World Business

S&P has a neutral outlook on the subindustry, but likes a calculate of funds in the group, including strong-buy-ranked Sempra Energy

By Sam Stovall From Standard & Poor’s Equity Research

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The Standard & Poor’sitting 1500 Multi-Utilities subindustry index is a recent joining to the High Momentum List (see in the world of sense). Its trailing 12-month price performance is in the zenith 10% of all subindustries in the S&P Composite 1500 index (consisting of the S&P 500, MidCap 400, and SmallCap 600 indexes). Like most companies and subindustries in the equity market, this subindustry index has declined, falling 29.9% year to date through Oct. 24, 2008, vs. the 40.2% slump for the S&P 1500. Granted, it would be preferable to find a group that is posting positive results simultaneously with relative outperformance.

Take a look at the accompanying chart. As a reminder, the jagged cerulean line represents the subindustry index’s rolling 52-week price performance as compared with the 52-week performance as being the S&P 1500. Any point atop of 100 indicates market outperformance over the prior year, while points below 100 indicate mart underperformance. The red line is a rolling 39-week moving average, while the two green bands mark one standard deviation on high and below the index’s long-term mean relative nerve.

There are 25 large-, mid- and small-cap companies in the S&P 1500 Multi-Utilities subindustry index, seven of which convey S&P investing. rankings of 4 STARS (purchase) or 5 STARS (strong buy). Alliant Energy (LNT), Ameren (AEE), Dominion Resources (D), MDU Resources Group (MDU), Public Service Enterprise Group (PEG), and Xcel Energy (XEL) are reaped ground ranked 4 STARS, while Sempra Energy (SRE) carries a 5 STARS recommendation.

Christopher Muir, the algebraist who follows this subindustry for S&P Equity Research, has a neutral fundamental outlook for the multi-utilities group for the next 12 months. He expects that regulated utility operations will be permanent to examine single-digit percentage revenue growth in 2008. Higher and more inconstant article of merchandise prices have raised the cost of fuel and purchased host for electric utilities and supply costs for gas utilities.

While utilities are allowed to pass these increases on to customers over time, Muir believes there are some potential negative goods. Faced with higher bills, customers may default upon the body some payments. Also, for example a result of higher customer bills, S&P thinks regulators are going to more thoroughly scrutinize large utility rate increase requests. Usage per customer is likely to stagnate in response to continued high power and gas prices. Muir expects growth in the number of customers served to partly offset more of these factors.

Regarding utilities with unregulated operations in the same state as oil and gas research and production (E&P), Muir notes that while gas prices are currently lower than their 2005 highs (and 2008’s earlier highs), oil prices reached record levels in mid-2008. After peaking in early July, prices fell through the end of the summer and into the fall.

S&P furthermore sees higher hibernate peak commodity price cheerfulness due to serve instead of bottlenecks. Given the potential for gyrating prices, Muir believes multi-utilities with trading operations should produce higher earnings. Multi-utilities that participate in based on competition wholesale and retail power markets should be useful to from relatively sturdy power prices, in S&P’s view.

Some companies are threatening business risk by reducing exposure to mercantile and oil and elastic fluid exploration and product operations, while planning to use the proceeds to make large-scale share repurchases and debt reductions.

In joining to growth in unregulated businesses, S&P believes investors have been attracted to dividend yields greater than those of most other subindustries in the S&P 1500. S&P thinks the dividends paid by means of these companies should have appeal for investors in not burdensome of increased concerns about the rate of real gross household product growth. So there you have it. The group’s strong relative strength, but negative unconditional performance, is confirmed by a neutral fundamental outlook, in S&P’s view.

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The beaten-down shares of Florida’s largest utility—too the top U.S. husbandman of wind power—offer investors profusion of upside as hale of the same kind with a healthy payout

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FPL Group (FPL)—52-week stock cost

By Gene Marcial

Who among the beleaguered investing community would be in the same state hardy as to predict the market’s bottom at this point? Not very many, that’s for confident. It’s foolish, at best, to make like a soothsaying amid the in every one’s mouth financial and economic turmoil, argue many of the most expedient. see the various meanings of good strategists on Wall Street.

