Financial life in a big town

In a recent performance review, my sister was rated "below expectations." Her boss said she took too long to complete a project. However, this really wasn’t her fault.

During that time, she had a lot of computer problems. Also, management changes created some confusion and her co-workers weren’t very cooperative. But she still got a bad review.

Now she’s on three-month probation with a warning that her current project must be completed on time. It’s not clear what will happen if she doesn’t meet the deadline.

I don’t think this is fair, because many things are out of her control. And the rules seem to be different for her. For example, her boss has positioned her monitor so that he can see what she’s doing.
My sister tries hard, despite getting little cooperation from others. I feel that "below expectations" should be for people who goof off all day. What do you think?

I think you only have one side of the story. When someone receives a reprimand, the automatic response is to point out other reasons for the problem. That’s just human nature.

But here’s the catch: people who never see their own flaws continue to repeat the same ineffective behaviors. So your sister needs to take a long, hard look in the mirror.

Your sister received a low rating because her project was late. Other factors may have contributed, but her boss believes she was responsible. She needs to stop fretting about "fairness" and concentrate on self-improvement.

To get off probation, she must focus like a laser on her upcoming project deadline. If unavoidable obstacles arise, she needs to tell her boss immediately. And nothing but work should appear on her computer monitor.

If you continue to encourage your sister’s search for scapegoats, you will only perpetuate the problem. Instead of collaborating in her denial, try to help her save her job.

I am 24 years old with a job that bores me to death. Now that I’m in graduate school, I’ve realized that I truly hate this field. However, I am clueless about what I might prefer.

My parents say I should stick with this profession because the pay and benefits are good. What’s your opinion?

Somewhere along the line, you wandered down an inappropriate career path. But that doesn’t mean you have to stay there.

If you do, a lack of interest and commitment will limit your success. And no salary or benefit package is worth a lifetime of unhappiness and boredom.

Although your Mom and Dad undoubtedly have your best interests at heart, parents often make lousy career counselors. You need to seek out professional advice.

As a graduate student, you should have access to career counseling through your school’s placement office. Explore different occupations until you find one that energizes and excites you.

Marie G. McIntyre is a workplace coach. Send questions and get tips at www.yourofficecoach.com.

2008, McClatchy-Tribune Information Services

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U.S. consumers’ confidence weakened to the lowest in 16 years in March, pointing to recession, as worries over fading job prospects and rising inflation clouded the outlook, a survey showed on Friday.

The Reuters/University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers said its final index of confidence fell to 69.5 in March — its lowest since February 1992, when it was at 68.8 — from the previous month’s reading of 70.8.

Economists polled by Reuters expected a reading of 70.0 in the index of confidence, which the preliminary report had said was at 70.5 in early March.

The index of consumer expectations fell to 60.1, its lowest since January 1992, when it was at 59.1. In February this year it was at 62.4.

The Reuters/University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers said in a release that “it is now nearly unanimous among consumers that the economy has already entered a recession.”

“Consumer confidence slipped due to growing concerns about weakening prospects for the economy as well as anticipated increases in unemployment and inflation during the year ahead,” the statement said.

The report showed the final reading on one-year inflation expectations jumped to 4.3 percent in March from 3.6 percent in February.

That was the highest final reading since October 2005, when gasoline prices were soaring in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, but was down from the preliminary March reading of 4.5 percent. 

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KANSAS CITY — Bombardier Aerospace is considering Kansas City as a site for a $375 million passenger jet assembly plant, city and state officials said.

While the project is only in its initial stages, discussions have gone far enough that state officials outlined legislation Tuesday to provide state tax credits as a prerequisite for landing the plant.

The Montreal-based Bombardier Aerospace is looking for a site to assemble the C Series of 110- and 130-seat passenger jets. The plant eventually would employ up to 2,100 people, with up to 5,200 related jobs created by employers attracted by the plant. The estimated overall economic impact over 22 years would be $5.9 billion.

