World Business

Watch original video:

Blame it on the recession. Or the slushy roads.

Whatever the reason, post-Christmas crowds at Seattle-area malls Friday seemed to pale in comparison with previous years.

Storefront signs giving ground of hope big bargains drew mixed reviews from shoppers already regular to half-off sales, and many said they merely were exchanging items or redeeming gift cards.

“Here’s 60 and an additional 10,” said Jenny Goebel, from Des Moines, referring to the percentage markdowns on Christmas-themed tableware at Macy’s in downtown Seattle.

“We analogous the 50 and additional 50,” joked Goebel, who was shopping with her sister-in-law Andrea Marchel.

The 2008 holiday shopping season is expected to turn up the weakest sale results in decades as consumers worry about everything from rising joblessness to declining stock portfolios, and retailers now must try to require room according to new, spring merchandise.

At Bellevue Square, shoppers who arrived midmorning Friday had their choice of prime parking spaces. Inside, shoppers jammed the Apple supply as well as Nordstrom, which started its half-yearly men’s sale.

Otherwise, signs offering up to 60 percent off attracted mostly lookers and the masses seeking exercise after being couped up at home for the past small in number days.

Britt Beemer, a consumer algebraist with America’s Research Group in Orlando, Fla., related he thinks retailers have carried put on about totally the price-slashing they have power to do without “just giving begone the farm.”

“The problem is,” he said, “more than 30 percent of consumers are worried in regard to their jobs. When people are worried about their jobs, they move into a survival mindset, meaning they uncorrupt cease spending.”

David Koch, a theater director strolling through Pacific Place in downtown Seattle with his wife, Susan, and their 5-year-old daughter, Quincy, reported he checked to the end Nordstrom’s sale but stopped short of buying anything, concluding “maybe I really don’t need one more shirt.”

“Theaters are cutting back on the number of productions they be sufficient, and we’re watching our loneliness funds lessen,” Koch said, explaining his personal financial outlook.

Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008563486_retail27.html?syndication=rss

Watch original video:

BAGHDAD

Three of the militants, including a man Iraqi police described since inner reality a local leader of the al-Qaida in Iraq, escaped and remained at extensive, the authorities said.

Al-Qaida in Iraq is a homegrown Sunni extremist group that American intelligence agencies say is foreign-led, and the leader who escaped is suspected of having killed exclusive police officers and civilians in the past.

The city of Ramadi, where the jailbreak occurred, was cordoned off Friday morning and a curfew was imposed on its 450,000 residents, reported Latif Obaid Ayada, the city’s mayor. Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, is located about 65 miles west of Baghdad.

Seven Iraqi police officers and one denizen were also wounded in the gunbattle, which started inside a police station niggardly the city center and spilled out onto local streets. No bystanders have been reported injured.

Friday early part of the day’s escape attempt began about 1 a.m. after a police officer at al-Forsan police station was escorting an inmate back to his cell from an interrogation room, aforesaid Maj. Gen. Tareq al-Youssef, police chief of Anbar province.

As the policeman entered the small cavity with the captive, another inmate, Emad Ahmed Ferhan, the suspected al-Qaida in Iraq leader, complained that he felt nauseated and needed to practice the mode of dressing. As Ferhan was leaving the cell, what one. held about 30 inmates, he attacked the police officer.

Of the 30 men in the lonely dwelling, the police said 11 fled as part of what officials said had been a planned escape.

After the primeval shooting, a forward police officer rushed to the scene, excepting he was also shot dead, the authorities said.

Armed through a second automatic weapon at that point, the prisoners made their way to the police office’s armory to secure more guns and ammunition, officials said.

Three inmates were marksman and killed inside the station, the authorities said.

After failing to charm the armory, the prisoners began to shoot their way out of the station, led by Ferhan, who is suspected of being the mastermind of the contrivance.

Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/iraq/2008563404_iraqjail27.html?syndication=rss

Watch original video:

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan

The specter of war also may be exaggerated to reduce international pressure on Pakistan to crack down on a contending group blamed for the deadly Mumbai attacks last month, analysts said.

Regardless, even the reports of troop movements made the crisis much other serious than before and could undo most of the progress the brace countries had made in peace talks since 2004.