But several stouthearted pros don’t buy that, and they’re now placing their money behind their forecasts that the market is finding a cover through a floor. (While it may not be a sure signal that public securities have touched their bear-market lows, the Dow Jones pertaining medial sum posted its second-biggest question gain ever—889 points, or nearly 11%—on Oct. 28.) "We have become more assailing in buying stocks on this account that we eagerly believe the market is beginning to turn around and starting the process of pulling in our teeth to much higher ground," says Carl Birkelbach, president of Birkelbach Investment Securities.

Birkelbach has made several prescient market calls in the past. In September 1981, when the Dow was hovering at around 800, he placed ads in newspapers calling himself the "Lone Bull" and predicting the market had hit bottom and would ascend to much higher levels. His forecast: The Dow gain a mind hit 8,000. Birkelbach did not specify the timing of the emporium’s move, but 10 years later, in 1998, the industrial average shot up to 8,000—and then surpassed that make horizontal some months later.

Birkelbach uses both fundamental measures and technical indicators in gauging the command of the Dow. In September 2002, when the Dow stood at 7,900, he made another daring prediction: The Dow would hit 14,000 in the years ahead. True enough, in early October 2007, the benchmark index soared to more than 14,000. (Birkelbach, however, didn’t predict whether stocks would retrench after such big moves.)

That brings us to October 2008 and the market’s stunning fall from its year-earlier peaks. Here is Birkelbach’s brief analysis of why he assumes stocks are reaching a trough. He notes that the European and Asian markets have retreated from their highs by about 40% to 50%, and the Dow has lost nearly 40% this year. In the past, he says, such huge declines presaged a market bottom. "Much of the financial poverty and relating to housekeeping meltdown have already been discounted through the market, given such a massive market decline worldwide," he says.

If the worst of the bear’s rampage is behind us, as Birkelbach figures, what is he buying? His current favorite: FPL Group (FPL), a of the whole not private service troop that generates, sells, and distributes electric energy using natural gas, nuclear mechanical value, and wind power. "It is the best and safest bet in these periods of economic dislocation and financial force," he says.

FPL’s Florida Power & Light one is the largest utility in Florida, serving near to 4.5 million customers in the southern and eastern talents of the state. Its other unit, the unregulated FPL Energy, is the largest husbandman of wind power in the U.S., with a 30% share of the market at the end of 2007, generating 5,077 megawatts of wind power. FPL Energy is single in kind of the largest U.S. unrestrained power producers, generating roughly 16,000 Mw.

One other thing Birkelbach likes about FPL: its dividend yield of nearly 4%. "That is a comforting payout to shareholders" amongst the current harassing labor, he says. So the stock deserves to acquire being a core holding in every portfolio, he says.

The stock, which climbed to a high of 72 a share in 2007, has been clobbered along with other equities and struck a cast down of 37 in succession Oct. 10. It has since edged higher, to 45 on Oct. 28. The company posted a 45% jump in earnings in the third location, to $774 million, on revenues of meanly $5.4 billion, in spite of the deteriorating economy, trappings slowdown, and hurricane stipulations in Florida that adversely affected its utility operations there.

But the stock’s drop may indicate investors have discounted the weakness in the Florida market, at what place the vegetation in electric usage has slowed. "The descent is attractive for total return," says Justin McCann, an analyst at Standard & Poor’s Equity Research, who recently upgraded his recommendation on FPL to a buy from a grasp, although he reduced his earnings estimates by 5¢ a share for both 2008 and 2009. He now projects earnings of $3.84 a have a portion for 2008 and $4.15 for 2009. (S&P, like BusinessWeek, is a one of The McGraw-Hill Companies (MHP).)

"At the current apportioned lot recompense, we consider FPL to be an attractive buying opportunity for investors by a 12- to 18-month time horizon," says Timothy Winter, higher analyst at investment firm Jesup & Lamont (JLI). He figures the shares are worth 55 a share. FPL has added 499 Mw of wind power formation volume so far this year and continues to look forward to 1,300 of new air capacity in operation by yearend 2008, Winter notes. However, the company scaled back its growth plans for 2009 inasmuch as of the poor capital-market and economic conditions. Its approach to the problems will be to maintain flexibility to quickly prance up projects should conditions improve and further reduce investment should conditions deteriorate, says Winter. He believes the annual dividend of $1.78 a share is "secure and growing."

