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Last-minute shoppers headed to the nation’s stores and malls on the day before Christmas, looking for the final items they needed and searching for good deals — but for retailers, the season was essentially over long ago.

Many merchants are already tallying up just how dismal their sales were in a season expected to be the worst in decades.

"It’s beyond the worst fears of retailers," said C. Britt Beemer, chairman of America’s Research Group.

Much is at stake. The holiday shopping season accounts for as much as 40 percent of annual profits for many retailers, and the earnings outlook is growing more dire every week.

Retailers’ woes were good news for the dwindling numbers of shoppers who could afford to load up on deals. With mounds of inventory still left to sell, merchants are expected to deepen the discounts even more the day after Christmas.

But if 75 percent off before Dec. 25 didn’t make shoppers splurge, will even bigger deals do the trick amid mounting worries about layoffs and shrinking retirement funds?

In Christmases past, the retail industry relied on a surge before and after Christmas to help save the season. But this holiday period was virtually over before the Thanksgiving weekend ended as stores grapple with the most severe retrenchment in consumer spending in decades.

Merchants desperate to pull in shoppers started deeply discounting holiday goods as soon as they hit stores starting in November. But except for a shopping binge on the day after Thanksgiving, Americans have remained tight-fisted. When they do buy, they are looking for small-ticket, more practical gifts.

Analysts have kept slashing their holiday estimates. Michael P. Niemira, chief economist at the International Council of Shopping Centers, now expects that sales at established stores for November and December will fall 1 pay day loans.5 percent to 2 percent — making it the weakest holiday season since at least 1969, when the index began.

Excluding Wal-Mart Stores Inc., one of the few bright spots in retailing, same-store sales could be down as much as 7 percent for the holiday period. Same-store sales are sales at stores opened at least a year.

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Stores are expected to post an 18.8 percent decline in fourth-quarter profits, marking the seventh consecutive period of profit declines, according to Ken Perkins, president of research company RetailMetrics LLC.

Merchants can’t even count on gift card sales to boost profits and sales. In the past, gift cards had lifted the post-Christmas season as shoppers went back to the stores to redeem the plastic on discounted and regular-priced merchandise.

Karen MacDonald, a spokeswoman at Taubman Centers Inc., which operates 24 malls in 11 states, said gift card sales had been tracking anywhere from single-digit declines to double-digit declines this season, a worrisome sign.

Gift cards "certainly drive business the week after Christmas," she said. "I think there were so many good deals out there that many people made that their gift of choice."

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As lawmakers and housing advocates push the federal government to help cut the foreclosure rate, Comptroller of the Currency John C. Dugan offers this sobering statistic: More than half of loans modified in the first quarter of 2008 still fell delinquent within six months.

Dugan, whose agency regulates national banks, used data collected from institutions that service more than 60 percent of all first mortgages, or 35 million loans worth $6 trillion.

Experts say one possibility is that the modifications might not have lowered monthly payments enough to be truly affordable.

Bruce M. Sattin, a New Jersey lawyer who handles foreclosure cases, said most modifications required borrowers to continue their normal monthly payments and pay additional amounts each month to make up payments missed before the loan was altered health insurance.
"There are individuals for whom any loan modification would result in a mortgage payment they can’t afford, because they couldn’t really afford the original mortgage in the first place," said Farah Jiminez, executive director of Mt. Airy USA, a community development group.

"Trying to save the homes of those in such arrangements may only be prolonging the pain — especially for the homeowner," she said.

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Retailers prepared to open their doors early on Saturday in a final, frenzied push to save holiday sales, with the added disruption of a winter storm hitting the country’s Midwest and Northeast.

Foul weather kept many shoppers close to home on Friday, with freezing rain and snow expected for several regions through the weekend.

The storm hits at the worst possible time for U.S. store chains, which are trying to salvage the critical holiday shopping season and lure recession-struck consumers with last-minute deals before Christmas next week.

Many shoppers have said they are giving fewer gifts and looking only for marked-down merchandise, grim news for retailers who may see their weakest holiday season since the early 1990s.

Stacy Maites stopped in the snow to look at the window displays at Saks Fifth Avenue’s flagship New York store on Friday. She is worried about her job at a technology company and has whittled down her annual holiday party to 20 people.