“The situation is at this point in time far more dangerous than it was which time the military was in peacetime positions,” said Samina Ahmed, South Asia project instructor because of the International Crisis Group.

The military apparently started moving troops from the country’s border with Afghanistan to positions by the Indian border in what was described widely as a defensive due proportion in case India attacks. The army also canceled any planned leaves and said troops had to work a general holiday Saturday.

Since the three-day siege in Mumbai a month since, in which 171 the vulgar were killed, tensions between the neighbors have grown.

India has urged Pakistan to burst down seriously on terrorist groups

The two neighbors have fought three wars ago independence in 1947 and came choke to a fourth in late 2001 and 2002, after Pakistani militants were blamed for a deadly attack on India’s parliament. At that projection, a entire of a million troops were sent to the border, and flights were canceled between the pair nations.

At the present life, Taliban-led militants took advantage of the Pakistani troops moving from the country’session border through Afghanistan to the border with India. They regrouped and started attacking U.S.-led troops in Afghanistan, analysts before-mentioned.

Many feared that the Taliban, plenteous stronger now than in 2002, would take advantage of Pakistani troops moving out of the tribal areas along Pakistan’s westerly border by Afghanistan.

Pakistani officials would not publicly make firm the troop movements, raising scheme that the movements may be exaggerated to deliver a message.

A Pakistani military official, speaking on condition of anonymity for he is not authorized to talk to the media, told the Chicago Tribune that “some troops” were being moved Friday out of the country’s tribal areas to the Indian limit.

Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2008563412_pakistan27.html?syndication=rss

Watch original video:

NEW YORK — There was individual safe bet that mutual-fund investors could make in 2008 — that the stock market was a place to lose a catalogue of money.

Funds’ performance stats for the year to date show that Wall Street’s decline was so punishing that investors had almost nowhere to hide.

A majority of fund categories had negative returns in the vicinity of 40 percent, and other categories dedicated to financial services and natural resources had negative returns of 50 percent or more, according to Lipper, which tracks consols performance.

Lipper, whose tallies reflect commercial through Wednesday’s session, found that the kind of are known as bear-market funds, which wager that stocks will fall, were among the few successes this year.

The results confirm what people investors even now know from their 401(k) profit statements and from tracking the market’s greater indexes. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index, which is the benchmark because of many funds, was down 40.88 percent through Wednesday, while the Dow Jones industrials were down 36.16 percent.

“This is the good-natured of market where investors throw out relative performance,” said Lipper analyst Jeff Tjornehoj. “Was there really much of a difference betwixt a fund that was prostrate 40 percent and one that was down 43 percent? Not in truth.”

Wall Street’sitting heaviest selling came in September and October after the insolvency of Lehman Brothers Holdings. The brokerage’s collapse while burdened with the weight of soured investments triggered a freeze-up of lending and deepened Wall Street’s fears with regard to the depths of the recession.

The verse would have been worse admitting that the mart hadn’cheek by jowl rallied in the past month from the multiyear lows set Nov. 20; the S&P 500 has rebounded 16 percent before this then. Investors pulled less money out of equity and bond funds in November than in October.

Tjornehoj said the market’sitting latest move off its lows appears to be helping some investors to stay in the market.

“They put on’t feel they need to bail out. They feel they’ll miss that bounce off (the) bottom,” he related. Moreover, “if your government bonds is down 30 or 40 percent, bailing out now is unlikely to improve your rank.”

The chaos in the financial markets wiped out gains that some market sectors were building on partway into 2008. While the goods markets shot higher in the first half, giving a lift to funds that focused on natural resources and sensitive materials, the abrupt turnaround in commodities — including crude oil’session drop from $147 a barrel to $35 — plunged those funds into the same depths as more diversified funds.

Commodities funds’ negative return totaled 44.48 percent for the year and 32.90 percent for the fourth quarter, while natural-resources funds had a negative return of 51.99 percent for the year and 39.44 for the quarter.

Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008563231_mutualfunds27.html?syndication=rss

Watch original video:

WASHINGTON — When Jerrigrace Lyons goes out on a trial, she carries a basic set of tools: makeup kit, cardboard caskets and a handbook with practical instructions for icing and transporting bodies.

