Actual finance blog

Slightly fewer Americans filed for new unemployment benefits last week, a reassuring sign about the labor market in the closely watched economic reading.

The Labor Department reported Thursday that 367,000 filed new jobless claims in the week ended May 5, down from 368,000 the week before. The previous week reading was revised up by 3,000.

Economists surveyed by Briefing.com had forecast 365,000 would file for help.

There have been growing worries about a weakening of the recovery in the jobs market, especially after a disappointing April jobs report that showed employers adding far fewer jobs than expected.

Jobless claims, which had been falling steadily earlier this spring, also had climbed again in recent weeks before a drop two weeks ago.

The 86 million invisible unemployed

"The fact that claims continue to drift back toward pre-Easter levels provides important evidence that the level of activity in the labor market did not stall in recent weeks," said Joseph LaVorgna, chief economist at Deutsche Bank, in a note Thursday.

Hiring in a hurry picks up

Economist Michael Gapen of Barclays Capital said the latest reading shows that the improvement in the labor market seen earlier this year has not vanished, despite the temporary jump in new claims filings in April.

"The fact that initial claims held their decline last week is supportive of the idea that the recent softness in initial claims has reversed," Gapen said.

Initial claims can be a volatile reading, which is why economists prefer to look at the four-week average for claims. And that reading also improved slightly to 379,000 from 384,250.

Behind the jobs recovery

There were also 61,000 fewer people receiving continuing unemployment benefits, as that reading for the week ended April 28 — the most recent week available — fell to 3.23 million from 3.29 million.

"Continuing claims never altered their downward trend, even while initial claims were moving higher in previous weeks," Gapen said. "Normally, initial and continuing claims will exhibit similar movements when underlying trends in the labor market are shifting." 

Source

Get up to $1500 with an fast cash loans in less than 1 hour - 100% online.

Confidence among U.S. consumers unexpectedly dropped in March as this year

Legally speaking, you are anyways entitled to one 100% free credit report every year.

British police made six arrests early Tuesday in the British media’s phone hacking scandal, including Rebekah Brooks, the former top executive of Rupert Murdoch’s News International, The Associated Press has learned.

Police did not identify those arrested, but a person who had been briefed on the details said Brooks and her husband, a prominent horse breeder and a friend of Prime Minister David Cameron, were arrested at their house.

The six people were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, police said in a statement. The charge is an indication that investigators may be focusing on a possible coverup of the scope of phone hacking.

The investigation stems from widespread wrongdoing at Rupert Murdoch’s now-closed News of the World tabloid. The victims have ranged from celebrities and major politicians to the families of crime victims.

News International, which operates Murdoch’s British newspapers, confirmed that its head of security, Mark Hanna, was also one of those arrested. A spokeswoman, speaking on condition of anonymity, said she had no information about where he was arrested.

The Metropolitan Police said five men and a woman were arrested in various locations in and around London in a series of raids conducted between 5 a.m. and 7 a.m. Tuesday.

Police said a 43-year-old woman was arrested at her home in Oxfordshire. In addition, police said a 49-year-old man was also arrested in Oxfordshire at his home. Brooks, 43, and her husband, horse trainer Charlie Brooks, live in Oxfordshire in the town of Chipping Norton.

Cameron has recently described Charlie Brooks as “a good friend” and neighbor. The two have gone riding together in the countryside outside Chipping Norton.

Police also arrested a 39-year-old man in Hampshire, a 46-year-old man in West London, a 38-year-old man in Hertforshire and a 48-year-old man in East London.

A judge-led inquiry into media ethics has heard extensive testimony about wrongdoing by tabloid journalists, and Murdoch’s company has reached cash settlements with a number of victims.

There is also a simultaneous investigation into corrupt relations between the police and the press, which has yielded a number of arrests in recent weeks.

An inquiry panel appointed by Cameron is trying to determine why an initial police investigation into phone hacking in 2006 failed to reveal the scope of the problem.

At the time, Murdoch’s executives claimed the wrongdoing was limited to one scurrilous reporter and an unprincipled private detective, both of whom were jailed.