Because of the economic and housing problems in Florida, says Winter, investors should "look beyond the valley of the next 12 months." They will be rewarded, he figures, when the management improves. Given the company’s growing investments in renewable energy, FPL "is the best-positioned power company to capitalize on the long-term macrodynamics of a future green-energy world," he says.

With the shares down some 40% from their all-time high of 73.75, the sight of the stipe recovering a lot of lost ground is part of FPL’s appeal at its current cost. You potency suppose it’s poised for regeneration.

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The Conference Board’s record low consumer private index in October shocked experts. Consumers’ fears could become a self-fulfilling prognostication

By Ben Steverman

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The U.S. consumer is in a foul mood, and the effects on investors and the thriftiness are likable to be sharp.

The Conference Board said on Oct. 28 that its consumer confidence integral part has dropped to an all-time lowing, from 61.4 in September to 38 in October. Americans were in some degree reacting to what they saw on the news in the past month: A cast one’s self in the stock place of traffic, the dysfunctional credit markets, the abortion of major financial firms, passage of a $700-billion bailout package in Washington, and a Presidential campaign focused on the economic crisis.

But consumers’ fears aren’t entirely a media creation (BusinessWeek.com, 10/28/08), economists declare. Consumers are starting to feel the economic urge one’s way where they lead.

Keith Hembre, leader economist at FAF Advisors, identifies three main culprits "conspiring to substantially depress household confidence": deteriorating asset markets, credit markets, and have being in travail markets.

Asset market problems would include the quarterly retirement draught statements that showed a big drop in many lower classes’s net worth from declining investment—on top of the increasingly apparent impression of falling home values. Credit problems mean consumers can’t borrow as easily to make purchases, from washing machines to houses. And the deteriorating job market is a result of falling profits in a variety of sectors, not just the financial industry. "With good rational faculty, they’re concerned about their jobs and the value of their homes and 401(k)session," says Stuart Hoffman, chief economist at PNC Financial Services (PNC).

The impact on the economy from this crisis of confidence may regard existence even more doom and heaviness of mind. "When people credit there will be a recession, there will have being a recession," says Jerry Webman, chief economist for OppenheimerFunds (OPY).

Americans be possible to be expected to cut back on spending and to augment their savings accounts instead of tough times in front. But that saving, however virtuous, will rob the rest of the administration of important revenue. That’s a phenomenon economist John Maynard Keynes called the "paradox of thrift."

For almost two decades, Americans, known as the world’s shopaholics, have spent freely. Consumer spending has increased steadily for 17 years ever since a mild decline in the after all the rest deal out of 1991.

But because of declining confidence and other factors such as the tough job market, many economists say they expect consumer spending to fall by 3% or more in the third furnish with quarters of 2008. That would be the worst drop in atrophy since 1981.

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The biggest royalties tend hitherward from the most profitable fields, such as science, computer software, music, movies, and, uh, tortilla making

By Doug Hall

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Nothing beats “mailbox money” when it comes to boosting your bottom fill. That’s when you license some idea, innovation, or invention to another company in return for a royalty payment. Each quarter, magically, a royalty upon shows up in your mailbox with a gross margin of 100%.

There has never been a better time to be an originator. Big companies are desperate for your ideas. Procter & Gamble (PG) a little while ago gets more than half its ideas because new products from outside inventors. Five years ago, that number was closer to 20%.

But where you converging-point your creative energy has a huge impact on the payoff you can expect. If your idea is a big wow and highly proprietary—and you can show in what condition to draw out it usefully—the fair-market royalty is 25% of the gross profits generated from that idea.

Recently, Greg Lemmon, a mathematician at Eureka! Ranch, set out to find the profit margins in additional than 200 industries. Those with the highest margins should provide the most rich ground by reason of inventors. He based his analytics on 5.5 million business tax returns compiled by Leo Troy, an economics professor at Rutgers University, in the Almanac of Business & Industrial Financial Ratios.

Greg’sitting results remind me of the scene in The Graduate in which Walter Brooke’s business executory takes Dustin Hoffman’sitting character aside and says, “I righteous want to take for granted one word: plastics.” Greg has found the “plastics” for inventors—the greatest profit opportunities. Here are the top 10 industries:

Finance, credit, commercial banking, and other financial services understanding the list, with gross margins topping 50%. Of point of compass, late events show this may not be a good time to take possession of the financial-services industry.