Lyons is a “dying midwife,” a specialist in the little-known domain of helping people manage the passing of a loved person outside the traditive funeral activity. As the stock reels during its worst economic crisis in greater degree of than a generation, her business is booming.

In normal epochs, Lyons’ clients tend to be vulgar herd more interested in alternative lifestyles. But many the multitude are drawn to her by a stark calculation: They cannot afford traditional funerals and burials, which ofttimes run $10,000 or more.

“People want something that is in parallel direction with what their loved ones would have wanted,” Lyons related by telephone from Hawaii, at what place she was teaching a sold-out workshop. “But they also want something that they can afford.”

Lyons, every ordained minister from Sebastopol, Calif., started a nonprofit organization, Final Passages. As a dissolution midwife, she teaches workshops about alternative possibilities for families, such as keeping the body of a deceased relative at home or burying it outside a traditional cemetery.

Lyons also guides families end the legalities and paperwork of at-home funerals — death certificates and body-transport permits — season providing emotional support and counseling. Depending on what a tribe needs, her services can run from $500 to $1,500.

Interest grows

Other death midwives have reported a similar increase in interest, through much of the growth tied to economic need.

“In good times and bad, funerals have consistently been an incredible expenditure,” said Joshua Slocum, executory director of Funeral Consumers Alliance. “This economic situation is forcing us to reassess the value of the dollar, and not honorable the value of currency, but the value of what we pervert with money.”

When Howard Kopecky, 66, of northwestern Wisconsin, was diagnosed with terminal cancer this year, he decided he did not want his family and his wife, who had upright lost her work at jobs at a nursing pointedly, to use up a accident of money on his funeral.

The couple did not know how to proceed, until Kopecky noticed an ad in the local newspaper for death midwife Lucy Basler. “I think it made us feel like, OK, other people are doing this,” his partner, Phyllis, said.

Basler had been trained at some of Lyons’ workshops and assisted the couple with the legal and logistic particulars of staging a funeral in their home.

Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2008563478_funerals27.html?syndication=rss

Watch original video:

Several analysts expressed unbelief Friday that the Federal Reserve’s settlement allowing GMAC Financial Services to become a the money-lender’s holding party would spur many in greater numbers people to buy cars.

Daniel Alpert, of investment course Westwood Capital, said so many persons consumers already are struggling with existing liability that he doubts the Fed’s action will cause them to ensnare on still greater degree. “I don’t think it will suddenly increase auto credit,” Alpert before-mentioned.

The Fed approved GMAC’s demand Wednesday to become a the usurer’sitting holding troop, authorizing it to apply for a portion of the Treasury’s $700 billion bailout fund and receive unforeseen occasion loans directly from the Fed.

Meanwhile, GMAC had to the time when midnight Friday to clear a conclusive hurdle in its request to get a bank holding gathering.

GMAC Financial Services must complete a complicated $30 billion debt-for-equity exchange by the agency of then.

Analysts had speculated that out of financial help, GMAC would possess had to file for insolvency protection or shut down, dealing a blow to General Motors’ own chances for survival. The Fed cited “emergency conditions” in justifying its decision.

The Fed said its recommend “would benefit the public by strengthening GMAC’session ability to fund the purchases of vehicles manufactured by GM and other companies and by helping to normalize the credit markets for such purchases.”

But some analysts said they doubt that will happen. They point to the deteriorating thrift and debt-laden consumers’ inability or unwillingness to borrow more for big-ticket items so as cars, trucks and SUVs. Tighter lending standards have shut out many buyers.

“I don’t think the Fed decision, per se, will have any impact on the consumers’ willingness to buy cars,” Bert Ely, a banking industry consultant in Alexandria, Va., said via e-mail. “For many consumers, the willingness to buy a car — new or used — is largely a function of their ability to get affordable financing.”

Christopher Whalen, managing director of Institutional Risk Analytics, said pretended customers are simply not buying cars. Noting that Toyota has reasonable forecast its first operating loss in 70 years, Whalen sees no end to the slowdown.

Still, those who enjoy extremely good credit be pleased be able to borrow at historically low rates, as in the housing market. And others are more optimistic about the Fed’s action.

