones in the quarter, more than the 2.7 million sold by Verizon in the same period.

The company is comfortable about its mobile revenue because, even though it raised its data plan prices for new subscribers, customers were not leaving.  John J. Stephens, AT&T’s chief financial officer, said that out of 27 million smartphone customers, two-thirds were subscribers to the company’s tiered data plans.   70% of those customers chose the more expensive plans.

The company dealt with customers with older, unlimited data plans by imposing its new throttling policy, slowing data speeds after a customer hits a certain monthly limit.  Mr. Stephens said, “Those extraordinary consumers have been addressed, and that process has been in place for more than a few months now.  Quite frankly, once again, I look to churn as an indicator of how that’s being accepted and how that’s impacting our customer base, and we feel good about the progress we made there.”

Trading securities online can also be appealing because it can be conducted from your home so long as you have a computer with an internet connection. It is therefore possible to make money while having a family life. This is one of the principal benefits of online stock trading.

With the advent of the internet, a myriad of stock brokerage firms has arisen worldwide, and they compete for clients. Commissions, therefore, are low, and this is another of the things most likely to make online stock trading attractive.

Also at the top of the list of plus points for online securities trading is the degree of control it allows. Only recently gone are the days when a stockbroker could decline to carry out a trade they believed to be an unwise choice. This could prevent a client from committing an error, but it could also stop them from making a gamble that would generate a massive return. People trading shares online can monitor their investments all day long, using information that was only accessible to stockbrokers not so long ago.

Once upon a time, the daisy chain leading from investor to broker to trade to pay-off was so lengthy that in the extremely volatile world of stocks, trades could not be enacted in time. Trading online is near-immediate, with the time lag from the purchase decision of the investor to the actual purchase of stocks reduced to almost nothing. Trading online is also possible on a 24/7 basis, while it would be rare to find a stockbroker who could be contacted in the middle of the night.

There are other advantages. Online share trading can access a vast selection of investments. Stockbrokers usually required that a minimum number of trades be performed, so it was not possible to make a single trade at low cost, which is not true of online securities trading. Trading stocks online is cheap: stockbrokers with advanced degrees and years of experience were costly, but online brokerage firms charge flat rates per transaction, and these are generally very low. Some online brokerages offer free access to high quality research created by such predominant financial players as Standard & Poor’s. Trading stocks online does not generate paper,

There are, of course, disadvantages. New investors could be overwhelmed by the technology they are employing and forget they are using real money, with mistakes possibly costly. There is no mentoring relationship between a broker and an online trading account. If your computer is protected by the latest security applications, online trading should be safe; however there is still a possibility that a hacker could gain access to your passwords and your money. Websites can also be too slow.

The benefits of online trading of securities far outweigh the disadvantages, so this could well be the best use for your money.

The economic conditions in Europe have become the most serious issue facing the global auto industry.  Sales in Europe dropped as consumers face high unemployment and a widespread recession related to the European sovereign debt crisis.  In Europe, GM lost $361 million.  GM did not announce any immediate changes to stem losses in Europe.

CEO Dan Akerson announced that the company is in talks with German unions about a new comprehensive agreement that will address costs, productivity, and excess capacity at the company’s plants.  He said, “In the past, we haven’t moved fast enough to fix the things [in Europe] we can control.  But that has changed.”  The agreement is expected to be put into place this fall.

The number of vehicles sold worldwide increased slightly. GM’s international unit, including operations in China and other countries outside of the Americas and Europe, reported that profits fell 3% from the same quarter last year.  GM’s South American business posted a narrow loss.  Akerson said, “We clearly have more work to do to offset the headwinds we face, especially in regions like Europe and South America.”

GM and other automakers may also have to contend with a weakening U.S. economy for the rest of the year.   GM reported a bigger than expected drop in U.S. sales in July.  In North America, GM’s operating profit decreased by 13%.  The revenue decline was due to a strengthening of the dollar compared to a year ago.

The Swiss National Bank told Credit Suisse that the bank that needed to “significantly expand its loss-absorbing capital during the current year.” Credit Suisse’s chief executive, Brady W. Dougan, told investors  that the Swiss bank had responded to calm concerns about its financial strength, even though he disagreed with the Swiss central bank’s statement about the capital position of the firm.  Mr. Dougan said in a statement, “The capital measures that we announced today take any question of the strength of our capitalization off the table.  This is a robust and balanced set of capital initiatives.”

Credit Suisse reported that it was responding to the calls from the Swiss central bank and that it was “comfortable” with its progress toward increasing capital reserves.  The measures are expected increase its capital reserves to 8.7 billion Swiss francs ($8.9 billion) by the end of July.  The bank predicted that it would raise an additional 6.6 billion francs by the end of the year.

The Swiss National Bank said it supported the steps to improve in the bank’s capital position.  The steps would increase Credit Suisse’s core Tier 1 capital ratio to 9.4% by the end of the year, compared with 7%  at the end of the second quarter.  The Tier 1 capital ratio is a measure of firm’s ability to weather financial shocks.  The Swiss central bank said in a statement, “In an environment that remains particularly challenging for the international banking system, these measures substantially increase the resilience of Credit Suisse.”

Sales increased 1%, to 55.3 billion kronor.  Ericsson’s sales of outsourcing services and software to carriers partially offset the weakness in its network equipment business.  Sales of services and software rose 29% in the period.  These sales increased to 27.6 billion kronor from 21.4 billion kronor, generating half of Ericsson’s quarterly sales.

Much of the drop is blamed on telecommunications carriers trimming spending on equipment in the United States, Russia and China.  Ericsson is the world’s biggest maker of telecommunications equipment and its results are watched for indicators of global trends.  Hakan Wranne, an analyst at Swedbank in Stockholm, said, “They are signaling that China may be on the weak side going forward, and we already knew that Russia was coming down.  But the biggest concern is the U.S. market, which will continue to be weak.”

The chief executive of Ericsson, Hans Vestberg, told analysts that economic slowdowns in Russia and China had weighed on profit.  He also cited falling demand for older network equipment in North America, where operators are activating new, upgraded networks.  Sales of network equipment in North America fell by 22% in the quarter.  The North America region generally accounts for nearly 25% of Ericsson’s global sales.

The decline in business in North America came as wireless carriers, like Sprint and Verizon Wireless, replaced their older Code Division Multiple Access, or CDMA, technology with new networks built on an Internet-based Long Term Evolution technology, or LTE.  Ericsson said sales of CDMA equipment fell by 50% globally amid the transition to LTE grids.

The drink line will be offered in ready to drink, handcrafted (made by baristas), and VIA formats.  The handcrafted drinks made their debut in France and will be rolled out internationally during the next two months.  The Ready to Drink products have been out on grocery shelves throughout the U.S. and Canada since the spring.  Starbucks’ newest drink format is VIA, best described as a microground product that dissolves when mixed into water.  The concept was brought to market three years ago and creates an instant drink on-the-go.

The handcrafted and VIA varieties are available in two flavors, Very Berry Hibiscus and Cool Lime.  The lightly carbonated Ready to Drink products come in Strawberry Lemonade, Raspberry Pomegranate, and Orange Melon.  The products have considerably less caffeine than their coffee counterparts.  A Grande Cool Lime contains 45 to 55 mg of caffeine whereas a Grande Brewed Coffee contains 250 mg.

Starbucks’ vice president of global beverage Julie Felss Masino explained that the new products get their energy from an green coffee extract, which is made with beans that have not been roasted.  It is common in cosmetics and pharmaceuticals, but Starbucks’ new drink line is the first time its caffeine is being harvested for a drink.  The company has been perfecting a proprietary process for the ingredient for the last two years.

Starbucks is ready to stand behind its claim that the new product is all-natural.  Masino said, “There’s been a lot of FDA regulations around energy and caffeine and natural energy and what you can and can’t say.  This is natural energy.  It’s a boost of natural energy from green coffee extract.”

Here are the main types of retirement accounts that are available to U.S. Citizens:

Traditional IRA – A traditional IRA allows individuals to save money and invest their funds into stocks, bonds and other mutual funds. Money in a Traditional IRA is not taxed up front, but is taxed when money is taken out in retirement. Note that there are upper income limits for Traditional IRAs and high-income earners may not be able to take advantage of a Traditional IRA.

Roth IRA – The Roth IRA is seen by many as the cooler, younger brother of the Traditional IRA. With a Roth IRA, you pay taxes on the money you invest up front, but the investments earnings are tax free. Note that there are upper income limits for Roth IRAs and high-income earners may not be able to take advantage of a Roth IRA. Both Traditional IRAs and Roth IRAs allow investors to put money into a variety of mutual funds from a number of different companies, including Vanguard, Fidelity and Gail Lese’s Lese Investments.

Non Deductible IRA – This is an IRA for people who are over the income limit for Traditional and Roth IRAs. There is no tax deduction up-front and income is taxed in retirement. It is generally not recommended.

401K and 403B – These are the most common type of retirement plan available through work. The level and quality of these vary dramatically. If your employer offers you a match on your savings, a 401K is preferable to the Roth IRA. If you do not receive a match on your savings, typically a Roth IRA is preferable.

Small Business Accounts – Small business owners have a variety of additional retirement savings options available to them, including a Simplified Employee Pension (SEP), an Individual 401K and a Simple IRA. If you are a small business owner, talk to your accountant to determine what retirement savings option might be the most beneficial for you.

Anheuser-Busch InBev said it would pay for the remaining stake through cash reserves and a new $14 billion credit facility.  The Grupo Modelo deal is Anheuser-Busch InBev’s second-biggest takeover and is one of the largest transactions announced so far this year.  Anheuser-Busch InBev was formed in 2008 from the Belgian-Brazilian brewing company InBev acquiring Anheuser-Busch for around $52 billion, which gave the newly named Anheuser-Busch InBev its initial 50% stake in Grupo Modelo.

Carlos Brito, chief executive of Anheuser-Busch InBev, said, “There is tremendous opportunity from combining two leading brand portfolios and further expanding Grupo Modelo’s brands worldwide.”  The acquisition allows Grupo Modelo’s brands, like Corona, to expand into new countries worldwide.  It will also give Anheuser-Busch InBev access to Mexico’s fast-expanding domestic market.  Anheuser-Busch InBev brands include Budweiser and Stella Artois.

This is the latest deal announced from the quickly consolidating global brewing industry.  The deal would create a company with combined annual revenue of $47 billion.  The brewers would have operations in 24 countries and around 150,000 employees.

According to a joint statement from the companies, Grupo Modelo will sell its 50% stake in Crown Imports for $1.85 billion under the terms of the deal.  Crown Imports is a joint venture between Grupo Modelo and the wine and spirits company Constellation Brands.  Constellation Brands will own 100% of Crown Imports After the deal.

The acquisition of Grupo Modelo follows Anheuser-Busch InBev’s $1.2 billion purchase of a controlling stake in Caribbean drinks maker Cerveceria Nacional Dominican, which strengthened Anheuser-Busch InBev’s presence across the Caribbean.  The company is making plans to expand Cerveceria Nacional Dominican ‘s beer, malt, and soft drink businesses in the Dominican Republic, Antigua, Saint Vincent, and Dominica.

Dorothy Chou, a Google senior policy analyst, said, “Unfortunately, what we’ve seen over the past couple years has been troubling, and today is no different.  When we started releasing this data, in 2010, we noticed that government agencies from different countries would sometimes ask us to remove political content that our users had posted on our services.  We hoped this was an aberration.  But now we know it’s not.”

Google revealed that it had received 467 court orders for the removal of more than 7,000 items during the last half of 2011 and complied with an average of 65%.  The company also received around 560 informal requests to remove more than 4,979 items and complied with 47% of those cases.  The requests that are received and complied with are detailed in its Global Transparency Report released twice a year.

The number of government requests to censor items that could be considered political speech, particularly from Western democracies like the United States, Spain, and Poland, has increased significantly, an alarming prospect to many.  Iran and China routinely censor content from Google without notifying the company, so these numbers were not reflected in Google’s results.  One request received from Canada’s passport-issuing agency was to take down a YouTube video of a citizen urinating on his passport and flushing it down a toilet.  The request was denied by Google.

More requests for user data were received from United States authorities than from any other country.  User removal requests from American authorities increased by 70% from the first to the second half of 2011.  6,321 requests to turn over information about users were received from American authorities, a figure that also includes requests on behalf of other governments with which United States government has diplomatic agreements.  Google complied in 93% of those cases, higher than its compliance rate for any other country.

The mediation session was on a magistrate judge’s calendar at the San Francisco federal courthouse and may have been arranged to occur at an undisclosed location, such as a law firm office.  Representatives from Apple and Samsung declined to provide any details about the mediation meeting.  The case is set for trial at the end of July in San Jose, California.

The head of Samsung’s mobile division said that the company wanted to resolve its differences with Apple.  An settlement between Apple and Samsung could affect Apple’s other disputes with major Android phone makers HTC Corp. of Taiwan and Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc. of the United States.  The global patent war between the two companies currently involves 20 cases in 10 countries.  The U.S. case is the most closely watched.

The two companies have been fighting over Apple’s copyright infringement claims that Samsung has “slavishly” copied the iPhone and iPad through products that run on Android.  Samsung counter-sued with claims accusing Apple of violating its patents.  Both companies deny the other’s allegations of patent infringement.  Kristin Huguet, an Apple spokeswoman, reiterated a prior statement, saying Apple needs to protect its IP against “blatant copying.

Samsung is a key components supplier to Apple.  The company also makes computer chips, Galaxy smartphones, and televisions.  Samsung’s smartphones and tablet computers use Google’s Android operating system and compete with Apple’s products. Samsung has a stock market valuation of about $161 billion.

Apple makes the wildly popular iPod, iPad, and iPhone.  The company is currently valued at close to $600 billion.  Both companies hold dominant positions in the smartphone industry, with Samsung selling 44.5 million smartphones during the first quarter of 2012 for a 30.6% share of the global market and Apple selling 35.1 million iPhones for a 24.1% share.

One of the companies will be a North American grocery business made up of brands that earn substantial amounts of cash and continue to profit despite low growth, like Velveeta, Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, and Oscar Mayer. The grocery business will retain the Kraft name.

The other company will include Kraft’s blockbuster snack food brands, including Oreo, Cadbury, Milka, Trident gum, Tang, and Ritz.  The snack foods company expects to have more than 80 percent of its business in fast-growing markets abroad.  Splitting off the snack foods divisions will create a $35 billion parent company for some of the most well known snack foods brands in the world.

Mondelez will allow its famous brand names to do their work and consumers will see the name of the new company only in small print on the packaging.  Mr. Mitchell said, “It’s not intended to be a consumer brand.”  The new company will be a direct competitor for industry giant Frito-Lay.

To come up with a name for the new snack foods company, the company held a contest among its employees rather than hiring an ad agency or marketing firm.  The contest attracted nearly 1,000 entries, with the winning entry coined by two of Kraft’s employees.  The two male employees arrived at the notion of a name connoting “delicious world.”

Michael Mitchell, a spokesman for Kraft, said, “Curiously, two different employees came up with essentially the same suggestion for the name, though with a slightly different spelling.”  Mr. Mitchell said that there was no prize “other than our undying love and the honor of having named the new company.”

Computing is increasingly done in the cloud and on tablets and smartphones.  Consumers have been dazzled by the new devices that have been invented and abilities of those devices enabled by the cloud.

H.P. has struggled with consumer desires for new technology products that squeeze profit margins and have made many older products unattractive.  Competitor Amazon.com has become a premier cloud provider to businesses, and Apple has reinvented itself with smartphones and tablets.

Although revenue and net income exceeded Wall Street’s expectations, H.P. reported that both were below year-ago levels.  H.P. had revenue of $127.2 billion in its last fiscal year.  H.P. hopes to save nearly $3.5 billion a year from restructuring its business.  The money saved from the restructuring will be reinvested into cloud-based businesses, like computer security and analysis of large data troves.

As a cost cutting measure, H.P. said it would cut the number of employees it employed by 27,000 employees, or 7.7% of its global work force.  The company currently employs around 349,600.  Many of the jobs scheduled to be cut are located in the United States.

Meg Whitman, H.P.’s chief executive, warned that real success was a long way off.  In an interview after the earnings announcement, she said, “We don’t aspire to have a 3 percent decline in revenues.  There are big changes going on, and we have to position ourselves.”  She vowed that the company “will be much bigger,” both in employees and revenue, but did not provide a timeline.

Judge Pender stated that the aspect of the patent that was in the case covered an obvious variation of earlier inventions, but if the patent were valid, BlackBerry devices and the Apple iPhone 3G would infringe it.  $964 million in settlements have already been paid to Kodak from Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics for using the technology specified in this case.  Kodak said it would appeal the ruling.

The patent that is in dispute covers a feature that previews low-resolution versions of a moving image while recording still images at a high resolution.  High resolution requires increased processing power and storage space.  Kodak claims that the feature is used in all modern cameras.

The ruling by the court may hurt the value of the assets Kodak is currently trying to sell. Kodak demanded more than $1 billion in damages from Apple for infringement of the digital image-preview technology patent and other digital capture patents.  Kodak wanted to force RIM and Apple to pay for licensing and boost the value of the patent portfolios being sold by the company.  Kodak filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in January.

Timothy Lynch, Kodak’s chief intellectual property officer, said in a statement that this “represents a preliminary step in a process that we are confident will conclude in Kodak’s favor.”  He continued, “Kodak has invested billions of dollars to develop its pioneering digital imaging technology, and we intend to protect these valuable assets.”

The two digital patent portfolios held by the company may be its most valuable assets.  One patent portfolio contains more than 1,100 patents related to digital capture while the other collection contains patents related to imaging systems and services.  Collectively, the technology covered by the patents is valued at $2.21 billion to $2.57 billion.

Carmakers in Europe are suffering from a staggering reduction in sales and an overabundance of manufacturing capacity.  Many Opel factories are running well below capacity and operating during only two shifts a day instead of around the clock.  There has been widespread speculation that Opel may be forced to close one or more factories in Europe.

Opel’s plans include goals like increasing sales outside Europe and beginning to build Chevrolets on the Continent.  In a statement, Opel’s chief executive, Karl-Friedrich Stracke, said the company would be honoring an agreement made with workers not to close any facilities prior the end of 2014.  Mr. Stracke’s statement also addressed many of the criticisms of company strategy that have been made by worker representatives.

One of the main concerns has been the growing market share in Europe of Chevrolet brand cars, which are imported from South Korea and other locations.  Mr. Stracke said, “We are in talks with our colleagues in Detroit and Shanghai to find out whether we can build Chevrolet vehicles in Europe, to improve utilization of capacity.”  Opel will also try to build sales in places like Australia, Latin America and the Middle East.  Analysts believe that it may take years for Opel to win a share of new markets.

The company also plans to use its factories more efficiently.  Mr. Stracke said that the company must reduce the number of factories building the next generation of the Astra to two from three.  Mr. Stracke said, “In light of expected demand, it only makes economic sense to have two Astra factories.”  The Astra is the company’s best-selling model and is currently built at factories in Poland, Britain and Germany.

Some people think that getting their equity out of their home and then investing it somewhere is a good idea however investments are not advised with the funds received from a reverse mortgage. While the lenders for a reverse mortgage will have no right to tell you what you may or may not do with the money you receive, many financial advisors suggest that this is very risky. As a senior citizen the time to make money back from the investment is much shorter and the amount you make back could end up being less than the cost of entering into a reverse mortgage in the first place.

Naturally, there are a couple of other reverse mortgage disadvantages that senior citizens should make themselves aware of. Reverse mortgages are only available to those over the age of 62 meaning that the window of time to use that money can be short, no matter what age a person retired at. Reverse mortgages are also sometimes expensive to enter into although most do agree that the initial cost is worth it after seeing the benefits of a reverse mortgage.

So just like any other type of loan or investment it is important to do your homework before going forward as there are both positives and negatives involved with the process. The overwhelming majority of people who have gone through the reverse mortgage process have said that it was a positive experience and those that didn’t probably didn’t know the above information before getting started. So take the time out to make sure that a reverse mortgage is the right option for you, and if it is then you can comfortably move forward.

Daniel F. Akerson, G.M.’s chief executive, said he longs for the day that G.M. can say goodbye to its biggest shareholder.  Mr. Akerson said, “I try not to let it bother me.  But the fact is it does bother me.”  Mr. Akerson said he has regular conversations with Treasury officials, but “I don’t know what the government’s plan is.  I think it would be helpful if they would publicly state it.”

When the company emerged from Chapter 11 in the summer of 2009, American taxpayers owned about 60% of it.  A year later, the bulk of the government’s holdings were sold for $33 a share in the company’s public stock offering.

It is not likely that the government will sell the rest at a loss.  Timothy G. Massad, assistant Treasury secretary, said, “As with all of our investments, we try to balance the goals of maximizing taxpayer recoveries and exiting as soon as practicable.  We don’t have a specific timetable, but we’ll continue to watch the market closely.”

The government would lose billions if it sells before G.M. improves its performance and gets the stock price up. If the government’s shares were sold today, taxpayers would lose an estimated $15 billion based on G.M.’s stock price of around $22.

G.M.’s government ownership means that the company must operate under specific rules that frustrate some company executives.  The company must operate under pay restrictions that limit its ability to recruit new talent.  Government ownership also means a ban on corporate jets.

Government ownership has created lingering image problems in the eyes of some consumers.  Some investors are worried about the government’s stake and consumers’ perception of G.M. cars have been damaged.

This can be good not only as there will be less people to give a cut to for their help in marketing your product but also because it can be much easier to measure what is actually working and what isn’t. If your product is being sold in a store and you are releasing ads that are just trying to brand your product, you will never really know what sort of process your customers are going through on the way to purchasing your product. If you use a form of direct response advertising, they will be contacting you directly as soon as they are interested in your product or service, making it much easier to see what they really want as you long as you have some sort of system in place to track that sort of thing.

The majority of direct response marketing happens on television and is known as DRTV advertising. The most common form of this type of advertising is the infomercial but if you carry yours out in the right way it won’t even look the least bit cheesy like your average infomercial does. The easiest way to put it is that direct response advertising is connecting your consumers with you directly, something that many business owners would love to be able to do.

So if you have a product or service that you would like to be promoting much better but you don’t want the hassles off paying off middleman and also not being able to see how your customers react to things then direct response marketing is probably exactly what you’ve been looking for. There are lots of people out there to help you get set up so don’t hesitate!

Citi reported that net income decreased 2% to $2.93 billion, or $0.95 a share, from $2.99 billion, or $0.99 a share, for the same period a year earlier.  Total revenue was $19.4 billion, a 2% drop from a year ago.  Excluding certain items, the bank earned $1.11 a share for the first quarter, an increase of 7% from the first quarter of 2011.  This exceeded analysts’ expectations of $1.02 a share.

Most of the gains came from its investment banking business.  Revenue in securities and banking was $6.65 billion, an increase of 6% from last year and more than 50% higher than reported during the fourth quarter.  Fixed-income revenue results jumped 19% from the previous year.

John C. Gerspach, Citi’s chief financial officer, said that the company’s trading unit was a strong point and he predicted that it would continue to surge.  However, continuing concerns in Europe could undercut trading. “If markets roil, things will be impacted again,” he said.

Citigroup announced that more than 25% of its balance sheet is in cash or other liquid securities.  The bank ended the first quarter of 2012 with $122 billion of Tier 1 common capital and a Tier 1 ratio of 12.4%.  This figure rose from 11.8% at the end of the fourth quarter.  The Tier 1 common capital amount is a crucial measure of the bank’s health and ability to withstand sudden market swings.

After the latest round of stress tests, the Fed rejected the bank’s request to raise its dividend or increase share buybacks.  The rebuff to Vikram S. Pandit, Citi’s chief executive, was a tough blow for the bank, particularly after many of the bank’s rivals received permission to increase their dividend payments.  The Fed was concerned that Citi might not have enough cash to withstand a severe economic downturn.

Citi plans to resubmit its capital plans, which could increase its chances of being able to increase its dividend payout.  The process of resubmitting a capital plan and winning approval could take months.  The bank’s dividend is currently $0.04 per year.

The company reported earnings of $1.13 billion, or $0.71 a share, compared with $1.14 billion, or $0.71 a share, in the same quarter a year earlier.  PepsiCo earned $0.69 a share after excluding various items related to acquisitions and other one-time activities.  This was $0.02 more than analysts had predicted.  Revenue rose to $12.4 billion, up from $11.9 billion for the same period a year earlier.

Ms. Nooyi announced earlier this year that PepsiCo was planning to spend $500 million to $600 million to market powerhouse brands, including Mountain Dew, Lays, and Tropicana.  The company also plans to eliminate thousands of jobs to cut costs.

Despite essentially flat revenue, the company produced results that were slightly better than analysts expected.  PepsiCo achieved much of its progress with higher prices on its drinks.  It seems as if consumers have accepted the increases, but analysts are worried that beverage companies will eventually resort to price wars to regain market share as soft drink sales continue to slide.

PepsiCo is also the parent company of snack food giant Frito-Lay.  The higher prices on corn and other commodities that it uses in its Frito-Lay business weighed on the company’s earnings.  To compensate, Frito-Lay has been increasing prices as it pursues a strategy of attracting higher-end consumers.

Higher beverage prices help PepsiCo in particular because beverages are what the company has been built around.  Cash flow from its core beverage business is necessary to keep investors happy.  The company spent nearly $1 billion in dividends and stock repurchases in the first quarter.  The company plans to spend around $6 billion for the year.

Higher prices and cost-cutting helped offset declines in cigarette volumes.  Cigarettes volumes fell 2.6%, to 31.1 billion cigarettes, compared with figures from a year ago.  Less-expensive brands such as Pall Mall from Reynolds American Inc. and Maverick from Lorillard Inc. are putting pressure on Altria’s profits.

Revenue increased about 1%, to $3.99 billion, lower than analysts’ estimates of $4.01 billion in revenue.  The company’s marketing, administration, and research costs decreased by 12% to $483 million, and its gross profit rose 2.5% to $2.2 billion.  Altria’s wine and financial services divisions saw gains during the quarter.

An increase of nearly 18% in the price of its discount cigarette brands offset declines in its premium brands like Marlboro.  Marlboro gained 0.1 points of market share to end up with 42.3% of the U.S. market while Marlboro volumes declined 3.4%.  CEO Michael E. Szymanczyk said he believes the company has many strengths that position it for growth and that he is “excited about the prospects for Altria’s future.”

The company has introduced several new products with the Marlboro brand, including include special blends of both menthol and non-menthol cigarettes.  These new products were often sold with lower promotional pricing to try to keep the brand growing and steal smokers from its competitors.

Altria has been forced to cut costs as the cigarette business has become more difficult due to tax hikes, smoking bans, health concerns, and increased social stigma of smoking.  The decline in cigarette smoking is expected to continue.  Altria is focusing on cigarette alternatives such as cigars, snuff and chewing tobacco for future sales growth.

First-quarter profit for the bank was $2.1 billion, a 23% decrease from a year ago, but its earnings of $3.92 a share were higher than analysts’ estimates of $3.55.  The bank reported quarterly revenue of $9.95 billion.  In 2011, Goldman reported quarterly earnings of $908 million, or $1.56 a share, but the  results were dragged down by a large one-time expense for paying off a lifeline received during the financial crisis.  Excluding this event, Goldman earned $2.7 billion in the first quarter of last year.