• Next on the list are landlords, through a 47% profit margin. Notice I said “landlords,” not “slumlords.” New ways of leasing and modern concepts, like as mini-warehouses, make an attempt great potential.

• Successful companies in the recording and movie industry have margins of more than 40%. Writing lyrics or crafting a melody or script is a call for, but the payoff be able to be queer.

• Computer software publishing is hot, with 40% margins. It takes bulky energy to create breakthrough software, but the profit per unit is enormous, too.

• The old-world form of productive effort of specialized manufacturing equipment offers 40% margins.

• Bakeries and tortilla makers have a profit limit of 31%. I guess the Atkins diet doesn’familiarily rule after all.

• The so-called sin industries, such as breweries and gambling, report 30% margins. So much for sticking to the straight and narrow.

• Soft drinks offer a 27% verge, which explains all those New Age and energy beverages glutting supermarket shelves.

&gross mistake; Publishing also offers a 27% margin. This goes for the one and the other the online and the old-line variety.

&rescript; Rounding out the summit 10 are the pharmaceutical and health-care industries, with 25% margins.

The dregs of the list include meat and seafood processors at 7%, which also provide some of the most unpleasant work you’ll ever observe. They tie with automakers and auto parts suppliers. Last, at 5.5%, is the retail industry.

If you’re an inventor looking to cash in big, look first to industries by profusion of money to spend—by choice, to promote your idea.

For a collection of Hall’sitting columns, spree to businessweek.com/go/sb/doughall

Back to BWSmallBiz October/November 2008 Table of Contents

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BEIJING — Microsoft is trying to pester Chinese software users into buying genuine copies of Windows software.

The company drew criticism from a top copyright official and howls from consumers here over its new anti-piracy method: When it detects that an inaccurate copy of Windows is running, Microsoft turns the computer screen black.

Users be possible to switch it back manually only to have the process recapitulate itself each 60 minutes in the middle of a stream of warnings: “You may be the victim of pirated software.”

Microsoft’s “Windows Genuine Advantage” initiative, started in 2005 to fight software piracy, goes further in China than in other countries. Microsoft related it wants to protect its of the intellect estate and help users shun computer viruses.

But the program has left many users disgruntled in a market where pirated software is widespread.

Yan Xiaohong, vice director of the National Copyright Administration, told the state New China News Agency late Monday that his agency supported corporate efforts to safeguard their copyrights if it be not that questioned this approach.

Method questioned

“Whether the ‘blackout’ method should be adopted is open to question,” Yan said. “Measures in favor of safeguarding rights also need to be appropriate.”

Some computer users said they appreciated that their ruling power was protecting their interests but weren’t worried about the cumbersomeness. A rash of free fixes have sprung up, including one called “360 Guard,” that allows users to strain thoroughly Microsoft downloads that aren’t pirate friendly.

“No matter how severe the anti-piracy efforts are, Chinese users will figure out in what plight to get around them,” said Yang Fangzhou, 25, a brokerage worker from Fujian province.

“Most people in the present life don’t want to spend the money and have no mental qualms with regard to using pirated software.”

Recent polls on Chinese Web portals found most respondents used pirated copies of Windows XP and Vista, and more than 70 percent strongly disliked Windows Genuine Advantage.

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If you cheated on your spouse, would you admit it to a researcher?

That debate is one of the biggest challenges in the scientific study of marriage, and it helps explain wherefore different studies produce different estimates of infidelity rates in the United States.

But a maniple of new studies suggest unexpected changes in the incident to a husband landscape. Infidelity appears to be on the rise, particularly among older men and young couples. Notably, women appear to be closing the adultery gap: Younger women appear to subsist cheating on their spouses nearly at the same time that often as men.

“If you just ask whether infidelity is going up, you put on’t see really impressive changes,” said David C. Atkins, research associate professor at the University of Washington Center for the Study of Health and Risk Behaviors. “But suppose that you enlarge the picture and you start looking at specific sex and stage of life cohorts, we do start to see more in some degree significant changes.”

The most consistent data on infidelity reach from the General Social Survey, sponsored by the National Science Foundation and based at the University of Chicago, which has used a national representative sample to track the opinions and social behaviors of Americans since 1972. The survey given conditions show that in any given year, relating to 10 percent of married people

But detailed analysis of the data from 1991 to 2006, to be presented by Atkins at the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies conference in Orlando, Fla., expound some surprising shifts. University of Washington researchers have found that the lifetime rate of infidelity for men too 60 increased to 28 percent in 2006, up from 20 percent in 1991. For women over 60, the be augmented is more striking: to 15 percent, up from 5 percent in 1991.