The dormant police investigation was reopened last year after reporters were found to have hacked into the voicemail of a missing schoolgirl who was later found to have been murdered.

That investigation led to the resignation of Cameron’s top media adviser, Andy Coulson, who had been the editor of the News of the World.

It also led to the arrest of Brooks, who was later released on bail. Both have denied wrongdoing.

Murdoch’s company has reached cash settlements with various hacking victims, including actress Sienna Miller and singer Charlotte Church, but many new cases are being brought against News International, the U.K. newspaper branch of Murdoch’s global media empire.

The scandal also scuttled Murdoch’s plans to purchase full control of the British broadcaster BSkyB.

______

Associated Press writer Robert Barr contributed to this report.

Source

Just past the security gate for the world’s largest cell phone trade show in Barcelona, executives of big mobile carriers can’t avoid walking past a booth they would probably rather not see: It’s for “Pinger,” a small California company that offers free texting in the United States and Germany and has global expansion plans.

Pinger _ along with an explosion of smartphone messaging services like iMessage, BlackBerry Messenger, WhatsApp, Viber Media, Facebook Messenger and KakaoTalk _ have managed in just a few years to slash away at the important revenue that cell phone companies get from text messaging, and analysts say there’s no end in sight to the financial blood letting.

They do it by offering messaging applications that let phone users chat for free on the carriers’ data networks or Wi-Fi. Some, like Pinger, make money from advertisements and work on computers as well.

The London-based Ovum research firm estimates telecommunications companies lost nearly $14 billion last year in text-messaging revenue as consumers migrated to applications allowing them to send messages over cell phone data networks.

Ovum said the companies still took in an estimated $153 billion, but that was down 9 percent from a year earlier, and Pinger co-founder Joe Stipher wants to reduce the amount even more.

“Text messaging is free, and calling is going to be free,” said Stipher, wearing jeans in contrast to the dark suits favored by thousands of cell phone company executives attending the 2012 Mobile World Congress that ends Thursday. “Data is going to be like electricity or water, not totally free, but do you worry about giving someone a glass of water at your home or letting them plug in? No.”

Needless to say, mobile companies are not happy at the flood of free messaging services piggybacking their networks. Telecom Italia SpA chief executive Franco Bernabe told MWC that free messaging services are undercutting the ability of phone companies to invest in their networks. Paid texting, or SMS, has been a cash cow for phone companies that uses minimal network capacity.

The new “players have based their innovation in the mobile domain, without a deep understanding of the complex technical environment of our industry. This is increasingly creating significant problems to the overall service offered to the end user and driving additional investments for mobile operators,” Bernabe said.

After years of study, the big telecommunications operators announced this week that they will try to fight back by introducing software this year embedded in new cellphones that will allow users to do the same sort of Internet-based messaging and voice calls that consumers want without paying separate fees.

The new messaging method introduced by the industry group GSMA, or Groupe Speciale Mobile Association, is dubbed “Joyn” and will be launched this year by operators in France, Germany, Italy and South Korea. In industry parlance, the application is known as “Rich Communications Suite,” or RCS.

Joyn tries to deal with one major shortcoming of the messaging apps _ both the sender and the recipient have to have the same app. But it’s not clear if RCS will work on every phone. Apple Inc., for example, has a long history of not playing by mobile company rules.

“Since Rich Communications (Suite) will be fully integrated in devices, there is no need for our customers to download or install anything,” said Rene Obermann, chief executive of Germany’s Deutsche Telekom AG. “Ease of use is thus ensured and it will just work. We are looking forward to offer new services like text chat, file and live video sharing during a call to our customers soon.”

But analysts say there’s no way of knowing whether consumers will migrate to Joyn until after it is released and consumers try it out, and note that the last major technological advance by mobile operators came in the 1990s, when text messaging was launched. And cell phones issued by mobile carriers often come loaded with software that many people rarely or never use because they don’t like them.

“It is possible this will be their last chance to see if they can play more of a role,” said Pamela Clark-Dickson, an analyst at London’s Informa Telecoms & Media research group. “The user experience is key, and if they don’t get it right people won’t use it.”