“It’s minimal and only when I can find stuff on sale,” she said of her gift-buying this year.

The National Retail Federation predicted on Friday that two-thirds of Americans still had holiday shopping left to do, while 44.5 million consumers still had not even begun.

“With so much shopping left to do, the weekend before Christmas will be one of the most important periods of the year for retailers,” said NRF President and CEO Tracy Mullin bad credit pay day loans.

Stores like Macy’s Inc and J.C. Penney Co Inc were primed to greet shoppers starting at 6 a.m. after staying open until midnight on Friday.

“It’s our last one day sale before Christmas” announced Macy’s in a full-page ad that ran in many U.S. newspapers, accompanied by a $10 coupon. The department store chain even kept its doors open 24 hours at some East Coast locations.

Gap Inc’s Old Navy chain advertised $6 deals on items from scarves to slippers, while Toys “R” Us said certain toys would be 50 percent off.

A MAD SCRAMBLE

“Super Saturday” — the Saturday before Christmas that represents the final major day of holiday shopping — usually ranks just behind “Black Friday” as the single-largest holiday sales day. Black Friday fell on November 28 this year, the day after U.S. Thanksgiving.

This year, Saturday could be busier than expected, if storm conditions ease up. More severe weather was forecast for Sunday.

“You’ll see a mad scramble… in the New York region because it’s basically the only day we have,” said Scott Bernhardt, chief operating officer for weather tracking firm Planalytics. “Once you shovel out, go to the mall because another one is coming on Sunday.” 

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Rules aimed at preventing credit card holders from being hit by unfair and deceptive practices such as surprise fees and interest-rate hikes were approved on Thursday by a U.S. banking regulator.

The new regulations are expected to bring some relief to millions of card users by restricting issuers’ ability to raise rates and by giving holders reasonable time to pay their balances. They also are expected to lower revenues for issuers.

The Federal Reserve Board and the National Credit Union Administration are expected to approve the regulations later on Thursday. The new rules go into effect July 1, 2010.

Office of Thrift Supervision Director John Reich, whose agency approved the regulations, said in a statement they will “ensure fair treatment” for millions of American cards users.

“The rule will enhance public confidence in financial institutions,” Reich said.

In 2007, Americans used an estimated 694.4 million credit cards with Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover logos, according to the Card Industry Directory.

Citigroup, Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase enjoyed almost 70 percent of the credit card market at the end of 2007, according to the directory.

The American Bankers Association, which represents the biggest card issuers, called the rules unprecedented.

“The new regulations will fundamentally alter the relationship that cardholders have with their banks and the way that banks communicate with cardholders,” ABA President Edward Yingling said in a statement easy pay day loans.

Scott Talbott, chief of government affairs for the Financial Services Roundtable, said the rules will likely result in less credit as banks won’t be as able to charge higher interest rates to riskier borrowers.

“You need to be able to reprice for that risk, otherwise banks will grant less credit,” Talbott said. “You will have those who manage credit properly subsidizing those who don’t.”

18-MONTH DELAY, MORE NEEDS TO BE DONE

The rules aim to address several issues consumer groups and U.S. lawmakers have complained about for years. Among them, the rules prohibit raising the annual percentage rate (APR) on existing balances except under certain circumstances, such as a payment being more than 30 days late.

Consumer groups said the new protections will restore “some basic fairness” to consumers. “But we’re not going to get these protections for another year and a half,” said Gail Hillebrand with Consumers Union in San Francisco.

U.S. lawmakers said the rule is a “good first step” but may not go far enough. “There remain other areas that Congress may need to pursue legislatively to protect consumers,” Sen. Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat, said. 

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For the second time in three days, an electrical problem with a water pump led AmerenUE to shut its Callaway nuclear plant.

Missouri’s lone nuclear plant was manually shut at 5:14 p.m. Sunday because of an electrical fault in the motor of a condensate pump, AmerenUE spokesman Mike Cleary said. The exact cause of the problem was still being determined on Monday.

"It was the same issue, but a different pump," Cleary said. "It was not a safety-related issue; it’s just a technical problem. We’re doing some troubleshooting to find out what caused it."