The researchers also see blustering changes in comparatively new marriages. About 20 percent of men and 15 percent of women for that which is less than 35 speak they have ever been recreant, up from in all parts of 15 percent and 12 percent respectively.

Theories vary about why in addition people appear to be cheating.

But it is the apparent change in women’s fidelity that has sparked the in the greatest degree interest among relationship researchers. It is not entirely clear if the historical gap between men and women is real or if women have just been more likely to lie about it.

“Is it that men are bragging about it and women are lying to everybody including themselves?” asked Helen Fisher, research professor of anthropology at Rutgers University and the author of particular books on the biological and evolutionary basis of love and sex. “Men want to think women put on’t piece of chicanery, and women want men to think they don’t dodger, and therefore the sexes have been playing a little psychological game with every one other.”

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KILIMANYOKA, Congo

Alan Doss said peacekeepers were compelled to “respond,” apparently meaning they shot at troops who are supposed to be their allies, hind the soldiers opened impetuosity on those trying to leave Rutshuru, 45 miles north of Goma. He vowed to keep Rutshuru and other strategic towns out of rebel hands.

Congolese government soldiers, better known for preying adhering civilians than helping them, retreated from the front lines north of Goma, Doss reported, leaving the job of protecting Goma’s 600,000 people to the U.N. mission, known as MONUC.

U.N. helicopter gunships were being used on fronts near Rutshuru and Kilimanyoka, about seven miles north of Goma. They were hampered by rebels’ use of civilians as shields, said U.N. spokeswoman Sylvia covered wagon den Wildenberg.

The rebels in addition are fighting around Rugari, a town several miles north of Kilimanyoka and also between Goma and Rutshuru, as well as northwest of Goma round Sake

By late afternoon Tuesday, it appeared the use of the gunships was gainful off. About 200 government soldiers were nearly two miles closer to the rebels than the line of the troops that retreated. They were being resupplied from a truck loaded with rocket-propelled grenades.

Doss said the U.N. peacekeeping force was stretched to the limit and called for more troops to have being added quickly. With appropriated time of the essence, he left open the chance of using some superficial force, what one. would be brought in despite a precise final cause and a limited period.

Late Tuesday, the U.N. Security Council long delayed Tuesday called for an unmediated cease-fire and Chinese Ambassador Zhang Yesui, this month’s council president, condemned the fighters battling U.N. peacekeepers

Eastern Congo has been plagued by sum of two units civil wars since 1996 and fighting since then among several rebel groups. Some analysts estimate more than 5 million people have died.

The contrariety is rooted in the unresolved aftermath of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. The rebels are led through renegade Congolese Gen. Laurent Nkunda, who has vowed to protect the region’s ethnic Tutsi nonage from Hutu militias led by the agency of a core group that fled into eastern Congo after the genocide.

Despite several agreements by Rwanda, the Congolese government has failed to make good on promises to deprive of arms the Hutu militias. More recently, limited army commanders have collaborated with the militias, relying on them to help fight Nkunda’sitting better-disciplined, better-paid rebel forces.

Nkunda, who trained through the Rwandan army, has said he is preventing a possible second genocide, this time in orient Congo, where Tutsis are often cast as invaders or proxies for Rwanda. Since August, he has steadily expanded his fiefdom by seizing of influence towns and a national park where 200 of the last 700 mountain gorillas in the world live.

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QUETTA, Pakistan

The dying toll was expected to rise as reports arrived from remote areas of Baluchistan calling, one impoverished area bordering Afghanistan.

“It will be much more,” Sohail ur Rahman, a top civilian official in one of the affected districts, told Dawn News television.

Zamaruk Khan, the minister for revenue and restoration to former power and splendor, said “more than 100″ people have been found dead for a like reason far and the government is readying food, shelter and medical care for survivors.

A reporter as far as concerns AP Television News saw dozens of bodies and injured in a hospital in Zaras, in the Ziarat district. A doctor there, Mohammed Irfan, said the hospital was unable to cope with the injured it was receiving.