Goldman has struggled recently to produce profits near where it had performed in the past.  David A. Viniar, Goldman’s chief financial officer, said on a conference call with analysts that, while the economic environment had improved in recent months, it takes longer to show in the bank’s results.  Goldman’s merger and acquisition activity had not picked up, reflecting what he said was the “longer time required to improve C.E.O. confidence and investor conviction.”

Goldman revealed plans to cut $1.4 billion in costs in 2011, but those costs are mostly out of the system.  The bank has faced a number of public relations and staffing problems recently.  Goldman’s head count is down 8% to 32,400 employees.  The bank has had an oddly high turnover rate in its top ranks, with dozens of partners leaving in the past year.

Goldman has seen criticism recently for trading against its clients and a resigning executive publicly alleged that the bank was putting its own needs ahead of those of its clients.  Two years ago, Goldman was accused of duping clients into buying mortgage securities created by a hedge fund that sought to profit from collapse of the housing market. Goldman agreed to pay $550 million to settle the charges.

Revenue dropped 8% to $6.9 billion, down from $7.57 billion in the same quarter last year.  If the accounting charges are excluded, revenue increased to $8.9 billion, up from the $7.8 billion in the same quarter a year ago.  It was one of Morgan Stanley’s best quarterly showings since the financial crisis of 2008.  64% of its net revenue, or $4.4 billion, was set aside by the firm for compensation.  This amount includes $138 million related to staff reductions.

James P. Gorman, chairman and chief executive of Morgan Stanley, said, “This quarter is further evidence that Morgan Stanley has rebounded from the financial crisis of 2008 and is in a significantly stronger position.  Of particular note was the strength in sales and trading, which showed broad-based gains across products and regions.” He added, “while this has been a long and at times arduous journey, results this quarter are evidence we’re on the right track.”  Mr. Gorman has been attempting to retool Morgan Stanley by shifting focus away from risky businesses like trading and into steadier areas like wealth management.

Morgan Stanley’s institutional securities group reported revenue of $3.02 billion.  This was a little lower than the $3.57 billion reported by the unit a year ago.  Excluding the one-time charges, the division has revenue of $5 billion, an increase from $3.76 billion for the same period last year.

Revenue reported from the company’s fixed income and commodities sales and trading unit was $2.6 billion, an increase of 34% from a year ago.  Asset management reported net revenue of $533 million for the first quarter, down 14% a year ago.  Revenue increased to $3.41 billion in the global wealth management division, slightly higher than the $3.4 billion reported for the first quarter of 2011.

Facebook requested that the court find Yahoo’s patents invalid and demanded damages and the payment of its legal fees in its filing.  Ted Ullyot, Facebook’s general counsel, said in a statement, “From the outset, we said we would defend ourselves vigorously against Yahoo’s lawsuit.  While we are asserting patent claims of our own, we do so in response to Yahoo’s short-sighted decision to attack one of its partners and prioritize litigation over innovation.”

Yahoo’s lawsuit was filed at a critical time for Facebook, which is seeking to go public in May.  A statement released by Yahoo said, ““We have only just received Facebook’s answer and counterclaims, but on their face we believe they are without merit and nothing more than a cynical attempt to distract from the weakness of its defense.”  Display advertising, content personalization and photo sharing are among the parts of Yahoo’s business that are covered in Facebook’s filing.

Patent fights have increased in prominence in the technology sector over the past few years.  The courtroom battles often involve numerous claims and counterclaims between the clashing parties.  The conflicts have increased the number of mergers and deals for patent rights.  The companies make these deals with the intention of gaining ammunition for future patent battles.

Yahoo’s new chief executive, Scott Thompson, has been charged with improving Yahoo’s dismal performance.  The decision to file the lawsuit was viewed by some analysts as a reckless move by the company.  Lou Kerner, the head of the Social Internet Fund, said, “This was the action of a desperate man.  Facebook has a significant and valuable patent portfolio.  They were very savvy about getting as many patents as they could.”

Option Range offers three different ways for their investors to trade, namely digital, touch and range while their website has an extensive guide on the assets available on the site and a complete guide on how to trade. Digital option is when an investor is simply asked to predict if the price of the asset will increase or decrease from the moment they purchase the asset within a specific period of time. The touch option is when an investor must predict if the asset will touch a predefined price within the period that the asset is open for trade. Finally, range option is when an investor must decide if the price of an asset or a currency will drop out or stay within a range of prices.

Looking at all the benefits currently available at Option Range, including their trading tools and bonuses that increase the amount of binary options trading beyond the original deposit, there is no question that this brand is by far the ideal place to begin trading online.

The company’s chairman and chief executive Liam E. McGee said in a statement, “The Hartford’s sharper focus will lead to an organization that, over time, will be positioned for higher returns on equity, reduced sensitivity to capital markets, a lower cost of capital and increased financial flexibility.  With this portfolio and the actions we are taking, we are on the right path to unlock value and deliver superior, long-term returns for shareholders.”

One of its biggest shareholders, the hedge fund Paulson & Company, was demanding the moves.  The hedge fund has also called for a breakup of the 200-year-old company.  One of the issues is the argument that the value of Hartford’s property and casualty business is being obscured by weaker-performing units.  Paulson & Company declared that spinning off the property and casualty business would cause shareholder value to increase by 60%.

Hartford was damaged by the financial crisis and required an infusion of government bailout money totaling nearly $3.4 billion.  That money was repaid two years ago, but Hartford’s stock has tumbled over 16% over the last 12 months and the poor performance prompted the hedge fund’s campaign.  Paulson & Company holds an 8.5% stake in the insurer.

The concerns of Paulson & Company were apparently not fully satisfied.  The company said in a statement that while it appreciated the insurer’s efforts to raise shareholder value, its actions did not address the fundamental problem of analysts who were neglecting the company’s property and casualty business.  The statement continued, “While we appreciate the extensive work of the Hartford’s board and management, we do not believe the positive actions announced today address the main problem with the Hartford’s undervaluation.”

The company wants to apply MTV’s research and programming strategy to Chevrolet, which makes up 70% of G.M.’s U.S. sales.  The partnership is intended to transform things like the look of Chevrolet cars, the dealership structure, the dashboard technology, and the test drive.  Mark L. Reuss, president of General Motors North America, said, “It was the early days after bankruptcy, and we said, ‘What are we really going to do differently in the next five or 10 years?’”

Social media options like Facebook and Twitter allow teenagers and 20-somethings to make connections without wheels and high gas prices and environmental concerns are not encouraging them to desire private vehicles.  In a survey of 3,000 consumers born from 1981 to 2000, not one car brand ranked in the top 10.  Mr. Martin said, “They think of a car as a giant bummer.  Think about your dashboard.  It’s filled with nothing but bad news.”

Car cultures still endure in suburban and rural areas, but vehicles are losing popularity with younger people.  According to the Federal Highway Administration, 46.3% of potential drivers 19 years old and younger had drivers’ licenses in 2008, compared with 64% in 1998.  Drivers ages 21 to 30 drove 12% fewer miles in 2009 compared to 1995.

Cars used to stand at the center of youth culture and wheels provided the ultimate access to freedom and independence.  Gone are the days of the drive-in movie theater, cherry red Camaros, and Volkswagen Beetles splashed with bumper stickers and peace signs.  According to the research firm Gartner, today’s drivers aged 18 to 24 said they would choose Internet access over owning a car at a rate of 46%.

Apple generates so much money from its business that the moves are not likely to reduce the amount of cash in the company’s coffers by a significant amount.  Apple executives said the company would still have the flexibility to make big investments that help keep up its growth.  Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief executive, said, “These decisions will not close any doors for us.”

Apple’s plan would place the company among the top dividend-paying companies in the United States.  The dividend payment and stock buyback will reward current investors and attract a new group of investors interested in investing in the company.  The three-year stock buyback is scheduled to begin in September 2013.

Managing director for Janney Montgomery Scott, Bill Choi said that the dividend rate was in line with what was expected and that he expected record volumes on trading in the stock in the coming days.  He said, “Apple is quite widely owned already.  Every large fund family, from Fidelity to Vanguard, all have an income-oriented fund [which can now acquire the stock].  It is one high-quality name that they can own.”

Apple had been broadly expected to announce a dividend as its cash has piled up.  The company currently has a cash hoard of nearly $100 billion.  Apple earns less than 1% in interest on the cash, so Wall Street analysts and investors began to call for the company to disburse it to shareholders.

Apple’s dividend will amount to a 1.8% annual yield on Apple’s stock, according to Mike Abramsky, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets.  In comparison, Microsoft pays a 2.5% dividend, Intel pays a 3% dividend, and Hewlett-Packard pays a 2% dividend, he said.  Mr. Abramsky commented, “Rather than being stingy, they’re more likely being conservative in how they’re positioning themselves so they can raise it at appropriate points in the future.”

Ford started adding touch-screen control systems to some of its most popular models two years ago.  The move was expected to help the company stand out from the rest of the industry and draw in new customers.  Instead of increasing loyalty, the feature damaged perceptions of the company.  Michael Hiner, a former stock-car racing crew chief in Akron, Ohio, said, “I think they were too willing to rush something out because of the flashiness of it rather than the functionality.”  Hiner bought a Ford Edge Limited last year containing the MyFord Touch system.

MyFord Touch replaced many of the traditional controls in the vehicles with touch screens, steering wheel-mounted controls, and spoken commands.  The system integrates the car’s climate controls, hands-free communication, navigation, and entertainment into one screen on the console and has another customizable screen where the speedometer and other gauges are typically located.

In response to the customer complaints, Ford has issued a major upgrade to its vehicle touch-screen system.  The upgrade is expected to resolve complaints about the system crashing or rebooting while the vehicle is being driven and revamp much of what customers see on the screen.  The upgrade also includes improved voice recognition capabilities, a simplified design, and faster response to commands.

Senior director of auto testing for Consumer Reports, David Champion, said improving the software should resolve some customer issues, but he believes that a touch screen would always be harder for drivers to use than traditional knobs and switches.  He said, “It’s an idea that I don’t think really belongs in a car to a certain extent.  It is a very complex system that they’ve put in, that works great if you’re in a showroom and not having to look where you’re going.”

Derrick Kuzak, Ford’s group vice president for global product development, said, “We expect that these improvements will put us back on track in the quality ratings.  It’s more than just an update.  This is a substantial upgrade.”   Ford is sending the upgrade directly to the more than 300,000 customers with MyFord Touch in their vehicles, who can install the new software by plugging in a USB flash drive.  Dealers can perform the procedure if customers prefer.

Exxon’s earnings were helped by higher revenue for oil, which helped offset for lower natural gas prices and soft refinery returns on chemicals and lubricants.  Oil prices were above $100 a barrel for many benchmark crudes through the period.  The higher oil prices reflected the continuing unrest in the Middle East and North Africa and strong demand from China and other developing countries.

The company has shifted its focus from drilling dry gas wells to gas wells that contain hydrocarbon liquids, like ethane and butane, which are used in many gasoline and petrochemical products.  Analysts expect that the company’s total production will be 51% oil and 49% gas in 2012.  North American gas is expected to represent about 16% of the company’s total gas production.

Natural gas prices decreased in the United States due to sluggish demand and a glut resulting from drilling in shale fields throughout the country.  Oppenheimer & Company senior oil analyst Fadel Gheit said, “Exxon Mobil results were in line with expectations.  But weak natural gas prices continue to depress the stock.  Although I don’t expect Exxon Mobil to shut in gas production, I am surprised they have not reduced discretionary gas drilling because of the low returns.”

David S. Rosenthal, Exxon Mobil’s vice president for investor relations, strongly defended the company’s investment in natural gas in a conference call, arguing that over the long term it would be seen as a wise investment.  He said, “We remain bullish on the future of natural gas.  We continue to be focused on the long term.”  Exxon Mobil is the largest gas producer in the United States.

William J. Lynch Jr., C.E.O. of Barnes & Noble, has set the goal of carving out digital future for the company while its profit and share price are under pressure on multiple fronts.  In early January, the company projected that it would lose more money this year than Wall Street had expected and its share price promptly tumbled 17%.

Barnes & Noble was once viewed as the brutal capitalist of the book trade.  The company has 703 bookstores and operates in all 50 states.  In many communities, the company is the only retailer that offers a wide selection of books.  Barnes & Noble’s Web and digital operations are based in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, with the company’s stately headquarters on Fifth Avenue not far away.

Some expect Barnes & Noble to slowly wither as more readers embrace e-books.  Mr. Lynch says that the idea that devices like the Nook, Kindle, and Apple iPad will make bookstores obsolete is nonsense.  He said in an interview, “Our stores are not going anywhere,” pointing to the results of a surprisingly robust holiday season for the bookseller.

Amazon.com is currently the dominant force in books online.  Many publishing executives, editors, and publicists view Amazon as the enemy that could threaten their industry and their livelihoods.  While book publishers are cutting costs and trimming work forces, electronic books are booming and Amazon’s chief executive, Jeffrey P. Bezos, wants to cut out the middleman by publishing e-books directly.  Barnes & Noble currently holds about 27% of the e-book market, while Amazon has at least 60%.

Citing consumer complaints and legal actions against the bank, the consent of the Federal Reserve came with some conditions.  The Fed ordered Capital One to revamp its internal controls around its lending and debt-collection practices.  The Fed said in an order, “The Board expects that Capital One will ensure that its risk-management framework and methodologies, including its compliance functions, are commensurate with its new size and complexity.”  With the addition of ING, Capital One will become the fifth largest bank by deposits, having more than $200 billion in deposits.

Capital One’s $9 billion acquisition of ING provides a glance at how the government will use its new powers granted in the aftermath of the financial crisis to oversee bank mergers.  The central bank was deliberate in its approach to the deal, carefully planning its actions, delaying approval to hold public hearings, and twice postponing plans to announce the fate of the acquisition to compile and review additional information.  Capital One has 90 days to outline its plan to strengthen its compliance and other risk-management controls.

The decision follows a contentious eight-month battle that featured multiple public hearings and heated debates.  Community bankers and consumer advocates, including the National Community Reinvestment Coalition and the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, cast the deal as a risk to taxpayers and painted Capital One as an aggressive subprime lender.  John Taylor, head of the community coalition, said, “We’re extremely disappointed in today’s decision.  It appears the Federal Reserve waited until Valentine’s Day to give Capital One a box of chocolates.”  He added that his group was considering challenging the decision.

The sale of Pringles was stuck in limbo for months before the announcement by Kellogg.  The announcement came after a previous deal to sell the division to Diamond Foods fell apart.  Analysts on a conference call with Kellogg’s chief executive, John A. Bryant, were told that his company was interested in buying Pringles last year, but “it was hard to compete with the Diamond deal.”

Procter & Gamble signed a deal in April with Diamond Foods to sell Pringles for roughly $2.4 billion.  Diamond heralded the purchase and expressed its delight in Pringle’s global presence and influence in grocery stores.  Diamond’s previous purchases included Pop Secret and Kettle brand potato chips.

After investors started asking questions about its payments to walnut growers  last year, shares of Diamond began to drop and eventually lost more than half their value.  During this time, Diamond was ensnared by an accounting scandal and the deal was delayed.  Diamond was forced to restate its financial statements for the past two years following the  internal inquiry into the company’s accounting practices.

In early February, Diamond Foods announced that in addition to restating its financial statements, its chief executive, Michael J. Mendes, and its chief financial officer, Steven M. Neil, were being placed on administrative leave.  After Diamond’s announcement, Procter & Gamble said it was re-evaluating a sale of Pringles.

This year, Kellogg is focusing on expanding its international operations.  Pringles will add a leading global snack brand with $1.5 billion in annual sales to Kellogg’s snack food offerings, which currently includes Keebler cookies and Cheez-It crackers.  Kellogg expects Pringles to add $0.8 cents to $0.10 cents to its per-share earnings this year and hopes to achieve at least $10 million in cost savings.

GM benefited from having its sales rise and having its vehicles command higher prices.  The annual profit figures were higher than GM’s previous record of $6.7 billion, earned in 1997.  Revenue increased 11% to $150.3 billion.  Nearly all of GM’s profits for the year came from North America.  GM reportedly earned $7.2 billion in North America for 2011, a 26% percent increase over the previous year.

GM’s chief executive, Daniel F. Akerson, said that the year was “another step in the right direction” but expressed disappointment in the company’s performance in Europe.  In a conference call with analysts and reporters, Mr. Akerson said, “Obviously, we still have a lot of work to do in some areas and we’re taking the necessary corrective actions to get the ball over the goal line.”

Losses in the company’s European division depressed its fourth-quarter earnings.  The company lost $747 million in Europe in 2011, with $562 million of the losses occurring during the fourth quarter.  GM’s chief financial officer, Daniel Ammann, said, “GME has to become profitable even in a challenging economic environment.  Just like in the United States a couple years ago, we will need to show improvement in both revenue and cost to be successful.”  He declined to reveal what specific actions GM would take.

GM earned $0.39 a share in the fourth quarter, excluding one-time items like debt reduction and an investment in Ally Financial, its former financing arm.  The company cleared much of its debt in bankruptcy two years ago.  The figure was below analysts’ expectations of $0.41 a share.  The fourth quarter was the eighth consecutive quarter of profits for the automaker.

This source, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster has built up a reputation when it comes to breaking rumors, especially those surrounding the tech sphere. He has gone on to advise investors to be prepared for such a revelation in the coming months.

Apple has experimented with television in the past, but it’s Apple TV set-top box did not catch on like many of its other products, and quickly fizzled out in lieu of more traditional TV services and less expensive options like those offered by streaming box service Roku.

However, if Apple jumped headlong into the TV manufacturing world, the results could be extremely profitable for them, as iPhone and iPad users will undoubtedly have interest in Apple’s next “i” device. Some have speculated that Apple could bring in additional $50-$100 Billion if they get in to the HD TV business, and the timing could be right as cost has been driven down in recent years.  However, it’s important to remember that Apple hasn’t said anything concrete, and they still may just be in the speculative phase.

Kaz Hirai has been with the company for several years and is best-known for putting Sony’s struggling PlayStation brand back into the black in 2009 after nearly three years of losses. Kaz Hirai was promoted last year to head of Sony’s consumer division, which many saw as an indicator of his future as potential CEO.

Hirai’s promotion couldn’t come at a better time for Sony, as their fourth-quarter earnings report (set to be released tomorrow) is expected to be quite dismal as sales of Sony’s once-popular television sets sags to an all-time low.Sony took a large gamble last year, focusing many of its efforts on the new 3D TV sales market, but unfortunately sales of the new sets has not taken off the way they thought it would, leaving Sony with a whole lot of inventory and not a lot of cash.

However, the news isn’t expected to stay all-bad for Sony. A new handheld PlayStation console, dubbed the PS Vita, is scheduled to debut at the end of February, and has been designed in such a way to be immediately profitable (Sony famously lost money on every PlayStation 3 unit sold for nearly two years).

Sony definitely can be saved, and if Kaz Hirai can save an entire brand from bleeding money, hopefully he can work his magic on an entire company. He is expected to formally assume duties on April 1, 2012.

According to a letter written by CEO/Founder Mark Zuckerberg, “Facebook was not originally created to be a company. It was built to accomplish a social mission — to make the world more open and connected. We think it’s important that everyone who invests in Facebook understands what this mission means to us, how we make decisions and why we do the things we do.”

Zuckerberg also went on to say what he is expecting to do with the IPO capital, stating, ” The scale of the technology and infrastructure that must be built is unprecedented, and we believe this is the most important problem we can focus on.”

The paperwork also mentions that the company is seeking the stock symbol “FB”. The company revealed that it now has 845 million users and had a net income of $1 Billion during 2011 after taking in over $3 Billion in revenue.

These scheduled savings days will come in two varieties: the first is known as a “Monthly Value” which will see even bigger reduced prices on specific items for an entire month, and the second is termed “Best Price” and will occur on the during the first and the third Friday of each month, when many shoppers get paid. This new strategy aims to get rid of consumer headaches when it comes to planning shopping trips around sales that crop up on holidays and randomly throughout the year.

“We want to let (people) shop (their) way and have a better value strategy than our competition,” Chief Executive Ron Johnson said at a meeting on Wednesday, and added that to do this the chain needed to ” radically rethink presentation”.

The changes will go into effect at the beginning of February, and will likely stay permanent as long as J.C. Penney can stay profitable. However, with other retail chains like Sears and Bed Bath and Beyond closing locations and suffering under decreased non-holiday consumer spending, many are nervous as to whether this is a big enough step for the retail giant to stay in the game.

Dell also announced that in addition to the over 800 new hires they plan to take on that they are going to change thier development focus a little bit. The overwhelming profitability of smartphones has pushed the personal computing company into new spheres, and they will now be focusing their efforts on supporting existing platforms and hardware with cloud computing solutions and software.

Though Dell is primarily known as a computer hardware manufacturing company, they are hoping to change their image in the years ahead, and become more of a total IT solutions provider. They began their process of transformation in 2009 with a number of key aquisitions that moved them beyond simple computer parts and assembly. Now with the new building, new focus on service and additional staff, Dell should have all it needs to re-position itself in an ever-changing marketplace.

However, questions still remain about whether Dell will truly become fully integrated into the mobile market with it’s own branded tablet or smartphone. When pressed on the issue Dave Johnson, Dell senior vice president of corporate strategy, said in an interview “Is it critical to be the innovator of the smartphone? Maybe not. What I would say is incredibly important is it has to be a part of your solutions. It’s going to become a part of everything you do.”

IBM has insisted that they are not making this purchase in order to bolster support for their own smartphone and tablet offerings (they currently don’t have any) but instead want to provide premium apps to existing platforms for additional revenue. Worklight software, they said via press release, is unique in that it can be adapted to work with carrier-specific handsets. This includes the iOS software as well as carrier specific versions of Android.Worklight Software can also be used to make webapps, which do not require a specific device or OS to run, which makes compatibility for any future endeavors with IBM a non-issue.

News of the acquisition comes as IBM unveils a new service for mobile management and security service. Dubbed “IBM Endpoint Manager for Mobile Devices”. This new service along with this new mobile software acquisition should place IBM in a more strategic arena within the burgeoning tablet and smartphone market.

As Robert LeBlanc, IBM senior vice president in charge of middleware software, said in an internal memo “Now is the time to make IBM essential in the era of mobile computing”. Hopefully their strategy will pay off.

The strong results in the fourth quarter helped the bank make $15.9 billion in profit for 2011.  This is an increase of 28% from 2010.  Profit gains were limited by declining revenue, as new federal regulations continued to weigh on revenue at banks.  Fourth-quarter revenue at Wells Fargo fell to $20.6 billion from $21.5 billion for the same period a year earlier.

The wholesale banking unit, which includes the sales and trading business and the corporate lending unit, earned $1.6 billion in the fourth quarter, down 3% percent from the fourth quarter of 2010.  The bank continued to dominate the mortgage market, controlling more than a quarter of the market with a loan total of $769.6 billion in 2011, up from $757.3 billion at the end of 2010.  “We like lending,” Mr. Sloan said, adding that “we want to grow.”

The results indicate that Wells Fargo is weathering the uncertain economy better than its competitors are.  The company’s loan portfolio has recently showed signs of improving, as its nonperforming loans declined roughly 20% from the fourth quarter a year earlier.  The bank recently made the decision to set aside $600 million less in reserves to cover soured loans.

Wells Fargo has an edge over Wall Street titans that run large investment banking operations because the company is better shielded from the rampant volatility in the markets.  Citigroup reported a disappointing 11% decrease in fourth-quarter earnings and JPMorgan Chase said its fourth-quarter profit declined 23%.  Investors welcomed the report and sent the bank’s shares up nearly 1% after the announcement.

In fact, it is due to Gannett’s digital properties that the company even exists at all. The jobs-focused CareerBuilder site, owned wholly by Gannett, is the only source of green on their balance sheet, as the site actually posted a 9% profit during the last quarter.

Many analysts have been looking closely at Gannett in recent years in the hopes that newspapers and other forms of print media might make a comeback under the publishing giant’s stewardship. However, even the largest nationwide publisher couldn’t thwart the trend of digital media overtaking the market. Though there aren’t any immediate plans to close any of Gannett’s print imprints, it seems like so-called “old” media is living on borrowed time at this point, and Gannett may not have a choice but to close at least a few dailies in order to boost profitability and stay alive.

The company has already introduced many cost-cutting measures, including wide-sweeping layoffs and aggressive cost-cutting at all of its print-based brands. If Gannett can position itself as a leader in online content the way it once did with print media, the company may be able to survive, but as it is it looks like Gannett has trimmed every single bit of fat it can, and will soon need to consider what value their print brands really have and make some hard decisions regarding what they can afford to keep open and what money needs to be invested elsewhere.

This news comes as global companies have come under fire for exploiting cheap labor and lax employment regulations abroad. However, Coca-Cola has preemptively hit back at any would-be  detractors by saying that it was primarily attracted by Mexico’s growing economy and young workforce. It probably doesn’t hurt either that Mexico is already one of the largest consumers of Coca-Cola products internationally, so keeping production close to home would be a great way for the soda giant to cut costs.

The Mexico initiative is part of Coca-Cola’s larger $5 Billion expansion plan for the country, which began in 2010 and is scheduled to complete in 2015. Coca-Cola has been mum on what exactly they will invest in after the initial $1 Billion expenditure, but chances are good that they will expand further into the country, which could make the country one of the largest manufacturers of the beverage.

Though Wal-Street initially reacted poorly to this news (with shares in Coca-Cola loosing half a percent, chances are good that this new investment will improve profitability and make the balance sheet that much more attractive when we start seeing quarterly results for 2012.

If that number sounds a bit high to you, it’s probably because it would make Facebook the biggest tech IPO in history. Even “hot” IPOs of the past like Google and the more recent Groupon have failed to achieve these heights. However, investors are looking at the site’s rapid growth and their unique approach to targeting ads as proof that the company is not going to disappoint with a public presence.Facebook’s relationships with other already-public companies like social gaming giant Zynga also help instill confidence in those who are eying this IPO.

Though the vast majority of investors are excited about the forthcoming IPO, there is a small but vocal minority that is expressing concern over the IPO. Some believe that Facebook may go the way of former social-networking giant MySpace, which was recently sold for less than 10% of the price it was purchased for only a few short years ago. Others still are worried that inflated prices fueled by hype and speculation may cause another “dot-com” bust, similar to what happened after the early Internet-fueled tech boom of the nineties.

Another issue that may arise after a huge Facebook IPO might be a slew of smaller tech IPOs looking to cash in on some of Facebook’s early capital (if it does well). These smaller companies may ride the wave of Facebook popularity, but will have to sink or swim on their own merits, instead of just using a singular company as a tide to lift all boats.

No matter what side of the fence investors are on, chances are good that business professionals and consumers alike will have their eye on Wall Street when Facebook finally does file its IPO. No matter how it turns out, this stock is sure to make a splash, and will certainly make headlines, no matter what happens.

The powerhouse investment bank usually posts stellar results, but the company fell victim to the rocky financial markets that occurred at the end of last year.  Net income for the company for the last three months of the year fell 58% from a year earlier.  Much of the decrease was blamed on lower investment banking fees.

The reported results beat the expectations of Wall Street analysts and put Goldman’s earnings in line with ordinary banking institutions.  Keith Davis, an analyst at the investment firm Farr, Miller & Washington LLC and a Goldman shareholder, said, “Goldman is best in breed.  But even they are being careful in seeking out profits because of the uncertainty out there.”

