American English Conversation

English Lessons

2011-09-21T23:17:00.001-07:00

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Directions: Write the -ing and -ed forms of the following verbs. (The simple past/past participle of ireegular verbs is given parentheses.)

                      -ING-                      -ED-
1. start        starting                  started
2. wait
3. hit
4. write
5. shout
6. cut
7. meet
8. hope
9. hop
10 .help
11. sleep
12.step
13. tap
15. rain
16. run
17. whine
18. win
19. explain
20. burn
DIRECTIONS: Read the following and answer questions?
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said Monday that he will immediately halt investments in two big government pension plans so the government can continue to borrow money.
Geithner informed Congress of his decision in a letter stating that the government had officially reached its $14.3 trillion borrowing limit. He repeated a warning that if lawmakers do not increase the borrowing limit by August 2, the government is at risk of an unprecedented default on its debt.
The debt limit is the amount of money the government can borrow to help finance its operations. The nation has reached its debt limit because the federal government has grown accustomed to borrowing massive amounts of money. The latest estimate is that it borrows 40 cents for every dollar it spends.
Republicans have said they will not vote to raise the borrowing limit until Congress and the White House agree on a plan to reduce the deficit through spending cuts. House Speaker John Boehner last week those cuts should be larger than any increase in the debt ceiling.
The deficit is the difference between what the government spends and what it takes in through taxes and other revenue. The Congressional Budget Office projects that this year's deficit will total $1.4 trillion. That's would nearly match 2009's record imbalance and mark the third straight year in which the federal deficit has exceeded $1 trillion.
1. What is the name of the Treasury Secretary?
A. Timothy Geithner
B. Hillary Clinton
C. Barrack Obama
2. What is the government borrowing limit?
A. 18.2 trillion
B. 102 billion
C. 14.3 trillion
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After 33 years of marriage, Steven Simkin and Laura Blank divorced in 2006. They agreed to split their considerable wealth equally. She got the apartment on the Upper East Side; he got the house in Scarsdale, N.Y.Afterward, they spoke infrequently, mostly concerning their two grown sons.
More than two years later, Ms. Blank received a voicemail message that stunned her: Mr. Simkin wanted to revise their settlement. She refused, and he sued.
While divorce agreements are generally ironclad and rarely rescinded, this challenge has now reached New Yorks highest court. Deeply divided appellate justices requested what is considered an unusual review of settled law involving contracts.
What made Mr. Simkins call for a do-over even remotely possible has its roots in Bernard L. Madoffs Ponzi scheme. When the couple split their assets evenly, the largest chunk of money was invested with Mr. Madoff. Mr. Simkin kept much of his funds in the Madoff account, which was held in his name.
Ms. Blank, who said she had no interest in investing with Mr. Madoff, received her settlement proceeds in cash.
Shortly after Mr. Madoff admitted wrongdoing in December 2008, Mr. Simkin, a lawyer at one of the countrys most powerful law firms, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, filed court papers to drastically alter the terms of his divorce settlement.
Ms. Blank, he argued in the lawsuit, should be required to turn over millions of dollars that she had received in their settlement to make up for the substantial losses he had sustained in the fraud.
The Simkin-Blank dispute has riveted the states matrimonial bar, and splintered opinions among the six judges who have already weighed in on the case. Some lawyers are predicting that if the Court of Appeals allows Mr. Simkin to try to revise the agreement, the ruling could affect not only divorce settlements but also other contracts.
The decision could open the floodgates for people who want to challenge agreements after they go sour, said Peter Bienstock, a divorce lawyer not involved in the case. Deals are done every single day based on assumptions about what things are worth. If the court allows this lawsuit to go forward, how can we be certain that deals will hold up?
Some lawyers also say that if judges allow this agreement to be rescinded, it could lead to more Madoff-related suits by destabilizing all types of contracts struck with the fraud victims.
The case, which is expected to be decided later this year, has spawned at least one copycat action. In January, a Madoff victim in Middlesex County, Mass., filed a similar complaint against his ex-wife to revise their separation agreement. A family court judge dismissed the lawsuit earlier this month, and the plaintiffs lawyer is now weighing an appeal.
A ruling in the Blank-Simkin case would only have a direct effect on New Yorks laws, but a decision by the influential court could influence how judges interpret laws in other states.
Mr. Simkins suit rests on the doctrine of mutual mistake, a well-established principle that allows for the cancellation of contracts, including divorce agreements, when both parties are innocently mistaken about an essential term.
In a famous example, if a violinist sells another violinist what they believe to be a Stradivarius, and it turns out to be a cheap knockoff, they can void the contract.
In this case, Mr. Simkin, chairman of the real estate department at Paul Weiss, and Ms. Blank, a labor lawyer for the City University of New York, believed at the time of their divorce that $5.4 million of their $13.2 million in assets was in a Madoff account.
To divvy up things, Mr. Simkin withdrew some money from his Madoff account and put it toward a $6.6 million cash payment to Ms. Blank. He continued to invest with Mr. Madoff. But once the Madoff empire collapsed, Mr. Simkin began arguing that he and Ms. Blank were mistaken about the existence of the account.
There was in fact no account and no securities or other assets, wrote Mr. Simkins lawyers in a recent filing. There was only a Ponzi scheme of unprecedented size and duration.
Richard Emery, a lawyer for Ms. Blank, counters that Mr. Simkin did have an account with Mr. Madoff. Any mistake, he contends, involved the accounts future value not its existence. Under the law, an error about an accounts future value would not justify rewriting the agreement.
Just like other Madoff investors, he was able to redeem his money until the scheme collapsed precisely because he had an account there, Mr. Emery said.
To argue that he didnt have a Madoff account is nothing more than a semantic trick.
Last year, a trial judge dismissed Mr. Simkins suit. But in January, a sharply divided New York appellate court, in a 3-to-2 decision, ruled that Mr. Simkin could sue to revise the deal because of the fraud, citing their mutual mistake about the existence of the Madoff account.In her dissent, Justice Karla Moskowitz sharply criticized the majority opinion, writing that it undermines decades of established precedent favoring finality in divorce cases. She said the ruling could bring chaos for not only for the court system but for litigants as well, who deserve finality and to move on.
Ms. Blank, the judge wrote, cannot be responsible for Mr. Simkins decision to invest with Mr. Madoff for two and a half years after their divorce.
Just as she would not have benefited from any increase in the value of the account, she should not have to bear the burden of its loss, she wrote.
Steven received exactly what he bargained for. He alone took on the risk that he might not be able to recoup his investment. Mr. Simkins lawyers his colleagues at Paul Weiss described their partner in court papers as gravely damaged and suffering extreme hardship as a result of the Madoff fraud.
The annual profits per partner at Paul Weiss are about $3 million, according to The American Lawyer magazine. Last October, Mr. Simkin sold his Scarsdale home for $5.7 million and bought another in nearby Mamaroneck for $4.1 million, according to state real estate records.
Paul Weiss, a law firm renowned for its litigation department, is representing Mr. Simkin free of charge. Mr. Simkin and his lawyers declined to comment.
The legal community is divided on the case.
On one hand, the contract law principle of mutual mistake makes a strong case to cancel this divorce agreement, said Lawrence A. Cunningham, a law professor at George Washington University who has written about the dispute.
On the other, judges are reluctant to rescind these contracts because there is a strong interest in maintaining the finality of divorce. Its a close call.
Ms. Blank, who also declined to comment, plans to fight her former husbands lawsuit if the court does not dismiss the case, said Mr. Emery, her lawyer.
The finality of divorce is important for financial reasons and legal reasons, but its also important for emotional reasons, he said.
Five years ago Laura thought she had moved on with her life, but its now been put on hold.

Ms. Blank, who also declined to comment, plans to fight her former husbands lawsuit?
A. TRUE
B. FALSE

Ms. Blank, the judge wrote, cannot be responsible for Mr. Simkins decision to invest with Mr. Madoff for two and a half years after their divorce?
A. TRUE
B. FALSE
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama said on Tuesday the United States would cooperate with Europe as it deals with Greece's debt woes and said a potential default there would be disastrous.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, meeting with Obama on an official visit, said the euro zone shared a common interest in ensuring that the currency bloc was not endangered.
The two leaders said they discussed the debt crisis extensively. A proposal for a second Greek bailout package worth 80 billion to 100 billion euros over three years was taking shape, euro zone sources said.
Obama said Germany would be key to solving the crisis.
"I'm confident that Germany's leadership, along with other key actors in Europe, will help us arrive at a path for Greece to return to growth, for this debt to become more manageable," he said.
"But it's going to require some patience and some time. And we have pledged to cooperate fully in working through these issues, both on a bilateral basis, but also through international and financial institutions like the IMF."
Obama has cited the crisis as one in a handful of foreign "headwinds" affecting the U.S. economy.
Merkel, who is under political pressure at home to avoid being the financial savior for other struggling European countries, said Germany understood its role.
"We've seen that the stability of the euro as a whole will also be influenced if one country is in trouble," she said.
"So we do see clearly our European responsibility and we're shouldering that responsibility, together with the IMF."
Obama welcomed Merkel at a formal ceremony on the White House lawn with cannon shots and military musicians adding to the pomp and circumstance of an official visit -- the first visit by a European leader under Obama's presidency.
The show of partnership did not mask differences that the two leaders have over economic and security issues.
The United States cautiously endorsed military action in Libya while Germany confounded its NATO partners by refusing to take part.
Obama said he would expect Germany to help with Libya once Gaddafi was gone and recovery work was needed in the country, and he thanked Merkel for Germany's stepped-up support in Afghanistan, which freed up other NATO members to be active in Libya.
Did President Barack Obama said on Tuesday the United States would cooperate with Europe as it deals with Greece's debt woes and said a potential default there would be disastrous?
A. TRUE
B. FALSE
Is Obama said he would expect Germany to help with Libya once Gaddafi was gone and recovery work was needed in the country, and he thanked Merkel for Germany's stepped-up support in Afghanistan, which freed up other NATO members to be active in Libya?
A. TRUE
B. FALSE

English Lessons

2011-09-21T23:16:00.001-07:00

EXCERCISE #1
Directions: Discuss the italicized verbs. Do they expree present time or past time? Do the Verbs describe an activity or situation....
a. is in progress right now?
b. is usual or is a general statement of fact?
c. began and ended in the past?
d. was in progress at a time in the past?

1. Jennifer works for an insurance company.
2. When people need help with their automobile insurance, they call her.
3. Right now it is 9:05 A.M., and Jennifer is sitting at her desk.
4. She came to work on time this morning.
5. Yesterday Jennifer was late to work because she had a minor auto accident.
6. While she was driving to work, her cell phone rang.
7. She answered it. It was her friend Rob.
8. She was happy to here from him because she likes Rob and always enjoys
her conversations with him.
9. While they were talking, Jennifer, who is allergic to bee stings, noticed two bees in her car.
10. She quickly opened the car windows and swatted at the bees while she was talking to Rob on the phone.
11. Her hands left the steering wheel, and she lost control of the car. Her car ran into a row of mailboxes beside the road.
12. Fortunately, no one was hurt in the accident.
13. Jennifer is okay, but her car isn't. It needs repairs.
14. When Jennifer got to work this morning, she talked to her automobile insurance agent.
15. That was easy to do because she works at the desk right next to hers.

EXCERCISE #2
Directions: Write the correct pronunciations and practice sayin the words aloud. / T / D / ED /
1. cooked= T                          6. dropped= drop/    /              11. returned= return/
2. served = D                          7. pulled= pull/       /               12. touched= touch/   /
3. wanted= ED                        8. pushed= push/ /                13. waved= wave/      /
4. asked = ask/    /                  9. added= add/     /                 14. pointed= point/    /
5. started= start/ /                 10. passed= pass/ /                15.agreed= agree/     /

Directions: Read the following the paragraphs and answer the questions?

News reporters are taught to start their stories with the most important information. The first sentence, called the lead, cantains the most essential elements of the story. A good lead can convey a lot of information, as in these two leads from srticles that won awards from the American Society of Newpaper Editors: A healthy 17-year -old heart pumped the gift of life through 34- year -old Bruce Murray Friday, following a four- hour transplant operation that doctors said went without a hitch.
1. Is this story about?
A. Child
B. Cat
C. News reporters
2.How old are the people in the story?
A. 17-year -old 34- year -old
B. 21-year -old 72-year -old
C. 28-year -old 82-year -old
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Many market participants believe the end of the Federal Reserves quantitative easing program in June will signal the government's exit from the extraordinary interventions made during the financial crisis. After a healthy earnings season, they say, it is time now for our free market to stand on its own two feet.Not so fast, says Marc Chandler, global head of currency strategy for Brown Brothers Harriman. He and others believe that the incredible amount of borrowing by the U.S. and the European Union to get out of the credit crisis will force governments to stay involved to ensure an orderly decline of this debt load.
It's a concept called financial repression, akin to what occurred after the Great Depression and WWII. Financial repression refers to official actions that run counter to the market-based incentive structure, said Chandler in a note to clients. The ostensible goal is to support the government bond markets. Moral suasion, the cajoling of investors are soft forms of financial repression, where the government can impose such cooperation by fiat.
The Federal Reserves second round of quantitative easing, the purchase of $600 billion longer-dated Treasury securities, is scheduled to end June 30. Despite successfully keeping interest rates low, the program didnt stop housing prices from hitting a new post-recession low, according to Case-Shiller data released Tuesday. Bernanke, Paulson and Geithner had visions of Tina Turner in a burlap outfit and cage matches in Thunderdome especially when the AIG situation exploded on them right after the Lehman bankruptcy, said Alec Levine of WallachBeth Capital. The hindsight lesson is not that we overreacted, but that we were this close to the abyss. So-called free market countries will be much less free for a longer time than people realize.Over in Europe, a second aid package to Greece is being put together to avoid the default of Greek bonds, which could set off a catastrophic domino effect for the European banks holding the debt.
The US debt hit its legal limit of $14.3 trillion last month. Congress is currently fighting over an increase in the so-called debt ceiling, with Republicans wanting such a vote linked to heavy spending cuts. Congress has no choice, but to ultimately pass the increase in order to avoid a U.S. default.
Spending cuts, tax increaseseven organic growth wont do much of anything to solve a debt load of this magnitude, according to an NBER working paper referenced by Chandler on financial repression.
Earlier this year, Standard & Poors put Americas triple-A rating on negative watch in part because of concerns about Congress not having the political will to instill strict austerity measures. It may all be a moot point Hoping that substantial public and private debt overhangs are resolved by growth may be uplifting, but it is not particularly practical from a policy standpoint, states an NBER Working Paper by Carmen Reinhart and M. Belen Sbrancia entitled The Liquidation of Government Debt. The evidence, at any rate, is not particularly encouraging, as high levels of public debt appear to be associated with lower growth.
Once QE2 has ended, regulation may be used to force large institutions to reduce risk and hold more of the safest assets (i.e. Treasurys), said BBHs Chandler. Economists have been downgrading their second half growth estimates recently on fears that high unemployment may be here for a while and that manufacturing growth is slowing. This makes it all the more likely that the governments hand, and not an invisible one, will stay involved in this market to keep interest rates low and allow for the country to refinance this debt load.
The U.S. could still win under this scenario as long as it doesnt get too drastic in its continued intervention efforts and inflation doesnt explode, some investors said.
Despite this, the U.S. is still running at a much more free market mechanism vs. other market regulations, namely those in Europe and Asia where official controls and quotas are even more comprehensive and daunting and effect all asset classes, said Ron Shah of Jina Ventures in an interview from India.
Many market participants believe the end of the Federal Reserves quantitative easing program in June will signal the government's exit from the extraordinary interventions?
A. TRUE
B. FALSE

The Federal Reserves second round of quantitative easing, the purchase of $600 billion longer-dated Treasury securities, is scheduled to end June 30?
A. TRUE
B. FALSE
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WASHINGTON (AP) -- The economy has weakened in recent weeks, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke noted Tuesday. But he stuck with a message he's delivered since April: The slowdown from high gas prices and Japan's crises is temporary, and growth should pick up later this year.
Bernanke made no mention of any new steps the Fed might take to boost the economy. The Fed's $600 billion Treasury bond-buying program is ending this month. The program was intended to keep interest rates low to strengthen the economy. But critics said it raised the risk of high inflation.
The Fed chairman said the economy still needs the benefit of low interest rates. The Fed is scheduled to meet in two weeks and is all but certain to keep those rates at record lows.
Stocks fell after Bernanke began speaking. The Dow Jones industrial average erased gains made earlier in the day and closed down for the fifth straight day, as did broader indexes.
"The market was disappointed," said David Jones, head of DMJ Economic Advisors, a private consulting firm. "Wall Street investors were hoping for the promise of another round of credit easing, and they didn't get it."
Bernanke noted the May jobs report released last week was a setback. It showed the unemployment rate ticked up to 9.1 percent and the economy added just 54,000 jobs, the fewest in eight months. But he said he expected job creation and overall economic growth to rebound in coming months.
"The economic recovery appears to be continuing at a moderate pace, albeit at a rate that is both uneven across sectors and frustratingly slow from the perspective of millions of unemployed and underemployed workers," he said at a banking conference in Atlanta.
Bernanke said the central bank would not consider the recovery well-established "until we see a sustained period of stronger job creation."
He repeated a pledge that central bank officials have been making for more than two years: that they will keep interest rates at record lows "for an extended period."
Bernanke said that consumer inflation has jumped 3.5 percent in the six months ending in April -- well above the average of less than 1 percent over the preceding two years. But he noted that most of the increase had been caused by higher gas prices, which have been creeping down in recent weeks. Excluding food and energy, inflation has been tame, he noted.
He also noted that supply disruptions stemming from the March earthquake and tsunami in Japan have hampered growth in the April-June quarter. But he said the effect on manufacturing output will likely ease in the coming months.
Bernanke disagreed with critics who say the Fed's policies are raising inflation risks by weakening the dollar and contributing to the jump in oil and commodity prices. He said that slow growth in the United States and a persistent trade deficit were the fundamental reasons for the dollar's decline, and not the Fed's interest rate policies.
Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase & Co., asked Bernanke if he was concerned that rules from last year's financial overhaul law will take effect just as the economy is slowing.
Bernanke responded that the worst financial since the Great Depression "revealed a lot of weak spots" that needed to be addressed. But he said regulators were trying to make sure financial institutions would not be overburdened with costs to meet the rules.
Did he also noted that supply disruptions stemming from the March earthquake and tsunami in Japan have hampered growth in the April-June quarter?
A. TRUE
B. FALSE
The economy has weakened in recent weeks, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke noted Tuesday?
A. TRUE
B. FALSE
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NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wall Street bounced in light volume on Tuesday, a day after the S&P 500 fell to its lowest in over two months, with some describing the S&P's losses in the past five weeks as overdone.
The S&P 500 has fallen 4.9 percent since a recent high at the start of May. On Monday, the benchmark index closed at its lowest level since March 18.
Tuesday's move "is just an uptick off some oversold levels," said Marc Pado, U.S. market strategist at Cantor Fitzgerald & Co in San Francisco.
"Friday set us up with a low close. We had a cascading, selling kind of situation that got, in my opinion, a little bit overdone in the very short term."
Recently battered energy shares bounced back despite a drop in U.S. crude prices, though Brent crude rose, helped in part by a weaker U.S. dollar. Healthcare and utility stocks also ranked among the leaders.
Some investors are seeing an opportunity after weeks of soft economic data failed to create a panic in the U.S. stock market. Expectation of strong earnings reports in July could bring in buyers who want to get ahead of the expected move up next month.
"We are doing as typical a market move as you could possibly imagine," Pado said.
"We have no base at this point so we need to bounce and construct a base, then you can make the case for the next bull leg to start."
The Dow Jones industrial average (^DJI - News) gained 63.72 points, or 0.53 percent, to 12,153.68. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index (^SPX - News) rose 6.87 points, or 0.53 percent, to 1,293.04. The Nasdaq Composite Index (^IXIC - News) added 8.87 points, or 0.33 percent, to 2,711.43.
Bank stocks, heavily sold in recent weeks, were among the biggest gainers. JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM - News) rose 1.9 percent to $41.28, while the KBW bank index (^BKX - News) was up 1 percent.
But not all market participants were ready to call the end of the downturn. Peter Kenny, managing director at Knight Equity Markets in Jersey City, New Jersey, said light volume and lack of buyers could mean any bounce is short-lived.
"The problem for institutions on a day like today is the volume being light. Any concerted effort to raise funds (sell positions) could have a disproportionate impact on pricing as buyers will be on the thin side," he wrote in a note to clients.
In company news, International Paper Co (IP - News) launched a $3.3 billion unsolicited offer for rival Temple-Inland Inc (TIN - News). Shares of Temple-Inland shot up 40.4 percent to $29.50, while IP's stock rose 1.3 percent to $30.05. Temple-Inland said it adopted a stockholder rights plan to fend off the hostile takeover.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is due to speak on the U.S. economic outlook at a banking conference in Atlanta.
Did the Fed officials have said recent data was a disappointment, with Eric Rosengren, president of the Boston Fed, suggesting it could delay the Fed's exit from its extremely easy monetary policy. Bernanke is set to start speaking shortly before the market closes?
A. TRUE
B. FALSE
Did the Recently battered energy shares bounced back despite a drop in U.S. crude prices, though Brent crude rose, helped in part by a weaker U.S. dollar?
A. TRUE
B. FALSE

My family use to enjoy going to the beach?
A.tmetals tend to have a dark view of the world. Scratch a gold bug, and you might find a canned-goods enthusiast, or someone who thinks the world's currencies one day will collapse.
Sure, gold and silver have been great investments over the past couple of years. But silver seems to have taken on a more manic stripe, while gold has retained a degree of restraint. It is that divergence that argues for looking at these two metals differently.
Take the last two weeks. Silver is down nearly 30% this month in volatile trading. Such a move in the Dow Jones Industrial Average would equate to an eye-popping drop of more than 3,700 points. of Pacific Investment Management Co. called silver's parabolic rise and subsequent skid a "tulip mania-style move."
Silver backers counter that even with its recent drop, the lesser precious metal has retained a nearly 80% gain over the past year. Of course, it was up nearly 150% two weeks ago. Over the past year, gold is up 23% and the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index is up 15%.
Even before last week's dive, things had gotten pretty crazy in the silver markets. On April 25, the exchange-traded fund traded nearly as much dollar volume as the S&P 500 ETF. And , which oversees silver trading at its Nymex unit, tightened silver margin requirements four times in the last few weeks as the speculative fever got hotter.
1. Take the last two weeks. Silver is down nearly?
A. 50%
B. 30%
C. 15%.
2. Silver's halcyon days may be fading?
A. and the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index is up 15%.
B. Even before last week's dive.
C. but gold still looks like it has some spunk.
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Private debtholders, including euro zone banks, should accept a debt extension or other form of "soft default" to alleviate the debt burden for countries such as Greece if Europe wants a solution to the sovereign debt crisis, Bill Gross, Co-CIO of PIMCO told CNBC on Tuesday."We wouldn't go so far as to suggest that Greece or any other country leave the euro," Gross said. "What I think needs to be done....is for private debtholders and Euroland banks...to take a debt extension or some kind of soft default that alleviates the burden for these countries."
Gross admitted it was difficult to suggest that countries such as Germany, which have been more forthright and fiscally conservative, should help peripheral nations."But if they want a consolidated solution, that's really the way to go," he said.
"Countries like Greece and Ireland are subject to the euro currency and can't lower their high debt to GDP ratio by offering interest rates in the low to negative range such that a country can pay for its debt by real growth," Gross said.
That might have provided a solution, he said. "It's a rather surreptitious and sneaky way to do it, but it's quite effective."
Despite concerns that European banks have taken on too much risk and will not be able to withstand future shocks to the economy, Gross believes they are an attractive investment.
"Lloyds [LLOY-LN 49.74    -1.13 (-2.22%)] and Royal Bank of Scotland [RBS-LN 40.44    -0.44 (-1.08%)]and Rabobank all have cocos (contingent convertible bonds) which provide yields of 300-400 basis points more than typical senior bank capital, and we think it's attractive. Admittedly there is a risk and if these banks move down to a certain equity as a percentage of capital level then the price has to be paid, but ultimately we think banks such as those are in the process of recapitalizing... and that going forward they will be much more careful in terms of riskiness," he said.
Bond investors needed to look for opportunities from the standpoint of currencies where real interest rates are high as opposed to low or negative, Gross said.
"We're looking currencies and bonds in those currencies which offer high real interest rates. Brazil does that at 6-7 percent real. Canada... basically offers a half to 1 percent higher real interest rate. Same thing for Mexico," he said.