The GSMA didn’t say how operators will charge for Joyn _ and how much. The carriers face an uphill battle denting the popularity of the free messaging services. WhatsApp chief executive officer Jan Koum told the mobile congress that its users are now sending more than 2 billion messages per day, up from 1 billion in October. The much smaller Pinger saw its users send 2 billion messages in January, up from 1.7 billion in December, Sipher said.

And he says the mobile operators should stay away from free messaging because “they aren’t good at it and haven’t done applications.”

“The carriers should be smart, reliable pipes” providing Internet data access like utilities give reliable water and electricity, he said. “They need to focus on being good network operators.”

Obermann said carriers are at a crucial point at which they must “develop our own, innovative product suites” through cooperation with the smaller messaging companies.

“The smart pipe will be one of the areas where (telecommunications companies) will show their innovation,” he said.

His company’s venture capital division, T-Venture, took a stake in Pinger last week just before MWC started, announcing it would provide $7.5 million in venture capital to help Pinger grow internationally, especially in Europe.

For Sipher, it’s a sign that some operators realize they need to work with messaging startups instead of against them.

“We’re saying to the telecoms that we’re here, we’re big, and we’re playing,” Sipher said. “When’s the last time a carrier introduced a successful application? That would be SMS and that’s almost 15 years ago.”

Source

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke is trying to compensate for the damage lawmakers threaten to inflict on the U.S. economy, even as Republicans skewer his stimulus efforts for risking inflation.

The potential drag from fiscal restraint contributed to the rationale behind policy makers

The Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan final index of consumer sentiment for February rose to 75.3 from 75 at the end of last month. Economists projected a reading of 73 after a preliminary figure of 72.5, according to the median estimate in a Bloomberg News survey.

Forecasts ranged from 71 to 76 in the survey of 60 economists. The measure averaged 89 in the five years leading to the recession that began in December 2007 and ended in June 2009.

Source

Of all the bank fees that customers love to hate, overdraft charges on checking accounts have to be near the top. The government’s new consumer protection agency appears to agree.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said Wednesday that it will investigate overdraft fees, including how they are marketed and explained to customers. The agency said the probe could result in additional rules, perhaps even lawsuits.

Overdraft fees are charged by banks when customers try to spend more money than they have in an account. Banks will allow the transaction, then charge the customer a penalty of as much as $35.

“We’ve heard many stories about the $40 cup of coffee,” the agency’s director, Richard Cordray, told reporters and representatives from banks and consumer groups.

Cordray and representatives from four consumer advocacy groups said that the overdraft fees hurt the people who can least afford them because poorer customers are more likely to drain their checking accounts to close to zero.

Since the 2008 financial crisis, the government has clamped down on bank practices that it considers unfair, such as marketing credit cards to teenagers. Banks have complained some of the government’s moves have been too intrusive.

In 2010, the Federal Reserve barred banks from automatically enrolling customers in so-called overdraft protection programs for debit card or ATM transactions. Without overdraft protection, a transaction is declined if the customer can’t cover it.

The rule did not apply to checks, online bill payments or recurring debits, such as having the monthly cable bill automatically sent to your debit card. It also did not limit how much banks can charge for the service.

Banks have responded by marketing overdraft protection aggressively. Some told customers that opting out of overdraft protection could prevent them from making everyday transactions, including “medical or health emergencies,” according to research published last year by the Center for Responsible Lending, a consumer group that opposes overdraft fees.

Cordray said the problem is not just the fees but that banks often don’t explain them clearly. One bank, which he did not name, required customers to visit three different websites and scroll through 50 pages of dense text just to get an explanation, he said.

Cordray praised banks for finding ways to help customers avoid the fees, such as not charging overdrafts for purchases of less than $5 or giving customers 24 hours to add more money to an account payday loans direct lenders.

Representatives of consumer groups who appeared with Cordray said customers would rather have their cards declined than be charged the fee. A representative of Citigroup, one of the country’s largest banks, said customers prefer to avoid the embarrassment.

Andrew Rowe, a senior vice president from Bank of America, said the bank has started giving customers “clarity statements” to explain fees and sending them text messages when their accounts drop below $25. Last month, Bank of America sent 20 million such texts to 8 million customers, Rowe said.