Fear about the European debt crisis made the stock and bond markets volatile in the last three months of the year.  Clients of all the major banks avoided mergers, acquisitions, and public offerings of stock.  The company’s investment banking division earned 43% less in the fourth quarter than a year earlier.  Citigroup announced fee declines of 45%, while JPMorgan Chase reported a smaller decline of 39%.

Goldman’s revenue for the quarter decreased 30% to $6 billion.  Goldman made $4.4 billion for the year, 47% less than in 2010.  Revenue was $28.8 billion, down 26% from the previous year.  In the previous quarter, Goldman suffered a loss for only the second time since it went public in 1999.

The turmoil in the financial markets depressed revenue in certain areas of Goldman’s business.  Goldman’s clients are generally large hedge funds and multinational corporations that want to hedge the bets they have made on foreign currencies, fluctuating interest rates, and commodities.  Revenue from client services fell 16% to $3.06 billion for the quarter and transactions in commodities, currency, and fixed income fell 17%.

The banking giant’s capital markets division is believed to be mainly responsible for the poor results.  Total securities and banking revenues decreased 10% to $3.19 billion.  Equity market revenues totaled $240 million, which was a 60% drop from the same period the previous year.  The results from the investment banking division fell 45% to $638 million.

Despite a pickup in lending and a drop in losses on bad loans, Citigroup’s earnings decreased 11% to $1.16 billion, or $0.38 a share.  This was well below Wall Street analysts’ expectations of $0.50 a share.  Revenue fell 7% to $17.2 billion.  Citigroup posted profits of $1.3 billion, or $0.43 a share, in the same period one year ago.  The results of last year were helped by sizable accounting gains on the value of Citigroup debt.

Glenn Schorr, an analyst with Nomura Securities, said, “It’s just a weak quarter across the board at the investment bank.”  He commented that while some businesses performed well, like international banking and consumer lending, overall revenue was lower than expected while expenses were higher. He said, ”Those are difficult things to move at the snap of a finger.”

Pressure is mounting on Vikram S. Pandit, Citigroup’s chief executive, to improve results at the investment bank.  That may mean further job cuts in multiple divisions throughout the company.  Mr. Schorr said, “Before today, people would have been O.K. with the job he’s done given the difficult situation he inherited.  Still, investors want a more explicit game plan for the investment bank, asking if they are sized the right way for the opportunities going forward.”

The profit announcement was a dramatic turnaround from the previous year.  Bank of America investors watched the company’s shares dive by more than 50% last year and the company lost $1.2 billion in the fourth quarter of 2010.

Bank of America’s traditional consumer and corporate lending divisions were healthier than its capital markets divisions.  The Global Banking and Markets division saw revenues drop by 31% with a recorded net loss of $433 million.

The country’s second largest bank has been steadily shrinking, laying off around 7,000 employees and shedding tens of billions of dollars from its balance sheet.  Bank of America lost its number one ranking as the biggest bank in the United States to JPMorgan Chase last year.

The shrinking the company’s balance sheet and selling off assets allowed Bank of America to solidify its capital position.  The bank’s Tier 1 capital ratio rose to 9.86% in the fourth quarter, from 8.6% a year ago.

Bank of America chief executive Brian T. Moynihan said in a statement, “We enter 2012 stronger and more efficient after two years of simplifying and streamlining our company.  We built our capital ratios to record levels during 2011 on the strength of our core businesses and by shedding those that are not core to serving customers and clients.”

The $2 billion in income was mainly the result of one-time items, including a gain of $2.9 billion from the sale of a stake in China Construction Bank and a gain of  $1.2 billion on the exchange of common stock for preferred stock.  The company’s acquisition of Countrywide Financial in 2008 is likely to go down in history as one of the most disastrous corporate deals ever, saddling the bank with losses of more than $30 billion.

A legal settlement with the bond insurer MBIA resulted in a one-time $1.7 billion charge for the company, accounting for a loss of $0.59 a share.  Morgan Stanley logged net revenue of $5.71 billion for the quarter, a decrease of 26% from the same period last year.

Revenue for the fourth quarter in the company’s institutional securities division fell 42% to $2.07 billion.  The company’s asset management division reported a sharp drop in revenue to $424 million for the quarter, a decrease of 50% from the same period a year ago.  The drop was attributed to lower gains on investments made in the company’s merchant banking and real estate investing divisions.

The firm’s global wealth management division was the one bright spot for the quarter, posting net revenue of $3.25 billion.  This is down just 3% from the same quarter one year ago.  The division had $1.6 trillion in assets under management in the quarter, a figure unchanged from the previous quarter.

The bank’s chief executive, James P. Gorman,  spoke positively about the earnings release, saying that the company was “in better shape” than where it started at the beginning of the year and that a number of vexing issues had been dealt with.  Morgan Stanley is trying to navigate through a difficult economic environment with tighter regulatory requirements.  These regulations force firms to hold more capital against certain operations and to stay out of other businesses altogether.

Morgan Stanley was hit hard by the credit crisis and the last two years has been spent rebuilding the firm.  The company has reduced the risk in many divisions and focused a great deal of energy on building its wealth management division, a low risk operation that delivers steady returns.

The company has been struggling to adapt to an increasingly digital world and has experimented with a number of turnaround strategies and cost-cutting efforts in recent years, but ran short of cash during its efforts.  The company has only reported one full year of profit since 2004.

Kodak’s chief financial officer, Antoinette P. McCorvey, said in a court filing, “Since 2008, despite Kodak’s best efforts, restructuring costs and recessionary forces have continued to negatively impact the company’s liquidity position.”  The company has received $950 million in financing from Citigroup to allow the company to continue operating normally during bankruptcy.

Kodak was founded in 1880 by George Eastman and was one of America’s most notable companies, remaining in business for 131 years.  The company has close to $5.1 billion in assets and around $6.8 billion in debts.  Bondholders represented by the Bank of New York Mellon who are owed $658 million are Kodak’s biggest group of unsecured creditors.  To raise money for its loss-making operations, the company will continue selling a portfolio of 1,100 digital imaging patents.

After establishing the market for camera film and dominating the field for years, the company faced a variety of problems over the last four decades.  Foreign competitors undercut Kodak’s prices, then digital photography eroded demand for traditional film.  In 2003, the company said that it would halt investing in traditional film completely.

Antonio M. Perez, Kodak’s chief executive, said in a press release, “Kodak is taking a significant step toward enabling our enterprise to complete its transformation.  At the same time as we have created our digital business, we have also already effectively exited certain traditional operations, closing 13 manufacturing plants and 130 processing labs, and reducing our workforce by 47,000 since 2003.  Now we must complete the transformation by further addressing our cost structure and effectively monetizing non-core I.P. assets.”

Kodak has become the latest blockbuster company to falter when facing advancing technology.  After having failed to gain a toehold in e-books, Borders Group was liquidated last year.  Blockbuster was sold to Dish Network as its retail outlets lost market share to online competitors like Netflix.

During 2011, G.M.’s sales grew in every region of the world.  The company sold 9,025,942 vehicles last year, an increase of 7.6% over its 2010 figures.  Volkswagen, G.M.’s closest competitor, saw a sales increase of 14% to 8,156,000 vehicles.  Toyota fell to third place with an estimated 6% decrease to around 7,900,000 vehicles.

G.M. held the title of world’s largest automaker for more than 70 years before Toyota claimed it in 2008.  Toyota’s sales have been hampered by major natural disasters that interrupted the company’s supply chains and manufacturing bases.  Toyota has only been recently able to return production to normal levels.

The executives at G.M. have been careful to avoid publicly celebrating amid Toyota’s struggles.  G.M.’s chief executive, Daniel F. Akerson, said in an interview last year, “I want to win in the marketplace, but I want to win against a healthy and vibrant Toyota and Honda.  Next year, we’ll put the gloves back on, and I’m sure they’ll go right back at us and we’ll go back at them.”  The company’s global sales figures were buried deep at the bottom of an announcement about its Chevrolet brand.  The company sold a record 4.76 million Chevrolet cars and trucks last year.

Mr. Akerson said G.M. was focusing on increasing profits and margins, but acknowledged that rising sales are a positive indicator of the progress of the company.  He said, “We’re not going to achieve the financial goals that we want to achieve and have declining market share or declining numbers of units sold.  What’s most important for our owners, our shareholders, is that we produce margins and profits and cash flow.”

This news was music to investor’s ears, and stocks rose sharply as a result. However, Netflix isn’t out of the woods yet. The company recently announced a pricy UK expansion, which is expected to cut into next quarter’s profits sharply. Netflix is also trying to bolster relationships with streaming partners, and is expected to dole out an unprecedented amount of money to secure new content for its streaming service, which won’t come cheap for the tech giant.

Many have openly questioned Netflix’s decision to focus only on streaming content, as it presents many challenges in the form of licensing fees and placating fickle third-parties. Netflix is already losing licensing from Starz, which is a huge content provider, and ABC/Walt Disney seems keen to follow suit. As Netflix becomes more dependent on their streaming service, content providers will likely jack up rates, which will pu Netflix in a tight spot indeed.

For the time being though, Netflix is optimistic about their streaming service, and announced that its subscribers streamed more than 2 billion hours of movies and TV shows during the quarter. Clearly, investors are hoping this trend continues as Netlix forges ahead into an uncertain future.

A slowdown in mainframe purchases weighed down sales to just below analysts’ estimates.  Revenue for IBM rose 2% to $29.5 billion, just short of analysts’ forecast of $29.7 billion.  The company anticipates earnings for 2012 of “at least $14.85 a share,” above analyst estimates of $14.76 a share.

IBM is the world’s largest supplier of information technology to corporations.  The company sells more than $100 billion in services, software and hardware to businesses and governments annually.

Results for the company are closely watched as an indicator of corporate spending and confidence.  IBM has proved an extraordinary resilience to economic cycles, having a more steady performance than many corporate technology suppliers.

Analysts have been reassured by the company’s performance in the fourth quarter.  Ben Reitzes, analyst at Barclays Capital, said, “IBM is uniquely positioned to sell higher-value software and services.”

Over the years, IBM has increased its investments in services and software businesses that have proven their stability, been aggressive in its pursuit of emerging markets, and shed cyclical hardware businesses.  IBM has developed a number of new businesses, including analytics software that allows companies to sift through immense amounts of data for insights into how to cut costs and how to drive sales.

Because of the economic conditions in the US and in Europe, corporate technology buyers are expected to restrain spending and bolster their balance sheets against the uncertain global economy.  A survey conducted by the research firm Gartner of more than 2,000 chief information officers in 45 countries found that technology budgets for companies would be flat this year and would decline in North America and Europe.

Wall Street expected better results and shares of Google dropped by 9% in after-hours trading.  Google’s reported net income for the fourth quarter was $2.71 billion, or $8.22 a share.  This was an increase of 6.4%, to $2.54 billion or $7.81 a share, from the same period a year earlier.  Google’s profit for the fourth quarter was $9.50 a share, up from $8.75 a year ago.

Revenue for the company increased 25%, to $10.58 billion, from $8.44 billion the prior year.  Net revenue was $8.13 billion, up from $6.37 billion.  Analysts’ expectations were for $10.49 a share and net revenue of $8.4 billion.

Larry Page, Google’s chief executive, said in a statement, “Google had a really strong quarter ending a great year.  I am superexcited about the growth of Android, Gmail and Google Plus, which now has 90 million users globally — well over double what I announced just three months ago.”

Jordan Rohan, an analyst at Stifel Nicolaus, said, “Google seems to be outperforming online advertising as a whole, which is pretty amazing.  The retailers went nuts on paid search, consumers seemed to exhibit frugality fatigue, and the Internet was one obvious area for them to show that newfound gusto.”  However, he continued, “Google has big-company problems now, or more specifically, huge-company problems.”

Some analysts are expecting 2012 to be a rough year for Google, due to numerous factors such as antitrust investigations, intellectual property litigation over Android, competition from Facebook, and the acquisition of Motorola Mobility.  Motorola Mobility had disappointing fourth-quarter earnings and financial results that missed analysts’ expectations, mainly due to decreased device sales.  Colin Gillis, an analyst at BGC Partners, said, “Motorola really is going to be a tough one to swallow.  It’s going to wreck their income statement.”

During an event today at the Guggenheim museum hosted by Phil Schiller, the company’s director of product marketing, Apple revealed that the partnership with McGraw-Hill,  Pearson PLC and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, was born out of a legitimate need in the educational world. Though iPads themselves are rather expensive, the cost could be offset by the cheaper textbooks, which regularly go for hundreds of dollars each. This could help struggling school districts that face budget cuts in the wake of a national effort to cut costs.

Though it is hard to imagine a classroom filled with iPads instead of textbooks, the benefits include less wear and tear, and a platform that allows for constant revisions and updates to material. Students could also use in-app tools to complete homework assignments and pop quizzes.

The iBooks 2 app, which will facilitate the download of textbooks has already launched. Apple will likely be courting education professionals before the rollout of the actual textbooks so that they can maximize the potential market for these digital textbooks. Much of this program’s profitability will rest on Apple’s ability to get iPads into classrooms so that students and teachers can start downloading, and Apple (as well as textbook-makers) can start reaping the benefits.

The rate changes are as follows: AT&T customers will pay $20 for a 300-megabyte monthly data plan, up $5 from a previous low-end 200-mb plan. The more “standard” 2GB plan has also been axed in favor of a $30 for 3 GB plan. The premium 4 GB plan has also been done away with in similar fashion, as it has been replaced by a $50 for 5 GB plan, again up by $5 for the extra gigabyte.

Existing customers will automatically be rolled into the higher data tiers, but can downgrade at any time by visiting a local AT&T store. However, due to increasing usage trends, AT&T is likely betting that consumers will just accept the extra $5 charge and see the increased data cap as a good thing.

The price hike couldn’t come at a worse time for AT&T, as they recently finished last again in a customer satisfaction survey, behind rivals like Verizon, Sprint, and former merging candidate T-Mobile. It is doubtful the rate hike will do much to help AT&T’s situation, and it wouldn’t be surprising if the trend of AT&T customers fleeing the carrier and switching to another provider (particularly Verizon) strengthens because of these new price changes.

Because this is still very much a rumor, it is unclear if the purported new operating system is going to be designed to compete directly with Android or iOS, or if it will be a feature-enhanced version of the operating system designed to lure customers away from other smartphone platforms.

If Samsung and Intel are planning to get into the smartphone operating system wars, they are going to have to do quite a lot to beat out the current versions of iOS and Android. Smartphone makers Palm learned that competing OS’ that are tied to one handset manufacturer don’t typically do well, and it is a lesson that Research in Motion (the makers of BlackBerry-branded tablets and smartphones) is learning now.

It is important to remember that at this point everything is just speculation, and nothing has been confirmed. However, during an interview with Forbes during last week’s Consumer Electronics Show, Samsung’s Senior Vice President Kang Tae-jin did indicate that Samsung’s existing Bada platform infrastructure could be used to develop something new, and he did mention Intel as someone he would like to work with.

Another reason Samsung may be looking for ways to differentiate itself in the current smartphone market is to help settle allegations made by Apple that they infringed on their design trademarks with a few of their handsets. Samsung has thus far refuted these claims, and the matter isn’t expected to go to court any time soon. However, with a new OS and a rumored new partnership with Intel, Samsung could really come into its own in the smartphone market, as long as they play their cards right.

Fed up banking customers are now wondering what other options they may have when it comes to get the free checking accounts they are used to. The general public is still bitter about the government banking bail-out. The fact that the banks now want more money is not going to sit well with others. A surprising option for people who mistrust the banks may be a car insurance company.

State Farm has been offering banking services since 1998. However, the general public has finally caught on to what the car insurance firm is selling as an alternative to ridiculous monthly banking fees. Here are some of the services State Farm Banking is offering besides cheap auto insurance quotes from their website:

Free Debit Cards – Instead of looking at charging customers to use their debit card, State Farm has announced their debit cards will continue to have no monthly fees or minimum purchase requirements.

Free Checking Accounts – Many banks are requiring conditions to their free checking, making free checking accounts more difficult to acquire. State Farm Banking still offers accounts with no monthly fees and no minimum balance requirements.

ATM Rebates – While many banks were using this tactic to draw in customers a couple of years ago, now this option is harder to find. State Farm customers enjoy ATM rebates both domestic and international.

Mobile Banking – State Farm also has a mobile banking option, called Pocket Agent, that is also free. Customers will need a scanner and to download the mobile app in order to scan in their deposits, or they can mail them in.

Next year, State Farm Bank will be offering switch kits to customers that are designed to make it simple to transfer a customer’s bill pay information from a traditional bank to State Farm. The car insurance company sees an opportunity to acquire a dissatisfied customer base from banking competition and is working to seize the moment.

The opportunity may have a short window as banking customers become more frustrated. Bank of America has recently reversed its decision to charge a $5 debit card fee based on a customer petition with over 300,000 signatures. The company has stated it has no plans to reinstate the fee in the future. This may mean that State Farm has a limited window to seize as many disgruntled banking customers it can. If other banks follow the lead of Bank of America and reserve the new banking fees, most customers will probably stay with their current banks instead of going through all the trouble to close an account with one company and open a new one with State Farm.

State Farm, with all its affiliates included, is the largest car insurance provider in the country. The company does not only offer affordable auto quotes, they provide service to over 80 million different policies including life, health, and home insurance. State Farm Bank already has almost 2 million banking accounts. The company also provides insurance for commercial and rental customers.

State Farm is not the only auto insurance company that offers banking. Competitors like Nationwide also offer banking. On the flip side, large banking institutions, like Wells Fargo, also offer insurance.

The company’s earnings were lower due to increased difficulty making money in the capital markets and regulatory restrictions that reduced profits.  Going forward, the bank may try to entice more customers to charge more on their credit cards, since the fees that can be reaped from debit card swipes were capped by new regulations last year.  A fee revenue decrease of 7%, to $1.6 billion, was blamed on the new cap on debit interchange fees.  The cap is projected to cost the bank around $600 million over the next year.

JPMorgan representatives have not made any announcements specifically detailing what the company plans to do to make up the revenue lost in recent months.  Some analysts expect that the company will increase revenue by increasing banking fees and pushing more credit cards on new customers.  Richard Bove, a financial analyst at Rochdale Securities, said to expect higher prices on bank products along with reduced customer service. “[Banks] were hit hard by regulation. Someone has to pay for it,” he said.

JPMorgan’s commercial banking division, Chase, has reported that it will be focusing on enrolling more customers in its Chase Private Client division, a division that caters to customers with at least $500,000 in liquid assets.  The company expects to increase the division to 750 locations, from 250 locations, during the next year.  The average Chase Private Client account has a balance of $1.2 million.

Rumors about the deal were reported by AppleInsider and other technology blogs before the official announcement was made.  Some people with knowledge of the matter believe that the Apple displays will be similar to the small Apple stores located within some Best Buy locations.

Having a large Apple display in Target locations will help make the brand more accessible to a wider range of consumers.  Some Apple products are currently sold at Target stores, including iPads and iPods, but the offerings are limited and do not include Macintosh computers.  It is not known whether Macintosh computers will be available for sale in the new Target test centers.

The details about the Apple displays were announced after Target revealed plans for a new program called The Shops At Target, a program to install small boutiques in some of the company’s locations.  The first boutiques to open will feature five local stores, including Polka Dog Bakery in Boston and The Webster clothing store in Miami.  Each of the boutiques is expected to contain around 400 exclusive items created with Target’s influence.

Having dedicated boutiques within larger stores has been a popular strategy for several years.  Many department stores contain individual branded boutiques and some have made them a signature part of their growth strategy.  Target recently warned that its fourth-quarter profit would be lower than previously estimated and December sales at stores open at least a year rose 1.6%, lower than the expectations of a 3.1% increase among analysts.

Though Pepsi was never formally convicted of anything, they chose to go ahead and settle with the commission to avoid any costly litigation. Once the settlement has been finalized, Pepsi has pledged to work with the EEOC to avoid more issues in the future. “I commend Pepsi’s willingness to reexamine its policy and modify it to ensure that unwarranted roadblocks to employment are removed,” EEOC Chairwoman Jacqueline Berrien said in a statement.

However, even though the EEOC is painting a rosy picture of the situation, Pepsi seems to be less than thrilled with the settlement, and has insisted that when they were first found to be non-compliant with EEOC’s standards back in 2006 they changed their system and have been in line with their standards ever since.

Though the settlement effectively ends the litigation with Pepsi, this was only the first of what will likely be several lawsuits targeting major US corporations, as the EEOC says it plans to crack down on an epidemic of unfair hiring practices around the country. These practices generally involve using criminal screening to disqualify certain applicants, even if the job would not be affected by the presence of a criminal record.  EEOC officials have said, for example, that a past drunk driving conviction should not hinder an applicant for a clerical job, but a shoplifting conviction may give employers pause when it comes to retail or working at a bank.

The overall goal here according to the EEOC is to make the workplace an easily accessible place for all. Julie Shmid, director of the EEOC’s Minneapolis office said “”We hope that employers with unnecessarily broad criminal background check policies take note of this agreement and reassess their policies to ensure compliance”.

Though Crocs initially became popular during the early 2000s, the brightly colored shoes with the plastic sheen haven’t exactly been seen much on the streets lately. However, the shoes have clearly been selling, which may be in part due to a restructuring of what “Crocs” actually look like. While traditional Crocs have a large front filled with holes and a strap in the rear, Crocs took this year to diversify, introducing everything from ballet flats to fuzzy snow boots, all featuring the same comfortable resin. These more fashion-forward Crocs clearly have made an impression on the market, and Crocs is poised to become one of the biggest US-based footwear manufacturers going into 2012.

The only part of this news that has some investors worried is Crocs’ checkered past. While Crocs burst on the scene with incredibly strong sales, as the trendiness of the shoes diminished Crocs found themselves in debt to the tune of $130 Million. Hopefully they will be able to keep 2011′s momentum going strong into 2012 by touting their ever-changing styles and eco-friendly materials to keep that cash box ringing.

HTC, which supplies phones to all four major carriers in the US is leading the pack with an unnamed phone making a splash on AT&T’s network with an as-yet unnamed phone that will be the first in the country to feature a 16-megapixel camera. While this new feature might not have much practical use (more megapixels doesn’t necessarily improve picture quality) this staggering new statistic should help further convince consumers that smartphones can be used to replace point-and-shoot digital cameras much like they replaced traditional MP3 music players.

Microsoft will also release two phones in the first half of 2012 on AT&T’s network and came on stage during their CES presentation to re-affirm their newfound partnership with the carrier. These phones also haven’t been named and details were scant, but more should be revealed during Microsoft’s presentation at CES.

Rounding out AT&T’s lineup are phones from Samsung, Nokia and Pantech. At&T also announced that it will begin selling a low-cost Pantech tablet bundled with a phone from the same brand. This tablet will be the first waterproof tablet and will be sold for $250 when bundled with the Burst smartphone.

Though AT&T continues to lose market share, they seem confident that new hardware and network improvements (AT&T recently finished a $20 Million network upgrade) will keep current customers happy, and perhaps lure a few customers away from market leader Verizon.

Unfortunately, this agreement has been a long time coming, and even though Amazon tried to assuage Indiana’s State government by opening three distribution centers in the state and adding hundreds of jobs to a state that really needed them. However, after several years of back and forth, Amazon has relented and the Indiana state government is expected to receive an extra $20 Million annually from the deal.

Indiana is the fourth state to demand sales tax revenue from the online sales giant, and it doesn’t look like they’ll be the last, as states like Florida andKentucky are eying similar deals to increase lagging revenue.

The decision in Indiana was actually prompted by a suit by mall owner Simon Properties over “unfair” sales practices that shut out traditional retailers. A local court ruled that it was unfair for Amazon.com to lure customers with lower prices by eliminating the extra cost of sales tax.

Indiana governor Mitch Daniels is considering asking Congress to implement a resolution that would require Amazon.com to pay sales tax to all 50 states to make it possible for online and traditional stores to compete fairly. “It’s the only way to level the playing field for all sellers,” Misener said at a press conference. “It’s the only way for Indiana to obtain all the sales tax revenue that is already owed.”

Hostess, the snack cake brand behind such iconic products as Twinkie and Wonder Bread isn’t having such a sweet 2012. The company announced yesterday that they are filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy for the second time a mere 2 years after coming out of their 2004 bankruptcy in 2004. The snack cake maker has cited several reasons for this including rising commodity costs (flour and sugar being the chief offenders) and high labor expenses.

This news is not only noteworthy not only because of the legacy value of the Hostess snack cake brand, but because Hostess is one of the largest employers of US workers, with locations in 49 states and 19,000 employees. Annual sales have been hovering around the $2 billion mark, but unfortunately these sales have not been able to keep up with rising costs.

Hostess has yet to officially comment on the matter, but after they finish filing proceedings raised prices, factory closings, and layoffs are sure to follow. Rumors are also swirling that Hostess will try and renegotiate labor contracts with local labor unions such as International Brotherhood of Teamsters, as well as the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Unions.

The Wall Street Journal quotes a source close to the situation saying that Hostess is facing debts in excess of 800 Billion, but does not identify where these debts are coming from. Unless Hostess can raise some capital like they did after their 2004 bankruptcy, it looks like the halcyon days of the Twinkie snack cake may be numbered.

The aluminum manufacturing giant said it recorded a $191 million or 18 cents a share loss in the first quarter, compared to a $258 million or 24 cents a share profit in the same period a year ago.  Excluding one-time costs to the tune of $185 million, Alcoa had a net loss of 3 cents a share.  The result was slightly steeper than the 2 cent loss analysts estimated.

Alcoa said the one-time costs were largely due to the reduction of smelting capacity.  The company decided to cut 12 percent of its capacity in the quarter to help improve its competitive position.

However, revenue was still strong, up nearly 6 percent in the period to $6 billion from the $5.65 billion registered last year. The result topped estimates, which called for $5.72 billion in revenue.

“Alcoa turned in solid performance in a volatile year by responding quickly to changing market conditions and relentlessly managing cash. We stayed focused on growth and took aggressive action to cut costs, improve our competitiveness, and strengthen our balance sheet,” said Alcoa Chairman and CEO Klaus Kleinfeld.

For the full-year 2011, Alcoa earned $611 million or 55 cents a share, up from the$254 million or 24 cents a share earned in 2010.  Revenue was up 19 percent on the year to $25 billion.

Looking ahead, the company expects global demand for aluminum to grow by 7 percent in 2012.  Alcoa is projecting the Aerospace industry to represent the largest portion of demand growth.

Shares of Alcoa are trading slightly higher in after-hours action after closing the day 3 percent higher to $9.44.

The U.S. Justice Department says it’s the largest settlement over residential fair lending practices in history.  Between 2004 and 2007, Countrywide originated millions of residential mortgage loans as the nation’s largest single-family mortgage lender.  Bank of America bought Countrywide Financial in 2008.

The alleged discrimination was aimed at qualified African-American and Hispanic borrowers that applied for home loans.  The complaint alleged that Countrywide charged more than 200,000 African-American and Hispanic borrowers steeply higher fees and interest rates than non-Hispanic white borrowers that had a similar credit profile.  These borrowers were charged higher fees and rates because of their race or national origin, rather than any other objective criteria.