Bill Gross, Co-CIO of PIMCO told CNBC on Tuesday."We wouldn't go so far as to suggest that Greece or any other country leave the euro," Gross said?
A. TRUE
B. FALSE
Despite concerns that European banks have taken on too much risk and will not be able to withstand future shocks to the economy, Gross believes they are an attractive investment?
A. TRUE
B. FALSE
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Take a helping of Russian genius, add a portion of risk appetite and stir in a lot of patience, and you have the recipe for the resounding success of search engine Yandex's U.S. stock market float.
The Nasdaq listing values Russia's leading internet search engine [YNDX 35.0799    10.0799
at $8 billion, an eye-popping 500 times its worth when private equity investors bought into the company in 2000.
That year the business, founded in 1997 by mathematician Arkady Volozh and geophysicist Ilya Segalovich, had revenue of $72,000 and lost $2 million.
Eyeing a long-term prospect, Yelena Ivashentseva of private equity fund Baring Vostok Capital Partners put together an investor group that bought a 36 percent stake in Yandex for just over $5 million.
Talks to buy into Yandex lasted seven months, Ivashentseva said recently, recalling the horror of the fund's backers over the deal. "It was really difficult to explain this to our investors, who en masse demanded that we get rid of the stake," she told Forbes magazine's Russian edition.
It turned out to be the only round of fund-raising that the company did until the initial public offering (IPO), which featured a slug of new shares. Investors who came into Yandex in recent years bought stock from existing shareholders. (Update: Yandex launched its $1.3 billion IPO on the Nasdaq Tuesday. Shares began trading at around $40 a share, after the offering was priced at $25 a share.)
Yandex went on to richly reward that investment, with the algorithm driving its search engineconceived to scan the Bible, Russian classical literature and patent textsproving consistently superior to that of rival Google [GOOG 520.71    2.32 (+0.45%)   ], whose co-founder, Sergey Brin, was born in Russia.
The company's home site yandex.ru has a market share of 65 percent in Russia, compared with Google's 22 percent, capitalising on a boom in online advertising to generate sales of $445 million last year, up 43 percent, while earnings rose 90 percent to $135 million.
Volozh is a slight man with a quiet manner and, since the earliest days of the Internet boom, a wry scepticism about the millions, then billions of dollars flooding into his industry.
"We used to be very conservative, until we started meeting so many excited people," Volozh joked in 2000.
He resisted the overtures of suitors dangling the prospect of a huge payday through, telling Reuters in 2005 that bankers "are promising us a golden future, diamonds in the sky, if we do an IPO."
Patience Pays
Bankers say plans for a long-awaited float were prepared in 2008, only to be derailed by the global financial crisis. The company's core investors decided to sit out the crash and Yandex, bucking an 8 percent contraction in the Russian economy in 2009, delivered top-line growth that year although earnings shrank by 17 percent.
"The investors waited for long enough and this strategy was successful. They weren't trying to push Yandex into an IPO as soon as possible," said Anna Lepetukhina, an analyst at Moscow brokerage Troika Dialog.
"There were rumours that they were going to do an IPO in 2008. Then the crisis came and they were prepared to wait. They got a good return on that investment."
Russia Returns
For the investors, the Yandex story amounts to proof that Russia's investment climate is by no means as hostile as many say.
Baring Vostok, which retains a 26 percent stake as Yandex's largest shareholder, abides by a few golden rules to avoid the pitfalls that others have fallen into, founding partner Michael Calvey told Reuters on Tuesday.
The fund's 19-firm portfolio is weighted towards services, avoids industries where it might clash with state firms and relies on equity funding, not debt, to shield its investments against Russia's often vicious business cycle.
Calvey, an American who founded Baring Vostok in 1994, said in an interview that the fund's strategy had enabled it to ride out the 2008-09 crash without having to make any disposals.
"We don't expect there to be any fatalities in our portfolio as a result of the crisis," Calvey said. He declined to comment on the Yandex IPO, citing regulatory restrictions.

What business man founded in 1997 company?
A. Arkady Volozh
B. Gerald Kesler
C. Harold Keller

Who was the American who founded Baring Vostok?
A. Calvey
B. London
C. Jason
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NEW YORK (AP) -- Traders are eagerly awaiting indications from Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke that interest rate hikes aren't likely anytime soon.
The hope that Bernanke will make that clear in remarks scheduled for Tuesday afternoon is keeping stocks afloat. Stocks recovered some of their losses Tuesday after sliding for four straight days.
The Dow Jones industrial average rosleeker broadcast networks like

English Lessons

2011-09-21T23:12:00.001-07:00

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Most Asian markets ended in the red after euro zone finance ministers delayed a final decision on extending emergency loans to debt-stricken Greece, dashing hopes for a quick solution to the political impasse.
The FTSE CNBC Asia 100 Index [.FTFCNBCA 6455.52    -48.37 (-0.74%)], which measures markets across Asia, fell 0.7 percent.
The Nikkei average ended flat, with investor caution before the Federal Open Market Committee meeting this week offsetting gains in power companies, which rose on a government official's comment to restart nuclear reactors.
Shares in power companies Chubu Electric and Kansai Electric jumped after Trade Minister Banri Kaieda said on Saturday that government inspections showed all nuclear power plants in Japan had adequate safety measures against severe accidents and called on local governments to give the green light to restarting nuclear reactors.
But, shares of Japanese game developer Sega Sammy tumbled after the firm said information belonging to 1.3 million customers had been stolen from its database, the latest in a rash of global cyber attacks against video game companies.
The benchmark Nikkei average [.N225 9354.32    2.92 (+0.03%)   ] closed at 9,354.32, while the broader Topix gained 0.2 percent to 806.83.
Seoul shares dipped as foreign investor selling continued for a third straight session, with technology issues and crude oil refiners including Samsung Electronics and S-Oil losing ground.
The Korea Composite Stock Price Index [.KS11 2019.65    -12.28 (-0.6%)   ] ended down 0.6 percent at 2,019.65 points.
Australian stocks suffered another reversal as morning gains evaporated to send the market to a fresh nine-and-a-half-month low, with doubts about the Australian economy adding to worries about a Greek debt default.
Shares in oil refiner Caltex slumped 6.9 percent after it said refining margins have dropped sharply and its first-half profit would fall by up to 39 percent.
The benchmark S&P/ASX 200 index [.AXJO 4451.70    -33.20 (-0.74%)   ] dropped 33.2 points or 0.7 percent to 4,451.7, having reached as high as 4,520 in morning trade.
China's main stock index ended down 0.8 percent in thin trade near a nine-month low on dampened by tight liquidity in the interbank market, while banks prepared to meet Monday's deadline for a hike in requirement reserve ratio.
The liquidity squeeze in China's money market makes brokerages, fund managers and wealthy personal investors unable to obtain sufficient cash for investments in stocks.
The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index [.SSEC 2621.25    -21.57 (-0.82%)   ] finished down at 2,622.6 points, the lowest level since late September 2010 and extending a 2.3 percent loss over the week last week.
Hong Kong shares gave up earlier gains to end lower as property issues floundered and a sluggish market, which looks poised to hit a nine-month low, weighed.
The benchmark Hang Seng Index [.HSI Loading...      ()   ] fell 0.4 percent to 21,599.5 with the property sub-index slipping 2.2 percent to its lowest level in a year.
Cheung Kong [0001.HK 109.20    -4.30 (-3.8%)   ] fell 3.8 percent, leading a broad decline in property counters in Hong Kong after a top government official warned of the growing risks of a property bubble in the territory.
In Southeast Asia, Singapore's STI [.FTSTI 3013.60    8.32 (+0.28%)   ] rose 0.3 percent at the finish line, while Malaysia's KLCI [.KLSE 1559.19    -4.24 (-0.27%)   ] ended 0.3 percent lower.

Most Asian markets ended in the red after euro zone finance ministers delayed a final decision on extending emergency loans to debt-stricken Greece, dashing hopes for a quick solution to the political impasse?
A. TRUE
B. FALSE

Did the benchmark Hang Seng Index fell 0.4 percent to 21,599.5 with the property sub-index slipping 2.2 percent to its lowest level in a year?
A. TRUE
B. FALSE
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NEW YORK (Reuters) Stocks edged higher on Wednesday after an upbeat outlook from FedEx as investors awaited the Federal Reserve's assessment of the economy and any clues about plans for dealing with recent weakness.
Economic bellwether FedEx Corp (FDX.N) rose 2.4 percent to $91.31, lending support to the market after the shipping group reported strong fourth-quarter profit and forecast robust 2012 earnings.
"The new news there is FedEx made noise about how the cost of doing business is going down as opposed to up. So are we starting to see some slowdown in inflation here?" said Stephen Massocca, managing director at Wedbush Morgan in San Francisco.
The Dow Jones Transportation average (.DJT) gained 0.8 percent.
The Dow Jones industrial average (.DJI) gained 4.39 points, or 0.04 percent, to 12,194.40. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index (.SPX) put on 1.74 points, or 0.13 percent, to 1,297.26. The Nasdaq Composite Index (.IXIC) added 2.13 points, or 0.08 percent, to 2,689.39.
The Fed is likely to acknowledge weakness in the economy and reiterate its commitment to keeping interest rates low for an extended period, according to analysts.
Investors will look for clues on new measures to support the economy as the Fed's second quantitative easing program ends this month.
"(Bernanke) could surprise you, but he's certainly not looking at inflation or looking at an overheating economy. He's not looking at an economy that is so dire that he has to fire a bullet he really doesn't want to fire right now. So it's going to be the bullet is in the gun, it's ready to go if I need it, and everyone is expecting that," said Massocca.
Adobe Systems Inc (ADBE.O) slumped 6.4 percent to $29.96 a day after the software maker reported a 54 percent jump in quarterly profit but warned of weakness in European demand.
U.S. stocks advanced for the fourth straight day on Tuesday on expectations the Greek prime minister would survive a confidence vote, a key hurdle to avoiding a debt default, adding momentum to a recent rebound.
The Nasdaq posted its biggest percentage gain since October on Tuesday, while the S&P 500 marked its best day in two months in what traders see as continued short-term buying from deeply oversold levels.
Net short positions by hedge funds on the S&P 500 have recently increased, according to Societe Generale cross-asset research.
A statement from the Federal Open Market Committee is due at 12:30 p.m. EDT, followed by Bernanke's press conference at 2:15 p.m. EDT?
A. TRUE
B.FALSE
The new news there is FedEx made noise about how the cost of doing business is going down as opposed to up. So are we starting to see some slowdown in inflation here?
A. TRUE
B.FALSE
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Shares of major Chinese lenders China Construction Bank and Agricultural Bank of China fell to multi-month lows on Tuesday, hit by potentially souring loans, an economic slowdown and tighter capital requirements.

AFP | Getty Images
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

CCB [1288.HK 3.94    -0.05 (-1.25%)   ] was down 2.7 percent to a nine-month low of HK$6.43, while AgBank [3988.HK 3.79    -0.03 (-0.79%)   ] was down 3.8 percent to a four-month low of HK$3.84, versus the benchmark Hang Seng Index's [.HSI 21850.59    251.08 (+1.16%)   ] 0.4 percent rise.
"The risk of a hard landing for the Chinese economy is increasing," said Alexander Lee, a Hong Kong-based analyst at DBS Vickers. "The Japanese earthquake, a slow U.S. economy, the Eurozone problems and a slowing Chinese economy are all building up on the banking sector."
CCB is China's largest mortgage lender at a time when the government is taking increasingly heavy-handed measures to cool real estate prices, prompting Standard & Poor's to lower its outlook on the country's property sector to negative.
AgBank is the biggest lender to rural causes and has the highest non-performing loan ratio and lowest capital adequacy ratio among the big four lenders, raising worries that it may need fresh capital if the government tightens capital requirements.
Further weighing on the two stocks is the impending expiry of their cornerstone investors' lock-up period, with Bank of America [BAC 10.695    0.095 (+0.9%)   ] able to sell CCB shares from late August. Bloomberg reported on Monday that Bank of America may sell half its stake in the lender to comply with new industry capital rules.
The lock-up period for AgBank will begin expiring in July, which could lead to a large number of its shares flooding the market if cornerstone investors including Singapore's Temasek and the Qatar Investment Authority choose to sell.
"This is a known risk factor that most investors should know about," said Patrick Pong, an analyst at Mirae Asset Securities.
"These cornerstone investors may choose to sell down some of their holdings, and that may weigh on the shares in the short term."

Slowdown and Tightening
The total amount China's banks have lent compared to the country's GDP size has risen to "alarming levels", and off-balance sheet financing could lead to future asset quality problems, Credit Suisse wrote in a research report on Monday.
Much of the off-balance sheet financing is likely to have gone to local government financing vehicles companies set up by provincial or city authorities who are forbidden from borrowing directly from banks.
The country's top banks provided many of the loans as part of a giant economic stimulus programme launched by Beijing in late 2008 to counter the global financial crisis.
"There are signs of an economic slowdown in China, and we believe that this may not be just a transient problem as the situation is much more complex with structural problems," Credit Suisse analysts Vincent Chan and Peggy Chan wrote in a note on Monday.
Monetary tightening in China could further pressure the sector, with the central bank raising bank reserve ratios last week for the ninth time since October to curb inflation, which is running at its fastest pace in almost three years.
The People's Bank of China is also likely to raise its benchmark interest rate at least once more and reserve requirements at least three more times this year, a Reuters poll showed in April.
"There's an increasing number of short-term risks in the horizon, and that's something investors need to look out for," said Lee at DBS Vickers.

The lock-up period for AgBank will begin expiring in July, which could lead to a large number of its shares flooding the market if cornerstone investors including Singapore's Temasek and the Qatar Investment Authority choose to sell?
A. TRUE
B.FALSE

The People's Bank of China is also likely to raise its benchmark interest rate at least once more and reserve requirements at least three more times this year, a Reuters poll showed in April?
A. TRUE
B.FALSE
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The nations two biggest providers of reverse mortgages are no longer offering the loans, as the economics of the business have come under pressure.

Wells Fargo, the largest provider, said on Thursday that it was leaving the business, following the departure in February of Bank of America [BAC 10.68    0.08 (+0.75%)   ] , the second-largest lender. With the two biggest players gone together, they accounted for 43 percent of the business, according to Reverse Market Insight prospective borrowers may find it more difficult to access the mortgages.
Reverse mortgages allow people age 62 and older to tap what may be their biggest asset, their home equity, without having to make any payments. Instead, the bank pays the borrowers, though they continue to be responsible for paying property taxes and homeowners insurance.
But the loans have increasingly become a riskier proposition. Banks are not allowed to assess borrowers ability to keep up with all their payments, and more borrowers do not have the wherewithal to stay current on their homeowners insurance and property taxes, both of which have risen in many parts of the country. At the same time, borrowers have been taking the maximum amount of money available, often using it to pay off any remaining money owed on the home. Yet home prices continue to slide.
We are on new ground here, said Franklin Codel, head of national consumer lending at Wells Fargo [WFC 27.33    0.53 (+1.98%)   ] . With house prices falling, you reach a crossover point where they owe more than the house is worth and it creates risk for us as mortgage servicers and for HUD. He was referring to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, whose Federal Housing Administration arm insures the vast majority of these loans through its Home Equity Conversion Mortgage program.
As a result, banks are seeing a rise in what are known as technical defaults, when homeowners fall behind on their taxes or homeowners insurance, both of which are required to avoid foreclosure. According to Reverse Market Insight, about 4 to 5 percent of active reverse mortgages, or 25,000 to 30,000 borrowers, are in default on at least one of those items.
Bank of America, meanwhile, said that declining home values made fewer people eligible for reverse mortgages. So it decided to redeploy at least half of those working on the mortgages to its loan modification division, which has been criticized for failing to help enough homeowners on the brink of foreclosure.
For Wells Fargo, however, the inability to assess borrowers financial health was the biggest factor for exiting the business. Anyone over the age of 62 with enough home equity can take out a reverse mortgage, regardless of their other income. The amount of money received is determined by the borrowers age, the amount of equity in the home and prevailing interest rates.
We are not allowed, as an originator, to decline anyone, added Mr. Codel of Wells Fargo. We worked closely with HUD to find an alternative solution and we were unable to find one with them, which led to this outcome.
Reverse mortgage borrowers are required to pay premiums for mortgage insurance, which protects the lender if the homes are ultimately sold for less than the mortgage value, since the government is required to pay the difference to the lender. The premium rates were increased last October to account for declining home values (though one sizable upfront mortgage premium was eliminated to make the loans more attractive to certain borrowers).
But lenders are responsible for making tax and insurance payments on behalf of delinquent borrowers until they submit an insurance claim to HUD, at which point the agency would be responsible since it provided the insurance against default.
In January, HUD sent a letter to lenders and reverse mortgage counselors that provided guidance on how to report delinquent loans to the agency, and what steps the lenders could take to get borrowers back on track, like establishing a realistic repayment plan that could be completed in two years or less, or getting a HUD-approved mortgage counselor involved to help come up with a solution. If one cannot be reached, the lenders must begin foreclosure proceedings.
Both Wells Fargo and Bank of America have said they have not foreclosed on any borrowers to date.
The National Reverse Mortgage Lenders Association, the industry group, said it has been working with HUD to come up with procedures that would allow lenders to assess a prospective borrowers income and expenses, or at least require homeowners to set aside money to pay for taxes and insurance. A spokeswoman for HUD said the guidance is still being drafted.
As it stands now, borrowers are required to see a HUD-approved lender before they can apply for a reverse mortgage. As part of that process, consumers are educated on the nuts and bolts of how the loans work and what their responsibilities are, including that they need to be able to continue to pay taxes, insurance and keep the property in good repair.
We dont tell consumers what decision to make, but we do try to give them the tools to make a decision, said Sue Hunt, director of reverse mortgage counseling at CredAbility, a nonprofit consumer credit counseling agency. She added that their sessions last about an hour and 15 minutes, on average. The counselors also look at the consumers budget to see if it is sustainable with the mortgage, as well as what circumstances might arise that could throw the borrower off track.
Outside factors are affecting people who thought five or six years ago that they were in pretty good shape, she added. The world has changed a bit around them.
In days past, the borrower would get the reverse mortgage, and equity would continue to build, experts said, which would provide borrowers with more options like refinancing should they fall on hard times. Declining home values have changed that calculus for both bankers and consumers. Borrowers have not been able to pull out as much money. At the same time, the government has also tightened its withdrawal limits.
There were a total of more than 50,000 reverse mortgages, totaling $12.66 billion, made industrywide since last October, according to HUD.
Both Wells Fargo and Bank of America will continue to service their existing reverse mortgages. And the reverse mortgage association has said it will work with its members to ensure that senior citizens who need the loans can get them, though some experts said that less competition could increase certain fees.
There is a certain amount of the business done by Wells and Bank of America that happens because of their bank branches, brand names and large sales forces, said John K. Lunde, president of Reverse Market Insight. We would expect something more than half of their volume to be absorbed by the rest of the industry, with something less than half not happening.
Wells Fargo, which said that reverse mortgages represented 2.2 percent of its retail mortgage business, employs about 1,000 reverse mortgage workers. They are being given a chance to find other positions at the bank. Bank of America said that about half of its 600 workers have been reassigned within the bank. MetLife, the third-largest provider of reverse mortgages, declined to comment on its business.