Bank of America was a leader in trimming overdraft fees beginning in 2009, when Brian Moynihan, now the CEO, was running the bank’s consumer banking unit. At the time, the bank owed $45 billion in government bailout loans. It has since paid the money back.

Banks have also drawn criticism for a practice known as “re-ordering” _ when a bank takes all the purchases a customer makes in a single day and subtracts the biggest ones from the customer’s account first. Banks say it helps customers pay their most important bills first, like mortgages and student loans. Consumer groups say it’s a way to rake in fees.

The practice has been challenged in class-action lawsuits around the country. Bank of America settled one case for $410 million last July. JPMorgan Chase agreed this month to pay $110 million to settle similar claims.

The CFPB, born out of outrage over the financial crisis and the banking practices that led to it, said it would focus on four areas: re-ordering, missing or confusing information, misleading marketing and disproportionate impact on low-income and young customers.

According to a 2008 study by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., 9 percent of checking accounts incur 84 percent of overdraft fees. The study found that nearly half of younger cardholders paid the fees.

The CFPB also is requesting public input on the idea of a “penalty fee box” _ a disclosure on checking account statements that would highlight overdrafts and related fees.

The agency said it plans to issue a report by the end of the year.

___

Follow Daniel Wagner at www.twitter.com/wagnerreports.

Source

Markets reacted cautiously Tuesday to the news that Greece finally secured its second massive bailout in less than two years, which is aimed at giving the debt-ridden country the breathing room to enact widespread economic reforms and set it back on the path to growth and prosperity.

That is the most optimistic hope in Europe’s capitals but with many hurdles still to be cleared and the country still lumbered with massive amounts of debt even after its private creditors agreed to a huge writedown of debt, the prevailing view in the markets is that Greece remains insolvent and that its debt crisis still has a few more chapters to run.

“This deal clearly does not solve Greece’s problems or that of the rest of the eurozone. What it does do is buy some time,” said Louise Cooper, markets analyst at BGC Partners. “This deal does not rule out a breakup of the eurozone. It does not rule out a Greek default in the future, it does not prevent contagion and does not help the wider eurozone indebtedness problem.”

The heart of the deal that emerged after 12 hours or so of wrangling in Brussels is that Greece’s partners in the 17-country eurozone have agreed to hand over another euro130 billion ($170 billion) to the country in the hope that it will avoid a potentially disastrous default as soon as next month, and secure the euro currency.

On top of the new rescue loans, Athens will also ask banks and other investment funds to forgive it some euro107 billion ($142 billion) in debt, while the European Central Bank and national central banks in the eurozone will forgo profits on their holdings.

However, the pieces of the jigsaw have yet to be put in place and many in the markets think that there will be more high-wire acts in the Greek debt drama. Perhaps most important of all will be Greek elections, due in April, which will take place at a time when the country’s economy is in freefall and unemployment is standing at a record rate above 20 percent.

With the parties of the governing coalition struggling to get a combined 30 percent in opinion polls, there are real fears in the markets that anti-bailout forces may win the day, or at least hold the balance of power.

“With the recession thwarting debt reduction efforts and public outrage growing, we still see Greece leaving the eurozone before the year is out,” said Jennifer McKeown, senior European economist at Capital Economics bad credit pay day loans.

Over recent days, stocks have rallied in the hope that a deal would be secured and that Greece would avoid defaulting on its debts in a disorderly fashion that could hobble a tentative improvement in the global economy.

The eurozone _ and Greece _ had been under pressure to reach an accord quickly to prevent Athens from defaulting on a euro14.5 billion ($19.2 billion) bond payment on March 20. The fear has been that an uncontrolled bankruptcy even of relatively small Greece could unleash market panic across the rest of the continent. That would further unsettle other struggling countries like Ireland, Portugal or the much bigger Italy or Spain.

Despite the promise of new rescue loans, which come on top of a euro110 billion ($146 billion) bailout granted in 2010, the other 16 euro countries made clear that their trust in Greece is running low. Before Athens will see any new funds, it has to put into practice a whole range of previously promised cuts and reforms.