The complaint said that Countrywide was aware that the fees and interest rates that the loan officers were charging were discriminatory against African-American and Hispanic borrowers, but failed to impose meaningful limits or guidelines to stop it.  Sub-prime loans carry more expensive terms, such as prepayment penalties, and higher adjustable interest rates that increase suddenly after two or three years.  This made the payments unaffordable and left the borrowers with an increased risk of foreclosure.  The complaint alleged that by steering borrowers into sub-prime loans from 2004 to 2007, Countrywide harmed those qualified African-American and Hispanic borrowers.

Bank of America spokesman Dan Frahm said in a statement that the company does not practice lending based on race.  He said, “We discontinued Countrywide products and practices that were not in keeping with our commitment and will continue to resolve and put behind us the remaining Countrywide issues.”

Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division Thomas E. Perez said, “Countrywide’s actions contributed to the housing crisis, hurt entire communities, and denied families access to the American dream.”  Attorney General Eric Holder said, “These institutions should make judgments based on applicants’ creditworthiness, not on the color of their skin.  With today’s settlement, the federal government will ensure that the more than 200,000 African-American and Hispanic borrowers who were discriminated against by Countrywide will be entitled to compensation.”

General Mills recently acquired Yoplait, adding its product line to the company’s popular Cheerios cereal, Nature Valley granola, and Hamburger Helper product lines.  General Mills continues to be one of the most popular product brands on grocery store shelves, but has been struggling with increased costs for ingredients and employees to manufacture, package, and ship the products.  The company estimates that cost increases has cost the company between 10% and 11% more this year and has planned to raise its prices on many of their products to offset the increased margin pressure.

The net income for the company for the second quarter was $444.8 million, or $0.67 per share.  This is down from $613.9 million, or $0.92 per share, for a year earlier.  If charges tied to the deal for Yoplait are excluded, earnings results were $0.76 per share.  Total revenue saw an increase of 14% to $4.62 billion.  General Mills expects adjusted earnings of $2.59 to $2.61 a share for the full year.

Don Mulligan, the company’s chief financial officer, said, “We knew it was going to be a tough environment and it is, but the year is shaping up as we anticipated.”  Revenue at the company’s bakery and food service units increased by 12%, reflecting strong sales of popular products like Pillsbury’s Mini-Pancakes and French Toast.  The company’s retail business in the US saw a 3% increase over last year with increased sales of cereal and snacks.  Yogurt sales and sales of higher priced baking products were weaker.

Many consumer product companies have faced increased labor and material costs as well as more expensive freight charges.  Nike is one of the few companies that has been able raise their prices and increase demand without facing a backlash from consumers.  The price of Nike items will increase further this year to provide relief from margin pressure, although the company has not disclosed how much the prices will rise.

The executives at Nike are confident that the company’s sales growth will continue into the future.  The NBA season resuming and having a number of new products ready for launch for major athletic events, such as the summer Olympics, will help the company’s bottom line.  Nike is the world’s largest athletic shoe and clothing company.

Mark Parker, Nike’s CEO, said, “We’re able to accomplish this by staying focused on what we do best – deliver innovative products and experiences that serve athletes, inspire consumers and reward our shareholders.”  Nike disclosed that orders for items scheduled to be delivered between December and April increased by 13% when compared to the same period last year.

Nike reported that the company earned $469 million, or $1 per share, for the second quarter of 2011.  This was an increase from $457 million, or $0.94 per share, for the same quarter last year.  The total revenue for the company saw an increase of 18% to $5.73 billion as international and domestic sales increased in nearly every market.  Analysts expected around $0.97 per share on revenue of $5.63 billion.

Consensus estimates seem to show housing prices reaching the bottom in the second half of 2012 – after it find’s that bottom, they could linger their for years as supply significantly outpaces demand currently. The excess supply needs to clear through the system before home prices at the macro level can start inching upward again.

An eventual rebound in the housing market would have a positive effect on basically everyone, but no one firm may be banking on it more than Bank of America (NYSE: BAC), the Charlotte based banking giant. An improvement in housing will no doubt help the home-building sector and related industries. But it will also be a big catalyst for bank stocks, with the fortunes of the sector deeply tied to the economy and the problems in housing.

Frederick Cannon, an analyst at KBW commented “If you see high single-digit or low double-digit growth in housing, that will get people excited about financials, especially bank stocks.” Although Bank of America may be the nation’s largest mortgagor thanks to their acquisition of Countrywide a few years bank, Canon actually expects Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC) to be the biggest beneficiary from the eventual turnaround in housing. “Wells has maintained its presence in the mortgage origination market and is poised to grow mortgage origination business if housing recovers,” he said.

Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM) and Wells Fargo are the biggest players in the mortgage origination business. However, Wells derives a bigger chunk of its business from mortgage banking compared to its larger rivals. While it is hard to imagine the current housing slump suddenly turning around to post double-digit growths, some unforeseen developments could ease the situation in housing, according to analysts.

Bank of America’s stock price has dropped precipitously this year, much of which is contributed to its mortgage woes. With many borrowers underwater and unable to meet their mortgage obligations with rising unemployment rates, Cannon says it would take a lot more for the bank to resolve its problems. “Unless the housing market goes up 30% to 40%, those legacy assets are going to continue to be an issue for a long time.” It seems the near future may be just as difficult as the near past for Brian Moynihan and his team at BofA – that is, unless they find a way to sell of the old Countrywide division and rid themselves of the toxic mortgage assets.

While much of the news surrounding the world’s banking giants tends to be negative, there is also a clear track record of many of the firms giving back to their communities and making significant contributions in the process. The latest news comes out of sunny Palm Beach County Florida, where Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC) has helped the local school district through the Adopt-A-Classroom organization.

Through the Adopt-A-Classroom organization, Wells Fargo has helped raise more than $125,000 for county schools, providing for much needed materials and supplies in the classroom. Adopt-A-Classroom is the nation’s only nonprofit organization that enables donors to identify and make a donation to a specific classroom. Donations are tax deductible and teachers receive 100 percent of funds donated. Teachers have full discretion to budget the expenditure and purchase classroom materials that meet their students’ specific needs. Donors get to see exactly what the teacher purchased.

Grassy Waters Elementary School in West Palm Beach, one of the schools to benefit from the program, was recently awarded one of the Wells Fargo $5,000 Challenge grants. Grassy Waters Principal Amy Wilkinson commented that “Adopt-A-Classroom and Wells Fargo have been extremely beneficial to all our teachers and students. It’s enabled the teachers to get many of the materials and supplies that they need to become better teachers and our students love the new supplies.” 

Lisa Park, Wells Fargo At Work senior relationship manager, said “The Adopt-A-Classroom program has been tremendous.  What a gift to see how we have been able to help the classrooms, and most importantly get the extra school supplies and all the things students need to be more successful in their day-to-day endeavors in school.”

Since 1998, Adopt-A-Classroom has raised more than $16 million, impacting more than one million students in the United States. James Rosenberg, Founder and Executive Director of Adopt-A-Classroom commented that “There is no easier way to donate to a classroom in such a transparent and accountable way.”

Earlier this years Wells Fargo made headlines for other charitable efforts as well, donating millions to the United Way and with employees giving back through community service in grass roots outreach programs. Although banks remain the source of vitriol for many, it seems that at least one of the major banks has it right, and is building a community focused organization in the process.

To support a classroom, visit adoptaclassroom.org and click on the Classroom Locator. Donations can be made by credit card or check.

Although the firm may be lesser known in the U.S., Nomura is the largest brokerage firm in Japan, and this year advised companies on 134 transactions worth $65.4 billion. A large piece of that ($13.7 billion) came from their work on the Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. acquisition of Swiss drug maker Nycomed. In second place, Goldman Sachs handled 24 deals worth $62.3 billion.

Bolstered by a strong yen, Japan’s companies spent about $88.3 billion on overseas acquisitions in 2011, the most in any of the twelve years for which Bloomberg data is available. The Japanese demand for foreign investments should play in Nomura’s favor, as their advantage in their domestic market could lead their revenues even higher next year. Nomura’s Joint Head of Global M&A Kentaro Okuda said in an interview “Japanese companies will increase their presence even further next year as acquirers in cross-border mergers and acquisitions as they are in a relatively strong position in business and financial performance. We are already seeing this trend in our pipeline of deals which will keep our M&A bankers busy through the New Year break.”

The mergers and acquisitions advisory market has been hot in Japan this year and shows no signs of slowing down – the country saw 2,261 transactions valued at $195.9 billion this year to Dec. 29, a record for the equivalent period, data compiled by Bloomberg show. A total of 795 Japanese firms, including Mitsubishi Corp., Kirin Holdings Co., Terumo Corp. and Tokio Marine Holdings Inc., made acquisitions overseas.

Nomura is ranked twelfth among acquisition advisers globally, but has a clear opportunity to climb the ranks in the coming years. Japan’s economy was rocked by the tsunami induced catastrophe earlier this year and that has constrained growth, while essentially shut down key sectors of the economy for many months. As the firms continue their rebound, ongoing consolidation may be in their plans and play to Nomura’s favor. Nomura edged out Goldman Sachs this year, and may have a hand up in this battle for years to come if they can kee building on this success.

AIG was accused of underreporting the premiums it collected on workers’ compensation policies to reduce payments to an industry fund.  For an insurance company to have failed to participate properly in what essentially amounts to an insurance fund is borderline incredible, and may show just how dysfunctional AIG had been in the years leading up to its crash. Rivals claim the underfunding by AIG dates back into the 1980’s. AIG last December agreed to pay $146.5 million in fines, taxes and assessments in a settlement with all 50 U.S. states over alleged workers compensation reporting errors.

The settlement could put to rest a dispute over the claims related to workers comp, but far from the end of litigation the firm faces. The firm’s mounting legal costs and losses in litigation are hindering any semblance of a rebound – more than two years after their rescue by the U.S. government, the shop still does not seem entirely cleaned up. Before the firm starts returning value to shareholders the litigation must be brought to an end so the firm can adopt a clear strategy to move forward.

U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman in Chicago said the settlement is “fair, reasonable and adequate,” according to an order filed Dec. 21. Although he has approved it, the ruling won’t actually take effect until he issues his formal written opinion. Although $450 million is a staggering number, it is actually less than a third of what Liberty Mutual Holding Co. had requested. John Cusolito, a spokesman for the Boston-based insurer, said in an e-mail “Liberty Mutual is disappointed — but not surprised — with the judge’s order approving the settlement. Liberty Mutual will review the judge’s final written order, and anticipates an appeal.”

The case is Safeco Insurance Co. v. American International Group, 09-cv-02026, U.S. District Court, Northern District of Illinois (Chicago).  The stock price for AIG has fallen 51 percent this year, and continues to struggle to rebound from the financial crisis of 2008 from which they had to be bailed out. Taking the wrong side of thousands of trades caused the firm to lose billions. Although today’s AIG already looks very different from the firm that nearly collapsed, it has its work cut out for it.

As the interest rate environment continues to trade low, many firms are taking advantage of the opportunity to refinance their capital structure, and lowering the debt servicing costs in the process. CIT aims to complete the redemption within the next month, and has given redemption notice to the trustees already. According to the terms, the Series A Notes will be redeemed at par. The Series A notes were issued on December 10, 2009 as a part of the company’s reorganization. This announcement seems to be part of a series of restructuring moves CIT has been involved in over the past few months.

The repayment and refinancing of CIT’s costly debt within a short period will reduce the company’s funding costs. Ultimately, this will provide support to its future growth. Additionally, it will help the company to be flexible in providing financial help to small and mid-sized organizations. Although lesser known outside of the finance world, CIT provides important financial services to the retail sector, financing inventory and offering short term credit that fills many of the shelves in malls across the globe.

After completing this redemption, CIT will be left with nearly $1.5 billion principal amount of the 2016 Series A second lien Notes and about $2.9 billion principal amount of the 2017 Series A second lien Notes. Since 2010, the company has been lowering and refinancing first lien and second lien debt. With the completion of this redemption it will complete the payment of more than $17 billion of this debt. This comprises $7.5 billion of first lien debt, $7.8 billion of Series A notes and the entire $2.1 billion of Series B notes.

While CIT is firming up their own funding costs, sluggish growth in the economy could be detrimental to their growth prospects – if retailers are financing less inventory due to expecting a weak consumer, the cash flows to CIT would fall and offset their gains from lower costs of funding. Although cutting costs is important in any environment, CIT is particularly sensitive to the top line as it remains out of their control, as it is dependent on the decisions made by the retailers based on their expectations of the consumer psyche. As retail numbers trickle out in the coming weeks the growth prospects for CIT will become more clear.

The company has not disclosed the terms of the deal, but this news marks another point in a string of asset sales since the depths of the financial crisis nearly consumed the firm. Citigroup sold a $1.7 billion private equity portfolio to a French bank in June. Citigroup said it has reduced the assets within Citi Holdings by more than $582 billion since the peak in 2008′s first quarter. The company also is trimming its workforce and recently announced it will cut 4,500 jobs — or about 1.5 percent of its global workforce of 267,000 — over the next few quarters.

Citigroup was partially owned by the U.S. government until December of 2010, and was one of the largest received of TARP funds prior to paying them off. The company said Wednesday that Citibank Belgium SA has 700 workers and 500,000 customers. The firm will not pull out of the Belgium market entirely though – the firm said it will continue to serve corporate and institutional clients in Belgium through its Institutional Banking and Global Transaction Services franchises.

The deal is expected to close in the second quarter of 2012. The new financial regulatory reform will impact Citi and it’s rivals immensely. As many competitors have announced plans in the past month to layoff staff, one must wonder if the costs of the Dodd Frank financial regulatory reform exceed it’s benefits. Although some note that the financial system is safer as a result of these measures, the need to raise capital and cut businesses due to lost fee revenue could leave the banking sector on shaky ground for years to come. The lost revenue, wages, and therefore tax revenues could be detrimental to an already precarious recovery proceeding at a slow pace.

Vikram Pandit and team seem to finally have Citi pointed in the right direction. The future of Citi will likely look very different than the recent past, but a leaner Citigroup flush with cash from sales may lead investor confidence to finally rise for the firm.

According to research published by Credit Suisse, Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) has been hit hardest with the fee restrictions. Regulation E went into effect in July of 2010, and requires banks to obtain customer consent before charging overdraft fees. This rule costs Bank of America $3.3 billion annually, compared to $1.4 billion for Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC) and $1.077 billion for JP Morgan Chase (NYSE: JPM).

The loss of fees, and competition by banks around fees is driving the firms to pursue new revenue stream opportunities. ATM’s, cash cows for many banks are one such opportunity. Some ATM’s are being changed to show consumers advertisements, rather than charging the fee. The commercials would cover the fee that banks normally charge you if you use one of their ATMs but do not have an account with them. The fee-free ATMs, however, cannot prevent your bank from charging you for using a non-affiliated ATM, so you may still get hit with a fee from your bank.

While competition for borrowers reaches a fever pitch some of the large credit card companies are showing signs of growth . American Express, Capital One and Discover said their cardholders’ balances have increased slightly. It may be too early to tell if the increases will lead to lasting growth, but the results are a positive sign for an industry that faces some challenges going into 2012. With improvements in delinquencies and loan charge-offs losing steam, credit card issuers are under pressure to increase loans to raise revenue. That’s led to a boost in marketing by the industry’s biggest players, who hope to win customers using other lenders’ credit cards.

Final holiday sales data is not yet available, but with the shift of consumer spending from brick and mortar to online stores, the credit card companies (along with UPS and FedEx) have the biggest revenue growth opportunity. Whether those charges turn into cash flows or bad debts are yet to be seen, but could be a positive sign as we near the beginning of 2012.

BofA is lagging behind its major competitors, and with new capital rules on the horizon the bank may need to start selling assets to raise capital. Since January of 2010, the bank has sold nearly $50 billion of assets, which include most of its shares in China Construction Bank Corp. As a result, the bank may not have many big-ticket items left. The bank could consider selling its Indian back-office processing operation, as other banks have, and could shed real estate holdings and private-equity investments.

One analyst stated the bank could need $45 billion of additional capital by 2019, and if so it may have to start cutting deeper into its franchise. That would mean shedding more significant businesses, including potentially selling the crown jewel, the recently acquired Merrill Lynch brokerage business. The bank can also improve its capital measures by retaining profits and running off risky loans, but those steps will take time.

Investors have been disappointed with the speed of a turnaround Chief Executive Brian Moynihan has the firm on. The bank has suffered from a sluggish economy and concerns about the European debt crisis, but it has also incurred self-inflicted wounds. The media firestorm caused by the $5-per-month debit card fee program which has since been abandoned caused flocks of customers to jump to rivals.

Bank of America, which had to be bailed out by the U.S. government during the financial crisis of 2008, has remained one of the weakest in the industry, and concern over potentially having to raise capital may be rattling investors even more. At a time when rivals like JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM) and Citigroup (NYSE: C) are beginning to show traction, performance of BofA seems still stuck in the mud. Bank of America’s shares are down 58 percent this year and closed below $5 on Monday for the first time since March 2009. In comparison, the KBW Bank Index is down 23.5 percent this year. The bank’s shares on Friday closed at $5.60, up 2.4 percent amid a broader rally in the stock market.

Charles Elson, director of the Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware commented “You have had nothing but bad news come out of the company for two years. At some point, the directors on the board have to say, ‘Is it systemic or the result of management?’”

Citi managed to step into every financial mess of the last few decades, first lagging behind rivals during the boom, then facing an enormous bust losing tens of billions of dollars on mortgages (leading to a double government bailout). Even when the firm has no clear exposure, any hint of financial distress anywhere in the world seems to send the stock lower. Citi’s stock trades at just over 40 percent of book value. But 2012 may finally be the year when investors believe it will be different at Citi.

Chief Executive Vikram S. Pandit has been hard at work undoing may of the debacles caused by his predecessor Chuck Prince, and the firm may be in a position to start handing back more cash to shareholders. In fact, over the next few years Citi may even be able to outperform their rivals in terms of returning value to investors. Granted, JPMorgan Chase is already serving up a tasty $4 billion a year in dividends, and its chief executive, Jamie Dimon, is hoping the Federal Reserve will give him permission to bulk up the offering after the latest round of stress tests. If he can return to paying out around a third of its net profit in dividends by 2013, that could reach $7 billion, based on the consensus earnings estimate of sell-side analysts.

How can a firm currently giving a meager 1% dividend outpace goliaths like JP Morgan who are currently way ahead of the curve? Well, there are a few clear opportunities. Citi still has around $250 billion of unwanted assets in Citi Holdings, almost half of which is composed of the bank’s remaining bad mortgages and the rest a collection of nonbank lending businesses mostly accumulated by one of Mr. Pandit’s predecessors, Sandy Weill. Selling or running these off may free up around $25 billion of capital.

More for shareholders, though, should come from Citigroup’s $50 billion in deferred tax assets, a consequence of losing so much money over the years. Regulators allow only around $11 billion of this asset to count toward common equity. If the remainder did too, Citi’s Tier 1 common ratio would near an exceptionally robust 15 percent. Citigroup would probably not need that surplus capital, which means there could be an additional $39 billion for shareholders to feast on over time.

There are a few risks to this of course – first, the wind down of Citi Holdings could take several more years to fully realize. Second, Citigroup needs to actually earn money to monetize the deferred tax asset because it tapped into some $2 billion in the first nine months of this year, and various triggers ought to allow it to speed up the pace from 2012.

There’s also the issue of convincing investors that it can survive any fallout from Europe’s debt woes, another recession in the United States or a possible slowdown in emerging markets.

New economic growth data out of these countries seem to show a slowing down, casting a shadow over his forecasts and calling into question the global economic recovery we’ve been seeing as of late.

The BRICs, boosted by at least $870 billion of fiscal stimulus, did become the locomotives of the global economy during the Great Recession that battered the U.S. from December 2007 to June 2009. Now China, India and Brazil are losing speed after raising interest rates to curb the inflation that the stimulus stoked. Many investors suspect that China’s growth in the past decade has stemmed from a debt-fueled bubble, while India keeps balking at market-opening policies, reversing its decision to let foreign retailers such as Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) expand in the country.

“Dr. Doom”, New York University professor Nouriel Roubini says that China may have a hard landing within a year.  O’Neill, who wrote his book in mid-2011, is now predicting that global growth next year will decelerate to 3.4 percent.

O’Neill introduced the BRICs a decade ago, and introduced it as four populous, ambitious countries destined to drive global growth in the coming decades. The acronym transformed both O’Neill’s career and how global investors viewed the world. The BRICs obligingly outpaced his boldest original forecast, roughly quadrupling their aggregate GDP from $3 trillion when he wrote the paper to almost $12 trillion, he says.

Expanding the franchise, O’Neill’s team has since explored the potential of the “Next Eleven” most populous emerging economies, or the “N-11.” More recently, he decided that the term “emerging markets” no longer applies to the BRICs or four of the N-11 — Indonesia, South Korea, Mexico and Turkey. These he now calls “Growth Markets.”

The BRIC concept is appealing because it forces Western investors to set aside their preconceptions about the world. O’Neill encourages us to concentrate on the basics: population and productivity. It’s the demography, stupid.  O’Neill wrote “In all my analysis of world economies, amid all the information and hype, I have stayed focused on the benefits of an expanding, more productive workforce.”

The Goldman economist may not be one of history’s great storytellers,  but he capably lightens the reams of GDP projections with anecdotes from his travels to the Himalayas, Rio and Russia. He maintains that the BRICS are “the dominant story of our generation” and with all the international investment we see flowing into those market, he could still be right.

JP Morgan Chase remains a unique bank model, in a way similar to the large diversified supermarket model Dimon and Sandy Weill helped build at Citigroup (NYSE: C), but also larger in higher profit areas like investment banking which attracts significant competition. As an investment bank, the firm faces rivals like Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS), whose operations are squarely focused on investment banking, and thus able to commit more resources to the business. As a commercial bank, the competition from large banks seeking to stem the loss of market share has been immense. Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC) has embarked on aggressive expansion into the east coast with it’s acquisition and integration of Wachovia, and while Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) continues to have a negative light cast upon it, the bank continues to maintain an enormous customer base.

The credit card brand at Chase is second to none, and could be a defining characteristic in the coming years. Though, the new regulatory environment brought on by the Dodd Frank financial regulatory reform coupled with caps on fees and interest rates, could continue to stymie it’s growth.

The real trouble for JPMorgan could come down the road, though. The Fed recently issued proposed regulations that would require the bank, along with Bank of America and Citigroup, to meet the more stringent capital requirements under the Basel III framework. Yet because JPMorgan currently has better Tier 1 capital ratios than either B of A or Citi, the requirements may actually boost JPMorgan’s competitive advantage.

Like all the banks, JP Morgan Chase has a tough road ahead. The continued concerns surrounding Europe and potential defaults may continue to impact investor confidence well into 2012. The US Central Bank’s capital review of the major banks is expecting to produce results in the first quarter of 2012, and the results may further destabilize economic growth should banks be found capital deficient. The need to raise capital in an environment like this could be disastrous – the advantage JP Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo enjoy due to being well run may help them weather the storm better than their contemporaries, but the contagion of having their stock in mutual funds with those competitors could continue to pull it down in the future as well.

Moynihan issued a year-end message to senior executives where he comments that the bank has transformed itself this year and has made significant progress, in a memo sent Friday. Although the entire banking sector has been batter this year due to concerns over exposure to European sovereign debt and mounting loan losses on defaulting US consumers, Bank of America has been particularly hard hit. It’s price to book value has fallen below Citigroup’s (NYSE: C), which is actively engaged in selling of businesses.

Moynihan’s year-end message to employees can be found below:

***

Year-end message from Brian Moynihan

To Senior Leaders,

This year can be summarized in a few words: In the face of significant challenges, we made significant progress. I thank you for your continued commitment and all that you do to deliver on our purpose – to help customers and clients seize opportunity at every stage of their financial lives.

While there is much work to do and there may be further challenges ahead, we end 2011 stronger and better able to serve customers and clients. We continued throughout the year to simplify our company, to build capital, and to manage through the slow-growth, low interest rate U.S. and global economy. Today, our company is exposed to less risk and is less complex. As a stronger, more straightforward company better organized to serve our customers and clients, we can build deeper relationships with them, earn the profits our shareholders expect, and help restore confidence and strength to our economy.

There is ample evidence that we are moving forward on the course we set two years ago to transform our company, some of which is highlighted in the progress report included with this message. Our focus and strategy are clear: We deliver to three groups of customers and clients the four or five leading capabilities they need to manage their financial lives and businesses. Simply put: We can do more for people, companies, and institutional investors than any other financial services company. And day after day, we are proving it in the marketplace.

Obviously, our stock price does not yet reflect the work we are doing to strengthen capital, reduce risk, and serve customers and clients better. There are many issues weighing not only on us, but on the entire financial services industry, including concerns about the global economy, the implementation of new regulations and capital requirements, how these new rules may affect our ability to deliver for our customers, and the time it will take to resolve legacy issues and get the housing market and the economy growing strongly again.

The New Year will bring its own mix of successes and challenges, but our direction is clear and we know what we must do. Our job is to continue to focus intently on what we can control: providing our customers and clients with the best service and most comprehensive financial services solutions in the market, managing our costs, re-building our brand, and doing our part to keep the economy moving forward. Our long-term value will come through and be reflected in our stock price over time if we do that.

I appreciate all of your great work this year; it is because of you, and because we know we can do so much more for customers and clients than anyone else, that I have such great confidence in our future. Please enjoy some well deserved rest with family and friends during this holiday season, and let’s get right back to it in 2012.

– Brian

The bank is trying to reduce noncompensation expenses by $1 billion over the next three years.  The newest round of reductions at Morgan Stanley is expected to affect all job levels in all divisions, except for the 17,000 financial advisers in the Morgan Stanley Smith Barney unit.  James P. Gorman, the chief executive, told analysts that Morgan Stanley would keep paying “those employees who are delivering value.”

According to a report released by Thomas P. DiNapoli, the New York State comptroller, the securities industry in New York City lost around $3 billion in the third quarter.  Personal income tax collection in New York City could drop by $200 million next year because of the lower profits in the financial sector.  Business and sales tax collection could drop by $100 million a year.  Profits at the city’s securities companies are expected to fall short of the $20 billion in profit officials projected for the year.

Many banks have recently announced widespread cost-cutting programs to improve profits.  Citigroup announced it would cut 4,500 jobs over the next few months and Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse and several others have announced thousands of job cuts over the past year.  Mr. DiNapoli estimated that another 10,000 securities industry professionals in New York could lose their jobs by the end of 2012.  This would bring the total to 32,000 jobs lost since January 2008.

End-of-year layoffs are a common procedure on Wall Street.  Underperforming members of struggling divisions are cut and bonuses are adjusted for the remaining staff.  Chris Kotowski, a banking analyst with Oppenheimer, said, “There’s no denying that business is dreadful, and banks are trimming back.  In an environment like this, people are going to look at everyone on their platform and say, is this person absolutely necessary?”  He continued, “Everybody gets lower bonus checks, and some people get a severance package.  This is not a Morgan Stanley thing; this is a Wall Street thing.”

Lam has also announced plans to buy back up to $1.6 billion of its stock over the next year.  The structure of the deal, combined with the buyback program, turns the transaction into a half-cash, half-stock deal on the company’s balance sheet.  It also creates a tax-free transaction and allows Lam to take advantage of benefits associated with the debt held by Novellus.

Stephen G. Newberry, vice chairman and chief executive of Lam Research, said in a statement, “This strategic combination positions Lam Research to lead the development of next-generation semiconductor manufacturing technology and productivity solutions at a time when growing semiconductor demand and increased device complexity are creating significant business opportunities.”