"This is exponentially larger than any deal we’ve ever done," Missouri Department of Economic Development Director Greg Steinhoff told The Associated Press.
Kansas City officials also are enthused. "This would be a game-changer for Kansas City," Bob Marcusse, president of the Kansas City Economic Development Council, told The Kansas City Star. "We would suddenly be major players in the aviation industry."

However, the deal faces several obstacles. Bombardier made a preliminary deal two years ago to build the plant in Canada and is under political pressure to honor that deal.

Also, the company has just begun marketing the C Series and must generate enough orders to justify building the assembly plant. A decision on whether to go ahead with the project is expected this year.

Marc Duchesne, a Bombardier spokesman, confirmed Tuesday that the company has talked to Missouri officials, but he noted that other states also have expressed interest, although he would not name them. He also said the company’s "preferred choice" is still Mirabel, Quebec.

Kansas City and state officials say Bombardier has looked at a site on city-owned property at Kansas City International Airport for the 1.3-million-square-foot assembly plant. The firm hopes to begin production in 2013 and reach full production in 2015 or 2016.

Steinhoff acknowledged some initial concern that Bombardier was looking at Missouri to leverage a better deal from Canada. But he now believes the company is serious about Kansas City.

State economic development officials want to give Bombardier tax credits through a "mega-project" amendment to the Enhanced Enterprise Zone Program, which would be for projects that hire a minimum of 1,000 employees and invest at least $300 million.

With Bombardier, the state would cap the amount of tax credits at $40 million annually over the 22-year life of the deal.

Steinhoff said Bombardier would gradually repay the state for the tax credits, with interest, by giving the state a certain amount of money for each plane it produces. The details of those repayments are still being negotiated, he said.

Senate Majority Leader Charlie Shields, R-St. Joseph, and Rep. Ron Richard, R-Joplin, are sponsoring the tax credit legislation. Committee hearings on it are scheduled today in both the House and Senate.

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REYNOLDS, Ind. — This one-stoplight farming hamlet had big dreams in 2005 when it was christened BioTown USA.

Its goal: to become the first U.S. community to meet all electricity and gas needs through renewable energy by using everything from farm waste to sewage.

Industry and government officials led the early charge. BP installed a gas pump offering an ethanol fuel blend, and South Dakota-based VeraSun Energy Corp. started building an ethanol production plant near town.

Former U.S. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns stopped by in support, as did the band Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. Visitors also included a group of Chilean corn farmers who were touring the Midwest and interested in learning more about biofuels.

But the visitors are long gone, and many say the excitement is, too. Money problems, leadership changes and other obstacles have sparked skepticism that Rey

The U.S. Department of Justice has launched a criminal investigation into whether Alcoa Inc (AA.N: Quote, Profile, Research), one of its subsidiaries and people connected with the unit committed fraud, corruption and bribery in its relations with customer Aluminum Bahrain B.S.C. (Alba).

In a motion filed Thursday with the U.S. District Court in Pittsburgh, the Justice Department asked the court to put a temporary hold on a Alba’s civil suit against Alcoa, the world’s largest supplier of alumina, the principal raw material used in making aluminum.

The suit also names affiliate Alcoa World Alumina LLC, former Alcoa World Alumina Vice President of Marketing William Rice and Victor Dahdaleh, an agent of Alcoa and Alcoa World Alumina, as defendants.

“The Alba complaint alleges numerous facts which, if true, could be relevant to the government’s criminal investigation and a potential criminal trial,” the department wrote in its motion.

Last month, Alba, one of the worlds largest smelting firms, filed suit seeking more than $1 billion from Alcoa, accusing the firm of participating in a 15-year conspiracy involving overcharging, fraud and bribery.

In the suit, Alba accused the defendants of steering payments for alumina to companies abroad in order to pay kickbacks to a Bahraini government official.

Alba, which is 77 percent owned by the government of Bahrain, also accuses the defendants of overcharging it for alumina. It did not name the official to whom bribes were allegedly paid.