Scott Talbott, a financial-industry lobbyist, said the Fed’sitting move is part of a “one-two punch” that, along with the bailout of GM and Chrysler, could get the auto industry moving again. Giving GMAC access to the Treasury’sitting bailout fund should loosen lending markets, allowing GMAC to grant more loans to potential buyers exclude out by tighter loan standards, he said.

Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008563229_gmac27.html?syndication=rss

Watch original video:

Blame it on the recession. Or the slushy roads.

Whatever the reason, post-Christmas crowds at Seattle-area malls Friday seemed to pale in comparison from one side previous years.

Storefront signs promising big bargains drew mixed reviews from shoppers already accustomed to half-off sales, and many said they merely were exchanging items or redeeming gift cards.

“Here’session 60 and some additional 10,” said Jenny Goebel, from Des Moines, referring to the percentage markdowns on Christmas-themed tableware at Macy’session in downtown Seattle.

“We like the 50 and additional 50,” joked Goebel, who was shopping with her sister-in-law Andrea Marchel.

The 2008 holiday shopping season is expected to turn up the weakest sale results in decades as consumers worry in an opposite direction everything from rising joblessness to declining stock portfolios, and retailers now must try to act occasion for new, spring merchandise.

At Bellevue Square, shoppers who arrived midmorning Friday had their superior of prime parking spaces. Inside, shoppers jammed the Apple store as well as Nordstrom, which started its semi-annual men’s sale.

Otherwise, signs offering up to 60 percent off attracted mostly lookers and people seeking use later than conscious couped up at home as antidote to the past few days.

Britt Beemer, a consumer analyst through America’s Research Group in Orlando, Fla., before-mentioned he thinks retailers have done about all the price-slashing they can do without “just giving away the farm.”

“The point in dispute is,” he said, “more than 30 percent of consumers are worried about their jobs. When people are worried about their jobs, they irritate into a survival mindset, meaning they just stop expenditure.”

David Koch, a theater director strolling through Pacific Place in downtown Seattle by his wife, Susan, and their 5-year-old daughter, Quincy, said he checked out Nordstrom’s sale but stopped short of buying anything, concluding “maybe I really don’t extremity another shirt.”

“Theaters are cutting back on the affix a number to of productions they do, and we’re watching our retirement funds diminish,” Koch reported, explaining his personal financial foresight.

Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008563486_retail27.html?syndication=rss

Watch original video:

LOS ANGELES — Architect Andy Feola keeps running into Southern California colleagues in some of the world’s most exotic locations — from the Egyptian desert to China to Azerbaijan.

“We’ll scratch our heads and beg ‘Why are you here?’ ” said Feola, president of F+A Architects in Pasadena. “Well, I’m here for the same reasons you’re here.”

A growing number of architects and urban planners are finding work overseas as the domestic real-estate slump persists. An emerging affluent class abroad is drawn to suburbs through U.S. names that mimic the U.S. ideal — down to the master bathroom and tree-lined sidewalk.

A 2006 survey of American Institute of Architects members shows that large architecture firms with more than 100 employees reported billings from international work doubled in four years. Meanwhile, billings in the U.S. this year dropped to the lowest proposition in the 12 years the survey has been conducted.

While there’s no hard data, greater quantity U.S.-made windows, roofing systems, furnaces and other specialized materials are being shipped overseas because projects designed by means of Americans are built to U.S. construction standards, declared Jim Haughey, any economist with Reed Construction Data, which tracks the construction industry.

“If you look at how countries are moving up the socio-economic ladder, some of the things they all want is a car, a house, a nice view and current of air conditioning,” said Jeff Rossely, a Bahrain-based developer of shopping malls, resorts and residential communities in the Middle East.

The trend started during the early 1990s and has intensified in new years because of the U.S. saddle-cloth downturn. Firms that ventured without the least clew since that time say doing so has helped them weather economic slowdowns in certain markets.

It has also created opportunities to design on a grander and more creative scale. At times, architects are creating vast master-planned communities encompassing a mix of single-family homes with high-reaching rises, parks and shopping centers.

Feola’s firm is designing a shopping and entertainment complex for New Cairo, a metropolis built from scratch during the term of roughly 200,000 residents in Egypt.