Lam Research, of Fremont, California, is a semiconductor chip equipment maker.  The companies say that they are combining complementary technologies in order to create more sophisticated products for the world’s biggest chip makers.  Chip makers have been under pressure lately to create more intricate chips to keep up with the newest innovations in mobile and cloud computing technology.  Novellus, of San Jose, California, is also a maker of equipment to build semiconductors.

The acquisition of Novellus is expected to increase Lam’s market share in the industry.  It will also give Lam an additional $1.5 billion in annual revenue and add 2,700 employees to the company’s staff.  Martin Anstice, Lam’s current president and chief operating officer, said, “We believe that the people, products and technology that Novellus brings to Lam Research will position the combined company to accelerate revenue and earnings growth, realize significant operating efficiencies, and deliver stockholder value.”  Mr. Anstice will become the chief executive of the combined company in January.

The electronics retailer’s results were affected by its decision to cut prices in popular categories, such as tablets and televisions, to drive sales and increase traffic during the busy holiday season.  Best Buy CEO Brian Dunn said customers are focused on “value” this holiday, so the company had to reduce prices to attract them.  He said, “We took decisive actions to drive our business.  These actions, while negatively impacting gross margin, significantly resonated with customers and resulted in improved traffic.”

Jefferies analyst Daniel Binder said that the higher revenue came at a “steep cost.”  He stated, “While we think management is more focused on addressing competitive issues through better pricing and labor models, it is not producing enough top-line growth to convince investors that the longer-term challenges have changed all that much.”

Best Buy is up against tough competition from discounters and online retailers and remaining profitable depends on boosting traffic during the crucial November and December holiday season.  The company has been focusing on reducing its square footage in the U.S. and expanding its online offerings and services, such as free shipping, connecting devices to the Internet, and streamlining the process of picking up products ordered online in stores.

The best sellers this season included mobile computing, appliances, e-readers, mobile phones, and movies.  Triple-digit growth was seen in sales of tablet computers and e-book readers.  Television sales also improved in the third quarter, most notably sales of large screen televisions.  Revenue in U.S. stores open at least one year rose 1%, boosted by a 20% increase in online revenue.

Janney Capital Markets analyst David Strasser said, “Strength in the mobile segment, along with solid growth in mobile computing (including tablets) and e-readers (helped by the launch of Kindle and Nook) helped the third quarter.  We believe this trend has continued in the fourth quarter.”

President of Machinists District Lodge 751 Tom Wroblewski announced that 74% of voting members voted to approve the contract.  The union represents 28,000 workers in Kansas, Washington, and Oregon.  The union’s aerospace coordinator, Mark Blondin, said, “This contract signifies jobs throughout the Northwest, throughout the region.  The message of this contract is … Boeing is acknowledging we have the deepest pool of skilled aerospace workers in the country.”

Jim Albaugh, president and CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, said, “This contract will help secure a better future for our employees, our customers, our communities and our company.  It reflects an effort on the part of the company and the union to find a better way to work together and achieve common ground.”

The deal grants the labor force of the company peace and likely ends a federal complaint that has been a hot button topic in recent weeks.  If workers approved the contract, Boeing promised to build the new version of the 737 in the Puget Sound region.  The Machinists said that they would drop their claims that Boeing retaliated against a previous strike by opening a nonunion assembly plant in South Carolina.

The National Labor Relations Board filed a lawsuit earlier this year claiming that Boeing violated labor laws by opening the South Carolina assembly line.  South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley said that the NLRB lawsuit threatened thousands of jobs and millions of dollars invested in the new Boeing facility.  The case became a political issue as Republican presidential candidates used the case to speak against the Obama administration, as the labor board is an independent agency dominated by the president’s appointees.

SuccessFactors is a provider of employee management software.  Their products assist companies in assessing employee performance, managing recruitment, and other human resource needs.  The company has more than 3,500 customers in 170 countries and reported revenue of $91.2 million in the third quarter.

The enterprise software industry has seen an increase in deal making as larger companies search for companies that provide services in the cloud.  SAP has increased its efforts to expand its presence in this market in recent months.  Co-chief executive of SAP Bill McDermott said in a statement, “The cloud is a core of SAP’s future growth, and the combination of SuccessFactors’ leadership team and technology with SAP will create a cloud powerhouse.”

Web-based enterprise software companies are becoming more important as more companies find that cloud-based software is a more cost effective solution than installed software.  Cloud based software is more flexible and can be scaled to match the needs of small and large companies.  Most cloud based software is sold on a subscription basis that includes all upgrades and support.

Paul Hamerman, a Forrester analyst, said, “The premium is significant and it shows that SAP was struggling in its cloud strategy, especially in talent management.  The cloud has been a small part of SAP’s revenue stream, about 2 percent; the deal adds to the revenue base and shows SAP’s strong commitment to the software-as-a-service business model.”

However, Bank of America was not alone in that plan. Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC) had a pilot program doing basically the same thing, as did JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM). SunTrust Banks Inc. (NYSE: STI) officially launched their debit card fee program in June of this year, which also charged customers five dollars per month. The pressure has been mounting on the financial service industry during the past weeks. Politicians were outraged and called for inquiries into potential collusion, and customers protested the fees and even began closing some accounts.  As a result, many of the banks have started to change course on their plans.

Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC) and JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM) have both announced plans to end their pilot program entirely eliminating all debit card monthly fees, while Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) is making significant changes to their plans which will have a much smaller customer impact. Sun Trust is now the latest to join that fray, announcing plans to stop charging the fee. Regional bank SunTrust says it “listened to our clients’ feedback” in making the decision to stop charging the fees. With almost all the large banks now fully retreated from the aggressive charging plan, only Regions Financial Corp. is left unilaterally charging fees, which are four dollars per month beginning October.

Banks are continuing to struggle to replace earnings now evaporated from regulatory reform, and the difficult economic environment are causing sagging revenues in other lines of business. The future of the banking industry is very likely to look significantly different from the recent past. Traditional lines of business must be altered or shut down, dependent on the interpretation of the so called “Volker Rule”, which is still rather vague. With fewer revenue streams and lines of business customers may be appeased by ‘wins’ like stopping debit card fees, but coupling that with other lost revenue may provide a dicey situation in the coming months, which could threaten the already delicate economic recovery.

Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) set off a firestorm of public outrage last month after announcing a plan to charge all customers a five dollar monthly debit card fee. The fee was so shocking and outrageous to some that Senators commented on the issue, customers protested the issue, and the firm has been under public relations fire ever since that announcement. Now, it all seems to be for naught.

After the overwhelming negative response, Bank of America along with peers Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase all seem to have backed off their fee plans, or at least tweaked them to the point where they are virtually innocuous.

Chief Executive Officer Brian Moynihan was incensed by the criticism the firm received in the press and from politicians, contending it was a necessary measure to replace revenues now depleted from the Dodd Frank financial regulatory reform. Economically, Moynihan is right – BofA and many other banks now have to get out of formerly profitable lines of business. Losing these revenues will naturally lead to a fall in profit, and inevitably, jobs.

BofA is now considering plans to implement easier ways for customers to avoid the fee, sources say, including simple steps such as having direct deposit at the bank or opening a credit card account with BofA. Competitors Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC) and JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM) took it a step further and announced plans to abandon the pilot program altogether, eliminating the debit card fee plan. Ed Kadletz, head of Wells Fargo’s debit and prepaid cards, said in the official statement “As we adjust to changes in our business, we will continue to stay attuned to what our customers wan. This means understanding their needs as we continue to deliver the world-class service, convenience, and value they have come to expect from Wells Fargo.”

The abrupt changes in policies could be seen as a win for customers who made their displeasure known and received concessions, but could open significant new problems. Financial service firms lost billions in annual revenue when Congress took away their ability to charge fees to merchants whenever a debit card is swiped, capping such charges at 21 cents on average and the firms implemented the monthly fees to recoup that cash. All three large banks expected more than $1 billion a year in lost fees, so the abandoning of the debit card fee plan may help appease some customers, but may require radical changes within the banks. Since banks are service oriented headcount firms, which could mean large scale layoffs which will threaten and already unstable economy.

Investors across the globe have remained cautious due to the instability in Europe, and the changing regulatory environment in the US which is forcing many banks to reconsider growth plans. Recently though, the news has started to trickle out that better things are to come, and as a result the world markets have begun a rapid and impressive rebound.

Today, financial stocks in particular have surged in pre-market and early day trading. What is pointed to as the origin for this growth? In particular, it is the central bank activity. Early today, six central banks agreed to provide more liquidity to the markets by lowering rates on dollar swaps. This liquidity is seen as absolutely necessary, following the recent credit downgrades of large U.S. banks by Standard & Poor’s credit rating agency. Dow futures responded positively, swinging up 263 points in response.

Bank of America (NYSE: BAC), the beleaguered Charlotte based banking behemoth saw it’s shares fall below $5 per share after the downgrade, dangerous territory as fund managers would begin having even more trouble keeping it in their portfolios at such depressed levels. Following the news, Bank of America shares rose over 6% in pre market trading. A similar story greeted Citigroup (NYSE: C) shares this morning, which rose over 6% after falling due to the credit downgrade.

The market was also responding to a better than expected ADP jobs report that said private sector employment rose 206,000 in November. Gold and oil also rose on the announcement, with West Texas oil futures rising above $101 per barrel.

Investors are looking for positive signs to grab onto in an otherwise difficult market. Investor confidence remains low, and although Black Friday spending seems to imply consumers are out spending money feverishly, that confidence hasn’t yet seeped into the financial markets. The liquidity promise by the central banks could go a long way to improving this, and investors will have to continue to monitor conditions closely as the daily feeds of positive and negative indicators continue to trickle in.

Part of her prescription for the company is to boost research spending and limit the size of acquisitions.  This will allow the company to conserve cash and spur homegrown innovation, which has been neglected by the company over the past decade.  Avoiding large acquisitions will also allow the company to rebuild its balance sheet.

During a conference call with analysts, Whitman said, “HP is getting back to business fundamentals in 2012.  No more surprises.”  Whitman plans to unveil more plans in the first half of 2012.

Areas of the business to be revamped include the personal computers division and information-technology services division.  Hewlett-Packard suffered declines in its printing, PC, and server divisions in the fourth quarter that ended October 31.  Chief Financial Officer Cathie Lesjak said on the conference call that consumer spending remains soft and businesses are beginning to slow purchasing.

The company may still seek small software deals next year, but it is unlikely that it will pursue purchases more expensive than $500 million.  Whitman said, “We need to rebuild our balance sheet.  Software may be the one area where there are some assets ready to move.”  The company had $8 billion in cash on Oct. 31.

The company also plans to spend more on research and development in the coming year.  In the fourth quarter, HP spent 2.6% of sales on research and development.  This percentage has steadily decreased from more than 4% in 2004.

Fourth-quarter profit for HP was $1.17.  The profit for fiscal 2011 was affected by after-tax one-time costs of $3.3 billion.  $1.64 billion of the expenses stemmed from a decision earlier this year to stop making devices that use WebOS, obtained in last year’s acquisition of Palm Inc. for $1.2 billion.  Sales of $32.1 billion matched analysts’ projections.

These cuts come as banks confront a difficult capital markets environment, sluggish economic growth, and new regulations crimping revenue from consumer banking.  According to a Reuters tally, more than 120,000 jobs have been cut in the banking industry worldwide this year.  Banks often target technology when they are looking to tighten their belts because the reductions can be invisible to customers.

Employees in a server management group that employs about 500 have been told that the company is planning to cut about 25 staff and eliminate 30 unfilled positions in their department.  Project Compass, the efficiency program the company launched at the end of last year, will eliminate jobs as well.  Project Compass’s goal is to reduce quarterly expenses from about $12.5 billion in the second quarter of this year to $11 billion in the fourth quarter of 2012.

Wells Fargo is the fourth largest U.S. bank by assets but the second largest by employees.  Wells spokesman Ancel Martinez said that the bank might add staff to some groups even as it cuts from others and that laid-off employees can seek jobs in other parts of the company.  The bank has not disclosed a specific number of jobs to be cut and the bank spokesman said he could not provide details because “outcomes are not final.”  The company has around 263,800 full-time employees.

The bank is trying to cut costs by operating more efficiently.  Centralizing some staff functions and simplifying the company’s technology operations are part of the program being implemented by Wells Fargo to achieve this goal.  The bank has technology hubs in Scottsdale, Arizona; Charlotte, North Carolina; Minneapolis, Minnesota; and San Francisco, California.

The companies said in a joint statement that they still intend to pursue the $39 billion merger.  The statement also announced preparations for a federal antitrust lawsuit that has been filed in an attempt to block the deal.  AT&T and T-Mobile records about the potential effects of the merger could be used by the Justice Department in the antitrust trial.

The companies have publicly stated that the merger would not reduce competition and would create jobs in the United States, but the Justice Department says that the plan would severely restrict competition and F.C.C. officials says that confidential filings from AT&T indicate the plan would eliminate jobs.  F.C.C. chairman Julius Genachowski made the decision earlier this week that the merger did not meet the commission’s standard for approval.  The efforts to block the merger reflect renewed federal efforts to rein in excessive business practices.

Germany-based Deutsche Telekom released a statement saying that the withdrawal “is being undertaken by both companies to consolidate their strength and to focus their continuing efforts on obtaining antitrust clearance for the transaction from the Department of Justice.  As soon as practical, Deutsche Telekom and AT&T intend to seek necessary F.C.C. approval.”

Craig Moffett, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein, said that the withdrawal of the F.C.C. application “is a tacit acknowledgment by AT&T that this story is all but over.  The fat lady hasn’t started singing yet, but she’s holding the mike and the band is about to play.”

Gigi B. Sohn, president of Public Knowledge, said in a statement, “The chances that AT&T will take over T-Mobile are almost gone.  While you can never count out AT&T entirely, the fact that they pulled their F.C.C. application speaks volumes about the company’s lack of confidence” in gaining approval for the deal.

The video shows hens packed into industrial cages too small for spreading their wings.  The video also shows dead chickens left to decompose in cages with live egg-laying hens, bloody eggs, beaks being burned off of the chicks, animals being crushed in workers’ hands, and other chickens being thrown away in the trash.  The video was first shown on “Good Morning America”.

In further problems for the company, Sparboe received a warning letter from the Food & Drug Administration citing serious violations in five facilities owned by the company.  The violations detailed in the warning letter include inadequate rodent, fly and other pest prevention, inadequate monitoring of chicks, failure to develop farm-specific Salmonella prevention plans, and other issues.  The letter also stated that, “Failure to promptly correct these violations may result in FDA taking regulatory action without further notice, such as seizure, injunction, or the initiation of administrative enforcement procedures.”

Commenting on the video, Beth Sparboe Schnell, president of Sparboe Farms, said in a statement, “Acts depicted in the footage are totally unacceptable and completely at odds with our values as egg farmers.  In fact, they are in direct violation of our animal care code of conduct, which all of our employees read, sign and are expected to follow each day.”

The company announced that it is conducting an internal investigation and so far has identified four individuals who were responsible for the behavior shown on the video, who were then terminated.  Schnell added, “Management changes have taken place, and our investigation is ongoing.  We will hold any others involved accountable for their actions.  We are documenting all corrective actions taken.”

The 5.7% drop in earnings was attributed to weaker North American consumer sales that countered international growth.  The company now expects 20% or more of its sales this fiscal year to come from emerging markets.

Chief Executive William R. Johnson said, “Given the economic headwinds we’re facing and the difficulties we’re encountering in U.S. foodservice and Australia, we expect to get to our full year [earnings per share] target in a different way.”  He added, “Those who are not pushing aggressively into emerging markets are going to wake up one day and find out that the world left them behind.”

Heinz’s bottom line has taken a hit because of higher commodity prices, prompting the company to increase prices on many of their products and to trim costs with plant closures and layoffs.  Consumer data reviewed by Heinz shows that many consumers are now purchasing smaller package sizes in virtually every category of Heinz products as a result of the weak economic environment.  Heinz makes its namesake ketchup, Ore-Ida frozen potatoes, and Weight Watchers Smart Ones frozen meals.

In response, the company has decided to move up the roll out of items that will appeal to those consumers, including a new, 10-ounce version of Heinz ketchup, retail sizes of mustard, Worcestershire sauce, and Heinz 57 sauce, and a new line of Heinz Home Style Beans, all sold for around $1 per unit.  Mr. Johnson said “Importantly, these new products will enhance our ability to serve the rapidly growing number of U.S. households with incomes below $50,000,” a segment of society that has grown three times faster than households with incomes above that threshold.

He said that the beans were being brought back at the request of consumers.  He stated, “We believe this is the right time for the return of this convenient, nutritious and value-oriented classic.  Consumers have been turning to comfort foods during the recession, and a recent consumer poll ranked baked beans as the No. 2 comfort food.”

The company has not announced when the layoffs will occur, but individuals with direct knowledge of the matter have said that the layoffs will take place throughout the next year.  The total number of positions that will be eliminated has not been disclosed by the company and the number could exceed 3,000.  The layoffs at Citigroup are considered to be lighter than the layoffs for some of its closest competitors.

Many firms on Wall Street are embracing austerity and trimming their workforces, tossing many bankers into an unfriendly employment market with few prospects to obtain comparable positions at other firms.  Bank of America has eliminated 3,500 positions over the past few months and is contemplating laying off 30,000 people in a wider round of job cuts.  Goldman Sachs has also announced that it would be eliminating a number of positions with the company in the near future, with the layoffs expected to reach around 1,000 jobs or 3% of the company’s workforce.  Tens of thousands of security industry workers have lost their jobs since January 2008.

The employment picture for security industry workers is little better overseas.  Nomura, based in Japan, has announced layoffs as part of its plan to trim costs by $1.2 billion but has not given an estimated figure for the layoffs.  UBS, based in Switzerland, plans to eliminate 3,500 jobs over the next two years, and Credit Suisse is planning to eliminate 600 positions in its investment banking division in the future.

The results for the quarter resulted in a 2.5% gain in the company’s shares.  The results reassured investors, some of whom had been nervous about economic pressures depressing consumer spending, a revenue miss in the company’s May results, and reports of higher costs at ESPN, among other issues.  Disney has reported steady gains quarter after quarter under Chief Executive Bob Iger.

Disney made a recent deal with the National Football League to keep “Monday Night Football” on ESPN through 2021 at a cost of about $1.9 billion a year.  The deal is viewed as expensive but Disney defended the agreement on the terms that it provided viewers and advertisers with the long-term certainty of quality content and expanded digital rights.

Disney plans to replace NBA games with college basketball and other live sports programming in response to the NBA labor dispute and expects that any decrease in ad dollars will be offset by not having to pay rights fees for NBA games.  Disney Chief Financial Officer Jay Rasulo said, “We remain hopeful that there will be a quick resolution to the NBA situation.  However, our broad portfolio of rights will enable us to effectively program ESPN without the NBA.”

Quarterly results were solid across the company.  The parks and resorts group reported an 11% revenue increase, to $3.1 billion.  The media networks unit posted a 9% gain in revenue, to $4.8 billion.  The studio and entertainment division saw revenue slide 8% to just under $1.46 billion.  Revenue for the company jumped 7% to $10.43 billion and net income for the quarter rose 30% to $1.1 billion.

The department said in May, “By ending the head-to-head competition between TaxACT and H&R Block, American taxpayers would be left with only two major digital do-it-yourself tax preparation providers.  This would lead to higher prices, lower quality and reduced innovation.”  The Justice Department recently filed a federal antitrust lawsuit to block AT&T’s $39 billion purchase of T-Mobile USA on similar grounds, making this ruling a bad omen for AT&T.

Judge Beryl A. Howell of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia granted a permanent injunction to stop H&R Block’s bid for 2SS Holdings.  The judge ordered that H&R Block take “any and all necessary steps to prevent” the deal.  The two companies have time to redact confidential business information before Judge Howell’s decision in the case is publicly disclosed.

Gene King, an H&R Block spokesman, said in an e-mail statement, “We are disappointed with the decision and continue to believe this was in the best interest of consumers.  We are taking time to analyze the verdict to determine our immediate next steps.”  During the tax season of 2010, H&R Block reportedly handled around 5.9 million digital returns and TaxACT processed around 5 million returns, with the totals of both companies accounting for about 31% of the 35 million total returns filed from home computers with the IRS.

The original video series will be produced by Disney and distributed on a co-branded channel on Disney.com and YouTube.  Amateur video culled from the torrent uploaded to YouTube will also be included on the channel.

James A. Pitaro, co-president of Disney Interactive, said, “It’s imperative to go where our audience is.”  He also state that the goal is to “bring Disney’s legacy of storytelling to a new generation of families and Disney enthusiasts on the platforms they prefer.”

Mr. Pitaro, part of a new leadership team at the division, is under pressure to create Web videos that can be monetized quickly.  Disney Interactive has lost over $300 million in the last four quarters and Disney.com’s traffic has been dropping at an alarming rate.  Unique visitors to the website totaled 12.7 million in September, down from 17.9 million in June.

YouTube is hoping to compete with cable television for ad dollars by adding more professional videos to the website.  Robert Kyncl, YouTube’s global head for content partnerships, commented, “It’s an acknowledgment that we want to work with the best brands and, yes, we expect this partnership to attract new advertisers.”

YouTube walks a careful line when it comes to attracting children to become viewers on the website.  There is no age requirement to access the website but individuals are supposed to be at least 13 years old to register an account.  The content created with Disney is seen as good way to get kid-friendly content on the website as the company is currently locked in a legal battle with Viacom, which owns Nickelodeon and keeps its videos off YouTube.

This partnership follows an announcement made by YouTube in October that the company planned to create dozens of channels featuring comedians, sports stars, musicians, and other entertainers.  Cash advances are being offered to prospective producers, according to people knowledgeable of the plan but not authorized to speak publicly.  The investments signify Google’s belief that the Internet is the third phase of the television business, after network TV and cable TV, and its dedication to being a leader in the industry.

Bank officials have stated that the plan is viewed as an opportunity to reduce debt and interest expenses while raising capital.  This was a reversal of other announcements claiming that the company did not intend to issue any new shares in the company.  A filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission outlined the plan and the bank is expected to go ahead with the exchange before long, although the decision is not considered final yet.

The value of Bank of America’s shares has decreased dramatically due to numerous issues plaguing the company and worrying investors.  The bank faces tens of billions of dollars in liabilities for its role in the subprime mortgage meltdown.  Bank of America also reversed plans to impose a $5 fee on debit card holders after consumers and politicians in Washington voiced their outrage at the plan.  Shares of Bank of America have fallen nearly 50% in 2011.

The decision to issue new common shares will not reduce earnings if money is saved on the interest payments of the preferred shares and the bank may even see increased earnings in the short term.  The decision to swap shares will also increase the company’s Tier 1 capital base because preferred stock does not count as common equity under international regulatory standards while common stock does count.

Jerry Dubrowski, a spokesman for the bank, said, “We want to exchange one form of capital, which is very expensive, for another, which counts toward our Tier 1 common equity on terms that are economically favorable to us.  Our goal is to have the strongest balance sheet we can have, and this is an important step.”

Volatility in the European financial markets is viewed as a contributor to the loss as the volatility continues to affect investment banking operations worldwide.  The bank has been increasingly moving away from its reliance on the investment banking portion of the business and has looked for ways to cut its balance sheet.  The British government owns 83% of the bank after it received a £20 billion bailout during the financial crisis of 2008.

The bank’s chief executive, Stephen Hester, said, “In the current hostile market environment, RBS is making good progress on its restructuring plan.”  He added that RBS’s exposure to other distressed European sovereign debt was now negligible, but warned of a tough recovery ahead and the possibility of further job cuts, particularly in the investment banking division.  “We expect difficult conditions to continue in the fourth quarter,” he said.

The company said in a statement that it had disposed of £3 billion of assets and run off an additional £4 billion, while £1 billion of asset sale deals have been signed, but have not been completed.  Since 2008, the work force has been reduced by 27,000 and the bank’s balance sheet has been trimmed by more than £2 trillion.

The net profit for the company in the three months through September totaled £1.2 billion, including the third quarter’s one-time accounting gains.  The same period last year had a £1.1 billion loss.  The bank said its net earnings had been helped by a £2.4 billion gain on its own debt.

Executives at the Jefferies Group have said that the company has effectively hedged for whatever the market does.  The firm’s report shows more than $2.4 billion in gross exposure to European bonds, but its total net exposure to euro zone bonds is $9 million because of trades where it has taken a short position to offset the risk of holding the bonds.  When detailing its position on Italian bonds, the firm revealed that it owned $2.09 billion in bonds and an offsetting short position of $2.01 billion.

Richard B. Handler, chief executive of Jefferies, said, “These are fragile times in the financial market and we decided the only way to conclusively dispel rumors, misinformation and misplaced concerns is with unprecedented transparency about internal information that is rarely, if ever, publicly disclosed.”  He also stated that, “Our firm stands on a solid foundation of over $8.5 billion of long-term capital and we look forward to continued success.”

Executives of the company have reached out to analysts, investors, and traders to offer them reassurances and have issued five press releases in the course of a week explaining the company’s positions. While Jefferies’ leverage isn’t considered extreme, with a ratio of about 13 to 1, the company must borrow $13 for every dollar the firm has in equity.  Shares of the Jefferies Group have fallen on investor fears that the firm could suffer the same fate as MF Global, a firm that collapsed partly because of large bets made on European debt.

Analysts said Jefferies’ business model depends heavily on short-term borrowing, exposing it to trouble if lenders become nervous and pull back on credit.  Dependence on short-term financing heightens risk when volatility increases and market conditions deteriorate.  Jefferies is not the only brokerage firm relying heavily on short-term borrowing, and these firms are likely to face more pressure in the future.

The wireless operator also announced that it may need an additional $7 billion in new financing over the next several years to cover a cash shortfall caused by heavy investments in the iPhone introduction and a big network upgrade.  Sprint warned it would need to refinance $4 billion of debt and raise up to $3 billion from vendor financing deals to cover costs and keep its cash balance at a minimum of $2 billion.  The benefits from iPhone are not expected to exceed its costs until 2015.  Sprint had been facing criticism for refusing to disclose iPhone costs to the company at a recent conference.

Sprint estimated the present value of anticipated profits from the contract at $7 billion to $8 billion over the next four years, but analysts are skeptical.  Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett said, “To meet their target, they’d effectively have to turn their entire company into an Apple shop.”  Another analyst mentioned that savvy investors should stay away from purchasing shares in the company until they see clear signs that Sprint will succeed.

Mizuho analyst Michael Nelson said, “They’re betting the house on two things at the same time.  If they pull it off, great.  If they don’t, their financial performance would get materially worse, and they could have significant liquidity risks.”  He also said that it would take at least one year before investors could assess whether the plans are working because of the timing of the network upgrade.

The uncertainty that has surrounded Greece this year, and the extent of contagion due to any failure had dragged stocks down and depressed overall investor confidence. Today though, stocks opened higher and surged throughout the day on the good news. Financial stocks saw particularly large gains as a result, with Citigroup (NYSE: C), JP Morgan Chase (NYSE: JPM), Bank of America (NYSE: BAC), and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS) all posting large increases for the days. As investors speculated these firms had the most direct exposure to the Greek credit crisis, a resolution to that crisis should help buoy prices. Many of the banks continue to inexplicably trade below book value, leaving large appreciation potential in the near and long term.