According to the suit, the bribes were sent through a series of shell companies controlled by Alcoa and resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars in overpayments. 

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DALLAS — The Federal Aviation Administration, under fire for its handling of missed safety inspections at Southwest Airlines Co., said Tuesday it is ordering a check of maintenance records at all U.S. airlines.

The FAA’s action applies to records on all planes. FAA inspectors will check to make sure airlines have complied with orders to perform the type of structural inspections that Southwest missed on some older Boeing 737s.

The FAA hit Southwest this month with a $10.2 million civil penalty for missing the inspections and then continuing to fly the planes even after realizing the mistake. Dallas-based Southwest plans to appeal.

Acting FAA Administrator Robert Sturgell said Tuesday that the failure of Southwest to check the fuselages of its planes for cracks prompted him to ensure that other carriers were meeting the same requirement.

Sturgell said the first check of the airlines’ maintenance records will be done by March 28 and a full audit finished by June 30.

The FAA said it would check compliance with at least 10 safety orders, called airworthiness directives, at every airline by March 28. The agency said a full audit covering at least 10 percent of all safety directives will be finished by June 30.

FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said the review will involve both examining paperwork and checking airplanes at 118 operators, some of which are very small.

David Castelveter, a spokesman for the airlines’ trade group, the Air Transport Association, said the FAA audit would "help create the redundancies that make our aviation system the safest in the world."

In a letter to airline officials, FAA Associate Administrator for Safety Nicholas Sabatini defended the agency’s recent strategy of relying more heavily on information from the airlines themselves. FAA and airline officials argue that the system correctly focuses on improving safety instead of finding blame.

Southwest turned itself in to the FAA last March after discovering it had missed structural safety inspections on 46 planes. The company is conducting an internal review, and the FAA is also investigating how the lapses occurred.

After a drumbeat of bad publicity lasting more than a week, Southwest confirmed Monday that it was suspending plans to outsource some of its maintenance work to a contractor in El Salvador.

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On Dec. 17, Jewell Douthit walked out of the St. Louis County Jail, looking for a new start.

He had been in since March, on felony nonpayment of child support, and it had opened his eyes to some things, he said. His debt to society repaid, he wanted to build a new life.

But to do that, Douthit needed a job. That’s not the easiest thing to find when the economy is slumping and you have "convicted felon" attached to your name.

This is what the job search can be like on the margins. Uncertain. Frustrating. A lot of closed doors. And sometimes littered with hurdles like a lack of transportation, a criminal record and plain unfamiliarity with the ways of the working world.

A few days after he got out, Douthit boarded a Metro bus and rode it to Employment Connections, a social service agency that provides job counseling for welfare recipients, homeless vets and felons.

Like each of the roughly 1,500 people who come through the agency each year, Douthit’s first stop was a class on "work readiness training" and four days with Michael McCoy.

Shaven-headed, bushy-bearded and relentlessly upbeat, McCoy describes his job in a way that makes him sound a little like a drill sergeant, giving people on the bottom the tools, and the mind-set, they need to compete in the job market.

"These people have been beaten down by so much. They need to be reprogrammed, you know?" he said. "We have to fight through layer by layer by layer."

To do that, he starts with some advice. Stay positive. Network. Stick with your search, even when it means waiting 20 minutes for a bus on a cold day.

Then he asks his class of 10 how many have an e-mail address. Only half raise their hands.

"Get one," he said. "It shows employers you’re in the 21st century with the rest of us."

Then there’s the "don’ts."

Don’t slouch when you’re talking with an employer. Don’t fold your arms.

Don’t let your tattoos show, or wear earrings if you’re a man. If you’ve got gold teeth, as he used to, think about taking them out.

"That may be your culture," McCoy said. "But when you go into the business world, it’s about perception."

And, like it or not, he said, perception often is stacked against the people who wind up in his classroom.