Callaway was similarly shut down late Thursday after a problem with another of its three condensate pumps. It was restarted just before 3 p.m. Saturday and was running at 98 percent of capacity Sunday afternoon, Cleary said.

Condensate pumps move water to a system that converts it into steam for electricity generation. The pumps aren’t unique to nuclear plants. They also can be found in coal-fired plants or other plants that utilize steam.

The back-to-back shutdowns are noteworthy, not just because they were prompted by the same type of equipment failure.

Before a planned, monthlong refueling outage earlier this fall, Callaway ran for 520 consecutive days without interruption — the first such streak in the plant’s 24-year history.

Monday also was the day the Nuclear Regulatory Commission formally accepted AmerenUE’s application for a second nuclear plant in Callaway County. Formal acceptance by the NRC doesn’t indicate whether the commission will approve the project; only that the 8,000-page application submitted in July is complete and ready for evaluation easy fast payday loans.

AmerenUE applied for a combined operating and construction license to build a 1,600-megawatt nuclear plant next to the existing Callaway plant. The utility, however, insists that no decision will be made whether to go forward with the project until at least 2011.

The existing Callaway plant, 10 miles southeast of Fulton, Mo., began operating on Dec. 19, 1984. It supplies enough electricity to power about 780,000 homes. AmerenUE plans to apply to the NRC in 2011 for a 20-year operating license renewal.

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Cleary didn’t know how long it would take to repair the condensate pumps or whether the plant could operate at a reduced level on just one pump. Even without the plant, AmerenUE has more than enough generating capacity to serve customers, he said.

"This time of year, (an outage) is not as significant as if it happened on a real hot day during the summer."

jtomich@post-dispatch.com | 314-340-8320

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Japan reported its sharpest crash in business sentiment in three decades on Monday and industrial output in China grew at its slowest pace since 1999, the latest signs of the damage done to Asian economies by the global crisis.

But markets rallied despite the gloomy data, buoyed by expectations that the White House would step in to prevent the collapse of the “Big Three” U.S. automakers.

President George W. Bush told reporters aboard Air Force One on a flight from Iraq to Afghanistan that while some funds earmarked to shore up the U.S. financial industry could be diverted to save the automakers, no announcement was imminent.

“We’re not quite ready to announce that yet,” he said, adding that a decision would not take long. [nN14461208]

Last week’s collapse of auto bailout talks in the Senate sent world markets reeling as investors feared another ugly turn in global turmoil that began last year with the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis and has now sent major economies into recession.

Over the weekend carmakers elsewhere produced dire warnings about the state of their sector.

Martin Winterkorn, CEO of Europe’s biggest carmaker, Germany’s Volkswagen, told Monday’s Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper that its sales could fall about 10 percent next year in a global market expected to fall around 20 percent.

The joint general secretary of Britain’s Unite trade union, Tony Woodley, said up to 40,000 car industry jobs could go in Britain in the next four weeks unless the government intervenes easy payday loan.

JAPANESE SENTIMENT DIVES

The Bank of Japan’s tankan survey gauging big manufacturers’ sentiment fell to minus 24, slightly worse than expected, from minus 3 the previous quarter. It was the biggest fall since the oil crises of the 1970s and the bleakest outlook since 2002, when Japan was recovering from a slump after a banking crisis.

The December survey pointed to more economic gloom ahead.

“The extent of the worsening outlook for March is a bit shocking,” said Susumu Kato, chief economist at Calyon Capital Markets Japan. “It’s hard to predict the bottom of the current economic cycle.”

Bank of Japan Governor Masaaki Shirakawa told the Financial Times the Japanese economy might contract in the year to March 2010. The central bank had previously forecast a modest recovery with 0.6 percent growth in the next fiscal year.

In a historic meeting on Saturday, Japan, China and South Korea pledged joint action to tackle the impact of the global crisis, despite decades of animosity.

But while they promised not to create new trade barriers and backed efforts to bolster a regional safety net of currency swaps, they did not unveil any new initiatives. 

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The House of Representatives could vote as early as Wednesday on a $15 billion plan to bail out and restructure U.S. automakers but the initiative may face possible roadblocks in the Senate, officials said.