Although not a typical financial company, Visa (NYSE: V) reported earnings today that were slightly above expectations, further pushing gains higher. Visa is a unique financial intermediary as they do not take on trading risk; instead, their business model is based on getting paid a percentage of reach transaction every time someone uses their credit or debit card. Taking into account the gradual move from cash only to a primarily electronic transaction economy, Visa has plenty of room to grow, and this is reflected in its price, which is hovering near all-time highs.

Exxon Mobil (NYSE: XOM) also reported earnings today, posting impressive results. The oil giant reported a 41% increase in earnings, in line with Wall Street’s expectations, and posting modest gains afterwards. Exxon Mobil remains the U.S. firm with largest market capitalization, close to $400 billion.

The debt crisis is not over year, as Spain, Italy, and Portugal remain on shaky ground, but some good news has been latched onto quickly. The lift generated by the debt restructuring news should continue to have positive effects, as European and Asia markets are likely to build a rally of their own when they open tonight and early tomorrow morning. The spillover effect may fuel additional rallies in the U.S. tomorrow, though profit taking is always a possibility as well following a quick run up.

John Stumpf, chairman, president and CEO of Wells Fargo commented “With our neighbors across the country suffering during this prolonged economic downturn, the generosity of our team members continues to be a point of pride for Wells Fargo. Year after year, they respond with empathy and leadership by donating their time and money to make a difference in people’s lives.  Our team members’ deep commitment to their communities explains why Wells Fargo, the nation’s 12th largest employer, has been United Way’s No. 1 largest corporate campaign over the past two years.”

In addition to the cash donations, the one-month campaign also resulted in 122,000 volunteer hours contributed by team members to a variety of nonprofits and other causes in local communities across the country.

During this year, 4,700 team members in Charlotte, set a national record for corporate participation in an American Heart Association fundraising walk, raising more than $375,000 to help the American Heart Association fight heart disease.  In the Greater Bay and San Francisco Bay area, 4,500 team members volunteered 13,325 hours on 280 different projects during the month of September, including the San Francisco Public Library and “habitat restoration” on Alcatraz.  In the Twin Cities, 1,000 team members volunteered with Feed My Starving Children to prepare and package 91,917 nutritious meals for needy children in countries around the world and raised $22,000 to help pay for the ingredients and shipping expenses.

Brian Gallagher, president and CEO of United Way Worldwide commented that “United Way could not make the impact that it does without important, longstanding partners like Wells Fargo. Congratulations for running this year’s top campaign. Wells Fargo and its employees continue to demonstrate their commitment to advancing the common good. Through their tremendous generosity and focus on volunteerism they’re improving lives and strengthening communities throughout the country.”

Wells Fargo team members invest in nonprofits throughout the year. To- date, including the Campaign, team members have donated $63.9 million of their own dollars to nonprofits, a 15 percent increase over 2010, and the ninth straight year of year-over-year double-digit increases in pledge totals. The firm also matches contributions up to $5,000 per employee, further emboldening the contribution efforts.

Today, the firm announced it has opened a customer assistance center in Warwick to serve its mortgage customers throughout Rhode Island. Borrowers will have the opportunity to meet face-to-face with Bank of America home retention specialists to review options for home loan modifications or other alternatives to foreclosure, as well as review loan modification files already in progress. The announcement comes after the firm held a customer outreach event in Providence from July 7-9, which helped 400 attendees meet face-to-face with home retention specialists to review options for modifications or assist with other alternatives to foreclosure.

Foreclosures continue to plague the housing market, and loan re-structuring is seen as a key tool needed to help stem the tide. Rebecca Mairone, national mortgage outreach executive for Bank of America Home Loans commented “Face-to-face dialogue is an incredibly important element of homeowner assistance, which is why we have established a permanent presence for our Rhode Island customers. Home retention specialists in Warwick will play a critical role as we seek to build on the more than 3,800 permanent loan modifications we have completed statewide since 2008.”

The Warwick customer assistance center team will follow each customer file through the entire loan modification process, make on-site decisions in many cases, and assist with other available foreclosure prevention solutions if a modification is not possible. The team will also assist Spanish-speaking customers by offering bilingual staff. Bank of America customers can make appointments and get more information on required documentation by calling the center at 401.535.1061. Home retention specialists are available to meet with borrowers by appointment only from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekdays and 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturdays.

Although the firm has continued to receive significant negative press, the firm has shown a clear commitment to the communities they operate in. Since the first of the year, Bank of America has expanded its network of customer assistance centers for mortgage customers from five to nearly 50. More than 42,000 homeowners have received assistance through these centers.

According to a memo obtained by Bloomberg News, Buckley T. Ratchford, who served as the head of global bank loan trading and distressed investing at Goldman, has resigned from the firm. Ratchford, 40, a partner and managing director, will leave at the end of this year. Michael DuVally, a spokesman for the New York based bank, confirmed the memo’s contents and declined to comment further. Blake Mather, Ratchford’s partner in running bank loan sales is also leaving the firm. During the conference call with analysts announcing the third quarter’s results, Goldman’s CFO David Viniar commented that trading in the credit department, which includes bonds and loans was ‘challenging’ during the quarter.

Ratchford joined Goldman Sachs in 1998 and became head of global bank loan distressed investing in 2003. Revenue from fixed-income, currencies and commodities dropped 36 percent to $1.73 billion from $2.69 billion a year earlier. The bank said in July that it planned to cut about 1,000 jobs to help reduce annual costs by $1.2 billion. Cost cutting will help Goldman on margin, but the underlying issue is trading revenue, not the expenses. The fall in revenue has put the firm in unchartered waters for them, dealing with quarterly losses and taking the wrong side of many trades.

This is not the first time Ratchford has been in the news, back in December he was featured on Comedy Central’s ‘The Colbert Report’ after one of the show’s writers found his credit card on the street. Colbert joked at the time that he would reveal one digit of the credit card each night until Ratchford came on the show to defend Wall Street bonuses. Goldman Sachs shortly thereafter contacted the comedian to request the card be returned, which he complied with and ended the plan. The success, or lack thereof, of the global distressed bank loan trading department is no joking matter, however. The department’s results have detrimentally impacted the firm overall, and perhaps a change at the top is needed to get the group turned around.

The department head’s successor has not yet been publicly announced.

Gupta was charged with one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud and five counts of fraud. He faces five years in prison on the conspiracy charge and 20 years on each of the securities fraud charges. He also faces fines of more than $5 million. Although he is released on bond, U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff ordered him to surrender his passport. While the government probe has been going on for four years, Gupta, 62, is the highest ranking executive to be named in the investigation.

The arrest and charges sound eerily similar to former Galleon Group founder Raj Rajaratnam, who earlier this month was sentence to 11 years in prison for his role in insider trading.

Gary Naftalis, Gupta’s attorney commented that “The facts demonstrate that Mr. Gupta is an innocent man and that he has always acted with honesty and integrity. He did not trade in any securities, did not tip Mr. Rajaratnam so he could trade, and did not share in any profits as part of any quid pro quo. We are confident that any accusations that he did anything improper cannot withstand scrutiny by any fair and impartial factfinder.”

The complaint from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) alleges that Gupta illegally tipped off Rajaratnam with inside information about the quarterly earnings of both Goldman Sachs and P&G as well as an impending $5 billion investment in Goldman by Berkshire at the height of the financial crisis.

Gupta stepped down from his post at Goldman in 2001, and left P&G’s board in March of this year. It has been a far fall for a person who once had a meteoric rise, graduating top of his class at the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology before moving on to Harvard Business School. After graduation and joining McKinsey, he quickly grew and in 1994 was appointed to lead the consulting firm. It has long been speculated that Gupta fed Rajaratnam inside information on the earnings of Goldman Sachs and Procter & Gamble, but the wire taps from Rajaratnam’s trial never specifically mention the name of the source, nor do they ever indicate Gupta. As such, the case against Gupta is largely circumstantial, but only the future can tell what will come of these charges.

The $12 million fine is one of the highest penalties paid recently to the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.  In a released statement, UBS neither admitted nor denied the accusations but stated that the company was pleased that the matter was resolved and all issues had been remediated.  The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority is also investigating other banks for possibly failing to comply with the same rules UBS is accused of non-compliance with.

UBS has been pummeled by several serious problems over the past few years.  Most recently, a rogue trader drained the bank of $2.3 billion, causing the bank’s profit to plummet 39% and resulting in numerous cost cutting measures, including the elimination of 3,500 jobs.  The bank has also had to notify the Securities and Exchange Commission about potential problems with its internal controls.

The case against UBS Securities, an American arm of the Swiss banking giant, focuses on short-selling, where investors bet that the price of a security will decline. Short-selling permits investors to sell securities without owning them, provided that the investors eventually borrow the security when it is time to deliver.

UBS is accused of permitting the firm’s employees to sell short without verifying that the traders could produce the underlying shares.  The bank is also accused of misidentifying several short trades as being long trades.  There were a number of instances found, touching equities trading across the firm.  Regulators claimed that UBS had violated securities rules that require brokerage firms to have “reasonable” belief the shares will be delivered before placing a short-sale order.

The enforcement chief of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, J. Bradley Bennett, said, “The fine reflected broad gaps in their compliance system.  I think it’s very significant.” He also stated that the rules regulating the short-selling of securities were put into place “in order to prevent potentially abusive naked short-selling,” and added that “the duration, scope and volume of UBS’s locate and order-marking violations created a potential for harm to the integrity of the market.”

Reality TV mogul Mark Burnett, BBC America, and KABC-TV Eyewitness News have signed on to create content for the new network and the channel is being spearheaded by Los Angeles-based ChannelPort Communications LLC.  Leland Edmondson, founder of ChannelPort, said, “The intention is to catch and engage the customer, and then enhance their experience.  The McDonald’s customer is everyone, and we want not to be passive viewers but to be active and participatory with this network.”

The content for the McDonald’s channel will be tailored to particular communities around the individual restaurants, and will include local news, information on upcoming films, albums and TV shows, and other entertainment features.  Vimby, Burnett’s Van Nuys-based digital production company, will be a key content provider for McDonald’s.  Vimby uses a network of more than 150 filmmakers in 40 cities to generate original programming for the Web, portable devices and television.

Participating restaurants will undergo a number of changes.  Dining areas will be fitted with two high-definition, big screen televisions in locations that will make them visible to 70% of eating areas.  The audio for the channel will be heard through the screen or ceiling speakers.  Customers who do not want to see or hear the channel will be able to eat in “quiet zones” set aside for this purpose,

The channel will soon be up in 800 McDonald’s restaurants in Southern and Central California.  The project has already been tested in Los Angeles, San Diego, and Las Vegas.  The McDonald’s channel is expected to reach 18 million to 20 million people a month.  If successful, the project may expand nationwide.

This is the second decision made by Netflix recently that has caused controversy.  The first was Netflix’s decision to eliminate its subscription plan that offered unlimited streaming and DVD rentals for $9.99.  The subscription plan was replaced by two separate plans that were both priced at $7.99 that offered one DVD rental at a time or unlimited streaming, meaning that users that wanted both services would have to pay an increased cost of $15.98 instead of $9.99.

When Qwikster was first unveiled, Hastings explained, “[W]e realized that streaming and DVD by mail are becoming two quite different businesses, with very different cost structures, different benefits that need to be marketed differently, and we need to let each grow and operate independently.  It’s hard for me to write this after over 10 years of mailing DVDs with pride, but we think it is necessary and best.  In a few weeks, we will rename our DVD by mail service to Qwikster.”

The two services, Netflix and Qwikster, were to be operated on separate websites, requiring users that wanted to access both services to maintain two separate accounts and pay two separate companies each month.  Any movies reviews by the user would have to be posted twice as well, once on each website.

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said in a blog post, “It is clear that for many of our members two websites would make things more difficult, so we are going to keep Netflix as one place to go for streaming and DVDs.  This means no change: one website, one account, one password… in other words, no Qwikster.”

In addition to the request that Microsoft be forced to unbundle Skype from Windows, the complaint also requests that European competition authorities require Microsoft to open Skype’s internet phone network to the services of rivals.  This would be accomplished by requiring Microsoft to disclose confidential computer coding, enabling rival services to connect calls to Skype users.

Legal experts have differing opinions on whether the complaint, filed by Messagenet, a Milan-based rival to Skype internet’s phone service, would cause difficulties or prevent European support of the deal.  Arguments such as these have been levied at Microsoft in Europe for close to two decades and, in past years; the European Commission has been sympathetic to complaints about Microsoft’s strategy of bundling applications that are popular with its Windows systems.

Denis Waelbroeck, an antitrust lawyer at Ashurts in Brussels, commented, “These types of complaints from competitors are to be expected.  I would expect that the commission will look at this seriously, but I think that in the end, the officials will reach their own independent decision. This doesn’t mean the complaint will be upheld.”

A decision on the acquisition will reportedly be made public on Oct. 7 by E.U. competition commissioner Joaquin Almunia.  A spokeswoman for Mr. Almunia, Amelia Torres, said the commission considers every submission from competitors in antitrust cases, but declined to comment specifically on Messagenet’s complaint.  Mr. Almunia’s office approved Microsoft’s takeover of Yahoo’s search business in February 2010.

Microsoft may try to delay an immediate decision and obtain more time by making a request for an extension to prepare an answer to the complaint.  Jesse Verstraete, a spokesman for Microsoft in Brussels, said, “The proposed acquisition is still undergoing regulatory review and we are working closely with the agencies.  Until all regulatory approvals are obtained, it is business as usual at Microsoft and at Skype.”  Skype’s internet phone network had 124 million regular users in June 2011.

In order to avoid a protracted legal battle, Reebok has chosen to settle with the Federal Trade Commission, although the company says that it does not agree with the agency’s conclusions.  “We stand by our EasyTone technology,” said Daniel Sarro, a company spokesman.  “We have received overwhelmingly enthusiastic feedback from thousands of EasyTone customers, and we remain committed to the further development of our EasyTone line of products.”

Reebok introduced the shoes and their “balance ball-inspired technology” in 2009.  Advertising claimed that just wearing the sneakers would tone and strengthen the legs of customers 11% better and sculpt bottoms 28% better than regular walking shoes.  The sneakers are designed to create a slight instability, which forces the muscles to work harder, becoming stronger and more shapely.  Reebok ceased using advertising that made the disputed health claims last year, and under the terms of the settlement, the company is prohibited from making these claims in the future unless it can provide more evidence and scientific proof that the claims are true.

It is unclear at this point whether regulators would go after other manufacturers for making similar claims about their toning shoes and clothing.  The industry is already reeling from inventory accumulations and lawsuits challenging the claims made in the advertising of the products, and the penalty levied on Reebok is considered to be unusually harsh.  Sales of toning sneakers and footwear were more than $1 billion in 2010, but the first eight months of 2011 saw sales fall 46% compared to the same period during the previous year.

The implementation of the additional fee for debit card usage comes at a time when purchases made by debit card are on the rise.  Between April 2010 and April 2011, debit card transactions authorized by signature increased by nearly 10%.  At the same time, recent legislation has placed more restrictions on the amounts that banks can charge retailers for debit card transactions at their locations, decreasing the expected profits from these charges.  The added fees are widely seen as an attempt to replace the revenue lost from the implementation of these new regulations.

U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL), who sponsored portions of the new legislation, released the following statement in response to the decision by Bank of America to charge their customers additional fees:

“It seems that old habits die hard for Bank of America. After years of raking in excess profits off an unfair and anti-competitive interchange system, Bank of America is trying to find new ways to pad their profits by sticking it to its customers. It’s overt, unfair and I hope their customers have the final say.”

“Earlier this year the Federal Reserve determined that the interchange fees Visa and MasterCard fix for big banks grossly exceed the cost of processing a debit card transaction by some 400%. These hidden fees were designed to boost big-bank profits by charging small businesses and merchants every time a debit card was swiped. And profit they did. Bank of America hauls in billions in debit interchange each year.”

“Thankfully, on October 1st that flawed system will be replaced by a more transparent and competitive market. Swipe fee regulation will still allow banks to cover the actual costs of debit transactions but will rein in the banks’ excessive profit-taking. Small business and merchants will benefit from fee relief and consumers will benefit from lower prices. And banks that try to make up their excess profits off the backs of their customers will finally learn how a competitive market works.”

The two airlines are expected to be fully integrated by the middle of 2012.  The Secretary Treasurer for the Continental Master Executive Council, Randy Hodge, detailed how pilots have worked on a continue in force contract since 1997 and desired an agreement so the company can reach full synergy.  Hodge said, “We negotiated in 30 days that gave up our pensions to save the company from bankruptcy.  We think they are dragging their feet here.”

The pilots marched quietly back and forth in an enclosed area decked out in full uniform.  The pilots purposely decided against whistles and other noisemakers to draw attention to the proceedings, unlike the Occupy Wall Street protests located a few blocks away and August’s Verizon employee protests.  Hodge stated this was because the pilots “were professionals and very disciplined”. The group, represented by the Air Lines Pilots Association, concluded that the best strategy would be to act respectfully and show strong numbers.

The strategy was designed to appeal to frequent fliers in the Wall Street area and show that the merger between the two airlines was not proceeding as smoothly as presented by the company.  Capt. Jay Pierce, chairman of the Continental pilots union, said in a statement, “Management may be attempting to portray success with the progress of the merger, but the reality is that it takes more than painting airplanes, hanging new airport signs and revamping a frequent-flier program.  Real process with implementing the merger requires the involvement of pilots and an acknowledgement by management of the contributions that pilots make in creating a successful airline.”

Bank of America (NYSE: BAC), the nation’s largest bank as measured by deposits, has announced plans that it will start charging a $5 monthly fee when customers make debit card purchases. The fee will be rolled out starting early next year. Prior to this year the idea of paying to use your own debit card was unheard of, but it may quickly become the norm. Several banks have recently introduced or started testing debit card fees.

The fee for these debit cards is in addition to the newly introduced account management fees rolled out last year.  Anna Pace, a spokeswoman for Bank of America commented that customers will only be charged the fee if they use their debit cards for purchases in any given month. Those who only use their cards at ATMs won’t have to pay.

The era of new fees is upon us, as reflected by a recent study carried out by Bankrate.com. The survey found that in 2009, 79 percent of checking account were free with no strings attached, compared to just 45 percent now.

Beginning in October, part of the new bank regulations will go into effect which limit the fees banks can charge merchants for debit card swipes. In 2009, those fees generated $19 billion in revenue for banks, according to a Nilson Report which tracks the payments industry.

If consumers choose to select ‘pay with credit’ when using their debit card, that can be even more advantageous for the banks. Bart Narter, a banking analyst with Celent, a consulting firm commented that “It’s become a more profitable business, at least in relation to debit cards.”

Several banks are considering a similar move, to charge for debit cards. SunTrust, JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM), and Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC) all have plans in the pipeline, meaning this will soon become an industry norm.

Although the outlook is bleak in some of it’s lines of businesses, the Merrill Lynch division remains a crowned jewel. Acquired during the financial crisis of 2008, the thundering herd of financial advisors continues to post solid profits, even while management has spun the revolving doors since the acquisition.

The firm’s books are plagued with toxic mortgage assets, but that is only half the problem. They may need to raise capital to meet newly-stringent global liquidity standards, while it faces a wave of huge multi-billion-dollar lawsuits related to its poisonous dump of mortgage securities. While every bank struggles to deal with the new Dodd Frank financial regulatory reform, BofA will seem to have the most difficult path in light of the firm’s acquisitions. In the second quarter of 2011, the bank lost an astounding $8.8-billion, partially due to the burden of its enormous mortgage/legal liabilities.

Robert Lutts, President and Chief Investment Officer of Cabot Money Management in Salem, Massachusetts commented “Banks are now in an extremely challenging environment. Even banks like Wells Fargo and JP Morgan, which are better off than Bank of America on a relative basis, are still delivering pretty dismal numbers.” Lutts went on to describe Merrill as a “cash cow” that Bank of America would be foolish to get rid of, and that “Merrill is their ‘golden goose’ which  generates major cash flow and is a proven franchise. Moreover, Merrill proved it could not survive as an independent entity. By separating Merrill, they would significantly weaken the entire company.” So, although Merrill could attract a significant cash inflow to the beleaguered Charlotte based bank, it may not be feasible to unload them given that their profits can help carry the losses being generated in the firm’s other divisions.

While Merrill Lynch remains a highly attractive and profitable institution and solid brand name, the other company Bank of America bought during the credit crisis, Countrywide Financial, is a disaster that threatens to implode the entire corporation. Many speculate that former Chief Executive Kenneth Lewis, did not fully comprehend the magnitude of Countrywide’s problems.

Bank of America shares are currently trading at about one-third of book value, while key competitors Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC) and JP Morgan Chase (NYSE: JPM) are trading at 1.06 and 0.75 respectively.

During 2007 through 2009 BofA acquired the Countrywide business, the largest sub prime home mortgage originator in the nation, and Merrill Lynch, along with their thundering herd of financial advisors. The integration of these businesses, and the losses on mortgages that continue are posing serious jeopardy to the nation’s largest bank (as measured by deposits).

Recently, the firm announced plans to lay of 30,000 employees in the coming years. The firm’s official statement commented that the banks goal is “not a given number of job reductions, but to focus  all of its resources on serving individuals, companies, and institutional investors.” In total, these cuts are expected to save $5 billion in costs. Considering the mounting integration issues on ongoing legal fees, the cost cutting will be a necessary move to maintain profitability,

Coupled with these headcount cuts are a re-organization of the firm’s management team. the bank said it would now be run under the leadership of two chief operating officers, David Darnell and Tom Montag. It also said that Sallie Krawcheck, head of global wealth and investment management, and Joe Price, president of the consumer bank, are leaving the Charlotte based firm.

Paul Miller, managing director, FBR Capital Markets & Co., said “The real issue for the stock trading where it is today is that we don’t know about the bank’s business model and mortgage litigation expenses.” As the Countrywide division continues to garner significant losses and litigation, CEO Brian Moynihan recently left the door open to potentially splitting it off and filing for bankruptcy.  Miller commented that “If the bank got rid of Countrywide’s litigation expenses and liabilities, it could have a $10 to $12 stock price overnight. It’s not that we don’t like company — we have a hard time analyzing its balance sheet apart from all this litigation.”

But Miller added that he did not think bankrupting Countrywide would be politically and legally feasible.

While BofA did receive some positive press thanks to Warren Buffet, who announced plans last month to buy $5 billion worth of BofA shares, the stock price continues to trade down. The experiment in North Carolina may be nearing it’s conclusion, and eventually slide to the same fate Sandy Weill realized in his vision for Citigroup (NYSE: C). The supermarket model of banking may simply not work, and banks may need to get smaller, not larger to adapt to this changing environment.

Citigroup, formed through a series of mergers and acquisitions over the course of the last decade and a half has begun aggressively selling of businesses, and shrinking their activity in the financial services industry. Though still enormous, they are fast becoming a shell of their former selves.

Similarly, Bank of America, which rose to power through mergers with North Carolina National Bank, and acquisitions of Merrill Lynch and Countrywide also seems to be exploring options for getting smaller.

Gary Parr, vice chairman at Lazard (NYSE: LAZ) and one of the top advisers to financial companies observed during a panel discussion at Bloomberg Dealmakers Summit “Traditional bank A merging with bank B is nonexistent. It’s the rearranging of portfolios: what’s core, what’s non-core and so on that is very active. Extremely active.”

Citigroup and Bank of America have already sold several businesses each. Bank of America has sold several stakes in foreign institutions, and it recently sold its Canadian credit card business. Both companies continue paring down their portfolios, as do other large financial institutions, and Parr expects some of the buyers will be smaller U.S. players. Parr added “Some number of the buyers of these assets are going to be U.S. companies. The assets that are sold tend to be good businesses that are not so capital intensive,” he said, adding that “selling a big investment bank today is somewhere between really hard and impossible.”

From 1997 though 2008, many banks were trying to grow through a series of mergers and acquisitions, to grow market share, profits, and to diversify their streams of income. The supermarket model of financial services where all products are available under one roof seems to have come and gone very quickly now. To raise capital, many banks could find it appealing to sell non core businesses, while also transforming the firms into more nimble, easier to manage organizations. Due to the price of assets the size of deals may be on the smaller size in the near term, or firms may resort to spinning off non-core businesses into standalone firms through an IPO, should there be improvement in the primary market. Either way, we know one thing for certain: banks are showing a change in strategy.

The financial services industry continues to be plagued by mounting legal fees, as angry investors and customers see over the questionable practices of the past few years. The latest news comes on behalf of Citigroup (NYSE: C), which has been sued by the German lender IKB Deutsche Industriebank AG. The complaint lodged claims that Citi misrepresented documents as an underwriter in the sale of over $4.2 million in residential mortgage-backed securities.

Mortgage backed securities gained particular notoriety during the financial crisis of 2008, where there collapse risked bringing the entire financial system down with it. Home mortgages, sold to sub prime customers in many cases, were re-packaged into a single investment which was sold off to funds. When the underlying loans turned bad, the bonds defaulted and investors were left in a lurch.

According to Dusseldorf-based IKB, Citi issued misleading statements and omissions related to the mortgage-backed securities and breached the contract. IKB has filed lawsuit in the New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan. The company demands for unspecified damages and cancellation of the sale of securities.

The issue is system wide, with even exposure among the traditional investment banks. IKB also sued JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM) earlier in September for the sale and breach of contract over the sale of mortgage-backed securities by misrepresenting documents. Bond insurer CIFG Assurance North America Inc. alleged that The Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS) and its subsidiaries along with M&T Bank Corp. (NYSE: MTB) issued misleading statements and omissions related to the mortgage-backed securities from a portfolio of 6,204 loans, most of which were made by M&T Bank, which has concealed risks associated with the securities worth $275 million. The Allstate Corporation (NYSE: ALL), the largest insurer in the US of home and auto policies, also sued Goldman for misrepresenting documents in the sale of over $123 million in mortgage-backed securities from April 2006 to March 2007.

The ongoing lawsuits will likely continue to damage both the reputations and profits of the banks, as the contagion of bad loans continues to spread losses amongst the investor pools. The allegations of fraud and misrepresentations continue to be widespread, even now, three years after the apex of the collapse. The fundamental issue of investors not understanding the risk associated with their investments may ultimately have a shared responsibility, between the rating agencies who gave incorrect designations to the securities, to investors who should have applied more scrutiny to the deal documents, and to the banks how may have misunderstood or misrepresented the securities. In essence, it is a collective failure that will not be fixed any time soon.

Oswald Grubel, the banks Chief Executive Officer up to last week, resigned amidst the scandal. Sergio Ermotti, the former Chief Executive of the group’s operations in the Europe, Middle East, and Africa regions has stepped in and will serve as interim CEO of the firm. In recent weeks where the banking sector stocks have fallen precipitously, shares of UBS have lead the heard, as negative perceptions are magnified for the firm since the trading scandal.

Grübel, who was brought out of retirement as UBS Group CEO in February 2009 had also headed rival Credit Suisse from 2003 to 2007. Charged with the task of turning around the Swiss bank’s fortunes after huge losses during the global economic recession, he helped pull the bank’s performance out of the red in just six months. UBS Chairman Kaspar Villiger commented that Grübel had “achieved an impressive turnaround and strengthened UBS fundamentally.”