Wells Fargo, the largest provider, said on Thursday that it was leaving the business, following the departure in February of Bank of America?
A. TRUE
B.FALSE

Wells Fargo, which said that reverse mortgages represented 2.2 percent of its retail mortgage business, employs about 1,000 reverse mortgage workers?
A. TRUE
B.FALSE

English Lessons

2011-09-21T23:06:00.000-07:00

The teaching method employed is based on the philosophy that for the students to speak English well they must be able to recognize and produce the tones of the language accurately. English Lesson to help and instruct with English conversation. English lesson are concentrated around our student individual needs. English lesson will help you improve your spoken English. Our English Lessons can help you achieve a great knowledge of the English language. With our English lessons you will see your self improve greatly. English Lessons, English Lessons
order to accomplish this, a method of FOCUSED PRACTICE is used. Practical vocabulary and grammar patterns are introduced and drilled before students are ask to engage in short or long conversations.
A large percentage of the class is spent having the teach model sounds, patterns and sentences and the students practising drills.
Within each lesson, dialogues are practised to help students communicate outside the classroom.Our American English language courses consist of two levels. They are recommended for those with a serious interest in learning to understand speak, read and write English. Students are encouraged to devote one to two additional private hours a day to the study of the English language.
Our classes are taught by qualified and experienced native speaking English instructors. Classes are small (size ranges from 1 to 4 ) to allow maximum participation .English Lesson to help and instruct with English conversation. English lesson are concentrated around our student individual needs. English lesson will help you improve your spoken English. Our English Lessons can help you achieve a great knowledge of the English language. With our English lessons you will see your self improve greatly. English Lessons, English Lessons

Our English Language courses consist of two levels.
They are recommended for those with a serious interest in learning to understand speak, read and write English.
Students are encouraged to devote one to two additional private hours per day to the study of the language..
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kype classes are taught by qualified and experienced native-speaking English instructors. Skype classes are small (size ranges from 1 to 4) to allow maximum participation.
In class, students practice speaking the English Language in a controlled setting. As a student you will be expected to actively participate in the learning process, not only between yourself and the teacher but also between fellow students. The use of grammar patterns are presented and repeated to ensure proper pronunciation. Dialogues are also practised to increase fluency.
AMERICAN ENGLISH CONVERSATION
Free Amercian English Conversation course. This course is aimed at giving you a good foundation of spoken English language.Special emphasis is placed upon good American English tone production, while using and recognizing basic vocabulary and sentence patterns. Short dialogues and class activities are practised to enhance fluency and accuracy when talking. After completing the Free American English Conversation course, you should be able to recognize and respond appropriately to high frequency and expressions about familiar American English topics.
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The Associated Press reported from Moscow Friday that an expected deal between Russia and China to supply around 60 billion cubic meters of natural gas to China has stalled. The two could not agree on price.
Past energy negotiations between China and Russia often have snagged on disagreements over prices, loan terms and other issues, including Beijings desire for equity stakes in Russian resources. Like Chinas own state-run companies, Russia balks at ceding any control over what it views as strategically vital assets, the AP reported.
In a Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) Arbitration Statement of Claim filed in September 2009, Claimant Merrill Lynch asserted breach of promissory note and unjust enrichment causes of action arising from Respondent Aquinos alleged failure to pay the balance due and owing on a Promissory Note executed on or about April 22, 2008 (the Promissory Note). Claimant Merrill Lynch sought
    * $969,870.41 in compensatory damages for the outstanding principal of the Note;
    * interest from September 21, 2009 through such date as the principal and Interest are fully paid, accumulating at a rate of $132.86 per day;
    * attorneys fees;
    * costs; and,
    * any additional relief the Panel deemed just and appropriate.
By the close of the arbitration hearing, Claimant had further clarified various damages as $80,911.74 in interest through July 16, 2010 ; $419,501.26 in attorneys fees , and, $32,605.83 in costs. In the Matter of the FINRA Arbitration Between Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith, Incorporated, Claimant, vs. Angel E. Aquino, Respondent (FINRA Arbitration 09-05587, June 14, 2011. Hearing Site: San Juan, Puerto Rico)
Respondent generally denied the allegations, asserted various affirmative defenses. Respondent filed a Counterclaim asserting breach of contract and termination without cause, and he requested:
    * $1,000,000 for the loss of Monthly Transition Compensation
    * $200,000 for the loss of Revenue Performance Bonus damages
    * $200,000 for the loss of Up Front Contingent Award
    * $100,000 per month for the loss of commissions
    * $2,000,000 for the loss of negotiating an advance against future commissions with another firm
    * $50,000,000 in damages for the present value of commissions that would have been generated over Respondents lifetime
    * $4,000,000 for physical and mental pain
    * $100,000,000 in punitive damages
    * $50,000,000 in good will damages
    * $7,500,000.00 representing five times his average yearly earnings
    * five percent of the value of securities sold by Respondent during his tenure at Merrill Lynch
    * expungement of his Form U-5
    * attorneys fees
    * costs
    * any other relief the Panel deemed just and appropriate
At the close of the hearing, Respondent requested compensatory damages in the sum of $13,290,232.26.
SIDE BAR: I dont know about you but I love the sound of a $50 million and $13 million claim. It just has a lovely ring to it. Also, this is setting up as one of those cases where you get a bucket of popcorn (dont tell my wife that I drenched it in butter), lay down on the couch, and prepare to watch a Heavyweight World Championship fight. I mean, cmon, this is going to be a slugfest. And dont forget that Merrill Lynch started this with its $1 million-plus claim.
Now You See It
This case involved a number of Motions, among which was Respondents Motion for Visual Inspection,which,among other things, requested that the FINRA Arbitration Panel order that a visual inspection of Respondents former office be performed by the Panel to determine the visual and audial [stet] perception of witnesses to an event at issue, involving Respondent and his superior. The Arbitration Panel granted the Motion and conducted the requested inspection with legal counsel for both parties present.
SIDE BAR: Frankly, kudos to Respondents legal counsel. A very clever move and something that more lawyers should demand. I have no knowledge of what the issue was here (not explained in the FINRA Decision) or what was in dispute in terms of the proximity of various parties, but from my years of practice I know that sometimes theres just no substitute for being there, standing there, and looking around.
Sometimes a witness swears that he saw everything from his office or she heard it all from her desk, but all the diagrams in the world just dont demonstrate how unlikely those claims are. Get a jury or panel to stand in the office and see that the executives desk was way around the corner and behind a pillar or that the overheard conversation took place within a highly-walled cubicle amidst the hub-bub of a noisy trading floor, and that physical proof can be compelling.
Oops
Respondent filed a Motion for Protective Order against Claimant (related to Respondents wife) in which he asserted, among other things, that his wife received an unwarranted call from Claimants representatives; and that Claimants breach of Respondents and his wifes private life and sanctuary was unjustifiable.
Claimant asserted, among other things, that no attorney or employee of Claimants counsels firm made the alleged call; and, Respondents wife had been identified as a potential witness on Claimants witness list since June 23, 2010, to which Respondent had never objected. Respondent countered that his wife had never been identified as a witness on the witness list filed by Claimant.
Thereafter, Claimant admitted that it had inadvertently misstated that Respondents wife was listed as a potential witness on its witness list. The Panel granted the Motion.
SIDE BAR: Ouch!
DECISION
The FINRA Arbitration Panel found Respondent Aquino not liable and denied Claimant Merrill Lynchs claims with prejudice.
However, the Arbitration Panel was not done. Not by a long shot.
The Panel found Claimant Merrill Lynch liable for the defamatory nature of information placed on Respondent Aquinos CRD record and ordered the firm to pay to Respondent compensatory damages in the amount of $1,546,247.00 (prejudgment interest specifically excluded); and $600.00 representing reimbursement of the non-refundable portion of the Counterclaim filing fee previously paid by Respondent to FINRA Dispute Resolution. The Panel denied punitive damages and any award for emotional distress.
Expungement
Based upon a finding of defamation, the FINRA Arbitration Panel recommended the expungement of the Termination Comment in Section 3 of Respondents Form U5. The Panel recommends the expungement of the following language:
    Mr. Aquinos employment was tenninated on September 21. 2009 for failure to adhere to the firms policies and standards regarding employee conduct This matter did not involve customer accounts
The Panel recommended the following replacement explanation:
    Mr. Aquino was terminated not for cause.
The Panel retained as unchanged Discharged as the Reason for Termination.
In this case involved a number of Motions, among which was Respondents Motion for Visual Inspection,which,among other things, requested that the FINRA Arbitration Panel order that a visual?
A. TRUE
B. FALSE
Did the FINRA Arbitration Panel found Respondent Aquino not liable and denied Claimant Merrill Lynchs claims with prejudice?
A. TRUE
B. FALSE
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In case you haven't noticed, there's a lot of uncertainty in the market right now. Along with the European financial crisis, the budget battle and political posturing surrounding the 2012 election, uncertainty over Fed policy is driving a lot of rethinking about where to invest.
The biggest immediate concern is what will happen in debt markets once the Federal Reserve stops buying long-term Treasurys. Its "quantitative easing" program has kept long-term rates low, so in theory those rates should rise beginning in July after the Fed ceases its second wave of security purchases. Conflicting schools of thought see this playing out differently. Many believe that the Fed will continue to intervene to keep long-term rates low.
Forget about ever seeing short-term rates normalize in your lifetime. Since most of the $14 trillion national debt is financed in this market, every one-percentage-point rise in short-term rates would add $140 billion to the deficit. Imagine what three points would do. Expect the Fed to keep using the unemployment rate as its excuse for not raising rates even in the face of rising inflation.
My income investment strategy has been to diversify over a variety of income drivers so that no single adverse economic event can destroy the overall performance of a portfolio. This approach has worked well over the last two years because all sectors have benefited from a recovery from the financial crisis and the concurrent recession. Looking forward it seems clear, however, that some sectors face greater uncertainty than others. Some of this is due to recent run-ups in prices and some to a lack of predictable direction. Also, we cannot underestimate the emotional factors that often lead to perceptions trumping reality.
My most confident allocation is in adjustable-rate debt securities. These securities will benefit from a rise in interest rates, but they require a sacrifice of one to two percentage points in current yield. Since I expect rates to rise before year-end that is a small concession, especially if the security is trading below its par value.
Look for securities tied to the headline Consumer Price Index rather than the core CPI, which lags the true inflation rate by a significant amount when commodities like oil and foods are moving higher. One is Prudential Financial ( PRU - news - people ) (PFK, 27), which pays CPI plus 240 basis points. It currently yields 4.6%. A fund alternative is the Nuveen Tax-Advantaged Floating Rate Fund ( JFP - news - people ) (JFP, 2.5), which yields 5.9%. Note that Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS) are not the best choice here, but if you like them, buy the iShares Barclays ( BCS - news - people ) TIPS ETF (TIP, 110) for its more favorable tax treatment. Allocate 30% of your portfolio to adjustable-rate securities.
The second area, where I recommend a 20% allocation, is energy, specifically oil. Yes, the big-appreciation gains are probably over, but the income payouts are still high and will likely rise. Look to buy Canadian oil and gas producers for your tax-sheltered account, as they are not subject to the 15% Canadian withholding tax. My choice here is Penn West Petroleum (PWE, 25), paying 4.4%. Buy master limited partnerships like Plains All American Pipeline ( PAA - news - people ) (PAA, 61), paying 6.3% for taxable accounts to obtain a high tax-deferred payout that can grow.
I'm allocating another 15% to stockmarket-linked securities. These include convertible securities like Wells Fargo ( WFC - news - people )'s 7.5% convertible preferred (WFC-L, 1,079), as well as closed-end funds that invest in stocks and use call option writing to enhance the yield. Look at Eaton Vance Tax-Managed Buy-Write Opportunities Fund ( ETV - news - people ) (ETV, 13), yielding a tax-advantaged 10%.
This final 35% of the portfolio should be in a combination of cash and gold. By holding cash you avoid having to make a sell decision, which can cloud the buy decision when an opportunity comes. Gold should be up to 10% of this total, using an ETF that holds bullion, such as SPDR Gold Trust (GLD, 149) or iShares Gold Trust (IAU, 15). Other commodity-based ETFs are available, but I prefer gold for its broader audience of buyers, more limited supply and longer history as a vehicle for wealth preservation.
In order to raise cash from your existing holdings, look to take some profits by reducing positions that have done well for you as well as by reducing your fixed-rate debt exposure. Then again, you could just raid your equities portfolio.
A reshuffling of Greece Prime Minister George Papandreous cabinet and a call for rapid action from the leaders of France and Germany gave the euro a lift Friday, and in turn Wall Street.
Former Greek defense minister Evangelos Venizelos will take over as finance minister from Giorgos Papakonstantinou, the author of the wildly unpopular, albeit necessary, austerity programs, who is begin reassigned to an environmental post.
The move comes as some of the EUs stronger core countries push for a resolution to Greeces fiscal mess. French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Prime Minister Angela Merkel showed a united front on the need for a deal in the next few weeks, but offered few details of when and how such a deal will get done or who will pay for it.
To date, Germany has demanded that any Greek rescue come with the participation of private bondholders, who would have to take haircuts on their investment, as opposed to the French position of paying creditors 100 cents on the dollar. The opposing perspectives may be a reflection of the exposure within the French and German banking systems to Greek debt. Just this week, Moodys said it was placing the ratings of a trio of French banks BNP Paribas, Credit Agricole, and Societe Generale under review. (See Greek Clouds Over French Banks.)
While there is still a tough row to hoe, the more encouraging signals around the debt situation helped bolster the euro, which rallied to $1.4277. The 17-nation currency has been surprisingly strong against the dollar in the face of a Greek default, something that seems incongruous and would likely reverse sharply if the delicate deal talks collapse again.
European stocks made moderate gains Friday, and U.S. stocks were moving sharply higher at the open as the major indexes try to avoid a seventh-straight down week. On Thursday investors showed a taste for Americas biggest companies, with the Dow Jones industrial average comfortably outperforming the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq the latter actually finished in the red.
Among stocks in the news, Research In Motion bears watching after getting crushed in after-hours trading following a disappointing earnings report that missed revenue forecasts and offered a bleak outlook. Shares of the BlackBerry-maker were down more than 16% pre-market. (See Research In Motions Q1 A Win For The Bears.)
BJs Wholesale Club moved up 3.5% before the bell on word that private equity firms Leonard Green & Partners and CVC Capital Partners had teamed up on a buyout offer for the retailer. The news, which came in an SEC filing, did not include the financial terms of the deal, which has been rumored seemingly since Leonard Green disclosed a 9.5% stake in BJs last year.
Did income investment strategy has been to diversify over a variety of income drivers so that no single adverse economic event can destroy the overall performance of a portfolio did this approach has worked well?
A. TRUE
B. FALSE
Did the move up 3.5% before the bell on word that private equity firms Leonard Green & Partners and CVC Capital Partners had teamed up on a buyout offer for the retailer?
A. TRUE
B. FALSE

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - Online social game company Zynga plans to raise $1.5 billion to $2 billion in an initial public offering and could file paperwork with U.S. regulators as soon as Wednesday, a source familiar with the situation said on Tuesday.
Zynga is expected to float only a small portion of its shares and the IPO could value the company as high as $15 billion to $20 billion, the source said.
Morgan Stanley is expected to lead underwriters on the IPO, with Goldman Sachs, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Barclays and JPMorgan also expected to be among the underwriters, the source said.
The source declined to be named because the information is not public. The banks and Zynga declined to comment.
Zynga has also held talks with banks about a credit facility of at least $1 billion, according to CNBC, which first reported the news.
Zynga, the company behind a series of popular games on Facebook including FarmVille and Mafia Wars, has more than 215 million monthly active users, according to its website.
Its IPO would be the latest in a string of social media companies to take advantage of the equity markets.
LinkedIn Corp and China's Renren Inc were first to test the public markets in May. Today, LinkedIn is above its IPO price, but down from its highs, while Renren has lost nearly half of its value since its IPO.
Earlier this month, online radio company Pandora Media Inc raised the proposed value of its IPO by almost 50 percent. Two days after Pandora's stock debuted, it handed back its gains and was down nearly 20 percent.
Also this month, online daily deal site Groupon raced to file its IPO. The company said it wants to raise up to $750 million. Groupon disclosed in its filing that its staffing ballooned to more than 7,000 employees at the end of March from 37 in June 2009.
Investors are also setting their sights on IPOs for social media networks Facebook and Twitter.
(Reporting by Clare Baldwin, Nadia Damouni. Editing by Robert MacMillan, Bernard Orr)
Another month, another dismal read on consumer confidence.
The Conference Board measure came in below expectations for May, with both the present and future expectations measures dropping. The University of Michigan sentiment reading has strengthened some off the recessionary lows of 2009, but is still nowhere near the 40-year average.
In other words, the headline data screams that the consumer economy is muddling along without much improvement.
Investors, however, seem to be painting their own, more optimistic tale about the economy ahead.
Despite high unemployment, debt ceiling fears, riots in Greece, earthquakes in Japan and a host of other negative headlines, most of the American consumer related stocks are doing pretty darn well lately.
Consider that heading into today the S&P 500 (INDEX: .spx) is up 2.6 percent so far in 2011.
But look at these YTD returns:

XLY consumer discretionary ETF (NYSE Arca: xly) up 5 percent, with Dow Transportation index (Dow Jones Global Indexes: .djt) up 4 percent
XRT retail ETF (NYSE Arca: xrt) up 10 percent
XHB homebuilder ETF (NYSE Arca: xhb) up 4 percent
Office REITs Boston Properties (Frankfurt Stock Exchange: BO9-ff) & Vornado Realty (NYSE: vno) up 20 percent and 10 percent.
Homebuilder Toll Brothers (NYSE: tol) up 10 percent
Ethan Allen (NYSE: eth) up 6 percent
Goodyear Tire (NYSE: gt) is up 36 percent
Wyndham Worldwide (NYSE: wyn) up 11 percent
H&R Block (NYSE: hrb) up 36 percent
MasterCard (NYSE: ma), Visa (NYSE: v) & American Express (NYSE: axp) up 24 percent, 6 percent, and 15 percent respectively
Consulting firm Accenture (NYSE: acn) up 24 percent

The most optimistic market action is probably in that XLY consumer ETF. Though its components are largely large-cap companies across a broad consumer spectrum (McDonalds, Disney, Target, Ford, Comcast, etc), the ETF has rather quietly gotten back close to its 2007 highs.
The negative Nellies out there can point to their own stats: oil falling, home prices stagnant, NFIB small business survey still weak, Marriott (NYSE: mar) and the cruise company shares down, etc. And yes, we still have a warehouse full of economic problems.
This isn't about being an economic Pollyanna, and ultimately there are a host of reasons why people buy stocks. But returns are returns, and agree with it or not, the message of the market appears to be one of more confidence in the consumer, and thus the economy, ahead.

Online social game company Zynga plans to raise $1.5 billion to $2 billion in an initial public offering and could file paperwork with U.S. regulators as soon as Wednesday, a source familiar with the situation said on Tuesday?
A. TRUE
B. FALSE

This isn't about being an economic Pollyanna, and ultimately there are a host of reasons why people buy stocks. But returns are returns, and agree with it or not, the message of the market appears to be one of more confidence in the consumer, and thus the economy, ahead?
A. TRUE
B. FALSE

English Lessons

2011-09-21T23:03:00.001-07:00

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Doubts about Europe's ability to manage its debt hammered global markets Monday, pushing the dollar up sharply and dragging down commodities and stocks.Following a three-notch cut of Greek debt by Fitch Ratings Friday, which pushed the country's rating deeper into junk status, rival Standard & Poor's revised its outlook for Italy to "negative" from "stable" on Saturday.