The quiver struck two hours before dawn and had a preliminary magnitude of 6.4, the U.S. Geological Survey reported. It was a shallow 10 miles below the surface and was centered about 400 miles southwest of the leading, Islamabad.

The worst-hit area appeared to be Ziarat, where hundreds of mostly mud and timber houses were destroyed in five villages, said the mayor, Dilawar Kakar. Some were buried in landslides triggered by the agency of the quiver, he said.

Kakar said 120 about people were injured.

“Rescue work is existence carried out by the villagers themselves, but a larger operation is needed here,” he said.

The troops reported it was rushing medical teams on helicopters to the foppish villages.

Pakistan is prone to violent seismic upheavals. Wednesday’s tremble was the deadliest since a magnitude-7.6 shake devastated Kashmir and northern Pakistan in October 2005, killing about 80,000 people and leaving hundreds of thousands homeless.

Baluchistan is home to a long-running separatist movement, goal is not considered a greater battle ground in the fight in equalization of Taliban insurgents that affliction other border regions.

Associated Press quill-driver Matiullah Achakzai contributed to this report from Chaman.

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WASHINGTON

Then she started using coupons, trolling the Internet for the best ones. These days she spends about $200 a month on grocers’ commodities.. She once walked out of a CVS pharmacy having spent $50 for $200 worth of items.

“Sometimes, it really feels taste I’m robbing them,” the Washington, D.C., resident said. “I sometimes feel bad.”

That is, until she looks at what stores are charging for food and toiletries. “The price of everything seems to exist rising,” she said. “When you walk out spending half what you would have, that feeling is mind-blowing.”

More Americans are trying to get that sympathetic, consumer-behavior experts said. With stipend not rising as quickly as the cost of basic necessities, coupons are back in favor afterward many years of unwaveringly declining popularity, experts said. Eager to lure customers into supplies, many merchants are offering else coupons and are experimenting by creative ways to deliver them, such as text-messaging them to cellphones. Consumers, meanwhile, are seemly more savvy about finding good deals, thanks to Web sites devoted to coupon-clipping strategies.

“Marketers tend to send more coupons or issue more coupons during an economic downturn, and consumers make good more,” said Peter Meyers, fault president of marketing for ICOM Information & Communications, which did a oversee without interruption detachable certificate usage. “Both are motivated. Marketers scarcity to get in addition revenues, and consumers are motivated to get more savings.”

Coupon usage peaked in 1992, at the sort of time nearly 8 billion were redeemed for nearly $5 billion in savings, according to CMS, which processes interest certificate payments for merchants. Usage then started declining at every annual rate of 5 to 7 percent. Last year was the first year it did not decline, with 2.6 billion coupons redeemed for savings of almost $3 billion.

Survey organizers said that number could be higher this year, as food prices have climbed at a faster rate than in former years. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the price of provender increased by a seasonally adjusted annual reprimand of 7.5 percent in the first nine months of the year. For all of 2007, it increased 4.9 percent.

“Were we not in this economy, we probably would be looking at a slight decrease again,” before-mentioned Matthew Tilley, co-chairman of the Promotion Marketing Association’session Coupon Council and director of marketing for CMS.

The typical family saves $5.20 to $9.60 a week using coupons, the Coupon Council found. ICOM’session Meyers said he sees an average of 10 to 25 percent savings on grocery bills.

Recent studies have shown coupon use is just one highroad people are changing their shopping behavior to sustain within tighter budgets. A Booz & Co. retrospect last month found that people were switching to less-expensive groceries, buying besides store-label products and making fewer impulse purchases at the cash register.

In a survey of 1,000 people released last month, the Coupon Council found that 89 percent had used coupons when shopping for groceries, household or health-care items.

Experts related they expected coupon usage to grow. Of the 1,529 U.S. consumers surveyed through Toronto-based ICOM this spring, 67 percent said they would be more likely to employment coupons during a recession. People of all ages

Dianne Murphy, 44, of Leesburg, Va., has three sons, ages 14, 12 and 8. She plans meals for the week and spends part of her Saturdays studying coupon options. She estimated she saves about $40 by coupons. “That’s something,” she aforesaid.

Holston, a management analyst for a government contractor who is also studying to get a doctorate, started using coupons in January.

She rest TheGroceryGame.com, which sends her a weekly list of the lowest-priced products at her supermarket along with manufacturers’ coupons and specials.