Nonetheless, the sheer size of the banks losses in the rogue trading scandal show a systemic failure within the firm, and someone had to pay the price. The timing comes as a challenge though, as there is exogenous uncertainty also placing pressure on the firm. Grubel’s departure comes at a time when banks in Europe and the US are facing difficult times amid political and macro uncertainty, which has resulted in substantial market volatility.

New CEO Ermotti will be tasked with improving the bank’s internal control systems, and concurrently seeing that the investment banking business is more aligned to the group’s strategy of increased client focus. The task will be long and arduous, and the firm could take many quarters to rebound financially. The extent of executives held accountable may not end with Grubel, as multiple reports have surfaced that investment-banking Chief Carsten Kengeter, Chief Risk Officer Maureen Miskovic and investment bank Chief Operating Officer Thomas Daula are all potential candidates to leave the firm as well. The firm was brought to the brink of collapse just three years ago amidst the financial crisis, and facing such serious financial issues today does not bode well for the firms short term performance. Recovering from such serious dents to profits and perception of the firm could be many years off.

The August result marked an annual sales pace of 295,000 homes, which was basically in-line with average economist estimates.  However, it did mark the fourth consecutive month of sales decline.

According to the report sales fell in three U.S. regions.  The Midwest was able to buck the trend posting an increase of 8.2 percent.  The Northeast saw the largest decline, down 13.6 percent, followed by the West and South with a 6.3 percent and 2.4 percent drop, respectively.

Despite being lower from a month ago sales did finish 6.1 percent higher year-over-year; August 2010 sales totaled 278,000.

Based on the August sales pace and current inventory, a 6.6 month supply of new homes exists in the market.

Average sales price continued its downward trend settling at $209,100 for the month, marking a 7.7 percent drop from a year ago.  Selling prices for new homes have been pressured lower as builders try to complete with lower prices from existing homes, which are generally lower due to foreclosure properties.

KB Home (KBH) announced fiscal third quarter results last week that showed a 26.7 percent revenue decline to $367.3 million.  Revenue has declined the past four quarters for the homebuilder.

The outlook for the housing market and homebuilders has not improved as many had hoped with historically low mortgage rates doing little to motivate buyers.

The rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage fell below 4 percent last week after the Federal Reserve said it would use proceeds from its mortgage bond holdings to make additional purchases.

Some observers are claiming that this deal is a test case to review how the government of the United State will handle the mergers of large banking institutions in the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2007 – 2009.  If Capital One is allowed to acquire ING and complete the acquisition of HSBC announced by the company in August, it will become the 7th largest bank in the United States with more than $320 billion in assets.

The multi-billion dollar taxpayer bailouts of the largest banks during the financial crisis were designed to prop up banks whose failure had the potential to bring the financial system to ruin.  To prevent future incidences, the Dodd-Frank financial oversight law was put into place.  The law does not require regulators to break up the big banks, but it does require close scrutiny of any future mergers involving the biggest banking institutions.

John Taylor of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, who has led the charge against the merger and will testify in Washington against the plan, said, “It is one thing for a $20 billion bank to fail. We’ll feel a ripple; there will be hand wringing.  When a $300 billion bank fails, that is a threat to our system.”

Representative Barney Frank, the leading Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, said the deal needed a thorough review and requested that the Federal Reserve hold public hearings on the matter.  “An important subject like this ought to be dealt with (having) as much chance for public input and as transparently as possible,” Rep. Frank said.

This will be the Fed’s first public hearings on a merger since Bank of America acquired Countrywide in 2008.  The Dodd-Frank law requires regulators to take systemic risk into account when evaluating a merger, in addition to other factors such as public benefit, concentration of resources, and unfair competition.

According to recent reports, the number of foreclosure filings submitted by Bank of America increased more than 200% in the month of August when compared to the previous month.  Many of these filings were notices of default, the first step in the process of foreclosing on a home in states where foreclosures are not required to be overseen by a judge, such as Nevada and California.

Experts are worried that an influx of foreclosed homes on an already distressed housing market would depress prices further; increasing the number of homeowners that are underwater on their mortgage and leading to more foreclosures and more people mailing in the keys to homes they no longer wish to pay for.  This would have a negative effect on the United States economy, which is already struggling to extract itself from the worst economic downturn since the great depression.

Many banks postponed foreclosing on homes that were delinquent this past year as they tried to deflect criticism that they were using shoddy mortgage paperwork and automatic paperwork signers, also known as robo-signers, to foreclose on properties in numerous states.  Processing delays also played a role in reducing the number of foreclosure filings reported through the first half of the year.

Bank of America’s stock price as plummeted 50% this year as the company has struggled to defend itself against a barrage of lawsuits related to mortgages, foreclosures, and mortgage-backed securities.  The Federal Housing Finance Agency has filed a lawsuit against Bank of America alleging fraud in the company’s sales of mortgage-backed securities to the agency and insisting on more than $50 billion in restitution.  Bank of America has also been sued by AIG, who claims the bank sold the company mortgage-backed securities that were significantly overvalued and requesting the repayment of $10 billion.

The jobs cuts were announced after Brian Moynihan, Chief Executive Officer of Bank of America, gave an address to investors in which he outlined the cost cutting moves being undertaken to reshape the company.  The company’s stock has taken a dramatic nosedive this year, losing half of its value, and the company must deal with numerous lawsuits from investors and regulators over mortgage-backed securities sales that decreased in value when the housing boom collapsed.

Bank of America has also recently revamped its top management team.  Two top executives chose to leave the company; Sallie Krawcheck, head of wealth management and Joe Price, head of consumer banking.  David Darnell, chief of commercial banking, and Tom Montag, head of investment banking, were elevated to co-chief operating officers, reporting directly to the Chief Executive Officer, Brian Moynihan.

The scheduled job cuts represent a 10% reduction in staff for Bank of America, with a current work force of around 288,000.  These cuts are in addition to the 6,000 jobs already eliminated by the company this year.  The additional reduction in staffing levels is expected to be fulfilled through attrition and the elimination of positions that are unfilled.  Representatives for the bank have indicated that the number of jobs that will be cut is not a fixed number, but the elimination of 30,000 positions will help the company reach its goal of saving $5 billion in costs annually.

If Sprint is the only wireless carrier that has the ability to sell the iPhone and offer unlimited data plans for the device, it may help the company regain market share lost to its two biggest competitors.   Michelle Leff Mermelstein, a Sprint spokesperson, said the company doesn’t comment on unannounced products or services. Natalie Harrison, an Apple spokesperson, also declined to comment on the matter.

Sprint is currently the third largest wireless carrier in the United States and has been struggling to compete with larger rivals in the industry.  Matthew Thornton, an analyst at Avian Securities, commented, “It’s a competitive disadvantage if your two larger competitors have the iPhone and you don’t.  Getting the iPhone closes that gap.”  Sprint, based in Overland Park, Kansas, has lost money for 15 consecutive quarters.

Unlimited data plans are currently offered for Sprint’s other smartphone devices, including Blackberry by Research In Motion and Evo by HTC, which uses Google’s Android operating system.  These plans allow users to share photos, surf the internet, and watch videos without incurring hefty charges unknowingly.  This is especially valuable to users that use Pandora’s streaming music service, Netflix’s video service, or users that tend to surf the internet frequently.  Sprint’s unlimited voice and data service is priced at $99.99 a month.

The iPhone has heavy data consumption that can strain a network. Both AT&T and Verizon Wireless switched to a tiered-pricing plan after getting Apple’s device, eliminating their unlimited data plans.  Some have speculated that Sprint’s unlimited data plan for the iPhone 5 will be a limited time offer designed to draw customers away from its rivals and will no longer be offered after a short period of time.

One company, to be called McGraw-Hill Markets, will be focused on the markets, housing  Standard & Poor’s index and ratings business, energy industry data provider Platt’s, and research service J.D. Power and Associates.  This group is projected to have revenue of $4 billion for 2011 and is expected to produce double digit growth in the future.  40% of the group’s revenue for 2011 comes from outside the United States.

The other company, McGraw-Hill Education, will focus on education, including textbook publishing.  McGraw-Hill hired the investment bank, Evercore Partners, to explore options for the education business and announced plans to sell broadcasting assets in June.  Revenue for this unit is expected to generate revenue of $2.4 billion for 2011.  The current president of the education unit, Robert Bahash, will remain in the role until the company finds a new chief.

In a statement made by Harold McGraw III, the chairman and chief executive of McGraw-Hill, it was said “…the board determined that the creation of these two independent companies is the best and most reliable way to generate superior shareholder value.  Because both companies will be sharply defined, they will create two pure-play investment opportunities and present a more transparent capital markets profile, enabling investors to better assess their value, performance and potential.”

Other plans to makeover the company include cutting costs and repurchasing $1 billion worth of shares.  Shares of the company, once worth more than $70, trade for less than $40 now.  The investors were originally seeking a four-way breakup of the company, seeking to bring about changes to increase shareholder value.

Wal-Mart’s layaway program was originally discontinued because of the increase in the use of credit cards and gift cards to make purchases during the holiday season.  Chief merchandising officer for Wal-Mart’s United States stores, Duncan Mac Naughton, said recent demands to restart the program ”… tells us the customer’s still struggling, as they tell us about their concerns with energy prices, housing prices, the job security, that 9.2 percent unemployment — it tells us that this is a fragile economy and the customer needs our help.”

The layaway program allows consumers to have the store set aside products for them with the promise to pay over time for the items, often with a small service fee applied but no interest charged.  When credit card interest rates were low and many people had high credit limits, they chose to place their purchases on their credit cards instead of in layaway programs.  Now that the interest rates for credit cards have skyrocketed and many lines of credit have been reduced, consumers are again turning to layaway programs for their holiday shopping.

Some of Wal-Mart’s biggest competitors will be offering layaway programs this holiday season as well.  Toys “R” Us began its layaway program for expensive items in 2009 and K-Mart has been offering layaway for decades.  Sears brought back its layaway program in 2008.  Other holiday plans for Wal-Mart include placing holiday merchandise on shelves two weeks earlier in mid-October and pricing a variety of toys at $15 for the holiday season.

Amazon fought vigorously against legislation passed earlier this year for e-commerce companies with subsidiaries in California to collect sales tax from consumers.  To date, the company has paid out more than $5 million in its efforts to get the issue on the ballot for the election next June.  Democratic legislators in the state Senate attempted to secure a two-thirds vote to block the ballot issue, but failed.

On the surface, it appears unlikely that California voters will vote to pay more for their online goods.  Some people are speculating that the deal is merely a ploy by Amazon to buy time to move its subsidiaries out of California, resolving the argument and allowing Amazon to sell to California residents without collecting the sales tax.  Amazon has declined to comment on the matter, but has previously stated that it prefers a single federal law rather than individual state laws on the matter of sales tax.

According to the legislation passed earlier this year, Amazon should have begun collecting sales tax on the 1st of July, but Amazon chose to fight the measure instead of comply.  The terms of the deal have not been finalized  yet, but the referendum will be dropped if the official language of the deal can be completed before the conclusion of the legislative session.  Once recessed, the legislators will not be back in session until January.

The Department of Energy’s inspectors office usually investigates businesses that they believe are committing fraud.

After Solyndra filed for bankruptcy, they closed their solar panel plant in Fremont, California. The reason the company cited for its bankruptcy was that silicon solar panels have been exponentially dropping in price. For years Solyndra had some of the most advanced solar panels in the industry. However, as rival’s technology became cheaper and more efficient, Solyndra has not been able to compete.

The company’s factory was built on a $535 million loan from the Department of Energy. President Obama said that this venture had the opportunity to help aid the United States in shifting from a fossil fuel driven country to a nation that depends on renewable energy more.

Many have been skeptical of Obama’s “Green Job Plans” from the start. ”The FBI raid further underscores that Solyndra was a bad bet from the beginning and put taxpayers at unnecessary risk,” House Energy Chairman Fred Upton told the National Journal on Thursday. “President Obama’s signature green jobs program went from a darling of the administration to bankruptcy to now the subject of an FBI raid in a matter of days.”

According to the Department of Energy, Solyndra’s bankruptcy will not affect the other businesses involved in the loan guarantee program. The Department of Energy has spent nearly $40 billion dollars on this program. Their ventures have been anything from solar power to nuclear power.

A few hours after the tweets, NBC released a statement saying they were working with Twitter to gain access back to their Twitter account. They also apologized for the messages that were emitted from their Twitter account during the time of the hacking.

Soon after the hackings, Twitter quarantined the Twitter accounts of both NBC and the Script Kiddies for damage control reasons.

The Script Kiddies is similar to the mass hacking group named Anonymous. However, the Script Kiddies were comprised with individuals that do not necessary agree with Anonymous’s ideals.

Script Kiddies are also believed to be behind the Twitter hacking of Fox News in July. While they had control of Fox News’ Twitter account, they tweeted that President Barack Obama had been killed.

Now the FBI is getting involved in the investigations. There is a part of the FBI that is devoted to investigating cyber crimes similar to this hacking. So far, they have not released any new information regarding the hacking.

It appears that the goal of the Script Kiddies is to embarrass large news organizations such as Fox and NBC.

“This is a group that has been around for a few months,” said Barrett Brown, a a former spokesman for Anonymous.. “A lot of them don’t like the mainstream media. But they could also just be doing this to get attention and increase their street cred.”

Zagat is a website that revolves around local consumer reviews. It was originally started in 1979 by Tim and Nina Zagat as a way to rate local restaurants and diners around their area. Since the creation of the internet, Zagat has expanded exponentially. It now has consumer reviews on places in almost every large American city.

The rating system is based on a 30 point scale. The reviewer has 13 different categories of which he or she can classify the establishment.

Google’s head of local and location services, Marissa Mayer, had this to say regarding the purchase: ”Zagat will be a cornerstone of our local offering.” She also said that Zagat will help enhance products that Google already has developed such as Google Maps and the all-powerful Google search engine.

Zagat tried to sell itself in 2008 but never got an offer which they were satisfied with. According to CNN, the company raised of 31 million dollars in revenue in 2000.

As we said earlier, in 2011 Google has been making local a priority. Earlier this year they attempted to buy the coupon giant Groupon. However, they failed to close the deal because they did not offer enough capital. In August Google purchased a website called The Deal Map. This website allows you to enter in your city/state/zip code and what you are looking for a deal on in to their website. After you have done this they will return the closest deals to you regarding that keyword.

Now Google is launching a new project called Google Offers. This is similar to The Deal Map. The core of what they want to do is sell more local advertising space to small businesses, which could significantly raise their ad revenue.

One of the big money saving ideas members of congress have been pondering is the possibility going from delivering mail 6 days a week to only 5, effectively cutting out Saturday postal delivery.

The Post Master General Patrick Donahue is expected to testify in front of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committees at 2 PM EST today.

Officials at the United States Postal Service have promised consumers and employees that there will not be a mail service interruption and employees will keep receiving their pay checks as regularly scheduled. However, the consumers and employees of the USPS should remain skeptical of this promise. If the USPS cannot strike a deal with congress, they are not going to be able to make payroll and keep delivering their mail.

The United States Postal Service has to make a 5.5 billion dollar payment to their retiree health care fund. As of now they cannot make that payment, which is due at the end of September.

This trust fund was was required by congress in 2006. The reason the postal service cannot make their payment that is due is because of the declining revenues because of two reasons. The first reason is technology. Instead of sending a letter through the mail you can save your self money and simply just email them. Many prefer this to the hand written sentiments of the 1980s. The other reason is the emerging competition in the delivery industry such as UPS and FedEx. They have stolen a significant amount of the market share from the United States Postal Service.

67 of the companies in the Standards and Poor’s 500 have issued warnings to stock holders that earnings are going to be lower than they had expected. This number has risen slightly from the numbers a year ago today.

Stocks on Wall Street have decreased to amounts that are “little to no earnings growth” for the rest of 2011. If earnings don’t grow over 12% this year it will be the slowest growth rate for a year since the official end of the recession in 2009.

There are numerous reasons to companies cutting their profit is because of the economic uncertainty ahead of us as a nation. A job report on Friday showed that the American economy failed to create any new jobs in the month of August. It also appears that the GDP has completely stalled.

Some stock analysts have said that the corporations slowing momentum is not necessarily a factor that truly indicates our economy stalling. However others are strongly disagreeing.

These corporations are still maintaining a very healthy profit margin despite losing a little off of the top.

The top 500 companies in the Standards and Poor’s index set a record last quarter with 8.9% profit. It has been predicted to fall to a still healthy 8.7% by the end of 2011.

An example of three companies that cut their sales expectations in 2011 are GameStop (GME), Dell (DELL), and Urban Outfitters (URBN). However, each of these three companies still maintained their full year profit forecast, which is encouraging for investors.

Once again the American economy is putting to much emphasis on the stock when trying to examine the health of the American economy as a whole.

Rupert Murdoch, the CEO and chairman of News Corp, raised his pay by 47% despite the recent scandalous actions by the News Corp. His current salary now stands at 33.3 million dollars per year.

Murdoch’s son, James, raise would have compensated him 74% more if he would have accepted the full package. This would have meant his salary could have potentially been 17.6 million dollars. However, he decided to decline a 6 million dollar bonus, which meant his final pay would stand at 11.9 million dollars for the year of 2011.

“While the financial and operating performance metrics on which the bonus decision was based are not associated with this matter, I feel that declining the bonus is the right thing to do,” he said in a written statement released by News Corp. “I will consult with the Compensation Committee in the future about whether any bonus may be appropriate at a later date.”

Rupert Murdoch’s base per year still remains at 8.1 million dollars, while James Murdoch’s actually was reduced slightly from 3.2 million to 3.0 million dollars. These past two years Rupert Murdoch had not received a bonus, so this year he qualified for a 12.5 million dollar cash bonus offered by the corporation.

News Corp has come under criticism recently for their alleged “hacked voice mail” incident. Both Rupert and James were asked to testify in front of British Parliament to help shed light to the allegations. Both Murdoch’s have apologized to the citizens whose voice mail’s they hacked and to the U.K. as a whole.

The FHFA has made the claim that the loans used for the mortgage-backed securities had riskier characteristics than what was contained in the descriptions used to market the securities.  The damages claimed in the lawsuits include the costs of rescinding the transactions as well as civil penalties and punitive damages for providing misleading materials and misconduct.

The FHFA filed lawsuits against JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup Inc., Merrill Lynch & Co., Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Barclays Plc, HSBC Holdings Plc, Nomura Holdings ltd., Credit Suisse Group AG, Societe Generale SA, Deutsche Bank AG, First Horizon National Corp., Ally Financial, General Electric Co., Countrywide Financial Corp., Morgan Stanley, and Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc.

In the years since sub-prime mortgage losses pushed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac towards insolvency, both companies have been operated under US conservatorship.  The billions of dollars in mortgage-backed securities purchased by the companies from some of the world’s largest banks were rated high by the credit ratings firms based on the information provided by these banks about the securities they were offering. This information was found to be incorrect when the mortgages underlying the securities soured, causing billions of dollars in losses for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Some banks are responding that the FHFA’s claim that the banks misstated the risks of the investments they were selling is unfounded and they are ready to defend their position.  They claim that Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae acknowledged that the losses suffered from their purchases of mortgage-backed securities stemmed from an unprecedented downturn in the housing market and other unforeseen economic factors.  Many company representatives have declined to comment on the lawsuits that have been filed against their company until their legal teams have had a chance to review all of the documents thoroughly.

The soup and snack company said fourth quarter profit totaled $100 million or 31 cents a share, down from $113 million or 33 cents a share in the same period a year earlier.  The company said excluding one-time costs for planned restructuring, earnings were 43 cents a share, which topped analyst estimates for 38 cents a share.  Analysts generally exclude one-time charges from estimates.

Revenue totaled $1.61 billion in the period as Campbell’s Global Baking and Snacking unit saw sales rise 17 percent to $559 million.  Sales of Pepperidge Farm products helped pushed the unit.

Sales were also strong for the International Simple Meals and Beverages unit, rising 12 percent to $316 million.  The U.S. Simple Meals unit did not fare as well with sales slipping 8 percent to $431 million.  Sales of “Campbell’s” condensed soup were the real drag for the U.S. unit, down 10 percent in the period.

U.S. beverage sales held up a bit better, but were down 1 percent to $176 million.  The unit actually saw a 3 percent rise in volume and mix, however, increased promotional spending offset those gains.  Campbell’s launch of “V-Fusion + Tea” helped push beverage volumes.

“Significant cost inflation and increased promotional spending depressed beverage profits in the quarter,” said President and CEO Denise Morrison.

Earnings for fiscal 2011 totaled $805 million or $2.42 a share.  Excluding restructuring costs, earnings were $846 million or $2.54 a share.  Both adjusted and unadjusted results were down from 2010.

Sales for the year rose 1 percent to $7.72 billion.  Volume and mix were down 1 percent, while price allowances coupled with promotional spending reduced sales by 2 percent. Campbell’s saw a 2 percent benefit from currency translation.

“We’re pleased to be finishing a very difficult fiscal year with some positive momentum and a new strategic direction. Fiscal 2012 will be a year of transition, as we build the foundation for a new Campbell with a renewed focus on meeting consumers’ needs,” said Morrison.

The company plans to debut 27 soup products in fiscal 2012, up from 3 in the prior year.

The impact of the news spread throughout the financial sector as investors worried regulators would ask other big banks to review their foreclosure processes; a topic that is already sour with the public following the robo-signing scandal.

The financial sector, which has led stock higher the previous four sessions, finished Thursday 2.3 percent lower, making it the largest S&P 500 laggard on the session.

According to the Federal Reserve’s orders, Goldman Sachs is required to hire an independent consultant to review foreclosures at the Litton Loan Servicing; a unit that Goldman is currently selling. 

Goldman reached an agreement Thursday with the New York Financial Services Superintendent that will allow the $264 million sale of the business to Ocwen Financial Corp go through.   However, this agreement does not free Goldman of investigations of past actions at Litton Loan Servicing.

The Fed stated that monetary penalties would be handed down if wrongful foreclosures were found by the consultant and occurred between 2009 and 2010.

Additionally, any borrower wrongfully foreclosed on would have to be reimbursed by the bank.

The investigation and potential penalties comes just a year after Goldman Sachs paid $550 million to settle charges from the Securities and Exchange Commission of civil fraud.

Elsewhere, Goldman Sachs cut its forecast for new jobs in August to just 25,000.  The Labor Department is set to release nonfarm payrolls for August along with the unemployment rate on Friday morning.

The DOJ argued that the proposed $39 billion merger, which would join the country’s second and fourth largest cell phone providers, would lead to higher prices for consumers and lessen consumer choice. Both AT&T and T-Mobile publicly disputed the accusations, noting that labor unions are in favor of the deal and contending that the merger could create new positions.

Deputy Attorney General James M. Cole said that “the view that this administration has is that through innovation and through competition, we create jobs” in a news conference announcing the lawsuit. He said that mergers often reduce jobs through the elimination of redundant positions. He added, “so we see this as a move that will help protect jobs in the economy, not a move that is going in any way to reduce them.”

AT&T was quick to announce that it plans on fighting the lawsuit. “We plan to ask for an expedited hearing so the enormous benefits of this merger can be fully reviewed,” said AT&T general counsel Wayne Watts in a statement. “The D.O.J. has the burden of proving alleged anticompetitive effects, and we intend to vigorously contest this matter in court.”

Deutsche Telekom said in a statement that the DOJ had “failed to acknowledge the robust competition in the U.S. wireless telecommunications industry and the tremendous efficiencies associated with the proposed transaction, which would lead to significant customer, shareholder and public benefits.”

AT&T had previously been negotiating with the Federal Communications Commission and the Department of Justice, both of which must approve the merger, since the proposal was first announced earlier this year. The Justice Department said that those negotiations cause it to believe that it would be extremely difficult to find arrangements under which the merger could proceed.

A number of consumer groups applauded the suit, including Consumers Union and Public Knowledge.

The Charlotte-based bank will be selling 13.1 billion common shares of China Construction Bank to a group of investors who have not been identified. Two officials stated on Friday that a group of sovereign wealth funds and private equity funds had been negotiating to purchase the stake. Bank of America will continue to hold a 5% stake in the company after the sale, which is expected to close sometime next quarter.

The sale of shares in China Construction Bank is the latest in a series of sell offs from Bank of America. The company recently sold its Canadian credit card division and has placed its European credit card operation for sale. The company is working to eliminate all of what it considers non-core assets from its books, much in the way that Citigroup sold off a large portion of its assets in its CitiHoldings division.

The asset sales come as investors fear whether or not Bank of America has enough capital. BofA officials, including CEO Brian Moynihan, have tried to mitigate those fears. The company’s chief financial officer, Bruce Thompson, said in a statement that this specific deal would increase the bank’s Tier 1 capital by $3.5 billion.

A number of international regulators, including the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, place minimum requirements of capital for large banks around the world. The tier 1 capital level is considered to be an extremely important measure which can be used to determine the overall health of a bank. Under requirements set by the Basel Committee, Bank of America has to have a Tier 1 Capital ratio of 3.5%, which will slowly increase to more than 9% over the next 10 years.

“Our partnership with China Construction Bank has been mutually beneficial,” said Bank of America Chief Executive Officer Brian Moynihan. Bank of America and China Construction Bank are discussing a potential expansion and extension of the existing strategic assistance agreement.

Bank of America’s (NYSE: BAC) stock fell 2.03% during early trading on Tuesday, hitting $8.23.

Warren Buffet’s mega company Berkshire Hathaway invested 5 billion dollars in Bank of America today. This left most investors astounded and asking the question, “Why is he doing this?” Of course promptly after this announcement was made, Bank of America stock’s sky rocketed, increasing by over 25%.

The has reinvented the confidence investors use to have in the Bank of America. For years it has been known as one of the best long term investors.

“Bank of America is a strong, well-led company, and … I wanted to invest in it,” said Berkshire Hathaway (BRK) Chief Executive Warren Buffett, in a statement.

The terms of the deal where this: Bank of America will issue 50,000 preferred shares to Berkshire Hathaway immediately. They will be valued at approximately 100,000 dollars a piece.  These preferred shares pay an annual 6% dividend, which is a pretty high rate.

Berkshire Hathaway also has the option to purchase over 700 million shares of Bank of America at the price of $7.14 per share. If Buffet were to buy these shares today, he would have made almost 1 billion dollars in profit as the price of Bank of America stocks surged immediately after this announcement.

The reason Bank of America stocks have been tumbling is because their balance sheet is extremely lop sided. Many investors believed they needed to find an extra source  of  revenue for the company to stay afloat.

Now with Buffet’s 5 Billion dollars, investors say that Bank of America will need to raise little capital if any at all.

“While the investment is expensive and dilutive, it’s an investment that will act as a bridge to get Bank of America through this uncertainty,” said Erik Oja, a equity research analyst with Standard & Poor’s.

Google has just settled a very high-profile dispute with the United States Department of Justice. The crime? Google displayed advertisements from online Canadian pharmacies that were in violation of United States Federal law. The cost? Google has agreed to pay a $500 million fine.

According to the Justice Dept, this settlement is one of the largest that has ever happened in the United States. The $500 million covers all of the revenue that Google received from the rogue Canadian pharmacies as they advertised through Google AdWords (those advertisements on the right side of Google search). The huge sum of money also covers the revenue that those pharmacies made from selling to customers in the United States.

Deputy Attorney General James M. Cole said “This settlement ensures that Google will reform its improper advertising practices with regard to these pharmacies while paying one of the largest financial forfeiture penalties in history.” He explained that the Department of Justice will hold accountable all companies who violate Federal laws in their bid for profits. Cole said that Google’s actions had put at risk the health and safety of American consumers.