The idea is to avoid more of the mistakes of the past and constitute a mixed-use environment to which place the masses rely less without interruption their car to get to shops and services.

U.S. firms are behind an eco-friendly isle connected to Shanghai by rail, and a just discovered township in northern Indian loaded with pleasure villas, apartments, shops, parks and schools.

Curiously, more of the developments overseas look and heartily a apportionment liking California suburbs marketed to affluent customers who be delivered of spent time living in the U.S. or attracted to an U.S. suburban lifestyle.

Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008563226_architects27.html?syndication=rss

Analyst opinions on stocks making headlines in Friday’sitting market

From Standard & Poor’s Equity Research

Watch original video:

12/26/2008- 11:23am S&P REITERATES STRONG BUY OPINION ON SHARES OF APPLE (AAPL)

Wal-Mart (WMT) announces the availability of certain AAPL iPhone products on Sunday December 28 by way of some 2,500 Wal-Mart stores. This is roughly 10 times the number of AAPL’s admit stores. We view this move as the company following through on existing strategies to add iPhone distribution partners and to build brand awareness with a broader consumer audience. We believe this move will support the market-share gains that we project for AAPL’s smart phone products in 2009. We assert our FY 09 (Sep) EPS estimate of $5.50 and our P/E-based 12-month target recompense of $127. /T. Smith, CFA

12/26/2008- 12:40pm S&P RAISES RECOMMENDATION ON SHARES OF GIBRALTAR INDUSTRIES TO BUY FROM HOLD (ROCK)

Our opinion change is based on estimation. On a more pessimistic outlook because of the construction products business, we are cutting our ‘08 EPS reckon to $1.32 from $1.45 and trimming ’09’s to $0.89 from $1.17. Based on our revised estimate for ‘09, we are reducing our 12-month mark price to $12 from $15. Based on our projected P/E, ROCK would sell toward the low end of its historical sweep. But after a recent sharp price marasmus, we think ROCK is attractively valued, selling at in regard to 11.6X our revised ‘09 EPS estimate and with a general dividend yield of nearly 2%. /L. Larkin

12/26/2008- 12:55pm S&P UPGRADES RECOMMENDATION ON ADSS OF TOTAL SA TO STRONG BUY FROM BUY (TOT)

We believe TOT is origin suited for a depressed awkward oil cost setting due to its geographical diversification, lack of derivatives exposure, and one of the highest percentages of production and earnings derived from low-cost production areas amid major European oil companies. TOT is in addition rapidly growing its Middle East appearance, another low-cost area, and it believes this area will represent 20% of worldwide production in 4 years. We raise our profits. per ADS estimates to $7.83 from $7.75 in ‘08 and to $8.14 from $7.90 in ‘09. We elevate our 12-month target price by $1 to $92. /C. Tiscareno

Original text: http://www.businessweek.com/investor/content/dec2008/pi20081226_025438.htm?campaign_id=rss_null

S&P’s chief investment adroit tactician says a bear-market bottom may already be in place—and tells why 2009 could be a better year for stocks

By Sam Stovall From Standard & Poor’s Equity Research

Watch original video:

Excerpted from a common fame published by means of Standard & Poor’session Equity Research Services on Dec. 22

Investors will remember 2008 as a year of change. Not just change in the White House, but furthermore the pocket change that they used to call their portfolios.

Let’s face it. This bear market started for the reason that the perfect tear of popping bubbles—commodities, emerging markets, hedge funds, and real estate. From Oct. 9, 2007 through Nov. 20, 2008, the S&P 500 declined 52%, fabrication it the third-worst bear market since the 1929-32 shiver. One of the more amazing characteristics of this decline was its speed. The average "mega-meltdown," or transport market degeneracy of more than 40%, traditionally took 21 months to play out. This one took 13 months.

Not surprisingly, all 10 sectors within the "500" bloody, from a 22% slump for Consumer Staples to a 74% thrashing for the Financials. Finally, 125 of the 128 subindustries in the S&P 500 declined.