"Removing equity exposure amid sovereign debt concerns is highlighting a headline-driven morning," said Andre Bakhos, director of market analytics at Lek Securities in New York. "We are experiencing another cycle of concerns that is causing investors to question the risk-reward scenario in equities. Until there is better visibility, investors will play their cards close to the vest."
The dollar [EUR=X 1.4042 -0.0089 (-0.63%) ] hit a two-month high against the euro. The euro also hit a record bottom against the Swiss franc, as investors worried about the potential for the eurozone's main currency as the region's sovereign debt problems mounted.
Commodities often move in reverse to the dollar and correspondingly with the euro.Oil and copper fell 3 percent, extending the sharp swings seen through most of May. Grains markets also gave up early gains, pushing the 19-commodity Reuters-Jefferies CRB index down more than 1 percent.
Gold went in the opposite direction, however, climbing to its highest level in nearly two weeks.
"We remain negative towards most commodity markets," said Edward Meir, analyst for metals and energy markets at MF Global in New York. "Bulls have to contend with a backdrop of a stronger dollar, weakening macro readings from a number of countries, and interest rate increases that still loom on the horizon," Meir wrote in his daily commentary.
U.S. crude oil [CLCV1 97.24 -2.86 (-2.86%) ] shed more than $3.50 per barrel to touch as session low of just above $96.50.
Analysts said the market may be on track for further losses if negative developments out of the eurozone news kept pounding the euro.
"Crude oil has not been able to find any follow-through buying over the last 10 days and without new fundamental developments it is likely to be harder to find strong fresh buying into crude oil if the Euro weakens further," Olivier Jakob with Petromatrix said London's Brent crude futures [LCOCV1 109.99 -2.40 (-2.14%) ] fell more than $3.80 to an intraday low of $108.58 a barrel.
The Dow Jones industrial average [.DJIA 12364.95 -147.09 (-1.18%) ] dropped over one percent, while the the Standard & Poor's 500 Index [.SPX 1316.57 -16.70 (-1.25%) ] and Nasdaq Composite Index [NDX 2314.00 -37.43 (-1.59%) ] had similar declines.
In Europe, the ruling Spanish Socialists were hit by stinging losses in local elections and now face walking a tightrope between voter anger over sky-high unemployment and investor demands for strict austerity measures.
Investors are increasingly concerned that voter rebellions against austerity plans could cause bailouts and budgetary pact agreements to unravel, leaving large swathes of debt in jeopardy.

Did crude oil fall 3.50$ per barrel?
A. TRUE
B. FALSE

Did Doubts about Europe's ability to manage its debt hammered global markets Monday?
A. TRUE
B. FALSE
DIRECTIONS: Read the folowing and answer all the questions?
In 1995 often calle the " Olden Days " of the public internet the average computer connected online via a telephone line, reaching down load speeds of merely 56 Kbps. We would wait patiently often for several minutes while images loaded, pages displayed, and long paragraphs of text rendere font sizes and colors combinations to challenge our optical nerve endings. And we didnt have many choices. For many, the idea of having a Web based shopping cart to accept product orders from a web site was far into the future of possibilities as owning a flying car. Because of the manual effort and knowledge base required to create a web site back then, business owners with forward thinking minds but limited budgets would neotiate paying a few hundred dollars for a single basic web page or even a mini page just to have some type of presence om the web. Web sited with multiple pages were restriced to the technical companies who could employ programming staff and designers. In short, ahving a presence on the web of any kind was a luxry and more of a status symbol than anything.
In what year was often called the olden days?
A. 1995
B. 1999
C. 1993
How fast was the internet in 1995?
A. 56 Kbps
B. 66 Kbps
C. 86 Kbps
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WASHINGTON (AP) -- The government is selling off a chunk of its stake in American International Group Inc., narrowly squeezing out a profit as it moves to bring an end to its bailout of the insurance giant.
The New York company and the Treasury Department said they were selling 300 million shares of AIG at $29 each. The per-share price was the low end of the insurer's expected $29 to $30 dollar range but just above the $28.73 price per share that the government needs to recoup its investment in the company.
Treasury said in a statement late Tuesday that the government could get gross proceeds of $7.1 billion if the underwriters exercise their option to buy an additional 45 million shares owned by the government. The sale included 200 million shares sold by the government and 100 million shares held by the company.
The stock sale represents a crucial step in the government's effort to exit its ownership of AIG Inc., which received a bailout package of more than $182 billion during the financial crisis that hit with force in the fall of 2008.
When this week's sale closes, government's stake in AIG will drop from 92 percent to 77 percent.
"Today's announcement represents an important milestone as we continue to exit our stake in AIG and wind down TARP," Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said in a statement, referring to the government's Troubled Asset Relief Program.
The $700 billion TARP was authorized by Congress in October 2008 and it provided billions of dollars in support to banks, auto companies and AIG.
"The decision to provide this assistance was exceptionally difficult, but it's clear today that it was essential to stopping a financial panic, preventing a severe economic collapse and helping to save American jobs," Geithner said.
The global insurance company, based in New York, has seen its shares drop by about half since hitting a 52-week high of $52.67 on Jan. 7. AIG closed at $29.46 on Tuesday, a drop of 52 cents from Monday's closing price.
Tim Massad, Treasury's acting head of the TARP program, said that with the sale of the AIG shares on Tuesday and the payment by Chrysler of its government loans, Treasury has now recovered more than 75 percent of the money invested in the bailout effort.
Going forward the government will continue to reduce its stake in AIG in "an orderly manner," Massad said in a conference call with reporters. He said that the next sales of AIG stock will not occur for at least 120 days, a period during which the government agreed to refrain from further sales.
Massad refused to predict whether the government will eventually turn a profit on its AIG investment.
How many shares is the government selling?
A. 300 million shares
B. 500 million shares
C. 1200 million shares

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde is set to be named the IMF's new chief on Tuesday after the United States and leading emerging markets endorsed her, maintaining Europe's grasp on the top job.
The International Monetary Fund's 24-strong board was meeting to go through the formalities of picking a successor to former IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who resigned in May to defend himself against charges of sexual assault against a New York hotel maid.
Lagarde, 55, is expected to get the majority of support from IMF member countries guaranteeing her win over Mexico's Central Bank Governor Agustin Carstens and making her the first woman to lead the global institution.
Assuming she gets the official nod, Lagarde will have to immediately deal with an IMF-EU effort to keep debt-stricken Greece afloat and focus on potentially thorny IMF "spillover reports" that analyze the economic and policy actions of the world's major economies.
Brazil said on Tuesday it would back Lagarde, a surprising decision given most countries in Latin America support Carstens.
With support from major emerging powers Brazil, China and Russia already clear, the United States moved to cement Lagarde's victory with an early morning statement.
"Minister Lagarde's exceptional talent and broad experience will provide invaluable leadership for this indispensable institution at a critical time for the global economy," U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said in a statement.
"EXCEPTIONAL TALENT"
The race has been one of the most hotly contested succession battles in IMF history as emerging market nations expressed displeasure with the 64-year tradition of having a European head the IMF and an American lead its sister institution, the World Bank.
In the end, the lack of backing from major emerging nations sunk Carstens despite his support from Latin America, Canada and Australia.
Geithner nodded to the unhappiness among developing countries at European-U.S. dominance of the two pre-eminent international financial institutions, but noted Lagarde had won broad support. The United States, which holds the most voting power at the IMF, had refused until the final stage of the process to say who it was supporting.
"The only reason the outcome didn't match what (developing nations) wanted was because emerging market countries did not grab the opportunity," said Arvind Subramanian, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute and the Center for Global Development think tanks in Washington.
"If China, Brazil, India and some others had thrown their weight behind Carstens, the U.S. would have been in a very difficult situation," he added.
SEARCHING FOR CONSENSUS
IMF board directors, who represent the fund's 187 member countries, want to reach a consensus decision that would let them avoid a formal vote. With Washington and major emerging markets backing Lagarde, a formal vote looked unlikely.
In a convention dating back to the creation of the IMF and World Bank after World War Two, Europe has always held the top IMF job, while the World Bank's top post has always gone to an American.
Developing countries had warned against another U.S.-European stitch-up, but some potential candidates from emerging markets decided not to step up because they did not feel they had a fair chance at the job.
Although a long-shot candidate, Carstens vigorously campaigned on his experience as a former IMF official who had first-hand knowledge of developing world economic crises.
Washington holds close to 17 percent of the vote at the IMF, while votes by Europe and other countries that have declared support for Lagarde stack up close to 50 percent.
Countries such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, South Korea and French-speaking African nations early on declared their support for Lagarde.
Fears of contagion over an escalating debt crisis in Greece have played in Lagarde's favor over the last several weeks because of her political punch across Europe, IMF board officials said.
A few board directors quietly have expressed concern over an unresolved legal investigation into Lagarde's role in a 2008 arbitration payout to a French business. A top French court has put off a decision on the matter until July 8.
One way of dealing with the issue is not to offer Lagarde an IMF contract until the court has made a final decision, a board source suggested.
Lingering resentment over Europe's hold on the top job will require the new managing director to act quickly to reassure developing nations they have a stake in decision-making at the IMF.
(Additional reporting by Glenn Somerville in Washington and Luciana Lopez in Brasilia)
(Editing by Paul Simao, Jan Paschal and Andrew Hay)

French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde is set to be named the IMF's new chief on Tuesday after the United States and leading emerging markets endorsed her, maintaining Europe's grasp on the top job?
A. TRUE
B. FALSE

Lingering resentment over Europe's hold on the top job will require the new managing director to act quickly to reassure developing nations they have a stake in decision-making at the IMF?
A. TRUE
B. FALSE

ENglish Lessons

2011-09-21T22:58:00.000-07:00

American English Conversation, free courses to help you with American English Conversation. Our aim is to help foreigners with free American English Conversation course working or visiting in the US. English language courses consist of two levels. Our free American English conversation course is to help our students increase English conversation skills. English Lessons that help you achieve great English skills. English Lessons, Free English Lessons, Enlglish lessons with Skype. English Lessons.. W e also provide, English Lesson to help and instruct with Americanconversation. English lesson are concentrated around our student individual needs. English lesson will help you improve your spoken English. Our English Lessons can help you achieve a great knowledge of the English language. With our English lessons you will see your self improve greatly. English Lessons, English Lessons

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) A man arrested during the investigation into the failed attempt to bomb New York's Times Square has been deported to his native Pakistan, U.S. authorities said on Sunday.
Aftab Ali Khan, 28, was deported after pleading guilty to forging immigration documents and transferring money without a license, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement said.
Khan helped transfer $4,900 from sources within Pakistan to Faisal Shahzad, the man who was found guilty of attempting to set off a car bomb in Times Square in May 2010, law enforcement officials said.
U.S. investigators have not charged Khan with being directly involved in the plot or knowing what the money was to be used for.
Authorities said Kahn entered the United States in August 2009 to marry his then-fiance and began working at a gas station in Brookline, Massachusetts, without a required work permit.
When he married a different woman three months later, he left out the unauthorized work from documents he filed to change his immigration status, the government said.
(Reporting by Andy Sullivan; Editing by Philip Barbara)
How much was the transfer for?
A. 8,500$
B. 6,200$
C. 4,900$
What year did Khan arrive to the US?
A. 2011
B. 2015
C. 2009

English Lessons

2011-09-20T19:06:00.000-07:00

BANGKOK – Asian stock markets rose Wednesday after a parliamentary vote of confidence in the Greek government boosted hopes that the country will avoid default.
Oil prices fell below $94 a barrel after a crude supply report reflected mixed signs about U.S. demand. In currencies, the dollar was higher against the euro and the yen.
Japan's Nikkei 225 index rose 1.3 percent to 9,582.73, with investors finding relief in what was viewed as a "crucial step toward stabilizing the whole debt situation" in Europe, said Ben Potter, a strategist with IG Markets in Melbourne.
"It looks like another broad-based rebound today as investor concerns ease over the European debt situation," Potter said in a note to clients.
Hong Kong's Hang Seng was 0.7 percent higher to 21,994.01 and South Korea's Kospi rose 1 percent at 2,068.02.
Australia's S&P/ASX 200 gained 0.8 percent to 4,542.90. Benchmarks in Singapore, Taiwan, Indonesia and the Philippines also rose, while mainland China shares were down.
Materials and heavy machinery producers — companies whose profits are closely tied to global economic growth — had strong gains. Hong Kong-listed Zijin Mining Group, China's biggest gold miner, rose 2.2 percent. Australia's BHP Billiton, the world's largest mining company, rose 1.1 percent. Japan's Komatsu Ltd., one of the world's leading equipment makers, jumped 2.3 percent.
On Wall Street Tuesday, stocks rose for a fourth straight day as investors bet that the Greek government would survive a crucial confidence vote, raising the likelihood that the country will push through budget cuts required to get the latest installment of emergency loans. Worries that a default by Greece could lead to a wider financial crisis have been dragging on markets since early May.
The S&P 500 index rose 1.3 percent to close at 1,295.52. The last time the S&P rose four days straight was at the end of May. The Dow Jones industrial average rose slightly less than 1 percent to 12,190.01. The Nasdaq composite rose 2.2 percent to 2,687.26.
Separately, the U.S. Federal Reserve began a two-day policy meeting Tuesday. Economists expect the central bank to keep interest rates at record lows, but most say the Fed won't announce another round of bond buying to help boost the economy.
Benchmark oil for August delivery was down 41 cents to $93.76 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract rose 54 cents to settle at $94.17 on Tuesday.
In currencies, the euro slipped to $1.4364 from $1.4416 in late trading in New York. The dollar strengthened to 80.24 yen from 80.13 yen.

Materials and heavy machinery producers — companies whose profits are closely tied to global economic growth — had strong gains. Hong Kong-listed Zijin Mining Group, China's biggest gold miner, rose 2.2 percent?

A. TRUE

B.FALSE

New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract rose 54 cents to settle at $94.17 on Tuesday?

A. TRUE

B.FALSE

The other shoe has finally dropped: emerging market currencies have followed emerging market equities into the global financial storm.

When the Greek crisis, combined with worries about a possible U.S. recession, frightened global markets in August, emerging economy equities plunged in line with a general flight to safety. Emerging market currencies held firm, buoyed by inflows into local bonds, cash and cash derivatives.

However, the latest fears about the eurozone have now hit confidence in emerging market currencies. While it falls far short of a total rush for the exits, traders are reporting a sprint for the doors led by hedge fund managers and other short-term investors.

Since September 1, the Brazilian real, South African rand and Polish zloty are all down by more than 9 percent against the U.S. dollar; Hungary’s forint, long vulnerable because of the country’s big foreign currency debt, is down more than 10 percent. Almost all the leading emerging market currencies are now down on the year, with the notable exception of China’s hard-to-trade renminbi (up 3.2 percent).

“It has proved yet again that the decoupling idea just isn’t correct,” says Paul Mackel, head of Asia currency research at HSBC. “There’s a panicky situation in the eurozone and it’s spilling into emerging markets.”

The key change since early August is the sharp deterioration in sentiment about the European Union’s chances of bailing out Greece and of boosting its vulnerable members, headed by Spain and Italy. The absence of concrete plans for implementing the rescue plans agreed in July have steadily sapped confidence across a widening pool of financial markets.

The impact is biggest in central and eastern Europe. Except Russia, much of the region depends on west European banks and financial institutions to finance current account deficits and investment plans.

Since the 2008 crisis, the region has become much more reliant on short-term inflows that now make it vulnerable to outflows. UniCredit, the Italian bank, says that, aside from perennially troubled Ukraine, the countries most at risk are Poland and Turkey, precisely because they have been popular in recent years with institutional investors.

The Turkish lira has given up less ground than its peers of late — but only because it fell sharply earlier. Many investors worried that the central bank, with an unorthodox interest-rate-cutting policy, might be losing the plot. For the year to date, the lira is the worst performing big emerging market currency — down nearly 15 percent against the dollar.

In Asia, investor confidence has long been bolstered by most countries’ robust progress since the 1998 Asian crisis in fiscal discipline, public debt cuts and resilient domestic economic growth. While this confidence persists, the scale of the eurozone crisis is raising doubts about growth prospects, particularly for open export-oriented economies, and about the ability to raise international financing.

English Lessons

2011-09-20T19:03:00.001-07:00

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde is set to be named the IMF's new chief on Tuesday after the United States and leading emerging markets endorsed her, maintaining Europe's grasp on the top job.
The International Monetary Fund's 24-strong board was meeting to go through the formalities of picking a successor to former IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who resigned in May to defend himself against charges of sexual assault against a New York hotel maid.
Lagarde, 55, is expected to get the majority of support from IMF member countries guaranteeing her win over Mexico's Central Bank Governor Agustin Carstens and making her the first woman to lead the global institution.
Assuming she gets the official nod, Lagarde will have to immediately deal with an IMF-EU effort to keep debt-stricken Greece afloat and focus on potentially thorny IMF "spillover reports" that analyze the economic and policy actions of the world's major economies.
Brazil said on Tuesday it would back Lagarde, a surprising decision given most countries in Latin America support Carstens.
With support from major emerging powers Brazil, China and Russia already clear, the United States moved to cement Lagarde's victory with an early morning statement.
"Minister Lagarde's exceptional talent and broad experience will provide invaluable leadership for this indispensable institution at a critical time for the global economy," U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said in a statement.
"EXCEPTIONAL TALENT"
The race has been one of the most hotly contested succession battles in IMF history as emerging market nations expressed displeasure with the 64-year tradition of having a European head the IMF and an American lead its sister institution, the World Bank.
In the end, the lack of backing from major emerging nations sunk Carstens despite his support from Latin America, Canada and Australia.
Geithner nodded to the unhappiness among developing countries at European-U.S. dominance of the two pre-eminent international financial institutions, but noted Lagarde had won broad support. The United States, which holds the most voting power at the IMF, had refused until the final stage of the process to say who it was supporting.
"The only reason the outcome didn't match what (developing nations) wanted was because emerging market countries did not grab the opportunity," said Arvind Subramanian, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute and the Center for Global Development think tanks in Washington.
"If China, Brazil, India and some others had thrown their weight behind Carstens, the U.S. would have been in a very difficult situation," he added.
SEARCHING FOR CONSENSUS
IMF board directors, who represent the fund's 187 member countries, want to reach a consensus decision that would let them avoid a formal vote. With Washington and major emerging markets backing Lagarde, a formal vote looked unlikely.
In a convention dating back to the creation of the IMF and World Bank after World War Two, Europe has always held the top IMF job, while the World Bank's top post has always gone to an American.
Developing countries had warned against another U.S.-European stitch-up, but some potential candidates from emerging markets decided not to step up because they did not feel they had a fair chance at the job.
Although a long-shot candidate, Carstens vigorously campaigned on his experience as a former IMF official who had first-hand knowledge of developing world economic crises.
Washington holds close to 17 percent of the vote at the IMF, while votes by Europe and other countries that have declared support for Lagarde stack up close to 50 percent.
Countries such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, South Korea and French-speaking African nations early on declared their support for Lagarde.
Fears of contagion over an escalating debt crisis in Greece have played in Lagarde's favor over the last several weeks because of her political punch across Europe, IMF board officials said.
A few board directors quietly have expressed concern over an unresolved legal investigation into Lagarde's role in a 2008 arbitration payout to a French business. A top French court has put off a decision on the matter until July 8.
One way of dealing with the issue is not to offer Lagarde an IMF contract until the court has made a final decision, a board source suggested.
Lingering resentment over Europe's hold on the top job will require the new managing director to act quickly to reassure developing nations they have a stake in decision-making at the IMF.
(Additional reporting by Glenn Somerville in Washington and Luciana Lopez in Brasilia)
(Editing by Paul Simao, Jan Paschal and Andrew Hay)

French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde is set to be named the IMF's new chief on Tuesday after the United States and leading emerging markets endorsed her, maintaining Europe's grasp on the top job?
A. TRUE
B. FALSE

Lingering resentment over Europe's hold on the top job will require the new managing director to act quickly to reassure developing nations they have a stake in decision-making at the IMF?
A. TRUE
B. FALSE

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The day could be drawing nearer for Apple’s long-awaited ascension to the big time: The Dow Jones Industrial Average.

Market chatter intensified Tuesday that the tech giant could soon become the bluest of the blue chips, complete with its $420 a share price that would give an immediate boost to the struggling Dow. Some speculated that the market rally was fueled by the Apple rumors.

While the Apple-to-the-Dow talk has been floating for years, the stocks’ regard as the ultimate safe-haven play has heightened the speculation.

For many traders, the move is a natural.

“It’s one of the biggest companies in the US, it seems like it would be reasonable to have it in the Dow,” says Philip Silverman, managing partner at Kingsview Management in New York. “The Dow is not necessarily just industrial companies these days, it’s supposed to be a representation of the very large bluechip companies. Apple is the best company we’ve got.”

Moreover, the price-weighted manner in which the Dow is calculated would result in a big jump for the index, with ensuing enthusiasm also likely to drive Apple’s price higher.

“From a standpoint for Apple, it’s great for shareholders, it’s tremendous for the Dow 30, the ripple effects would be tremendous. So let’s bring it on,” says Todd Schoenberger, managing director at LandColt trading in Loews, Del. “This is long overdue. Apple should have been added years ago.”