She has three coupon organizers. When she finds good deals, she buys in bulk. Her linen cloth closet, refrigerator and freezer are packed.

Erin Gifford, 34, has a laundry basket in her Ashburn, Va., fireside filled with toothpaste, Jell-O and Cheerios that she got exempt. She keeps some wrapper of coupons in her purse.

She once construct a 75-cent coupon for Gum toothbrushes and used it on a double-coupon day. The original price of each toothbrush was $1, so the store paid her 50 cents to buy reaped ground brush. She bought 20 and donated them to charity because she prefers her electric toothbrush. Along with the toothbrushes, she got two bags of pretzels and two tubs of Edy’session ice cream, all for 49 cents.

With three kids and an au pair living in her house, she needs the savings. “Things are much more expensive now,” she uttered. “Eggs are up. Milk is up.”

But she also admits to cherishing the vibrate of it all. “It’session kind of a game when you find those deals,” she uttered. “When you commit to memory that, it’session a bonanza.”

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The 1949 movie of Ayn Rand’s novel “The Fountainhead” ends by Patricia Neal elevating to the culminating point of a new skyscraper to send greeting to its godlike architect, Gary Cooper. He is the archetypal Rand great man, an individualist who triumphs over the tradition-bound forces of moderation.

Oddly, Cooper’s masterpiece of modernism resembles one those public-housing projects that got inflated up in the ’70s. For today’s audiences, it’s quite an bathos. To think they took down perfectly good tenements to build that.

Long before he ever dreamed of pretty Federal Reserve chair, Alan Greenspan played the clarinet and soaked up Rand’s philosophy of radical individualism and laissez-faire capitalism. Rand believed that one’s own happiness is the highest account and rational self-interest a moral binding.

Lots of youthful intellectuals read Rand’s books and enjoyed her politically incorrect hymn to selfishness. But they moved on. Not, it would seem, Greenspan. He gave up on music as a profession, studied method of developing public wealth and joined Rand’s Manhattan salon.

All three decisions seemed to come together in his later preserve for unregulated derivatives, or what the more earthbound Warren Buffett called “financial weapons of celebration of the lord’s supper destruction.” Once derivatives got a green light, it took a mere eight years for the edifice of regulation-by-self-interest to bang itself up.

In a moment for history, Greenspan last week sat in the congressional hot seat as Rep. Henry Waxman, Democrat of California, unloaded on him and his ideology. Greenspan owned up to the flaw in his philosophy.

“Those of us who be in actual possession of looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders’ righteousness, myself included, are in a state of shocked disbelief,” he told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Greenspan never proverb it coming. Not even last year. In his 2007 work, “The Age of Turbulence,” he conceded that loosening carry to the credit of one’s account terms as being subprime mortgages had increased financial risk. “But I believed then, as now, that the benefits of broadened homeownership are merit the risk. Protection of property rights, so critical to a market economy, requires a critical totality of owners to sustain political keeping.”

CBS’s “60 Minutes” recently offered a tutorial on derivatives’ role in sinking the management. The mortgage-backed securities were the TNT, Steve Kroft explained. “The rocket fuel was the trillions of dollars in side bets on these mortgage securities called credit default swaps.”

Credit default swaps are pure gambling. They are wagers in continuance whether nation disposition default on their debts, such as mortgages. They are not to be confused with assurance against loans going bad. Insurers must hold reserves against risk.

What happened? When the market seized up, people demanded reward on those credit default swaps, otherwise than that there was no money behind them. “There was not one there,” as New York state insurance regulator Eric Dinallo put it.

It’s happened before. The Panic of 1907 was fed by “bucket shops,” where people took derived interests

The 2000 Commodity Futures Modernization Act revived the bucket-shop bet. It was a horseman attached to a 11,000-page appropriations bill hours before Congress planned to leave during the term of Christmas recess. Page 262 forbade states to ban or regulate financial derivatives.

The Republican Congress passed the legislation, and Democratic President Bill Clinton signed it. Whatever Alan Greenspan wanted, he got, which was capitalism unlocked from its regulatory chains.

You have to credit Greenspan for manfully acknowledging the yawning break betwixt his free-market ideology and reality. It’s hard to dislike him, but furthermore to avoid this thought: He really should be the subject of stuck with the clarinet.

fharrop@projo.com

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