A spokesman for Google has remarked that Canadian pharmacies have been banned from their advertising network for some time. He also mentioned that hindsight had taught the company that they should not have allowed the ads in the first place. Besides the $500 million fine, Google has also agreed to several “reporting” measures that will help insure to the Justice Dept that any such conduct does not continue.

Normally, your average United States citizens looks at the stock markets as an indicator how our economy is doing. This is because wall street generally reflects how healthy it is. Economists believe now that since the stock market has been so volatile, it is actually fueling the economic uncertainty, not reflecting it.

Stocks have been falling consistently for the past 4 weeks. Many economists believe that this, along with 401k statements, have started a spiral of fear that could put us in another great depression. Businesses are fearful of hiring new people and buying more materials in case we do hit another recession, as this could bankrupt them.

A report on home sales showed that people were pulling out on the last stages of the deal more than usual. Realtors are attributing this to our economic uncertainty. Approximately 16 percent of deals were ended just before closing in July. This was 4 times the rate it was in May.

The Standards & Poor stock indicator was at 1,123.53, this is a five percent slide from the index of last week. Since our credit down grading, the market has been down 16%.

This first reason many believe for our economic uncertainty is obvious. It was our credit downgrading by Standards and Poor. The next reason is our economy did not grow as much as we expected during the first half of 2011.

The Federal Reserve gave out a regional survey this past month. Their survey found that manufacturer’s business in the mid atlantic states had slowed by the most in 2 years. The report also showed that existing home sales slipped in July for the third time in four months. Japan, the worlds third largest economy, is still feeling the after effects of its earthquake. Their economy also is slipping.

One encouraging sign is that retailers added over 117,000 jobs last month. Factory production also rose because auto makers were making more cars.

Fast food restaurant giant, Burger King, has recently decided to switch gears. Rather than focusing on branding themselves with an edgy image, they are going to drop the ‘King’ mascot that we have all seen in the recent commercials and instead begin to focus on… selling their products.

For the last several years the fast food chain’s edgy commercials, created by the advertising agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky, have been earning applause from critics all over the country. However, applause and praise do not necessarily translate into good sales. In the first quarter of 2011, Burger King’s sales declined 6%. The commercials are aimed at males in their teens and early twenties – apparently many of them saw the ads and liked them, but decided not to go buy food.

The company has announced that they are officially dropping the ‘King’ mascot. Senior Vice President of the company, Alex Maccedo, told USA Today, “People want a reason to go back to Burger King…” Alluding to the fact that the commercials gave customers no such reason. He went on to say, “There are no plans to bring the King back anytime soon.”

Could this change of heart be spurred by the fact that McDonald’s, Burger King’s largest competitor, saw a 3% rise in sales over last quarter? If you think back to the last McDonald’s commercial that you saw, you probably remember seeing images of people eating hamburgers and fries or enjoying smoothies and soft drinks. Perhaps this is a better form of advertising in the restaurant industry. I guess we’ll see…

Burger King finalized these changes by hiring a new ad agency, McGarr Bowen, who often receives criticism for having advertisements that are overly conventional and unhip. We will get a chance to see the company’s new advertising direction as they introduce the new ‘California Whopper’ this weekend.

Hewlett Packard confirmed Autonomy Corporation in regards to their business combination as well as other announcements.

Earlier today Hewlett Packard spoke about the announcement from Autonomy Corporation PLC and confirmed that is considering making an offer.

To keep things rolling with the very active day HP also announced that its board of directors approved exploring strategic alternatives for its PSG (Personal Systems Group). HP is considering a variety of options including a full or partial separation of PSG and HP by way of spin-off or various other transactions.

Hewlett Packard also announced that it is discontinuing all operations for its webOS devices, such as the TouchPad as well as its webOS phones, however HP is expected to continue optimizing the value of its webOS software.

HP’s W3 2011 preliminary results show its revenue at $31.2 billion versus last years revenue of $30.7 billion. Third quarter earnings per share finished out at $1.10 versus HP’s 2010 Q3′s EPS of $1.08. Saying a it was a busy day for HPQ is clearly being a bit reserved.

The Round Rock, Texas computer company has shown hefty gains since last year. Net income rose by 71%, up to $890 million (48 cents per share), compared with the previous year’s profit number of $545 million (28 cents per share).

On an adjusted scale, earnings increased to 54 cents per share, a lofty gain from last year’s second quarter number of just 32 cents per share.

Total revenue is up to $15.66 billion from last year’s sales figure of $15.53 billion, a modest gain of 1 percent.

According to a recent Thomas Reuters poll, analysts were predicting 49 cents per share earnings and a revenue number of around $15.76 billion. Unnamed sources say that the floated “whisper number,” which is the unofficial “street” expectation, predicted earnings to be only 46 cents per share. The actual per-share figure seems to have exceeded expectations at every level.

The adjusted gross margin increased in quarter two, from 22.7% to 23.2%, partly resulting from $70 million worth of vendor settlements. Revenue attained through commercial business went up 1%, compared to last year’s figures, as services revenues and enterprise solutions gained 4% and networking and servers revenue gained 9% over last year’s figures.

“We’re maintaining our focus on developing higher-value solutions and services to drive stronger profitability and smartly manage a balance of growth, increased operating income and cash flow,” stated Brian Gladden, Dell chief financial officer, in a released statement.

Tuesday’s session closed with Dell shares up 1.9%, or 30 cents per share, to end the session at $15.80. Upon releasing the results, the stock dropped 85 cents. For the year, Dell stock is up approximately 17%.

In California, average prices for a gallon of regular gas fell 6.4 cents in the last seven days to $3.73 as of Monday, according to a weekly survey of nationwide service stations conducted by the United States Energy Department. That’s a decrease of over 50 cents per gallon since the May 2^nd yearly high of $4.26.

Compared to one year ago when a gallon of gas was $3.16, prices in California remain much higher.

Nationally, average prices decreased by 7 cents per gallon last week, down to $3.60. At this time a year ago, the average price for a gallon of gas nationwide was $2.74.

Experts say that even though oil prices are climbing up once again, prices at the pump are expected to remain fairly steady in the coming month, barring a major supply disruption.

Gasoline prices may rise a bit as we approach the Labor Day weekend, which is traditionally the biggest driving holiday in the U.S., with many families embarking on the summer’s final excursion. However, on September 15^th, California refineries start the country’s earliest switch from the more expensive summer blend of gas to the cheaper winter formulation. Fuel analyst Bob van der Valk predicts this will maintain a downward push on prices.

As for oil cots, Brent North Sea crude, the benchmark for Europe, rose nearly $2 to close at just under $110 per barrel on Monday, after dropping as low as $107 on the London ICE Futures Exchange. This is a large drop from the May high mark of $127 per barrel.

The benchmark for the United States, West Texas Intermediate crude climbed $2.50 on Monday to end at $87.88 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. They also saw their high-water mark of the year in May, when the cost per barrel sat at $114.

The leaders of France and Germany on Tuesday asked for more integrated policy system to aid the euro in growing and stabilizing the European economy. However, Wall Street investors were disappointed in these statements. They were hoping that the leaders would announce plans to contain the debt crisis in roiling global markets.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel met with each other in Paris to discuss a proposed rule that would require all 17 countries to have balanced budgets. They said the goal behind this is to form a greater convergence among the core countries policies in the EU, particularly France and Germany’s. These nations are being hit the hardest by the policies currently enacted.

The European Union officials are under constant pressure to try and resolve Europe’s debt crisis.

Both country leaders sounded optimistic about their talks earlier in the day. Merkel acknowledged that weak economic growth every were creates a problem for Germany’s export driven based economy.

Investors in the United States were disappointed by Nicolas Sarkozy’s statement saying that the size of the EU’s stability fund is sufficient as of now. Many economists predicted that the EU would have to expand on this fund. The current stability fund is 440 billion dollars. Some economists thought they would have to double the fund due to Europe’s economic crisis.

The leaders also agreed that issuing “Euro Bonds” would not solve the debt crisis. Euro Bonds are a collective bond used to help pay off debt of peripheral countries.

The weakness being shown by the strongest economic countries in Europe is troubling to investors. It makes them wonder if these economies can support countries that are in the European Union but are struggling with their economies.

It was released that the European economic growth shrank to a mere .2%.

The drop hit just about every area that it possibly could have.  Falling prices affected silver and gold as well as yields on Treasuries.  Stocks have undergone a traditional ‘market correction’ in the last 10 days, having fallen more than 10%.
So what is to blame for the drastic fall?

Many traders are simply chalking it up to a double dip recession.  Not to mention the fact that the government seems to have run out of ways to stimulate the economy of the United States.  Corporations are cautious to make new investments because there seems to be little demand for products, even though Corporate America is sitting on staggering amounts of capital.  It seems that both corporations and consumers are holding onto their money which is leading to a seized and frozen economy.  Add on top of this the entire debt ceiling debacle which helped to further a loss of trader confidence.

The bottom line?  It seems that most traders are now convinced that the economy is facing a severe recession — nothing that the United States government, or any other government on the planet, can stop.  As we all know, when confidence is down, people stop buying.  When people stop buying, we run into stock market drops, just as we experienced on August 4th.

If you are an investor, should you worry?  The best thing that you can do is avoid panicking.  Keep your confidence up and rely on the fact that the market has a great little habit of correcting itself.  However, it may take a while for it to bounce back from this.  So, whatever action you take — be it to buy or to sell — perform those actions in small doses and don’t make any rash decisions.

Of course, Kraft Foods is not the first U.S. Company to split into several different businesses to serve different markets.  Just earlier this year, Sara Lee Corp. split off their meat brands to a separate company.  This trend may be driven by the fact that companies are looking for new ways to grow during tough economic times.  Rather than focusing on getting as big as possible, companies are fine tuning their strategies to focus on certain groups of brands.

Officials at Kraft surprised many in the industry with the announcement.  But the company has recognized that their domestic and international brands have developed into two very strong, yet distinct, portfolios.  The company has commented that they would like to begin recognizing different priorities for each of those portfolios.

Kraft, the largest food maker in the United States, will now be targeting two very different areas of the food market.  However, even after the split the new company primarily focusing on the grocery business is still going to be one of the largest food and beverage producers in all of North America.  Kraft’s grocery brands include Oscar Mayer, Jell-O and Kraft cheeses.

The second of the two new businesses will focus on international snack brands.  It is estimated that it will bring in revenue of around $32 billion per year, serving international businesses and convenience stores — just about anywhere that you might find small treats or snacks.

The company plans on growing the grocery business slowly and steadily in North America, while the snack business has plans of rapid growth in the international market.  Either way, we are likely to see some great dividends for Kraft shareholders.

After four days, each of which saw a 400+ point swing one way or the other, the Dow Jones average rose by a tame 125 points on Friday, bringing the weekly loss down to only 1.5%. At one juncture during the week, the industrial average was down a devastating 7.3%

Today’s subdued activity was a welcome relief for stressed investors who have heard nothing but bad news for weeks. Stocks have fluctuated greatly all week long, with investors reacting to a U.S. debt downgrade, fears of a possible double-dip recession, and concerns over European banks.

“It appears as though we’ve come out of this week almost whole,” stated Bernie McGinn, founder of McGinn Investment Management. “On Wednesday afternoon, no one would have suspected that.”

Friday’s modest gain came on the heels of a government announcement that a driving force behind our economy, retail spending, rose in July at a rate last seen in April.

The promising numbers, coming one day after a positive unemployment report, were more than enough to quell fears that we were heading for a new recession, even though experts were using caution before drawing conclusions from individual data points.

“The numbers were encouraging, but they were far from conclusive,” stated Jim O’Sullivan, chief economist at MF Global.

The Dow closed today up 1.3%, or 125.71 points, to 11,269.02. The more broad S&P’s (Standard & Poor) index ended with a gain of 0.5%, or 6.17 points, to 1,178.81.

Friday’s relative calm was a stark contrast to Monday’s mood, when the industrial average took a 634-point nosedive on the initial trading day after Standard & Poor’s knocked the United States down from their AAA credit rating.

Google has yet again surprised the technology world by purchasing Motorola Mobility. This Google’s largest acqusition ever, purchasing Motorola Mobility for 12.5 billion dollars. It is obvious Google is trying to establish themselves as the dominant force in the mobile device market.

Google first started off as a search engine company, but it is quickly expanding in to the mobile market. They license the most popular mobile device operating system, Android. One other reason Google is buying Motorola Mobility is to protect itself from future lawsuits. Samsung and Apple are currently in a nasty legal battle over “intellectual property.”

Motorola has been around for nearly 80 years now. It was the first company to invent the cell phone, which it did 30 years ago. Motorola Mobility currently has over 17,000 patents, and another 7,500 pending the patent process.

As the Android operating system grows bigger and bigger Google has been facing more and more patent related lawsuits. The latest ones have been from both Microsoft and Apple.

Google tried to recently purchase the bankrupted Nortel for approximately 1 billion dollars. However, they did not have the winning bid. Microsoft and Apple bid over 4.5 billion dollars for Nortel.

The biggest reason why giant companies buy other companies is to acquire their patents. This is a common defensive tactic used by litigation staffs to keep lawsuits at bay. The American patent system is very complex. It can take years upon years of litigation to sort out lawsuits regarding patents.

Google plans to run Motorola Mobility as a completely separate company from the search engine giant. Motorola will continue to buy licenses from Google for the Android operating system. Motorola will even have to bid to be the maker of Google’s next “Nexus” android device.

Apple has just surpassed Exxon Mobil as the most valuable corporation in America. It is very easy to tell how Apple surpassed the oil giant. Apple’s sleek looking electronic devices are a staple of any college campus now. From the iPhone, to the MacBook, to the iPad Apple has successfully created an idea behind the white Apple logo. Apple’s stock on the open market is now more valuable than any other publicly traded company in the United States.

Apple’s current market value sits at 337 billion dollars, while Exxon Mobil’s sits at 331 billion dollars. A single share of Apple stock costs $363 dollars. Apple is not the first tech company to hold this spot, in fact their most competitive rival held this glorified spot for a while as well, Microsoft. Another large corporation that has held this spot is General Electric. However, until today, Exxon held this spot since 2005.

Last quarter, Apple gave something for investors to talk about posting over 28 billion dollars in revenue. This has left market analysts comparing the 35 year old company’s profits to booming start ups in terms of revenue growth percentages.

Apple is great at marketing. When Apple products are released, most people think, “Oh just another electronic device I don’t need.” This train of thought quickly changes when they get their hands on these elaborate electronic devices. An perfect example of this is their newest line of product, the iPad.

In their last quarterly report, Apple said that their iPhone and iPad sales had aided in doubling its net income to 7.3 billion dollars and a rise in revenue to 28.3 billion dollars.

Apple usually produces a new product every 3 years. The iPad was made in 2010, so in 2013 they will have a new product. If this trend continues, Apple will pass HP as the largest tech company in the world. They are currently 3 billion dollars behind HP’s 31.3 billion in revenue per quarter.

Today, our debt super committee was formed. An almost all men panel is responsible for finding a way to save over 1.5 trillion dollars over 10 years. This is a very controversial issue and most likely will require sacrifice from both political sides. If both sides are willing to sacrifice we will be able to make significant progress in our goal to reduce our nation’s debt.

On Thursday house minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, gave her three democratic picks from the house: James Clyburn, Xavier Becerra and Chris Van Hollen. The republicans named their six committee members on Wednesday, adding to the 3 democrats from the Senate that had already been selected.

Overall the super committee has a wide range of experience. There are members from rural and urban areas. Some have been members of the house for 2 years while others are 20 year veterans.

4 of these committee members served on the Simpson-Bowles deficit reduction panel. Two of them were democrats, two of them were republicans.  These 4 members all voted against the deficit reduction plan, which leads us to think they may have a hard time passing a new deficit plan.

The committee has until November 23rd to agree on a deficit plan, this is when they are expected to present to congress. After that, they until December 23rd to amend the plan. The 23rd is the date set by Congress to have a new bill voted on.

If congress fails to pass their debt reduction plan, over 1.2 trillion dollars in cuts would be enacted automatically. These cuts would be equally divided in between defense and non-defense spending. These cuts were put in the bill congress passed nearly 2 weeks ago now.

As a nation we should be skeptical if this committee is any different than the Simpson-Bowles panel. We hope they can set apart their differences and pass a meaningful piece of legislation for our country.

United States stocks ended a heart breaking tumble Tuesday. The Dow Jones was up 429 points, erasing the deficit from the day before. Trading ended for the day at 11,239.77. The Fed made a statement today, which caused all the markets to drop initially, but rallied by the end of the day. The Dow Jones fluctuated over 600 points today. It dropped 200 immediately after the statement by the Fed.

Today the Federal Bank addressed the credit rating downgrade. Their policy statement left interest rates untouched. Their reasoning was that they believe the deterioration in the labor market and slower than expected economic growth will cause the banks to keep “exceptionally low-rates” until the middle of 2013.

Prior to this statement, an investment firm named Nomura conducted a questionnaire prior to the Fed’s statement showing that nearly a quarter of all investors were looking for the Fed to announce quantitative easing to help the economy recover. Now that investors know the interest rates will be stable for the next two years, they will be more prone to invest liberally. Business can hire more workers and take out mortgages with out having to worry about a significant rise in their loan interest rates.

This statement brought up the question, “How are the banks doing in this economic crisis?” The answer to this question is, “it is no 2008,” according to economic experts. Most banks recovered their loses on Monday with the rally of stocks on Tuesday. Some banks such as JP Morgan and Chase, and Citigroup actually ended the day nearly 20% up.

However, Bank of America is stocks are still very volatile. Most investors are accrediting this to the fact that AIG is looking to sue them over the Mortgage crisis in 2008.

Gold markets remained high, ending the day at 1,743 dollars an ounce. Earlier in the day gold prices hit a all time high, which was 1,782.50 dollars an ounce.

Investors should be cautious with any moves they may decide to make on Monday. Many market analysts are predicting stocks to fall sharply once the markets open on Monday. This is because of the downgraded credit rating by S&P, the debt crisis in Europe, and last week’s market volatility.

Most financial investors are telling their clients to ride out the market, as it will correct it self in the long run. Times like these are difficult for inexperienced investors. All you are hearing on the news is how the market plunged even more, leaving you thinking you’ll never recover. The point of investments is to ride through the bad and hopefully sell during the good period, making a solid profit.

Many financial analysts are recommending their clients to re-balance their portfolios frequently. For instance, the past two years the stock market has soared, which has warranted financial analysts to sway a heavier percentage of your portfolio to stocks. Now that the market is declining you need to transfer your money back.

Smart financial planning also encompasses when you want to withdraw your money. If you are a young professional that isn’t going to close your portfolio anytime soon you should have more money invested in stocks, as you have more time to end with a profit. You can ride out the bumps in the road. Now if you are closing in on retirement age, you want to have your money invested in stable forms. This helps you financially plan for your retirement, giving you a solid idea of how much money you will have to play with.

If you are looking to buy stocks now, you need to focus on the long term picture. Stock’s that look promising 5-10 years from now are the best investments as they will pay steady dividends.

Approximately 45,000 unionized workers of Verizon went on strike Sunday after negotiations stalled with the telecommunication giant on Saturday. Their deal expired at 12:00 am on Sunday. The Verizon employees are represented by Communication Workers of America and the Brotherhood of Electrical Workers from Virginia.

The strike has only affected Verizon customers that have came in to shops to start new contracts or modify existing contracts. Service has not been dropped in any area yet due to the strike. Verizon is currently trying to find replacement workers for the workers that are currently on strike.

The spokesmen for Communication Workers of America (CWA), Bob Master, told the media that some negotiations are still going on, but he also told us that Verizon is very difficult to bargain with. The telecommunication giant wants to scale back wages, benefits and union rules while still profiting nearly 6 billion dollars each year.

Master compared Ford and GM to Verizon with this quote, “Verizon is not Ford or General Motors. This is a company that has made billions upon billions of dollars. Because of the recession and anti-union climate, they have decided to try and drive down the middle-class standards of our members.”

CWA represents the most employees on strike. They represent over 30,000 Verizon workers. Master accused Verizon of wanting to out source as many jobs as possible to places like the Philippines and Mexico. The purpose of this is to avoid Unions that protect the rights of their workers.

Verizon is arguing that workers need to pick up a share of the health benefits, which costs over 4 billion dollars per year. These benefits help over 800,000 employees, retirees, and families. Verizon stated that their benefits would still be top of the line for companies that are comparable to Verizon.

A Verizon spokesmen said customers should not expect any impact from the strike, hopefully this is true.

For the second quarter of 2011, Fannie Mae posted a loss of nearly $3 billion, a significant increase from their $1.2 billion loss from a year ago. That makes losses in 15 out of the last 16 quarters, forcing Fannie to yet again ask the United States for bailout funds, once their quarterly dividend obligations to the Treasury are met. This time around, they will be seeking $2.8 billion.

Control over Fannie and their sister company, Freddie Mac, was taken by the federal government three years ago by a legal maneuver known as conservatorship. The government has promised an unlimited amount of funds to keep these two companies above water, in hopes of stabilizing the mortgage markets.

To this date, Fannie Mae has been issued $104 billion worth of aid, although $15 billion was utilized to make regular government dividend payments. That leaves the taxpayer cost at a healthy $89 billion.

Surprisingly, mortgage delinquencies dropped for the fifth consecutive quarter and sits at just over four percent of all home mortgages. That is the lowest it has been in over two years.

Still, losses continue to grow, because of weak home prices, requiring Fannie to boost its reserves.

Loss reserves for Fannie Mae rose from $72 billion to $75 billion in the last four months. Nationally, home prices remained fairly stagnant during the second quarter, but prices weakened within areas where Fannie has a larger concentration of guaranteed loans.

Long after the delinquencies have fallen, Fannie will be left to deal with a large stockpile of foreclosed properties. During the second quarter, they managed to sell 71,000 home, while taking back 54,000, making them a net home “seller” for the third consecutive quarter. By the end of June, Fannie listed their number of self-owned properties at 136,000.

Officials are reporting that hiring was up in the month of July. This meant the unemployment rate dropped to 9.1 percent. This is a small feat for the United States economy. Hopefully this report will help subdue the major fluctuations in our stock market. Yesterday Wall Street took a massive hit.

It is reported that employers added over 117k jobs last month, according to the Labor Department. This is an improvement on the last two months employment rates. The good outlook brought in a crazy day of trading on Wall Street. The day before, the Dow Jones last nearly 500 points. Today when trading opened to the public, the Dow Jones quickly jumped up 171 points, followed by a steady lose of the points we had just gained and added to the loss we had the day before. At the moment it is currently down 100 points, and many economists are attributing this to the debt crisis in Europe.

Our economy still needs to produce twice as many net jobs per month to get our unemployment percentage below 9. The rate has only dropped below nine in two months since our recession officially ended in June of 2009.

Our economy has been growing at a painstakingly slow rate this year, sitting at just .8 percentage points for the first 6 months of this year. Many people believe the high gas prices and lower wages have made consumers focus on saving more. For the first time in 20 months, consumers spent less than the previous month and saved more in June.

Hiring stats looked like this in July. Manufacturers added 24,000 jobs. Retailers hired 26,000 people. Healthcare employment grew by 31,000 jobs. Other companies such as hotels, restaurants etc added a total of 17,000 jobs. One industry that did dip was the auto industry, but they cut less jobs than they had the previous month before, which is a good sign.

On Tuesday, our country’s leaders gave the stamp of approval to legislation which raised our debt limit, avoiding a default. However, this wasn’t enough to stop investors from swarming to what they perceive as safe assets. Investors are increasingly cautious as the nation’s credit rating faces the risk of being downgraded, and growth continues to falter around the globe.

The gold contract seeing the most activity, intended for a December delivery, climbed nearly $23 to end at a new record of $1,644.50 for each troy ounce, on the New York Mercantile Exchange (Comex division). It set a new intraday record at one point, hitting $1,646.80.

Monday’s manufacturing data for the United States and Europe further turned investors away from risky assets. On Tuesday, currency markets took a hit due to growing concerns over the debt crisis in Europe, sending Spanish and Italian bond yields to the broadest levels since the euro was adopted.

Investors often turn to gold to avoid the turmoil of other markets as well, and this is the fourth consecutive week gold has hit a new high. The Swiss franc reached a record high against the euro and U.S. dollar on Tuesday. Treasury prices also rose, emphasizing the need for a secure place to invest cash.

Confidence in the strong gold market also was strengthened by the news of South Korea’s central bank making its first gold purchase in over 13 years. During June and July, the bank purchased 25 tons worth of gold, bringing their total to 39.4 tons at the end of July. Central banks are moving to decrease their dependency on the chief reserve currency in the world, the U.S. dollar.

Other central banks announcing major gold purchases this year are those in Thailand, Mexico and Russia.

The British bank has announced in the period January-June 2011, a profit, before taxes, of 11.5 billion dollars, up from 11.1 billion dollars in the same period of 2010. Analysts estimated a profit of 10.8 billion dollars. Next week, other major banks such as Barclays, Lloyds Banking Group and Royal Bank of Scotland, are to publish their balance for the first six months of this year.

HSBC will cut 5,000 jobs in the operations of reshuffle in Latin America, United States, Great Britain, France and the Middle East and by 2013 will reduce another 25,000 jobs.

The British bank has announced on Sunday the sale of 195 branches of First Niagara Financial Bank, USA, for $ 1 billion in cash and will close another 13 of their 470 branches.

HSBC shares rose Monday on the London Stock Exchange by 4.3%, to 620 pence, valuing the bank at about 180.6 billion dollars.

In May, HSBC announced that it would reduce costs by 2.5 to 3.5 billion dollars by 2013.

“We will increase the use of capital discipline, directing investments to markets that are growing rapidly,” said general manager Stuart Gulliver. He said that, however, it could take three years before the Bank will achieve cost savings, which are one of the highest among British and European banks.

Also, HSBC aims to a rate of return on equity of 12-15%.

Microsoft profits soared this quarter compared to the same quarter last year as revenues increased by 7.5% to 17.37 billion dollars for the company’s fiscal fourth quarter. For the entire year, Microsoft reported a net income of 23.15 billion dollars, a 23 percent increase on 69.94 billion dollars.

For the past month, the most critical issue in United State’s politics has been the debt ceiling. For weeks now congress has been debating over the issue, but no deal has been hammered out. August 2nd is the when the nation will be forced to default if the debt ceiling is not raised. As usual, liberals and conservatives are split on the course of action that is appropriate with this problem.

As the two men were driving away from the store on Harvey Road, Bryan, the Brazos County investigator and another officer managed to pull them over for questioning. Sauseda informed the officials that this was not the first time he had stolen from the store and that he had previously stolen from there on two occasions. Officer’s reports state that Sauseda admitted to stealing the items from the store on all three occasions.
Sauseda faces a felony charge and was kept inside the Brazo County jail on Tuesday, 19th July in lieu of a bail of $30,000. The man who was seen driving the car was released on Monday 18th July after a $4,000 bail.

This type of theft is a Class A misdemeanour that usually results in a punishment of up to one year in jail and a fine of up to $4,000. Sauseda has already been charged with theft of property below $1,500 and has at least two previous convictions. Because of his previous theft convictions, he is expected to face a state jail felony charge which means that he could be fined as much as $10,000 and could face up to two years in jail.