English Lessons

2011-09-20T19:01:00.001-07:00

Our English language courses consist of two levels. 영어 공부를 영어 배운 교훈 잉글리시체 학교 學習學習英語的免費讀寫学习学习英语的免费读写 studim të mësojnë anglisht pa lexuar shkruani تعلم اللغة الإنجليزية الدراسة الحرة الكلام الحديث قراءة الكتابة Вучыцца вывучаць англійскую мову свабодна чытаць напісаць учат английски безплатно изследване чете пиша aprendre estudiar anglès gratuïts lectura escriptura naučiti engleski studija slobodno čitati pisati Studie zdarma učit anglicky číst zápis lære studere engelsk gratis læse skrive lere
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Symbol	Price	Change
NTRS	37.25	+0.03

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Sarah Dilorenzo, AP Business Writer, On Wednesday August 17, 2011, 6:27 pm EDT

NEW YORK (AP) -- For what is normally a sleepy month, there are so many customers at the Gold Standard, a New York company that buys jewelry, that it feels like Christmas in August. Uncle Ben's Pawn Shop in Cleveland has never seen a rush like this.
Welcome to the new American gold rush. The price of gold is on a remarkable run, setting a record seemingly every other day. Stomach-churning volatility in the stock market this month has only made investors covet gold more.
Some want it as a safe investment for turbulent times. What worries some investors is that many others are buying simply because the price is rising and they want to make money fast.
"Is gold the next bubble?" asks Bill DiRocco, a golf company manager in Overland Park, Kan., who shifted 10 percent of his portfolio earlier this year into an investment fund that tracks the price of gold. He stopped buying because the price kept rising.
In October 2007, it sold for about $740 an ounce. A little over a year later, it rose above $1,000 for the first time. This past March, it began rocketing up. On Wednesday, it traded above $1,793 an ounce, just shy of last week's record of $1,801.
Meanwhile, stocks, despite rising sharply in the last two and a half years, are only slightly higher in price than they were a decade ago. Since hitting a record high in October 2007, the Standard & Poor's 500 index is down 23 percent.
Gold hits a sweet spot among the elements: It's rare, but not too rare. It's chemically stable; all the gold ever mined is still around. And it can be divided into small amounts without losing its properties.
Ultimately, though, gold is valuable because we all agree it is. It was used around the world as a currency for thousands of years, and then it gave value to paper currencies for a couple of hundred more.
Now, in a time of turmoil, from the credit downgrade and debate over raising the debt limit in the U.S. to the growing financial crisis in Europe to worries of slow growth across the globe, gold is dazzling investors.
Since the financial crisis in 2008, central banks around the world have bought gold as a hedge against their foreign currency holdings. Earlier this month, South Korea announced it had bought gold for the first time in more than 10 years.
Gold is "an effective hedge in a world where there is too much debt and uncertainty," says Jim McDonald, chief investment strategist at Northern Trust, which owns $2.8 billion of gold in a gold fund.
The last time gold prices rose so precipitously was a few years after President Richard Nixon ended a decades-long fixed relationship between the value of the dollar and the value of gold.
In those days, the price of gold was fixed at about $35 an ounce. And many foreign currencies were pegged to the dollar. Gold gave the dollar its value, and the dollar gave everything else value.
Then the U.S. began running a trade deficit, and dollars piled up abroad. Central banks could redeem dollars for gold. But it was a poorly kept secret that the U.S. didn't have enough gold to cash out every dollar in circulation.
To head off a rush, Nixon "closed the gold window," essentially saying that confidence in the U.S. government, not gold, gives the dollar its value. Gold and the dollar began to rise and fall freely, and gold earned its place as protection against the falling dollar when confidence lags.
As inflation worsened later in the 1970s and dollars were worth less, the price of gold took off. Gold hit its high in 1980 -- $850 an ounce, or more than $2,300 in today's dollars.
This time is different because gold is rallying against all currencies, not just the dollar, says Jim Grant, editor of Grant's Interest Rate Observer.
"Gold is the reciprocal of the world's faith in the world's central banks," Grant says, and right now, "the world is in a pickle."
Gold prices will probably keep rising until the U.S. and Europe get their finances in order, he says -- and Grant doesn't expect that to happen soon. He predicts inflation, low for the moment, will soar, further eroding the value of the dollar and leaving only gold as a good investment.
Cetin Ciner, a professor of finance at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington, disagrees. He thinks gold is near a peak and people who buy now are blindly chasing the rising price.
"I'm thinking of it as like the dot-com stocks," Ciner says.
Both Ciner and Grant caution, however, that when it comes to gold prices, no one really knows. That's because gold doesn't have intrinsic value. It doesn't offer an interest rate, like a bond, or represent a share of a company, like a stock. It is inherently speculative as an investment: You only make money if the price goes up.
Amy Robinette, who owns Gold Buying Girl, a network of 70 women in six states who throw parties for people to sell their gold jewelry, says her clients "don't realize how much their gold is worth." She gets a cut of the sales.
"Once they sell, it kind of creates a frenzy," says Robinette, who quit a career as a personnel recruiter to start the business two years ago. "They either want to find more or tell their friends and their friends start selling."
Sharlett Wilkinson Buckner, of Humble, Texas, recently took an old bracelet, ring and necklace to her local jeweler and walked out with $1,070.
"I couldn't wait for my husband to come home," she said. "I fanned my money in front of him and said, `Look what I got for my gold.'"
The next day, he sold an old gold necklace for $650.
If Peter Hug is right, this frenzy for gold is likely to continue. The director of the precious metals division for Montreal-based Kitco, one of the largest dealers of precious metals, says gold is no longer "just for the crazy people" -- Henny Pennys expecting the sky to fall.
Hug says that until the U.S. tackles its debt and deficit problems, there's no limit for the price of gold.
"As long as people are terrified that their purchasing power is going to be eroded, gold goes to $3,000 an ounce," Hug says.
Whether or not prices climb that high, many people are deciding it's as good a time as any to sell Grandma's jewelry. Pawn shops and gold brokers report a surge of people cashing in their gold.
In the past two years, Tansky, who runs Uncle Ben's and is president of the Ohio Pawnbrokers Association, says gold sales have doubled or tripled. That figure actually masks how hot gold is right now, he says, because others who would have come to his store have gone instead to unlicensed

brokers that are trying to cash in.

The federal agency that oversees the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is set to file suits against more than a dozen big banks, accusing them of misrepresenting the quality of mortgage securities they assembled and sold at the height of the housing bubble, and seeking billions of dollars in compensation.

Tetra Images | Getty Images

The Federal Housing Finance Agency suits, which are expected to be filed in the coming days in federal court, are aimed at Bank of America [BAC Loading... () ] , JPMorgan Chase [JPM Loading... () ] , Goldman Sachs [GS Loading... () ] and Deutsche Bank [DB Loading... () ] , among others, according to three individuals briefed on the matter.

The suits stem from subpoenas the finance agency issued to banks a year ago. If the case is not filed Friday, they said, it will come Tuesday, shortly before a deadline expires for the housing agency to file claims.

The suits will argue the banks, which assembled the mortgages and marketed them as securities to investors, failed to perform the due diligence required under securities law and missed evidence that borrowers’ incomes were inflated or falsified. When many borrowers were unable to pay their mortgages, the securities backed by the mortgages quickly lost value.

Fannie and Freddie lost more than $30 billion, in part as a result of the deals, losses that were borne mostly by taxpayers.

In July, the agency filed suit against UBS, another major mortgage securitizer, seeking to recover at least $900 million, and the individuals with knowledge of the case said the new litigation would be similar in scope.

Private holders of mortgage securities are already trying to force the big banks to buy back tens of billions in soured mortgage-backed bonds, but this federal effort is a new chapter in a huge legal fight that has alarmed investors in bank shares. In this case, rather than demanding that the banks buy back the original loans, the finance agency is seeking reimbursement for losses on the securities held by Fannie and Freddie.

The impending litigation underscores how almost exactly three years after the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the beginning of a financial crisis caused in large part by subprime lending, the legal fallout is mounting.

Besides the angry investors, 50 state attorneys general are in the final stages of negotiating a settlement to address abuses by the largest mortgage servicers, including Bank of America, JPMorgan and Citigroup [C Loading... () ] . The attorneys general, as well as federal officials, are pressing the banks to pay at least $20 billion in that case, with much of the money earmarked to reduce mortgages of homeowners facing foreclosure.

And last month, the insurance giant American International Group [AIG Loading... () ] filed a $10 billion suit against Bank of America, accusing the bank and its Countrywide Financial and Merrill Lynch units of misrepresenting the quality of mortgages that backed the securities A.I.G. bought.

Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan all declined to comment. Frank Kelly, a spokesman for Deutsche Bank, said, “We can’t comment on a suit that we haven’t seen and hasn’t been filed yet.”

MORE FROM NYTIMES.COM

In the years before 2007, “the market was so frothy then it was hard to find good quality loans to securitize and hold in your portfolio,” said David Felt, a lawyer who served as deputy general counsel of the finance agency until January 2010. “Fannie and Freddie thought they were taking AAA tranches, and like so many investors, they were surprised when they didn’t turn out to be such quality investments."

Fannie and Freddie had other reasons to buy the securities, Mr. Rood added. For starters, they carried higher yields at a time when the two mortgage giants could buy them using money borrowed at rock-bottom rates, thanks to the implicit federal guarantee they enjoyed.

In addition, by law Fannie and Freddie were required to back loans to low-to-moderate income and minority borrowers, and the private-label securities were counted toward those goals.

“Competitive pressures and onerous housing goals compelled them to operate more like hedge funds than government-sponsored guarantors, ” Mr. Rood said.

In fact, Freddie was warned by regulators in 2006 that its purchases of subprime securities had outpaced its risk management abilities, but the company continued to load up on debt that ultimately soured.

As of June 30, Freddie Mac holds more than $80 billion in mortgage securities backed by more shaky home loans like subprime mortgages, Option ARM and Alt-A loans. Freddie estimates its total gross losses stand at roughly $19 billion. Fannie Mae holds $38 billion of securities backed by Alt-A and subprime loans, with losses standing at nearly $14 billion.

This story originally appeared in The New York Times

English Lessons

2011-09-20T18:55:00.000-07:00

English Lessons

2011-09-20T18:53:00.000-07:00

DIRECTIONS: Read the following and answer the questions?
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For two decades, researchers hoped it might be possible to create a vaccine that teaches the body’s sentries, called dendritic cells, to recognize cancer, and then spur the immune system’s infantry, the T-cells, to attack the tumor. But every drug company that tried the approach failed — until last year. That’s when Seattle-based Dendreon got approval from the Food and Drug Administration to market its vaccine, Provenge, as a treatment for prostate cancer that has spread but is not causing symptoms like bone pain.

David Urdal, who served at Dendreon’s chief scientific officer for 16 years, is one of the key figures in that victory. Before Dendreon, he was head of manufacturing at Immunex, the pioneering Seattle biotech firm that was bought by Amgen for $16 billion in 2001. With Provenge having finally reached patients and with the company beginning to overcome the manufacturing challenges that have limited its sales, Urdal recently announced his decision to retire.
I sat down with Urdal to talk about how Provenge got to market – and about his hopes for the future of medicine. Points of interest: Urdal started working with Dendreon’s former chief executive, Chris Henney, shortly after getting his PhD.; he says the FDA might have made the right decision by rejecting Provenge in 2007, and later approving it; and he worries that biotech is getting too risky for venture capitalists. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Matt Herper: How is it that you came to Dendreon? You already knew the company’s chief executive.
David Urdal: I was first approached by the man who was to become the CEO, Chris Henney, in 1994, and he asked me to look at this opportunity. Ev I was in post-doctoral fellowship in [Henney's] lab at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center. This was the late ’70s. That was when he and [Steve] Gillis founded Immunex Corporation and he recruited me to Immunex back in 1980-81 or whenever that was. And so I started working at Immunex as a scientist.
Matt Herper: Before Chris Henney was involved, Dendreon had been founded by two Stanford researchers, and had gone through a rough patch. What made the opportunity interesting to you?
David Urdal: Their names were Ed Engleman and Sam Strober, and the technology that was of particular interest to me and ultimately to Chris was the work that Ed Engleman was doing with the blood-derived dendritic cell, a type of immune cell. The company had originally been funded by Healthcare Ventures, and they had run through their first $10 million since founding two years earlier and Chris was faced with the challenge of the need to re-capitalize the company. We needed to put it on a path that would allow us to take the company public and have a more of a commercial focus.
The company initially had one piece of intellectual property and it was a device that could allow you to separate cells by buoyant density that was being applied at that time to the isolation of [blood] stem cells for stem cell transplantation. And Chris and I looked at that and go well geez, at that time we would have been the third of fourth company looking at stem cell isolation and transplantation.
But it was showing promise in these early first-in-human studies in cancer that Engleman was doing with Ron Levy. So we had a way of marrying the device that the company was working with a novel cell line that had the potential to really address some major unmet needs in cancer.
Matt Herper: And why did you choose prostate cancer? Other cancer vaccine companies focused on melanoma and blood cancers.
David Urdal: Well, two reasons really. The model that we were working in could find ways to induce immunity to the [prostate] gland. If we could do that consistently that we could potentially treat malignancies derived from that gland. And the second was just a back of the envelope opportunity analysis. It’s a huge unmet need. Prostate cancer is the second leading cause of cancer and mortality in men and we knew we’d have to spend hundreds of millions of dollars anyway. Might as well do it that setting as opposed to doing it in, I don’t know, one of the other cancers that at the time would have been more favored.
Matt Herper: Speeding forward a decade: Why did you decide to file for approval, FDA approval, that first time, given that the studies had missed their primary endpoints and that a third study, the IMPACT trial, was already going on?
Urdal: It was really the nature of the data and how strong the evidence was that we were actually having an impact on survival. We had a really important meeting with the FDA in 2005 at which we shared with them the survival results and the analyses that we’d done. We were really up front with them, we said, look we didn’t specify overall survival as a primary endpoint of the study but we followed every patient for three years and these are the results that we obtained. And all of the analysis, all of the analyses that we’d done, you know, we can’t another explanation for the outcome that we saw except that these men received [Provenge.]
The key outcome from that 2005 meeting was a very a clear: “We, the FDA, find the results provocative and we could do a review.” And we went out and we built out the first phase of the manufacturing plant in 2006 and completed our license application in 2006 and it was accepted for review in January 2007. Then we had our famous advisory committee meeting in 2007.
Matt Herper: That advisory committee voted that Provenge should be approved. But the FDA rejected it in May 2007. Were you surprised by that rejection?
David Urdal: Well, I thought the advisory committee went incredibly well for us. I mean it got all the data that reflected up to that time and we got an incredibly positive reception. We had a unanimous vote on safety.
Matt Herper: But there was a real split between the opinons of the oncologists, who had doubts, and the cell therapy folks, who were enthusiastic.
David Urdal: Of the four votes against approval at that time, two were members of the [Oncology Drugs Advisory Committee] that had been invited to participate in the meeting. And it was clear, when I look back on it now, that even though the vote came out in our favor, there also was a sentiment that was expressed during the course of that day where all parties found the results provocative but hoped that there would be a way that meaningful data could be obtained from the ongoing study, IMPACT, that everyone knew was still enrolling patients and would still have some follow-up period to go. And I think in the end that’s what drove the FDA making the decision that they did — that look, these results are compelling, but we don’t see that we can be assured that we’d get meaningful data that would support the efficacy claim if we were to approve it in 2007. And they might have been right.
But it wasn’t just them, I think if you follow the sentiments within the clinical community I think there was a sense of, okay, if it’s approved I’d probably prescribe it, but geez, it’s a small study, overall survival wasn’t the primary endpoint, there wasn’t a sense of enthusiasm for it, and I think in the end of course the IMPACT study results came back and this completely vindicated the results from the earlier trials.
Matt Herper: Why do you think it is that time to progression, the time it takes for the tumor to start growing, wasn’t affected by Provenge, but people lived longer? To a lot of people, that doesn’t make biological sense.
David Urdal: I think there are two things on progression that we learned in that study. Progression was occurring much more rapidly in asymptomatic population than we expected. Going into this, our key opinion leaders thought that in asymptomatic patients progression was occurring more slowly than it would it more symptomatic patients and we learned that that’s simply not true, they’re progressing in 12 to 14 weeks, which is just as quickly as they’re progressing later in the disease. The second thing that we learned is that we were not able to show an impact on time to disease progression in the way that we measured it, which was the time to the next progression event or two lesions in the bone. And so if the question is how can you have a drug that has an impact on survival but you don’t see an impact on progression, my belief would be that if we were measuring progression in a more continuous way you might expect to see an impact on the rate of progression. We just weren’t able to measure it.
Matt Herper: So you think the difference is in how the measurement was made, you don’t think it’s revealing differences in the biology?

David Urdal: No. I think you’re seeing support for that idea come out of the other immunotherapies in the last year or so, Prostvac when that was published last summer, same thing, and then ipilimumab [Yervoy, from Bristol-Myers Squibb]. You’re seeing drugs that are being described as having a delayed effect, and meanwhile you’ve got the cancer that continues to progress. So if you’re looking at time to next progression event you might not have a window of time long enough to have an impact on that particular measurement.

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MCO 35.63 +1.31

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Mark Jewell, AP Personal Finance Writer, On Wednesday August 3, 2011, 5:44 pm EDT
BOSTON (AP) -- What relief rally? Hope that the stock market would surge on news of Washington's debt ceiling deal has given way to pessimism. Increasingly defensive-minded investors are adapting to the reality that the economic recovery is stalling, if not ending.
Stocks rose slightly on Wednesday to snap an eight-day string of declines that sent prices down nearly 7 percent.
That stumble complicates matters for investors who recently pulled cash from the market, fearing a government default was a strong possibility. With that worry behind, the question is what to do next.
Richard Shortt had expected to be buying stocks, putting his sidelined money back to work. Yet he was at his home computer Wednesday, selling some of his stocks, and trimming investments in stock mutual funds. The 66-year-old from Somerville, Mass. put the proceeds into safer money-market mutual funds -- the same actions he took last week, when he sold stocks before Congress and President Obama reached the debt ceiling deal.
Shortt kept selling because he worries there's a growing risk that the economy will slip back into recession. He notes the debt deal emphasizes spending cuts, without revenue increases, or stimulus spending that he believes is needed to create jobs.
"It just doesn't seem like a formula for very happy times, for a long, long time," says Shortt, a semi-retired small business consultant. "I'm preparing for a long downturn, but leaving options open, to see if things do change."
President Obama's spokesman said Wednesday that the administration doesn't believe there's a risk that the economy will head back into a recession.
But investors like Shortt have become more cautious in response to troubling news, such as Tuesday's report that consumers cut spending in June for the first time in nearly two years. A weak manufacturing report came out a day earlier, and the government last week said the economy's growth in the first half of this year was the weakest since the recession ended in June 2009. Another influential report is due Friday, when the government will release its employment data for July, which will include the unemployment rate and number of jobs created.
Yet some sense an opportunity. The market research firm Birinyi Associates on Wednesday said that market indicators it tracks suggest stock prices could be set to rebound. Birinyi said too many investors have left prematurely, which creates an opportunity for buyers.
Still, many are anxious:
--Stocks: The Dow Jones industrial average on Wednesday finished up 0.3 percent. But it was down most of the day, which put the market at risk of posting its longest losing streak since 1978, the last time there were nine daily declines in a row.
After the recent losses, a broader stock index, the Standard & Poor's 500, is almost exactly where it started the year.
Investors withdrew a net of nearly $8.8 billion from stock mutual funds during the week that ended last Wednesday, according to the Investment Company Institute. Investors also pulled money from international stocks funds, withdrawing a net $1.3 billion.
--Gold: Prices hit a new record on Wednesday, not adjusted for inflation, topping $1,670 an ounce. Gold prices have risen nearly 13 percent since July 1, and have steadily risen since the start of 2009, when an ounce of gold sold for $880.
Investors believe gold is safe because it tends to hold its value when stocks are falling, and often rises when the dollar falls in value against other currencies, as it did Wednesday.
HSBC precious metals analyst James Steel said in a report that gold's continued rise after the debt deal was reached indicates the rally "is clearly supported by more than just the long drawn-out political arguments over the debt ceiling."
--Treasurys: Prices for Treasury bonds have been rising since the debt deal concluded, reflecting greater investor demand for the government IOUs. Their reputation as a safe haven has been renewed now that the government avoided a default. Treasury yields move opposite their prices. On Wednesday, the yield on the 10-year Treasury slipped as low as 2.56 percent, its lowest level since November. That's even though Moody's Investors Service assigned a negative outlook to U.S. debt, but confirmed its AAA rating, for now.
--Money-market mutual funds: Investors had been withdrawing huge sums from these investments a few days ago, but reversed course once the debt ceiling deal was signed into law. Money funds are typically safe places to stash cash, because they invest in only the safest forms of debt securities. But many money funds invest in Treasurys, a fact not lost on investors who withdrew money as the debt ceiling talks stalled. Nearly $122 billion was withdrawn from money funds in the seven-day period that ended Monday, a surge that cut the $2.6 trillion that the funds hold by almost 5 percent, according to Crane Data. But there was a shift on Tuesday with the debt deal's conclusion, with a net $6 billion flowing back in. That new cash suggests investors once again see money funds as safe.
--Volatility: The stock market's fear gauge, formally known as the Chicago Board of Options Exchange's Volatility Index, has risen to levels last seen in August 2010. The VIX, as market pros call it, is up 35 percent over the past eight trading days. In an unusually volatile market, investors are willing to pay hefty premiums for options that offer protection from price swings of stocks in the Standard & Poor's 500 index.
The recent return of volatility worries Harvey Rowen. He's trying to figure out when to shift more money into stocks on behalf of individual investors whose portfolios he manages as CEO of San Francisco-based Starmont Asset Management.
About 80 percent of the clients that Rowen's firm contacted during the debt ceiling debate chose to sell a portion of their stock holdings and leave the money in cash. But Rowen was reluctant Wednesday to move that money back into the market, noting that negative economic reports have offset positive news from the debt deal.
He's considering adding more alternative investments to the portfolios, such as gold and other commodities, but worries they carry big risks as well.
"It's a hard question now what to do," says Rowen. "It's a struggle to find investments that are prudent, and will give our clients a reasonable return....So for now, we're sitting on that cash."
Matt Herper: It’s seems that one aspect therapies is that you would, in theory, really want to use them early in the disease, when tumors are weaker and patients have stronger immune systems. But I don’t know how you do that in prostate cancer. The studies would need to be too big.
Urdal: I think you’re asking a really key question. Because if you went too early you’d had to do a huge study. We are doing a study which is looking at men who have chosen to get a prostatectomy and they get Provenge some weeks in advance of that so that we can better understand the components in the immune system that are being engaged. But if you were to try to [receive FDA approval] it would have to be a huge study because 70 percent of the men are going to be cured with the surgery alone, and then you’d have to follow them for many many years before you could actually measure a clinical outcome. But we’re having with regulatory agencies in Europe and here in the United States about going into androgen-dependent prostate cancer that is metastatic at the time of diagnosis. The idea is and belief is that the earlier that we go the better the benefit.
Forbes: Last question: Why is the drug business in such a profound innovation drought? Why aren’t drug companies inventing more drugs?
Urdal: It’s something that I worry a lot about and from a slightly different point of view. Look at the dilemma that the venture capital community has. It’s a question of where does the capital come from to actually invest in the companies like the ones that I’ve been associated with. I don’t think there’s any way Immunex could go public today with the evidence it had to go public when it did, or Dendreon for that matter as we were starting our phase 3 program and went public. I think you need to be to the point of having complete clinical validation before you can expect an IPO to go out. So I think the dynamics have really changed. The horizon for VC funds is 10 years and the hurdle of having a body of data that you could go public on has only gotten higher. So where does the Dendreon come from, where does it get its capital? How do those early years get funded for the system to work? Because I worry a lot who’s going to be developing the drugs that are going to be of benefit for my granddaughter, they need to start now because it’s going to be 30 years down the road.