Douthit, in fact, is better off than most of the ex-cons in McCoy’s classes. His crime was nonviolent, and not drug-related. He has a r

There’s something truly scary about the current financial crisis and the potential risks to the global economy when the International Monetary Fund warns that governments need to "think the unthinkable."

This is a sign that we are in uncharted waters and even the top experts don’t know what will happen next. The IMF is saying that despite recent massive interventions in financial markets by the U.S. Federal Reserve, the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England, things could get much worse.

Indeed, we could be headed for the worst financial crisis since the 1929 stock market crash and the Great Depression of the 1930s.

The decline in the value of the U.S. dollar, a U.S. recession that’s already here, a credit crunch making loans more difficult to get, and rising interest rates for businesses and homeowners are among the factors already at work since the subprime mortgage crisis emerged last August.

Failure to restore confidence in the financial system would make all of these factors worse. Governments could even be forced, in a massive bailout, to take over the bad investments made by banks. Losses by financial institutions from the subprime mortgage crisis have been estimated at $500 billion to more than $1 trillion.

Moreover, Goldman Sachs warns U.S. housing prices could fall 25 per cent from their peak and wipe out $5 trillion of wealth in American households. For many this would wipe out all of their home equity and even leave them owing more than their houses are worth. There are fears of a similar drop in prices in commercial real estate. In addition, the sharp fall in the stock market has wiped out considerable wealth.

And it’s not over yet.

"The need to prepare systematically for potential risks has been demonstrated amply during the past few months," the IMF’s John Lipsky has warned. "After all, the failure of both financial institutions and public authorities to anticipate the current challenges already damaged some core institutions, undermining confidence and weakening economic prospects."

One risk that Lipsky highlighted is the emergence of "a global financial decelerator" where the financial crisis could do even more damage to the underlying economy, affecting jobs and growth. In this scenario, rising defaults or margin calls could force the fire sale of assets by borrowers unable to come up with cash to meet the demands of their bankers.

These forced sales would push down the value of office buildings, businesses and other assets, leading to a further deterioration in the value of remaining collateral assets and a new round of defaults or margin calls.

The result would be asset-price deflation, a downward credit spiral and a deep recession. A growing number of hedge funds are already getting margin calls, selling assets at low prices or going into default.

The U.S. Federal Reserve has made two interventions of $200 billion each in recent days to support financial markets while the U.S. government is injecting $168 billion of tax rebates to American households in the hope they will spend. There’s little evidence these kinds of actions are working so far.

Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney has pointed out that "the end is not yet in sight," adding that "some of the world’s largest financial institutions have recorded substantial losses, the cost of borrowing has increased, and the availability of credit has decreased."

Not surprisingly, "our economy is beginning to feel the effects of the deterioration in global financial conditions."

The failure so far to restore confidence in financial markets, with oil prices hovering around $110 (U.S.) a barrel and gold in the $1,000-an-ounce range as investors rush for safety, show why we should worry. The IMF’s warning is spot on.

David Crane can be reached at crane@interlog.com.

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NEW YORK — Stocks fell Wednesday for the fourth time in five days on concern the Federal Reserve will fail to prevent a recession as oil climbed above $110 a barrel, pushing down refiners, retailers and banks.

The Dow Jones industrial average fell 211 points from its midday high as oil rose. Sunoco Inc. dropped the most since 1995 after Caris & Co. said demand may decrease. Humana Inc. led shares of health insurers to a three-year low on a lower earnings forecast.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 index lost 11.88 points, or 0.9 percent, to 1,308.77. The Dow slipped 46.57 points, or 0.4 percent, to 12,110.24. The Nasdaq composite index decreased 11.89, or 0.5 percent, to 2,243.87.

Caterpillar Inc., the largest maker of bulldozers, led industrial shares higher after boosting its sales forecast.
The S&P 500 is down 16 percent from its Oct. 9 record.

Sunoco fell $4.22, or 7.3 percent, to $53.27. The refiner was downgraded to "below average" from "above average," along with Frontier Oil Corp., Holly Corp., and Tesoro Corp. Refiner Valero Energy Corp. was cut to "average" from "above average."