With the deal agreed, many investors took profits on the gains they have mustered over recent days.

In Europe, the FTSE 100 index of leading British shares was down 0.4 percent at 5,919 while the CAC-40 in France fell 0.9 percent to 3,441. Germany’s DAX was 0.8 percent lower at 3,890.

The euro was faring slightly better, trading 0.2 percent higher on the day at $1.3230.

Wall Street was poised for a modest advance later as it returns from a long holiday weekend _ Dow futures were up 0.3 percent at 12,969 while the broader Standard & Poor’s 500 futures rose 0.2 percent to 1,363.

Earlier, Asian shares were mixed as they awaited the developments in Brussels.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 index closed down 0.2 percent at 9,463.02 while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rose 0.3 percent to 21,478.72

In the oil markets, the attention was as much on Iran as on Greece. Earlier, Iran has laid out conditions for future oil exports to European countries after halting sales to Britain and France earlier this week.

Benchmark crude was up $1.49 to $104.73 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Source

British police and journalists agree that their cozy ties allowed illegal phone hacking to go on too long, an independent investigator said Wednesday.

Elizabeth Filkin, a former Parliamentary standards chief, said a culture of confidential briefings, poor guidance from senior staff too ready to accept reporters’ hospitality and a bias toward some tabloids must be overhauled by London police.

Police officers should be wary of journalists who offer alcoholic drinks, make flirty advances or tempt potential sources into “late-night carousing,” Filkin warned.

“Alcohol is fraught issue … drinking loosens tongues, so common sense is needed,” her guidelines state, warning that “some journalists do not practice abstinence.”

Witnesses from both sides had told her inquiry the issue lay behind the failure of early police investigations to uncover the true extent of media malpractice.

An initial police investigation led to the jailing of a reporter from the now-defunct News of The World tabloid and a private investigator in 2007, but failed to unearth the widespread interception of cell phone voice mail messages of celebrities, sporting stars, legislators and even crime victims.

Since then, London police have identified 5,795 potential phone hacking victims and launched three new inquiries into alleged criminality by the press.

Filkin’s inquiry said relationships between the police, particularly senior officers, and the press had “compromised the capacity of both the police and the media to scrutinize the activities of the other.”

However Filkin, who was appointed by London’s Metropolitan Police to review their relationship with the press, said it would be down to a new police inquiry, not her, to say how badly that had hampered inquiries into phone hacking.

“I don’t know whether it inhibited that inquiry,” Filkin said paydayloans. “What I heard from a large number of people, both journalists and people who work at the Met, was that they feared it had.”

“That was the greatest concern for me from what I heard,” she said, presenting her proposed new guidelines to officers on how to handle the press.

Since the extent of tabloid phone hacking was exposed last summer, more than a dozen News of the World journalists, including former editor Andy Coulson, have been arrested.

The scandal also forced the resignations of London’s top police officer, the Metropolitan Police commissioner Paul Stephenson, and assistant commissioner John Yates.

Stephenson quit in July over his links to Neil Wallis, a former News of the World executive turned PR consultant. Yates resigned amid criticism of his handling of initial investigation.

“There will be no more secret conversations, there will be no more improper contacts,” said Stephenson’s successor as London’s top police officer, Bernard Hogan-Howe.

Hogan-Howe pledged to take up Filkin’s recommendations in full, including a proposal that officers should in the future record every contact they have with reporters for potential inspection.

Filkin did not discuss in detail allegations that Britain’s press paid London police for information, but said claims from senior officers that only a few people were involved conflicted with accounts she had received from journalists.

Eight people, including a serving police officer and a reporter working for The Sun tabloid, have been arrested as part of an inquiry into the alleged bribes, though no one has been charged.

Source

Commodities may rebound from their first retreat in three years as developing economies shore up global growth, driving demand higher at a time when raw-material producers are already struggling to keep up.

Precious metals will advance 27 percent or more, industrial metals at least 17 percent and grains 5 percent, according to the median estimates in a Bloomberg survey of 143 analysts, traders and investors. Nine of the 15 commodities covered by a similar survey a year earlier reached their predicted highs in 2011, with another five no more than 4 percent away.

The Standard & Poor