David Urdal: Of the four votes against approval at that time, two were members of the Oncology Drugs Advisory Committee] that had been invited to participate in the meeting. And it was clear, when I look?
A. TRUE
B. FALSE

Immunex could go public today with the evidence it had to go public when it did, or Dendreon for that matter as we were starting our phase 3 program and went public?
A. TRUE
B. FALSE

Symbol	Price	Change
MCO	35.63	+1.31

Top Congressional Republicans Tuesday took the unusual step of telling the Federal Reserve to refrain from further "intervention'' in the economy on the eve of a policy decision by the U.S. central bank.

Getty Images

The group, which included the top two Republicans in both houses of Congress, said the Fed's policies have been ineffective at supporting economic expansion and boosting employment.

"It is not clear that the recent round of quantitative easing undertaken by the Federal Reserve has facilitated economic growth or reduced the unemployment rate,'' the group said in a letter to Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke.

The letter was signed by House Speaker John Boehner, Majority Leader Eric Cantor, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl.

It was a rare direct recommendation from Capitol Hill on monetary policy, which is supposed to be conducted free of political pressure.

The Fed said it had received the letter, which was made public by Republican leaders, but had no further comment.

With economic prospects fading dramatically after a damaging U.S. debt downgrade in August and an escalation of European financial turmoil, the Fed has made clear it is intent on taking further steps to lift growth.

English Lessons

2011-09-20T18:51:00.000-07:00

http://www.americanenglishconversation.com/
http://grammar-help.blogspot.com/

The Cord
Leanne O’Sullivan
I used to lie on the floor for hours after
school with the phone cradled between
my shoulder and my ear, a plate of cold
rice to my left, my school books to my right.
Twirling the cord between my fingers
I spoke to friends who recognized the
language of our realm. Throats and lungs
swollen, we talked into the heart of the night,
toying with the idea of hair dye and suicide,
about the boys who didn’t love us,
who we loved too much, the pang
of the nights. Each sentence was
new territory, like a door someone was
rushing into, the glass shattering
with delirium, with knowledge and fear.
My Mother never complained about the phone bill,
what it cost for her daughter to disappear
behind a door, watching the cord
stretching its muscle away from her.
Perhaps she thought it was the only way
she could reach me, sending me away
to speak in the underworld.
As long as I was speaking
she could put my ear to the tenuous earth
and allow me to listen, to decipher.
And these were the elements of my Mother,
the earthed wire, the burning cable,
as if she flowed into the room with
me to somehow say, Stay where I can reach you,
the dim room, the dark earth. Speak of this
and when you feel removed from it
I will pull the cord and take you
back towards me.

The Fed calls the tune for markets Wednesday, and Wall Street is hearing Chubby Checkers.

Markets are expecting the Fed to unveil a modern day "Operation Twist," similar to a Federal Reserve program in the early 1960s which was named for the famous dance, the topic of Checkers' songs. Fed watchers speculate on various degrees of easing, but they basically agree the Fed is about to unveil a program to buy longer dated Treasury securities in a bid to hold down interest rates.

"I don't think we get a whole lot of shouting. Just a little twisting," said Morgan Stanley's Jim Caron, who heads interest rate strategy.

The Fed's meeting got underway Tuesday, and it is expected to issue a statement at 2:15 p.m. Wednesday. The Fed also meets as the political rhetoric in Washington heats up around President Obama's proposal this week for tax hikes.

The Republican Congressional leadership Tuesday, in a rare move, sent a letter to Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke telling him further Fed action could harm the economy and that it could erode the dollar.

The letter was signed by House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and Sen. Minority leader Mitch McConnel; (R-Ky.) and Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.). They also wrote that he should resist further intervention and there's no evidence further monetary stimulus will create jobs or help the economy.

Analysts have been expecting Congress, at some point, to take aim at the Fed. Some even expect the Fed to hold back on other stimulus steps it might have taken to avoid the line of fire.

Richard Bernstein, CEO of Richard Bernstein Capital Markets said in a recent interview that after the Fed does 'twist,' it is unlikely to do anything else major. "I think the politics are such that the Fed is basically hog tied. 'Operation Twist' is not new stimulus. It's carrying on. What the Fed is trying to do is flatten the curve so they bring longer term rates down," he said.

Traders and analysts have debated just how much and in what way the Fed will take aim at the longer duration Treasurys. Some believe the Fed will retool an existing program, which invests roughly $20 billion a month runoff from its mortgage portfolio. The Fed could start using the runoff to buy just the longer end of the curve, not the whole curve.

Others, like Caron, disagree and expect the Fed to restructure its portfolio by actually selling shorter duration securities and buying the longer duration. "We think they sell 2 to 2.5 year paper and that could reap up to $300 billion, and they can take that cash and redeploy it into other parts of the curve," Caron said. "..What the consensus is saying is the majority of the purchases stay in the 8- to 10-year pocket." He said the Fed would also purchase some 25- to 30-year bonds.

"A lot of this has been priced in," said David Ader, chief Treasury strategist at CRT Capital. "However, we don't know the magnitude and in our estimate the Fed could buy as much as $650 billion of longer duration. They would have to sell (Treasurys) to get there." Ader said the street consensus is that the Fed buys $400 to $450 billion.

English Lessons

2011-09-07T22:48:00.000-07:00

DIRECTIONS: Read the following and answer all the questions?
http://www.americanenglishconversation.com/
http://www.freeenglishconversation.blogspot.com/
http://www.grammar-help.blogspot.com/
http://freeenglishlessons-denise.blogspot.com/
NEW YORK (AP) -- Stocks wavered between slight gains and losses Tuesday after the Dow Jones industrial average had its best week in two years.
The Dow Jones industrial average slipped 2 points to 12,580 in afternoon trading. The Dow had risen as many as 19 points after the Commerce Department reported an increase in factory orders. The Standard & Poor's 500 index fell 2, or 0.2 percent, to 1,338. The Nasdaq composite index rose 4, or 0.2 percent, to 2,820. All three indexes were moving in a narrow range.
Trading volume is expected to be light this week. U.S. markets were closed Monday for the July 4th holiday. Many traders are looking ahead to next week, when aluminum maker Alcoa Inc. becomes the first major U.S. company to report financial results.
Last week the Dow rose 648 points, its best week in two years, after Nike reported strong earnings and Greece cleared its final hurdle before receiving another round of loans. Automakers also reported that their sales rose 7 percent in June, compared to a year ago.
The gains erased nearly six weeks of losses. Prior to last week stocks had been falling since late April because of concerns about the debt crisis in Europe, weak home sales in the U.S. and slowing manufacturing. By mid-June, stocks had given up most of their gains for the year.
With last week's rally, the Dow is now down just 1.8 percent from April 29, when it reached a three-year high. The Dow is up 8.5 percent for the year. The S&P 500 index and the Nasdaq composite are both up about 6 percent.
Analysts are optimistic about the corporate earnings reports that will start to come in next week. Earnings from companies in the S&P 500 index are expected to rise 14 percent from the same period a year ago, according to FactSet. Revenue is expected to rise 11 percent.
"There hasn't yet really been a reason to get concerned about corporate America," said Randy Warren, chief investment officer of Warren Financial Service. "It's the rest of the America that's struggling."
Even while companies have been reporting higher profits, unemployment has remained stubbornly high since the recession officially ended in June 2009. The Labor Department will report the latest figures on unemployment and payrolls on Friday, and analysts expect to hear more bad news. They forecast that the unemployment rate will remain unchanged from May at 9.1 percent. They also expect that employers added only 90,000 jobs last month, below the 100,000 threshold that economists say is needed to prevent the unemployment rate from increasing.
Several stocks rose sharply after deals were announced. Immucor Inc. rose 30 percent after the maker of blood-testing equipment agreed to be bought by private-investment firm TPG Capital in a deal worth $1.97 billion.
Southern Union Co. rose 2.9 percent after Energy Transfer Equity LP said it would pay $5.1 billion for the pipeline company. The deal trumped a $4.9 billion bid made in late June by rival Williams Cos.
Netflix Inc. rose 7.4 percent to $287.85 after announcing that it would expand its online video streaming service to 43 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Stocks wavered between slight gains and losses Tuesday after the Dow Jones industrial average had its best week in two years?
A. TRUE
B. FALSE

Southern Union Co. rose 2.9 percent after Energy Transfer Equity LP said it would pay $5.1 billion for the pipeline company. The deal trumped a $4.9 billion bid made in late June by rival Williams Cos?
A. TRUE
B. FALSE

Christopher S. Rugaber, AP Economics Writer, On Friday July 29, 2011, 12:32 am EDT

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The economy likely grew in the first half of the year at the slowest pace since the recession ended, and the second half isn't looking much better.
Weak consumer spending, dismal hiring and cuts in government spending likely held back growth in the April-June quarter. The government will report on second-quarter growth on Friday.
Economists forecast the economy expanded at an annual rate of 1.7 percent, according to a FactSet survey. That follows a 1.9 percent growth rate in the first three months of the year. Those are the slowest back-to-back quarters since the economy began recovering from the recession two years ago.
Even if the economy picks up later this year, growth in 2011 will likely be slower than the 2.9 percent expansion last year. Economists at RBC Capital Markets, for example, forecast growth of 2.3 percent this year.
Complicating an already-weak economy is the debt crisis in Washington. No matter what lawmakers do to resolve that crisis, their decision will likely slow growth in the short term. A deal to raise the borrowing limit would likely include long-term spending cuts, which would withdraw government stimulus at a precarious time. If Congress fails to raise the borrowing limit and the government defaults on its debt, financial markets could fall and interest rates could rise.
Most economists expect growth to pick up slightly in the second half of the year, as the impact of high gas prices and supply disruptions stemming from Japan's March 11 earthquake ease. But growth won't be strong enough to lower the unemployment rate, now 9.2 percent.
"We're starting off the quarter in weaker shape than we thought," said Nigel Gault, an economist at IHS Global Insight. Gault notes that data for June showed little growth in retail sales, factory output and hiring.
Gault said he expects growth of less than 3 percent in the July-September quarter. That's down from his earlier forecast of 3.4 percent. Economists at Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase project third-quarter growth of only 2.5 percent. That's barely enough to keep the unemployment rate from rising.
The economy needs to expand at a 5 percent pace to make a significant dent in unemployment.
Economists cite several reasons for the disappointing growth:
-- Weak consumer spending. Held back by stagnant wages and high unemployment, people simply aren't spending money. Economists forecast that consumer spending grew in the April-June period less than 1 percent, the slowest pace since the recession ended. High gas prices forced consumers to cut back on other discretionary purchases. Sales of furniture, appliances, sporting goods and electronics fell last month for the third straight month, according to the government's June report on retail sales.
-- Cuts in government spending. Governments at all levels -- federal, state and local -- are short on cash and being forced to rein in spending. All told, the cutbacks reduced economic growth 1.2 percentage points in the January-March quarter, the biggest hit to the economy from reduced government spending since the early 1980s. While the impact won't be as large in the April-June period, economists expect lower government spending restrained growth.
-- Dismal hiring. Employers added only 18,000 jobs in June, the second-straight month of weak hiring and much slower than the average of 215,000 jobs added each month from February to April. And even people with jobs aren't getting any raises. Adjusted for inflation, average hourly pay fell 1.5 percent in the past year, the Labor Department said earlier this month.
One wild card for Friday's report on the economy will be how much companies added to their stockpiles. If companies built up more inventory in their warehouses than economists forecast, that would mean factories produced more and the economy grew at a faster pace. But that could also mean slower growth in subsequent months, because consumers aren't spending much and it would take time for companies to reduce their stockpiles. That would slow the production of new goods.

The European Union should appoint a new budget tsar with powers to dictate taxes and spending in euro zone countries and who could ultimately adjudicate whether countries should be kicked out of the euro, the Dutch prime minister has argued.

Writing in the Financial Times, Mark Rutte and his government’s finance minister, Jan Kees de Jager, said the new “commissioner for budgetary discipline” should be given the authority to impose a gradually more painful series of penalties on profligate eurozone countries, including the withholding of EU development funds.

But if a country continues to flout EU demands for spending restraint, Mr Rutte’s plan would force euro zone countries to submit their budgets to the commissioner, who could veto it before it is presented to parliament. Over the long term, Mr Rutte said, the euro zone should force countries to leave the euro if it did not abide by the commissioner’s ruling.

“Countries that do not want to submit to this regime can choose to leave the euro zone,” Mr Rutte and Mr de Jager write. “In the future, the ultimate sanction can be to force countries to leave the euro.”

Mr Rutte’s minority government is facing an increasing anti-bail-out backlash at home and his hardline rhetoric may be intended to shore up his position domestically. His cabinet governs with support from the far-right Party for Freedom of Geert Wilders, which opposes all aid to Greece and terms it “throwing money over the dikes”.

However, senior European officials say the Netherlands has become one of the most demanding countries in the negotiations over how to resuscitate the faltering bail-outs of Greece, meaning domestic Dutch politics have a big influence over euro zone debates.

English Lessons

2011-09-07T22:45:00.000-07:00

The Swiss central bank's decision to set a limit on how much the Swiss franc can appreciate against the euro is "a huge mistake," investor Jim Rogers, chairman of Rogers Holdings, told CNBC.com on Wednesday.

Chinafotopress | Getty Images

Jim Rogers told CNBC.com the Chinese yuan is the next safe haven currency.

On Tuesday, the Swiss National Bank set a minimum exchange rate of 1.20 Swiss francs for the euro, pledging to buy other currencies in unlimited amounts to defend the target.

Analysts said this was an endurance contest by which the SNB wanted to take the shine off the Swiss franc's safe haven status, in a move that roiled markets.

The move "will work for a while, but the market will have more money in the end than the SNB," Rogers, who was the co-founder of the Quantum Fund with George Soros, told CNBC.com.

The Swiss central bank risks losing "a lot of money buying up lots of foreign currencies which they will eventually sell at a loss," he explained.

Another risk is that the central bank will "totally debase the Swiss franc trying to keep Switzerland 'competitive' which will then destroy the traditional Swiss financial industry," Rogers said.

"So this is a huge mistake for Switzerland since they are going to suffer more either way," he added.

After the Swiss central bank's move on Tuesday, the dollar [CHF=X 0.8587 0.0011 (+0.13%) ] and the euro [CHFEUR=X 0.8275 0.0006 (+0.07%) ] appreciated sharply versus the franc and analysts have started to look for the next safe-haven currency.

English Lessons

2011-09-07T22:42:00.000-07:00

DIRECTIONS: Read the following and answer all the questions?
http://www.americanenglishconversation.com/
http://www.freeenglishconversation.blogspot.com/
http://www.grammar-help.blogspot.com/

A rebound in Asian stocks ran out of steam on Thursday, as worries over the widening impact of the euro zone crisis and the faltering U.S. economy gnawed at investor confidence.

Germany's top court on Wednesday rejected lawsuits aimed at blocking Berlin's participation in bailout packages for Greece and other heavily indebted euro zone countries, offered some temporary relief to global markets.

The FTSE CNBC Asia 100 Index [.FTFCNBCA 6040.53 -8.69 (-0.14%)] , which measures markets across Asia, edged 0.1 percent lower.

Japan's Nikkei stock average pulled further away from a six-month low hit this week, helped by hopes of an improvement in Europe's debt situation but the rise was tempered by continuing uncertainty about the U.S. economic outlook.

But shares of machinery makers such as industrial robot maker Fanuc weakened after Japan's core machinery orders fell in July at twice the pace economists' expected. Fanuc was down 2.1 percent and construction machinery maker Komatsu shed 1.7 percent.

The benchmark Nikkei [.N225 8764.88 1.47 (+0.02%)] was up 0.5 percent at 8,804.62, moving further away from 8,588 hit on Tuesday, its lowest level since March 15, when stocks were sold off in the wake of the earthquake and tsunami. The broader Topix added 0.6 percent to 758.27.

Sumco, the world's No.2 supplier of silicon wafers used to make chips, surged 4 percent after Credit Suisse raised its rating to "neutral" from "underperform", saying its poor earnings estimate and falling DRAM demand have been priced in.

South Korean stock prices turned weaker after early rises of more than 1 percent, following the country's central bank warning of softening economic activity.

The Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) [.KS11 1846.84 13.38 (+0.73%) ] fell to as low as 1,831.79 points from Wednesday's close of 1,833.46 points, after hitting a session high of 1,858.05 points.

Shares in Hana Financial rose 1.9 percent on hopes that regulators may approve its long overdue deal to buy Korea Exchange Bank (KEB) from U.S. fund Lone Star, which has been delayed by legal disputes.

Brokerages were among the biggest losers, hit by concerns of new share sales, as many prepare for recapitalization to meet the government's proposed criteria for investment banks. Daewoo Securities, which announced a $1.3 billion rights offering late on Wednesday, tumbled by the daily limit of 15 percent.

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Paul Wiseman and David K. Randall, AP Business Writers, On Wednesday August 3, 2011, 5:35 pm EDT

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Shoppers won't shop. Companies won't hire. The government won't spend on economic stimulus -- it's cutting instead. And the Federal Reserve is reluctant to do anything more.
Without much to invigorate growth, the economy may be in danger of slipping into a stupor like the one Japan has failed to shake off for more than a decade. And Wall Street is spooked.
The Dow Jones industrial average Wednesday barely broke an eight-day losing streak, finishing up about 30 points. A nine-day losing streak would have been the Dow's first since February 1978.
Even with the gain, the Dow has fallen 828 points, or 6.5 percent, over the past nine trading days. Investors didn't even pause to celebrate the resolution over the weekend of a dangerous debt standoff in Washington.
Stunned by news last week that the economy barely grew in the first half of 2011, economists are lowering their forecasts for the full year and recalculating the odds that the economy will slide back into recession.
Kurt Karl, chief U.S. economist at Swiss Re, has cut his 2011 forecast for growth this year to 1.8 percent from 2.6 percent. And he has bumped up the likelihood of another recession to 20 percent from 15 percent.
"The last week has made it much more likely that corporate profit estimates will be revised lower," said Nick Kalivas, a vice president of financial research at MF Global.
The stocks that have fallen the furthest have been those of companies that fare best in economic expansions. Industrial companies like Caterpillar and Boeing, energy companies like Exxon Mobil and Chevron, and retailers like Amazon and Coach have all fallen by more than the broader stock market.
Investors have pushed government bond yields to their lowest level of the year. The 10-year Treasury note now yields 2.6 percent. Bond yields typically fall when the economy is weak because nervous investors view bonds as a safe place to park their money, and there's less chance that inflation will erode their value.
The economy started sputtering early in the year. Economists at first thought the slowdown would be temporary, the result of a short-term rise in gasoline prices and an earthquake in Japan that disrupted shipments of auto parts and electronics.
But the weakness persisted. And it worsened as a political fight over debt and deficits raised the risk that the U.S. government would not be able to pay all its bills.
"It now seems fairly clear that those shocks have done a lot more damage than we expected," says Leo Abruzzese, global forecasting director for the Economist Intelligence Unit. "They seem to have had a devastating effect on confidence."
After the government reported that the economy grew at an annual pace of 0.4 percent in the first quarter and 1.3 percent in the second, Abruzzese is cutting his estimate for 2011 growth from 2.4 percent to less than 2 percent.
It's hard to see anything lifting growth to the 2.5 percent needed to keep unemployment from rising, let alone the 5 percent needed to bring the rate down significantly from June's 9.2 percent.
"Sales are what keeps the market moving higher, and there's not much demand when there's only 0.4 percent growth," said Andrew Goldberg, U.S. market strategist at JP Morgan Funds.
When the economy grows less than 2 percent over a 12-month period, it risks slipping into recession, says Mark Vitner, senior economist at Wells Fargo Securities. Over the most recent such period, the economy grew just 1.6 percent.
Few economists are predicting another recession, despite a series of weak economic reports. Gasoline prices have come down from their high of almost $4 a gallon in May. And Japanese factories are starting to crank up again after the March earthquake.
At the heart of the economy's problems are the debts that consumers built up during the early and mid-2000s. Many borrowed against the equity in their homes, convinced that house prices would rise forever.
When housing prices collapsed, people were left owing more than their homes were worth. Others charged up their credit cards. Now it's payback time, and Americans are spending less or spending cautiously as they slash their debts.
Companies are reluctant to hire until they're convinced enough customers are ready to buy their products or services. Corporate profits are booming, though, because companies laid off millions of workers, learned to operate more efficiently with smaller staffs and expanded in growing markets overseas.
"If companies were inclined to hire, they could," Abruzzese says.
So companies are waiting for consumers to spend, and consumers are waiting for companies to hire them or offer generous pay raises and job security. It's a tough cycle to break.
In the past, the government has helped by spending on infrastructure projects or jobs programs. This time, it's cutting at all levels. In the second quarter, government cutbacks reduced economic growth by 0.2 percentage points.
More cuts are coming. The deal to raise the debt limit calls for $917 billion in federal spending cuts. Those won't do much immediate damage to the economy because they mostly kick in after 2013, but a special congressional committee is supposed to find at least another $1.2 trillion in savings over the next decade, and no one knows where the ax will fall.
"You're not sure if there are going to be huge spending cuts or tax increases. Or are they just going to wrangle?" Swiss Re economist Karl says. "If you're a supplier to any part of the government, you certainly are not rushing to hire people or buy equipment. There's definitely a damper on growth."
To some economists, the United States is starting to look eerily like Japan. The Japanese economy fell into a recession in the early `90s. It has never fully returned to health, largely because of policy mistakes. The government raised taxes after declaring victory over the downturn prematurely. And U.S. economists, including current Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, criticized the Japanese central bank, the Bank of Japan, for being too passive to turn the economy around.
The Fed has kept short-term interest rates near zero since December 2008 to stimulate the economy. But at the end of June, it ended a $600 billion program to buy government bonds and keep long-term rates -- the ones that determine the rates people pay on cars and houses -- low.
It was the second round of what economists call quantitative easing, or QE2 for short. But the Fed has no plans for a third, fearing it would lead to higher inflation.
Kenneth Rogoff, a Harvard University economist, says that in this economy, QE3 -- and, if necessary, QE4 and beyond -- is the only hope.
"Yes, we are starting to look like Japan," he says. "But it is not too late."
Randall reported from New York.