The White House and congressional Democrats sought to quickly finalize an agreement in principle struck Tuesday night on conditions for providing low interest loans to avert a threatened industry collapse if one or more of the Detroit Three automakers were to fail.

“Bipartisan hard work has paid off,” said Democratic Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan whose home state headquarters General Motors Corp Ford Motor Co and Chrysler LLC.

“I understand an agreement has been reached,” Levin said in a statement.

President George W. Bush and President-elect Barack Obama were both urged by a key lawmaker to help rally support by Democrats and Republicans for the pending measure.

A Bush administration official said the negotiators satisfied the key White House concern in the talks that companies receiving aid obtain the necessary concessions and make other changes to prove they can survive and compete.

In addition to providing loans, the proposal would force automakers to answer to a presidentially appointed trustee — or “car czar” — and make the government their biggest shareholder.

The overseer will have powers to shape a restructuring of the companies, withholding further loans if progress toward a turnaround stalled car insurance.

A key provision would permit the czar to recommend a bankruptcy restructuring if companies borrowing money fail to obtain the necessary concessions.

KEY CONDITIONS

Some Republicans wanted some sort of bankruptcy option included as an incentive for labor and other stakeholders to agree on givebacks.

Among issues raised by Republicans is the use of taxpayer money in the case of Chrysler, which is owned by private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management. During the talks, Democratic aides said the Bush administration resisted a bid to hold Cerberus liable for repayment if the auto company defaulted on any government loan.

The administration official, who spoke on the condition that he not be identified because the deal had not been finalized, would not comment on specific companies so it remains unclear if that matter still needs to be cleared up.

Additionally, the administration still opposes a Democratic bid to force automakers to drop lawsuits against California and other states seeking to cut auto emissions and other greenhouse gases.

The administration official said it was his expectation the bill will not succeed unless that provision is struck. 

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Dow Chemical Co said on Monday it will close 20 facilities, divest several businesses and cut 5,000 jobs, making it the latest large chemical company to throttle back operations due to the global economic slump.

In addition to cutting 5,000 full-time jobs, or 11 percent of its workforce, the company also plans to reduce the number of outside contractors it employs by 6,000, or about 30 percent, and temporarily idle about 180 plants. Dow’s shares rose over 7 percent in afternoon trade following the announcement.

Dow said its action, which comes less than a week after its U.S. rival DuPont Co announced cutbacks, marks an acceleration of its “transformational strategy” and should lead to annual cost savings of $700 million by 2010.

The freeze in the global credit markets and a recession in many developed economies has hurt Dow and its peers. The companies have also suffered from a sharp slowdown in many emerging regions — areas which had been driving growth for them in recent quarters.

“We are accelerating the implementation of these measures as the current world economy has deteriorated sharply, and we must adjust ourselves to the severity of this downturn,” Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Andrew Liveris said in a statement.

The Midland, Michigan, chemicals maker is also in the process of buying specialty chemicals producer Rohm & Haas Co for $15.3 billion, a move the companies expect will yield $800 million in savings by 2010.

The company is also contributing a portion of its assets to a joint venture with Kuwait Petroleum Corp fast pay day loan. The joint venture will make chemicals used in products ranging from plastic bottles and compact disks to computers and agricultural compounds.

Dow plans to transform its earnings profile by growing its high-margin specialty chemicals business, while reducing its exposure to the more cyclical commodity chemicals business through a series of joint ventures.

Dow, the largest U.S. chemical maker, said the facility closures will target high-cost locations. The company also plans to sell non-strategic businesses.

Dow said it expects its restructuring actions to result in fourth-quarter pretax charges of $700 million. The moves will hurt earnings in the quarter by 50 to 60 cents a share, the company said in a presentation.

The company expects its actions to result in annual cost savings of $350 million by the end of 2009 and $700 in annual cost savings by the end of 2010.

INDUSTRY WOES

Chemical companies supply manufacturers of electronics, automobiles, paper, paint and a wide array of other companies that have all been hurt by the weak global economy and are all lowering output levels — reducing demand for chemicals.

Dow and other chemical makers have warned that fourth-quarter shipment volumes have fallen between 10 and 20 percent.

Dow’s restructuring move was widely expected after DuPont and Germany’s BASF AG announced similar actions. 

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