Where do we go from here? Probably not take down, in our opinion. A small in number months ago, I wrote that 700 on the "500" might be a worst-case scenario in spite of a decline, citing the trendline drawn off of the 1932 low, the average bear-market retracement of foregoing bull market advances, and the applying of a bear market P/E ratio on a conservative "top-down" EPS estimate. We got close to that level, as the S&P 500 closed at 752 on Nov. 20. Since then, it rose 21%—technically signaling the start of a newly come speculator on a rise market. So I say why evade the truth? What’s 50 points among friends? Besides, we rely upon in that place are several reasons that a bear-market dale may already be in site.

• The magnitude of the decline is single in kind of the reasons I believe a bear-market moo may have been propose in place. The 52% decline is within earshot of the 54% falloff recorded in the 1937-38 possess market—the second worst since 1929. Only if you believe the 89% decline recorded from 1929-32 will be challenged should you stop reading any further.

• If the year had ended on Nov. 28, when the S&P 500 had recorded a 40% year-to-date decline, it would have been the second-worst calendar year since 1900; 1931 was worse at minus 47%. What’s other thing, the S&P 500 prostrate by greater degree of than 20% eight times since 1900. It rose in six of the subsequent years, posting some average push of 10.4% in all occasions. You have to have an air to 1931 and 1932 for the exceptions.

• This support market retraced 103% of the advance during the 2002-07 bull market. Traditionally, bear markets retrace any average 73% of prior bull-market gains. And those that retrace more than 60% of the prior bull run have taken back an medium 110%. The current 103% retracement is close enough, in my opinion, to call it a wrap.

• At the 752 level, the S&P 500 was trading at a P/E ratio steady trailing operating earnings for participate in (EPS) of 11.5 times, equal to the lowest operating P/E ratio in the 20 years that S&P has been tracking operating results. It is also a 40% discount to the medial sum operating P/E ratio of 19.3 times since 1988. (In prior years, the Street looked only at GAAP or "in the same manner with reported" EPS).

• Finally, on Dec. 8, the S&P 500 closed at 909.70, or 20.9% above the Nov. 20 closing low of 752.44. Technically, that’s a new male mart. Even though I would prefer to see this level successfully retested in the sight of admitting that we are in the beginning of a newly come bull market, history indicates that no other than once since World War II (September 2001-January 2002) did the S&P 500 experience a bear-market ascend in disproportion of 20% that was subsequently followed by an even lower low. All other 20% advances were eventually proven to have been the ultimate bear-market submissive. Again, you have to go back to the 1930s to find exceptions to this rule.

Of behavior, these are unprecedented times and the rules are being rewritten every day. In totality, however, I believe the affluence of positive precedents will that may be liked serve as a healthy dose of indirect Valium.

S&P’s Investment Policy Committee has a yearend 2008 target of 850 for the S&P 500, indicating a full-year projected decline of 42%. Our 2009 mark of 1025, however, anticipates a 20% gain. Why such an optimistic send? Actually, by historical standards, it’session fairly conservatory.

This is the 16th bear market since 1929. Its more-than-50% decline makes it the worst bear since 1945, and the third worst since 1929. But when this bear place of traffic finally ends, history says be prepared for a fast and turbulent partial recovery. In the first 40 days after establishing a bear-market bottom, the S&P 500 has traditionally recovered any average 33% of the point loss experienced during the just-ended waft market. In this predicament, that would point to an initial take courage from the 752 direct on the "500" to around 1020 previous to the market gives us a second chance to get back in. Historically, in the 20 days following the initial bounce off of the bear-market scurvy, the S&P 500 has retested the prior low by falling 7% from the recovery high. An average retest would imply a falling off to the 950 level. Be prepared for an even deeper retest, however, like declines from recovery highs following mega-meltdowns (bear markets of -45%+) have averaged 13%, which would imply 888 on the "500."

Should Nov. 20 extremity up being the feeble for this bear market, we confident 2009 may end up being a fairly good year for blockhead returns, if history is any guide. During the rudimentary year of a new bull market considering 1932, the S&P 500 rose an average 46%. What’s greater degree, the "500" recovered more than 82% of the prior bear market’s loss, on average, in that first year. I can’t guarantee that the market will respond the same way this time around, but successful investors look at account—and history points to a sharp advance in the chief year of a new taurus market.

Original text: http://www.businessweek.com/investor/content/dec2008/pi20081224_461823.htm?campaign_id=rss_null