"It's safe to say at this point that they are sitting on a lot of data."
Although the hacker declined to identify himself publicly, he has verified his membership with Lulz Security by posting a pre-arranged message to the group's popular Twitter feed.
Lulz Security made its Saturday announcement about disbanding through its Twitter account. That statement gave no reason for the disbandment.
One of the group's members was interviewed by The Associated Press on Friday, and gave no indication that its work was ending. LulzSec claimed hacks on major entertainment companies, FBI partner organizations, the CIA, the U.S. Senate and a pornography website.
Kevin Mitnick, a security consultant and former hacker, said the group had probably concluded that the more they kept up their activities, the greater the chance that one of them would make some mistake that would enable authorities to catch them. They've inspired copycat groups around the globe, he noted, which means similar attacks are likely to continue even without LulzSec.
"They can sit back and watch the mayhem and not risk being captured," Mitnick said.
As a parting shot, LulzSec released a grab-bag of documents and login information apparently gleaned from gaming websites and corporate servers. The largest group of documents -- 338 files -- appears to be internal documents from AT&T Inc., detailing its buildout of a new wireless broadband network in the U.S. The network is set to go live this summer. A spokesman for the phone company could not immediately confirm the authenticity of the documents.
In the Friday interview, the LulzSec member said the group was sitting on at least 5 gigabytes of government and law enforcement data from across the world, which it planned to release in the next three weeks. Saturday's release was less than a tenth of that size.
In an unusual strategy for a hacker group, LulzSec has sought publicity and conducted a conversation with the public through its Twitter account. LulzSec attacked anyone it could for "the lulz," which is Internet jargon for "laughs."
Satter contributed from London.

Two unexpected gushers in northeastern Pennsylvania are helping to illustrate the enormous potential of the Marcellus Shale natural gas field?

A. TRUE
B. FALSE

In an unusual strategy for a hacker group, LulzSec has sought publicity and conducted a conversation with the public through its Twitter account. LulzSec attacked anyone it could for "the lulz," which is Internet?

A. TRUE
B. FALSE

English Lessons

2011-09-07T22:41:00.000-07:00

DIRECTIONS: Read the following and answer all the questions?
http://www.americanenglishconversation.com/
http://www.freeenglishconversation.blogspot.com/
http://www.grammar-help.blogspot.com/

European stocks are expected to make modest gains at the market open as investors await news on whether both the European Central Bank and Bank of England will change policy in response to the economic slowdown and the euro zone debt crisis.

Asian stocks were mixed following solid gains on Wall Street despite the Fed’s Beige Book indicating the US economy remains weak.

Federal Open Markets Committee member Charles Evans said late on Wednesday that the US economy never really pulled out of recession and Ben Bernanke is due to speak at 16:30 London time in a speech at which he is expected to avoid discussing the prospects for another round of quantitative easing.

Thursday night, President Obama will unveil his latest plan to boost jobs growth with reports indicating a $300 billion stimulus package will include payroll tax cuts.

Before that, investors will hear from Jean-Claude Trichet in his monthly press conference as the ECB meets to decide on rates.

Analysts expect the ECB to say it is planning to reverse its recent rate-hiking cycle and analysts will be looking for any guidance on the central bank's bond-buying program put in place to support the Italian and Spanish markets.

In London the Bank of England is under pressure to help shore up the economy with a second round of quantitative easing. Analysts do not expect the BoE to move on Thursday but the Institute of Directors wants action to support growth.

"The downside economic risks are sufficiently great to warrant an extension in quantitative easing now, in order to avoid the risk of a double-dip recession," said Graeme Leach, the chief economist at the IOD told the Wall Street Journal on Thursday.

The United States is calling on Europe to take decisive action ahead of Friday’s G7 meeting of finance ministers in France. Tim Geithner, the US Treasury Secretary is expected to push his European counterparts to act as he outlines America’s latest stimulus measures.

The Dutch Prime Minister has called for a European 'Budget Tsar' with powers to dictate taxes and spending within the euro zone. In an interview with the Financial Times Mark Rutte said the new “commissioner for budgetary discipline” should have significant powers to ensure fiscal targets are met.

Did the European stocks are expected to make modest gains at the market open as investors await news on whether both the European Central Bank and Bank of England will change policy in response to the economic slowdown and the euro zone debt crisis?

A. TRUE

B. FALSE

DIRECTIONS: Read the following and answer all the questions?
http://www.americanenglishconversation.com/
http://www.freeenglishconversation.blogspot.com/
http://www.grammar-help.blogspot.com/

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Bank of America Corp. is close to finalizing a deal to pay $8.5 billion to settle claims by a group of blue-chip investors that the bank sold them poor-quality mortgage-backed securities that went sour when the housing market tanked, according to a person familiar with the settlement talks.
The Charlotte, N.C., bank was continuing talks late Tuesday with the group, which includes the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Pimco Investment Management, the world's largest bondholder, and Blackrock Financial Management. It is expected to announce an agreement as early as Wednesday, the person said on condition of anonymity because the matter was still developing.
The deal comes eight months after the group fired off a letter to Bank of America demanding that it repurchase $47 billion in mortgages that its Countrywide unit sold to them in the form of bonds. The investors have argued that Countrywide's practice of modifying loans found to have faulty paperwork or those written outside of normal underwriting standards breached signed agreements with the investors. By continuing to service bad loans rather than speeding up foreclosures, the group has claimed that Countrywide ran up servicing fees, enriching itself at the expense of investors. The New York Fed is involved because it took over assets held by American International Group Inc., which faltered under the weight of bad home loans that it insured.
Bank of America, which paid $4 billion for Countrywide in 2008, has dismissed suggestions that its handling of loan modifications and other efforts to prevent foreclosure have violated the terms of the mortgage-backed securities that the investors hold. In November, CEO Brian Moynihan said he was in day-to-day "hand-to-hand combat" with investors' demands.
But the combined effect of the Countrywide deal, mortgage crisis and the risk overhang of the soured loans have been a drain on BofA's bottom line and stock price, eventually prompting a reversal in strategy. Since the beginning of the year, the bank has struck large settlements with multiple investors. In January, the lender paid $2.6 billion to settle buyback claims on home loans sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. And in April, the bank agreed to pay up to $1.6 billion to Assured Guaranty Ltd., an insurer that also pressed the bank to repurchase shoddy mortgages. If approved, the latest settlement would address a significant remaining slice of Bank of America's mortgage buyback claim risk.
A Bank of America spokesman could not immediately be reached for comment.
Shares of Bank of America gained 14 cents, or 1.3 percent, to $10.96 in aftermarket trading on Tuesday. The shares had closed the regular session down 3 cents at $10.82.

Bank of America Corp. is close to finalizing a deal to pay $8.5 billion to settle claims by a group of blue-chip investors that the bank sold them poor-quality mortgage-backed securities?

A. TRUE
B. FALSE

A Bank of America spokesman could not immediately be reached for comment. Shares of Bank of America gained 14 cents, or 1.3 percent, to $10.96 in aftermarket trading on Tuesday?

A. TRUE
B. FALSE

English Lessons

2011-08-30T21:11:00.001-07:00

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Symbol	Price	Change
NTRS	37.25	+0.03

{"s" : "ntrs","k" : "a00,a50,b00,b60,c10,g00,h00,l10,p20,t10,v00","o" : "","j" : ""}

Sarah Dilorenzo, AP Business Writer, On Wednesday August 17, 2011, 6:27 pm EDT

English Lessons

2011-08-30T21:09:00.000-07:00

English Lessons

2011-08-22T21:44:00.001-07:00

Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck are expecting their third child.
Reps for the 39-year-old actors confirmed the news to the Associated Press on Monday.
PLAY IT NOW: Jennifer Garner ‘So Proud’ Of Ben Affleck’s Success
According to the AP, the couple is "thrilled" over the news.
Ben and Jen who married in 2005, have two children - Violet, now 5, and Seraphina, 2.
VIEW THE PHOTOS: Ben Affleck & Jennifer Garner
Jennifer has spoken before about her joy over being a mom, telling Parents magazine in 2009 that it opened her heart.
"The best part of being a mom is the kid herself -- that you get to have this little person be your friend and hang out with you (and drive you crazy!)," she told the mag at the time. "Obviously your life changes and your heart expands, and it's something you can't even put into words without sounding incredibly sentimental and cliched -- both of which I am! But what it really is, is this new being is there, which is just the most fun ever."
While pregnant with Seraphina, Jennifer said she used it as an excuse to enjoy more sweets.
VIEW THE PHOTOS: Hollywood’s Hottest Moms & Their Loveable Little Ones
"I always have cravings," she also told Parents magazine. "It doesn't matter if I'm pregnant or not! I use pregnancy as an excuse to say I'm craving ice cream and chocolate, but really, that's just me."
Jennifer spent this past weekend promoting her new film -- "The Odd Life of Timothy Green," co-starring "Warrior's" Joel Edgerton -- at Disney's D23 Expo in Anaheim, Calif.

BEIJING (Reuters) - The "Black Death" of debt crisis across the euro zone will hurt China by sapping demand for exports, although Beijing's relatively small holdings of euro assets will limit any damage to foreign exchange reserves, the nation's top official newspaper said on Monday.

The bleak diagnosis for the euro's prospects appeared in the overseas edition of the People's Daily, the top newspaper of China's ruling Communist Party, in a commentary by a former central bank official and an economist for the state-owned China Development Bank.

The commentary in the People's Daily does not reflect a definitive view from China's top leaders, but it suggests the euro zone's successive crises have stirred anxiety and debate in Beijing about the impact on China.

"The euro debt crisis has now been going for nearly two years since the end of 2009, and the sovereign debt crisis has spread like the Black Death of the fourteenth century across the euro zone countries," said the commentary, referring to the rodent-borne pandemic that devastated Europe.

The commentary came days before French President Nicolas Sarkozy is due to meet Chinese President Hu Jintao in Beijing for impromptu talks that will probably focus on the recent turbulence in global financial markets.

"The spread of the euro debt crisis will not have as large an impact on our country's foreign exchange reserves as the U.S. sovereign debt downgrade, because euro assets make up far less of our country's foreign exchange reserves than the dollar," added the authors, Zhang Zhixiang, a former head of the People's Bank of China international department, and Zhang Chao, an economist for the China Development Bank.
"But the euro debt crisis will lead to a decline in real demand that will have a far-reaching impact on our country's real economy," they wrote.
About a quarter of China's record foreign currency reserves of more than $3 trillion are held in euro assets, analysts estimate.
RESTORE CONFIDENCE
It was not clear, however, that the commentary signaled China would take a tougher stance in discussions during Sarkozy's visit.
Wang He, a researcher with a Chinese government think tank, said Sarkozy and Hu have a shared interest in portraying Europe's troubles as manageable.
"Neither leader will miss the opportunity to voice their joint commitment to stabilizing global markets, and that should help to restore investment confidence to some extent," said Wang, who studies European economics at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
He also played down the likelihood of Europe's crisis spinning out of control.
"I don't expect Europe to solve its debt problem overnight, but we must see that Europe has the financial capability to prevent it from spreading like a disease," he said.
"It is certainly overly pessimistic to say that the euro zone is falling apart."

The 27-member EU bloc is China's biggest trade partner, with bilateral trade in goods in 2010 reaching 395 billion euros ($570 billion), a rise of 13.9 percent, according to EU statistics. Chinese exports to the EU reached 281.9 billion euros in 2010, a rise of 18.9 percent on 2009.

Chinese leaders, including Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, have repeatedly expressed confidence that debt-laden European countries can overcome their problems and return to healthy growth.

During a visit to Germany in June, Wen said his country could buy the sovereign debt of some troubled euro zone nations if needed.

But the People's Daily said the euro zone's problems reflected deep-seated institutional failings that needed to be overcome for Europe to recover confidence and strong growth.

"The euro zone should reform the institutional constraints to economic development, and show a responsible attitude regarding the links between their countries' and their region's economic development and global economic and financial stability," wrote the two economists.

English Lessons

2011-08-22T21:36:00.000-07:00

DIRECTIONS: Read the following and answer all the questions?
http://www.americanenglishconversation.com/
http://www.freeenglishconversation.blogspot.com/
http://www.grammar-help.blogspot.com/

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Bank of America Corp. is close to finalizing a deal to pay $8.5 billion to settle claims by a group of blue-chip investors that the bank sold them poor-quality mortgage-backed securities that went sour when the housing market tanked, according to a person familiar with the settlement talks.
The Charlotte, N.C., bank was continuing talks late Tuesday with the group, which includes the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Pimco Investment Management, the world's largest bondholder, and Blackrock Financial Management. It is expected to announce an agreement as early as Wednesday, the person said on condition of anonymity because the matter was still developing.
The deal comes eight months after the group fired off a letter to Bank of America demanding that it repurchase $47 billion in mortgages that its Countrywide unit sold to them in the form of bonds. The investors have argued that Countrywide's practice of modifying loans found to have faulty paperwork or those written outside of normal underwriting standards breached signed agreements with the investors. By continuing to service bad loans rather than speeding up foreclosures, the group has claimed that Countrywide ran up servicing fees, enriching itself at the expense of investors. The New York Fed is involved because it took over assets held by American International Group Inc., which faltered under the weight of bad home loans that it insured.
Bank of America, which paid $4 billion for Countrywide in 2008, has dismissed suggestions that its handling of loan modifications and other efforts to prevent foreclosure have violated the terms of the mortgage-backed securities that the investors hold. In November, CEO Brian Moynihan said he was in day-to-day "hand-to-hand combat" with investors' demands.
But the combined effect of the Countrywide deal, mortgage crisis and the risk overhang of the soured loans have been a drain on BofA's bottom line and stock price, eventually prompting a reversal in strategy. Since the beginning of the year, the bank has struck large settlements with multiple investors. In January, the lender paid $2.6 billion to settle buyback claims on home loans sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. And in April, the bank agreed to pay up to $1.6 billion to Assured Guaranty Ltd., an insurer that also pressed the bank to repurchase shoddy mortgages. If approved, the latest settlement would address a significant remaining slice of Bank of America's mortgage buyback claim risk.
A Bank of America spokesman could not immediately be reached for comment.
Shares of Bank of America gained 14 cents, or 1.3 percent, to $10.96 in aftermarket trading on Tuesday. The shares had closed the regular session down 3 cents at $10.82.

Bank of America Corp. is close to finalizing a deal to pay $8.5 billion to settle claims by a group of blue-chip investors that the bank sold them poor-quality mortgage-backed securities?

A. TRUE
B. FALSE

A Bank of America spokesman could not immediately be reached for comment. Shares of Bank of America gained 14 cents, or 1.3 percent, to $10.96 in aftermarket trading on Tuesday?

A. TRUE
B. FALSE

DIRECTIONS: Read the following and answer all the questions?
http://www.americanenglishconversation.com/
http://www.freeenglishconversation.blogspot.com/
http://www.grammar-help.blogspot.com/
ALLENTOWN, Pa. (AP) -- Two unexpected gushers in northeastern Pennsylvania are helping to illustrate the enormous potential of the Marcellus Shale natural gas field.
Each of the Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. wells in Susquehanna County is capable of producing 30 million cubic feet per day -- believed to be a record for the Marcellus and enough gas to supply nearly 1,000 homes for a year. The landowners attached to the wells, who leased the well access, numbering fewer than 25, are splitting hundreds of thousands of dollars in monthly royalties.
"There was definitely excitement among the team that planned out these wells and executed their completion," said Cabot spokesman George Stark.
Drilling companies knew the Marcellus held a lot of gas. They just had to figure out a way to get it out, and they say they're getting better at it all the time.
The result is that the Marcellus, a rock formation beneath Pennsylvania, New York, West Virginia and Ohio, has turned out to be an even more prolific source of gas than anyone anticipated. Energy firms are boosting their production targets, not only because new wells are coming on line but also because they're managing to coax more gas from each well.
Operators say they have a greater understanding of the complicated geology of the Marcellus, allowing them to land their drill bits in the sweet spot of the formation. They're drilling horizontally at greater distances, giving them access to more of the gas locked within the rock. And they're tweaking how they break apart the shale.
"It's like batting practice," said Matt Pitzarella, spokesman for Range Resources Corp. "The more you swing the bat, the better you get."
Fort Worth, Texas-based Range has boosted its estimate of the amount of natural gas it will ultimately be able to harvest from its Marcellus Shale wells, telling investors this month that it plans to triple production to 600 million cubic feet per day by the end of 2012.
Another major player, Chesapeake Energy Corp., has likewise reported a dramatic increase in expected well production. Early on, the Oklahoma City-based driller predicted that each well would yield 3.5 billion cubic feet of gas over its life span. That amount has since doubled, to more than 7 billion cubic feet, and continues to go up.
"Growing confidence in reserve quality is a major reason why many of the largest, most-successful, domestic and international energy companies are heavily investing in the Marcellus and other American shale plays," said Jeff Fisher, Chesapeake's senior vice president of production.
Indeed, major oil companies like Chevron Corp., Exxon Mobil Corp. and Royal Dutch Shell PLC have placed multibillion-dollar bets on the Marcellus, a 400-million-year-old rock formation that geologists say holds the nation's largest reservoir of natural gas and perhaps the second-largest in the world.
To unlock the shale's riches, drillers combine horizontal drilling with hydraulic fracturing, a technique known as fracking that pumps millions of gallons of water, along with sand and chemicals, into the well to creature fissures in the rock and allow natural gas to flow up. Fracking has raised environmental concerns, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is studying its impact on groundwater. The industry insists the process is environmentally safe.
The technology has unleashed a drilling frenzy in Pennsylvania -- where more than 3,300 Marcellus wells have been sunk the past few years -- and accounts for a twelvefold increase in U.S. shale gas production since 2000. Gas harvested from the Marcellus and other shale fields around the country -- including the Barnett Shale in Texas and the Haynesville Shale in Louisiana -- now represents a quarter of total U.S. natural gas production.
The new Cabot wells help illustrate why boosters believe the gas field could help steer U.S. energy policy for decades to come. They were also a nice bit of good news for Cabot, the Houston-based driller that endured two years of bad publicity after state regulators accused it of polluting water supplies in Dimock Township, Susquehanna County.
The wells -- also located in Dimock -- are "producing like gushers," exulted Stark, the Cabot spokesman, helping to push the company's daily production above 400 million cubic feet per day.
Like other drillers, Cabot has steadily increased the horizontal length of its wells, from an average of 2,100 feet in 2008 to 3,600 feet last year. It has seen a corresponding increase in capacity.
Capacity, though, does not always translate to production.
Cabot's wells, and Marcellus wells in general, are not running at full tilt, mainly because the infrastructure required to take the gas from wellhead to market is not yet fully in place. An oversupply of natural gas and the availability of crews to fracture the wells are other limiting factors.
"We certainly have had to manage our pace of drilling with the installation of pipeline infrastructure and demand in the market," Chesapeake's Fisher said in a statement. "While some delays in production startups are common in the early phase of these large-scale plays, the industry is working hard to build the infrastructure that will enable Marcellus reserves to get to market for decades to come."
The Marcellus isn't the only shale formation in Pennsylvania that energy companies have their eye on. Drillers are just beginning to explore the gas-bearing Utica and Upper Devonian formations. The Utica is deeper that the Marcellus, and the Upper Devonian is shallower.
"It's triple the resource potential under the same plot of land," said Kevin Cabla, an energy analyst at Raymond James & Associates.
NEW YORK (AP) -- A member of a publicity-seeking hacker group that sabotaged websites over the past two months and is dissolving itself says his group isn't disbanding under pressure from the FBI or enemy hackers.
"We're not quitting because we're afraid of law enforcement," the LulzSec member said in a conversation with The Associated Press over the Internet voice program Skype. "The press are getting bored of us, and we're getting bored of us."
The group's hacking has included attacks on law enforcement and releases of private data. It said unexpectedly on Saturday it was dissolving itself.
In the Sunday interview, the hacker acknowledged that some of the material being circulated by rivals online -- which purports to reveal the hackers' online nicknames, past histories, and chat logs -- was genuine, something he said had proved to be "a distraction."
He added that three or four of Lulz Security's members were taking what he called "a breather" and said he was considering giving up cyberattacks altogether.
"Maybe I'll stop this hacking thing entirely. I haven't decided," he said. He said he couldn't speak for the others' long-term plans, but said it was possible some of the members would continue to be involved with Anonymous, the much larger and more amorphous hacking group which has targeted the Church of Scientology, Middle Eastern dictatorships, and the music industry, among others.
He said the six-member group was still sitting on a considerable amount of stolen law enforcement files.

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{"s" : "cvx,jpm,xom","k" : "a00,a50,b00,b60,c10,g00,h00,l10,p20,t10,v00","o" : "","j" : ""}

Paul Wiseman and David K. Randall, AP Business Writers, On Wednesday August 3, 2011, 5:35 pm EDT

A. TRUE
B. FALSE

Fresh off the announcement that it would prioritize deportation for those with criminal records over other individuals here without legal status, the Obama Administration could take a series of other measures within its authority to rationalize U.S. immigration policy. The dozens of ideas for reform advocated in two new reports by the National Foundation for American Policy would be much less controversial than the recent Obama Administration on deportation.

First, let’s take a look at the new policy on deportation, a description of which can be found here. According to the response Senator Richard Durbin (D-IL) received from the Obama Administration, the new policy would work as follows: “Under the new process, a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Department of Justice (DOJ) working group will develop specific criteria to identify low-priority removal cases that should be considered for prosecutorial discretion. These criteria will be based on 'positive factors' from the Morton Memo, which include individuals present in the U.S. since childhood (like DREAM Act students), minors, the elderly, pregnant and nursing women, victims of serious crimes, veterans and members of the armed services, and individuals with serious disabilities or health problems.” (The Morton memo, issued in June, sought to address the situation of limited enforcement resources by providing field guidance on who to prioritize in deportations.)

Again, while this policy has received praise and criticism in different quarters, it is more controversial than other measures that could be taken. In the two reports released this week by the National Foundation for American Policy, a group of organizations and legal experts recommended a variety of measures that would improve immigration policies in a variety of areas. The recommendations in the reports (found here and here) come from organizations that include the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the American Council on International Personnel, the American Immigration Lawyers Association, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) and others. The goal was to find measures that did not require legislation and that, generally speaking, were unlikely to be controversial.

In January 2011, President Obama issued an executive order that called on agencies to remove outdated regulations or those that harmed competitiveness. A number of the recommendations in the reports were also submitted during a public comment period opened up by the Administration.

To improve the naturalization process, the reports recommended fee reform and streamlining that brings down the price of applying for naturalization, revising and simplifying the language in both the naturalization form and instructions, and restoring offsite naturalization interviews at local community centers. Since even critics of immigration would like those already here to integrate as well as possible and become citizens, these policy proposals should not engender much opposition.
To improve aspects of employment-based immigration, the reports advocated changes that would reduce red tape, such as allowing online advertisements rather than more expensive print ads for labor certification (a highly bureaucratic process required to secure a green card for a skilled immigrant that can cost employers $10,000).
Other reforms recommended in the reports would achieve important policy objectives, such as providing additional labor mobility to skilled foreign nationals. That is something critics of high skill immigration have supported, since it would encourage foreign-born professionals to change employers the same as U.S. workers.

The most direct way to provide more labor mobility, including within a company, is to allow individuals waiting for green cards in the United States (often in H-1B status) to apply for adjustment of status even when a visa number is not yet available. Currently, individuals waiting for a green card often may be passed over for promotion or may hesitate to change jobs because such actions could trigger the need to re-start the green card process. As Aman Kapoor of Immigration Voice explains, “By allowing applicants to obtain an Employment Authorization Document (EAD) through the adjustment of status process, this minor fix would allow high-skilled immigrants to accept job offers and promotions, either with their current employer or other perspective employers, without having to start the entire green card application process all over again.”

In response to a question from the Huffington Post’s Alex Wagner, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Alejandro Mayorkas said he thought some of the recommendations in the two reports were "well taken" but that he would need to examine them further. That’s a positive response. Randel K. Johnson of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said many of the recommendations in the reports could be easily implemented, calling them “low hanging fruit.” Let’s hope the Obama Administration is willing to pick some of that fruit and, in the process, bring greater rationality to our immigration system.

English Lessons

2011-08-22T21:25:00.000-07:00

Free English Poetry
http://www.americanenglishconversation.com/
http://grammar-help.blogspot.com/

The Cord
Leanne O’Sullivan
I used to lie on the floor for hours after
school with the phone cradled between
my shoulder and my ear, a plate of cold
rice to my left, my school books to my right.
Twirling the cord between my fingers
I spoke to friends who recognized the
language of our realm. Throats and lungs
swollen, we talked into the heart of the night,
toying with the idea of hair dye and suicide,
about the boys who didn’t love us,
who we loved too much, the pang
of the nights. Each sentence was
new territory, like a door someone was
rushing into, the glass shattering
with delirium, with knowledge and fear.
My Mother never complained about the phone bill,
what it cost for her daughter to disappear
behind a door, watching the cord
stretching its muscle away from her.
Perhaps she thought it was the only way
she could reach me, sending me away
to speak in the underworld.
As long as I was speaking
she could put my ear to the tenuous earth
and allow me to listen, to decipher.
And these were the elements of my Mother,
the earthed wire, the burning cable,
as if she flowed into the room with
me to somehow say, Stay where I can reach you,
the dim room, the dark earth. Speak of this
and when you feel removed from it
I will pull the cord and take you

DIRECTIONS: Read the following and answer all the questions?
http://www.americanenglishconversation.com/
http://www.freeenglishconversation.blogspot.com/
http://www.grammar-help.blogspot.com/

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Bank of America Corp. is close to finalizing a deal to pay $8.5 billion to settle claims by a group of blue-chip investors that the bank sold them poor-quality mortgage-backed securities that went sour when the housing market tanked, according to a person familiar with the settlement talks.
The Charlotte, N.C., bank was continuing talks late Tuesday with the group, which includes the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Pimco Investment Management, the world's largest bondholder, and Blackrock Financial Management. It is expected to announce an agreement as early as Wednesday, the person said on condition of anonymity because the matter was still developing.
The deal comes eight months after the group fired off a letter to Bank of America demanding that it repurchase $47 billion in mortgages that its Countrywide unit sold to them in the form of bonds. The investors have argued that Countrywide's practice of modifying loans found to have faulty paperwork or those written outside of normal underwriting standards breached signed agreements with the investors. By continuing to service bad loans rather than speeding up foreclosures, the group has claimed that Countrywide ran up servicing fees, enriching itself at the expense of investors. The New York Fed is involved because it took over assets held by American International Group Inc., which faltered under the weight of bad home loans that it insured.
Bank of America, which paid $4 billion for Countrywide in 2008, has dismissed suggestions that its handling of loan modifications and other efforts to prevent foreclosure have violated the terms of the mortgage-backed securities that the investors hold. In November, CEO Brian Moynihan said he was in day-to-day "hand-to-hand combat" with investors' demands.
But the combined effect of the Countrywide deal, mortgage crisis and the risk overhang of the soured loans have been a drain on BofA's bottom line and stock price, eventually prompting a reversal in strategy. Since the beginning of the year, the bank has struck large settlements with multiple investors. In January, the lender paid $2.6 billion to settle buyback claims on home loans sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. And in April, the bank agreed to pay up to $1.6 billion to Assured Guaranty Ltd., an insurer that also pressed the bank to repurchase shoddy mortgages. If approved, the latest settlement would address a significant remaining slice of Bank of America's mortgage buyback claim risk.
A Bank of America spokesman could not immediately be reached for comment.
Shares of Bank of America gained 14 cents, or 1.3 percent, to $10.96 in aftermarket trading on Tuesday. The shares had closed the regular session down 3 cents at $10.82.

Bank of America Corp. is close to finalizing a deal to pay $8.5 billion to settle claims by a group of blue-chip investors that the bank sold them poor-quality mortgage-backed securities?

A. TRUE
B. FALSE

A Bank of America spokesman could not immediately be reached for comment. Shares of Bank of America gained 14 cents, or 1.3 percent, to $10.96 in aftermarket trading on Tuesday?

A. TRUE
B. FALSE

back towards me.

English Lessons

2011-08-22T21:20:00.001-07:00

English Lessons

2011-08-17T23:46:00.000-07:00

DIRECTIONS: Read the following and answer all the questions?
http://www.americanenglishconversation.com/
http://www.freeenglishconversation.blogspot.com/
http://www.grammar-help.blogspot.com/
http://freeenglishlessons-denise.blogspot.com/
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Justice Department is investigating whether the Standard & Poor's credit ratings agency improperly rated dozens of mortgage securities in the years leading up to the financial crisis, The New York Times reported Wednesday.
The investigation began before Standard & Poor's cut the United States' AAA credit rating this month, but it's likely to add to the political firestorm created by the downgrade, the newspaper said. Some government officials have since questioned the agency's secretive process, its credibility and the competence of its analysts, claiming to have found an error in its debt calculations.
The Times cites two people interviewed by the government and another briefed on such interviews as its sources. According to people with knowledge of the interviews, the Justice Department has been asking about instances in which the company's analysts wanted to award lower ratings on mortgage bonds but may have been overruled by other S&P business managers.
If the government finds enough evidence to support a case, it could undercut S&P's longstanding claim that its analysts act independently from business concerns. The newspaper said it was unclear whether the Justice Department investigation involves the other two major ratings agencies, Moody's and Fitch, or only S&P.
S&P and other ratings agencies reaped record profits as they bestowed their highest ratings on bundles of troubled mortgage loans, which made the mortgages appear less risky and thus more valuable. They failed to anticipate the deterioration that would come in the housing market and devastate the financial system.
Companies and some countries -- but not the United States -- pay the credit ratings agencies to receive a rating, the financial market's version of a seal of approval. Before the financial crisis, banks shopped around to make sure rating agencies would award favorable ratings before agreeing to work with them. These banks paid as much as $100,000 for ratings on mortgage bond deals, according to the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, the Times said.
Critics say this business model is riddled with conflicts of interest since ratings agencies might make their grades more positive to please their customers.
The Times said the Securities and Exchange Commission also has been investigating possible wrongdoing at S&P, citing a person interviewed on that matter.
Ed Sweeney, a spokesman for S&P, said in an email to the Times: "S&P has received several requests from different government agencies over the last few years. We continue to cooperate with these requests. We do not prevent such agencies from speaking with current or former employees."
Representatives of the Justice Department and the SEC declined to comment on whether they are investigating the ratings agencies, the newspaper said.
http://www.americanenglishconversation.comhttp://grammar-help.blogspot.com
Lesson #1
EXERCISE #1
Directions: Discuss the italicized verbs. Do they expree present time or past time? Do the Verbs describe an activity or situation....

a. is in progress right now?

b. is usual or is a general statement of fact?

c. began and ended in the past?

d. was in progress at a time in the past?

1. Jennifer works for an insurance company.

2. When people need help with their automobile insurance, they call her.

3. Right now it is 9:05 A.M., and Jennifer is sitting at her desk.

4. She came to work on time this morning.

5. Yesterday Jennifer was late to work because she had a minor auto accident.

6. While she was driving to work, her cell phone rang.

7. She answered it. It was her friend Rob.

8. She was happy to here from him because she likes Rob and always enjoys
her conversations with him.

9. While they were talking, Jennifer, who is allergic to bee stings, noticed two bees in her car.

10. She quickly opened the car windows and swatted at the bees while she was talking to Rob on the phone.

11. Her hands left the steering wheel, and she lost control of the car. Her car ran into a row of mailboxes beside the road.

12. Fortunately, no one was hurt in the accident.

13. Jennifer is okay, but her car isn't. It needs repairs.

14. When Jennifer got to work this morning, she talked to her automobile insurance agent.

15. That was easy to do because she works at the desk right next to hers.

EXERCISE #2
Directions: Write the correct pronunciations and practice sayin the words aloud. / T / D / ED /

1. cooked= T 6. dropped= drop/ / 11. returned= return/

2. served = D 7. pulled= pull/ / 12. touched= touch/ /

3. wanted= ED 8. pushed= push/ / 13. waved= wave/ /

4. asked = ask/ / 9. added= add/ / 14. pointed= point/ /

5. started= start/ / 10. passed= pass/ / 15.agreed= agree/

English Lessons

2011-08-17T23:44:00.000-07:00

DIRECTIONS: Read the following and answer the questions?
http://www.freeenglishconversation.blogspot.com/
http://www.americanenglishconversation.com
http://freeenglishlessons-denise.blogspot.com/

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TM	74.68	-0.74

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Tom Krisher, AP Auto Writer, On Thursday August 18, 2011, 12:06 am EDT

STERLING HEIGHTS, Mich. (AP) -- Jeff Swanson was in the market for a new car just a few weeks ago. Then the stock market went crazy.
So Swanson, 25, decided to keep his 10-year-old Pontiac Grand Prix for at least another year. Gyrations in stocks and talk of a weakening economy rattled Swanson's confidence about taking on another payment, even though his new job running a home for mentally disabled people seems to be secure.
"Everywhere you turn, other people are saying `Oh, I lost my job this week. I lost my job last week,'" says Swanson, who works for a non-profit that gets money from the state. "I want to be a little bit financially set in case something like that happens."
It's an increasingly common reaction among would-be car buyers that has dealers and automakers worried. In May, many believed sales would reach a healthy 13.5 million this year -- halfway between their peak in 2005 and their 30-year low in 2009. Now, such forecasts seem overly optimistic. Analysts say the swoon in financial markets and economic uncertainty could reduce auto sales by a few percentage points, shrink earnings and delay hiring in an industry that has been a recent leader in job creation.
"If it keeps going this way, yes, it's going to hurt business," says Jerry Seiner, who runs a group of dealerships in the Salt Lake City area that includes General Motors, Nissan and Kia.
Any reduction in sales would be especially painful for Toyota and Honda dealers, who are just starting to restock their showrooms after months of shortages brought on by Japan's earthquake.
In a sign of how sensitive buyers have become to stock swings, showrooms are active on days the market is up, but empty when it's down, Seiner says. The Dow Jones industrial average has fallen 10 percent since July 22, with wild swings up and down along the way.
Gilbert Baldwin, 66, a retired auto worker from Ypsilanti, Mich., decided to wait for the market to stabilize before replacing his 2002 Ford Explorer. He was shopping for a new car last month, but now he's worried about higher gas and food prices and the possibility of Social Security cuts as Congress looks for ways to cut the deficit.
The lack of confidence isn't what car dealers want to hear, especially in August, usually a strong sales month as dealers clear lots of 2011 models to make room for 2012 cars and trucks. Carmakers report August sales in the U.S. on Sept. 1.
In the Washington, D.C., area, which is likely to be hit by government spending cuts, sales at Tammy Darvish's chain of about two-dozen dealerships fell by more than 2 percent in early August. She's worried the slow pace could continue for the rest of the month.
But dealers say sales likely won't collapse in the second half of 2011, as they did in 2009. That's because banks are lending more freely, and lease deals, which went away during the recession, are making a comeback. Also, older cars will still need to be replaced. The average age of a car in the U.S. is 10.6 years, up more than a full year from 2008, according to the research firm Polk.
Indeed, the turmoil in financial markets isn't scaring off everyone.
Jason Ashton, 38, of Shelby Township, Mich., plans to trade in his 2006 Dodge Ram pickup for a roomier SUV that will fit his wife, two kids and equipment.
"You've got to have room for the family," he says, trying to swing a deal for a Durango at Van Dyke Dodge in Warren, Mich.
But Ashton, who installs software for auto companies, will buy only if he gets a price low enough to keep his monthly payment steady. He also won't spend as much on options as in the past, forgoing leather seats, for example.
J.D. Power and Associates cut its 2011 sales forecast last week by 2 percent, to 12.6 million new cars and trucks. It cut its 2012 forecast by 3 percent, to 14.1 million. Ford Motor Co. is sticking with its sales forecast of around 13 million for the year.
"We're not getting back to what was considered normal or healthy as quickly as possible, but it's still a pretty strong progression," says Jeff Schuster, executive director of global forecasting for J.D. Power. Sales bottomed at 10.4 million in 2009.
Since that year, the U.S. auto industry has grown remarkably, adding jobs faster than the economy as a whole. The industry has added about 77,000 jobs since June of 2009. That's an increase of 12 percent, compared with a rise of 0.2 percent for the economy overall.
People looking to buy a car later this year could benefit from any reduced demand today.
Carmakers are likely to roll out sweeter deals, Schuster says, "just to keep buyers active and give them another reason to come in."
NEW YORK (Reuters) – The Dow and S&P 500 closed out their sixth week of losses on Friday as further signs of a global economic slowdown set the stage for more losses ahead.
The deepening gloom raised the prospect for the S&P, which suffered its worst week since August 2010, to break below the year's low of 1,250 next week.
The Nasdaq wiped out its yearly gains on Friday and also posted its biggest weekly decline since August 2010, as the latest deterioration in sentiment came on fear of flagging Chinese growth and fresh worries about Greece's debt crisis.
The Dow closed below 12,000 for the first time since mid-March.
Reflecting the bearish sentiment, options traders eyed calls on the CBOE Volatility Index (.VIX), Wall Street's so-called fear gauge, which moves inversely to the S&P 500's performance. The VIX rose 6.1 percent to end at 18.86.
"We broke below the April low, which was about 1,295 (on the S&P 500) pretty much at the open today. We are probably going to test the March lows if data next week remain weak," said Stephen Massocca, managing director at Wedbush Morgan in San Francisco.
"But investors are very susceptible to any kind of news and since we are very oversold here, we could see the market instantly bounce back if we get anything remotely good."
The Dow Jones industrial average (.DJI) fell 172.45 points, or 1.42 percent, to 11,951.91. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index (.SPX) slid 18.02 points, or 1.40 percent, to 1,270.98. The Nasdaq Composite Index (.IXIC) tumbled 41.14 points, or 1.53 percent, to 2,643.73 at the close.
For the week, the Dow was down 1.6 percent, the S&P 500 was off 2.2 percent and the Nasdaq was down 3.3 percent.
The S&P 500 has fallen about 6.6 percent from its intraday peak early last month. Many see the benchmark index sliding back down to around 1,250, its March low, where valuations could bring investors back into equities.
At 1,250, the S&P 500 would be roughly 1.7 percent below current levels and approaching a 10 percent decline commonly referred to as a correction.
FINANCIALS DECLINE
Bank stocks, already under pressure, finished lower, with the KBW Banks Index (.BKX) dropping 0.4 percent after sliding more than 2 percent earlier in the day. The Federal Reserve said it will subject more banks to annual stress tests to determine whether they have enough capital and can raise their dividends.
Some of the biggest decliners were regional bank stocks that are now going to face annual tests.
Northern Trust Corp (NTRS.O) fell 1.2 percent to $46.77 and M&T Bank Corp (MTB.N) lost 1.2 percent to $84.41.
But large banks, including JPMorgan Chase (JPM.N) and Bank of America (BAC.N), rose in a late rebound, on a news report that the extra capital charge on big banks will likely be 2 percent to 2.5 percent, compared with the widely predicted 3 percent, traders said.
Bank of America shares rose 1.4 percent to $10.80 and JPMorgan added 0.2 percent to $41.05.
The S&P energy index (.GSPE) declined 1.9 percent while the S&P index of industrial stocks (.GSPI) lost 1.6 percent.
China's sales to the United States and the European Union slumped to their weakest since late 2009, excluding Lunar New Year holidays, underlining the view that the world economy is stumbling.
In another negative for stocks, the euro tumbled more than 1 percent against the U.S. dollar as fears about Greece's debt returned to the forefront and investors curbed expectations about the European Central Bank's interest-rate hikes. Investors have been recently trading the correlation between stocks and the dollar.
The PHLX semiconductor index (.SOX) slid 1.7 percent, sinking to its lowest since early December. The SOX fell below its 200-day moving average for the first time since last October.
About 7.47 billion shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange, NYSE Amex and Nasdaq, compared with the daily average of 7.59 billion.
Declining stocks beat advancing ones by 2,419 to 587 on the NYSE while on the Nasdaq, decliners beat advancers by 1,987 to 593.
(Reporting by Angela Moon; Editing by Jan Paschal)

Is the Nasdaq wiped out its yearly gains on Friday and also posted its biggest weekly decline since August 2010, as the latest deterioration in sentiment came on fear of flagging Chinese growth and fresh worries about Greece's debt crisis?

A. TRUE

B. FALSE

Did the declining stocks beat advancing ones by 2,419 to 587 on the NYSE while on the Nasdaq, decliners beat advances by 1,987 to 593?

A. TRUE

B. FALSE

English Lessons

2011-08-17T23:41:00.000-07:00

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Sarah Dilorenzo, AP Business Writer, On Wednesday August 17, 2011, 6:27 pm EDT

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