ConocoPhillips slid $1.18 to $78.32 after saying higher costs for services and equipment prompted it to reduce its production target.

Energy shares in the S&P 500 lost 1.5 percent as a group, even as oil climbed to a record while the dollar weakened to an all-time low against the euro.

Retailers fell on the rally in crude. RadioShack Corp., the third-largest U.S. electronics chain, dropped 82 cents, or 5.1 percent, to $15.40. Circuit City Stores Inc. fell 19 cents, or 4.8 percent, to $3.78. Macy’s Inc. retreated 78 cents, or 3.3 percent, to $23.20.

Humana tumbled $6.50, or 14 percent, to $40.88 after cutting its 2008 earnings forecast to a range of $4 to $4.25 a share from a previously projected $5.35 to $5.55.

UnitedHealth Group Inc., the largest U.S. health insurer, retreated $1.56 to $36.68.

Financial stocks reversed earlier gains after New York Insurance Superintendent Eric Dinallo said in a Bloomberg Television interview that it’s "too early to say bonds insurers are out of the woods." MBIA Inc., the world’s biggest bond insurer, dropped 59 cents to $11.55. Ambac Financial Group Inc., the second-largest, fell 87 cents to $6.86. MGIC Investment Corp., the largest U.S. mortgage insurer, slid the most in the S&P 500, dropping $2.08, or 14 percent, to $12.92.

Northwest Airlines Corp. tumbled $1.98, or 16 percent, to $10.25. AMR plunged $1.36, or 13 percent, to $9.31. UAL Corp. fell $2.54, or 9.5 percent, to $24.29.

Delta Air Lines Inc. lost $1.98, or 16 percent, to $10.13. Continental Airlines Inc. declined $2.16 to $20.46.

Southwest Airlines Co. retreated 91 cents to $11.49 after grounding 41 of its Boeing 737s.

Caterpillar rose $2.64 to $75.25. The company increased its sales forecast for 2010 by 20 percent to $60 billion., exceeding analysts’ estimates, on growing demand from emerging markets.

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The U.S. trade deficit grew larger in January as imports, including crude-oil prices, zoomed to all-time highs.

The latest snapshot of trade activity, reported by the Commerce Department on Tuesday, showed the country’s trade gap increased to $58.2 billion. That was up from a trade shortfall of $57.9 billion in December.

Imports of goods and services climbed to a record high of $206.4 billion in January.

The trade gap widened even as exports of U.S.-made goods and services totaled a record high of $148.2 billion in January.
Federal officials say W.R. Grace and Co. has agreed to pay $250 million as reimbursement for government expenses in the investigation and cleanup of asbestos in Libby, Mont.

The U.S. Justice Department and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said Tuesday the sum is the highest in the history of the federal Superfund program of environmental cleanup.

The $250 million deal settles a claim the government filed to collect money for past and future costs of cleaning Libby schools, homes and businesses contaminated with asbestos.

Google Inc.’s long-anticipated acquisition of online ad service DoubleClick Inc. is expected to turn the Internet search leader into an even more powerful marketing vehicle.

The $3.1 billion deal, completed Tuesday after nearly a year of regulatory wrangling, also may intensify the pressure on Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc. to resolve their stormy courtship.

Google took control of DoubleClick a few hours after Europe’s antitrust regulators removed the final stumbling block by approving a deal that was announced 11 months ago.

U.S. regulators cleared the transaction in December.

A conservative group is ending its two-year boycott of Ford Motor Co. for donations to what it calls gay organizations.

Ford said Tuesday, however that it has decreased overall charitable spending and advertising in recent years because of financial losses.

The Tupelo, Miss.-based American Family Association says the automaker has met its conditions, including not making donations to gay organizations and ceasing almost all advertising in gay publications.

Ford said in a statement Tuesday that its principles haven’t changed.

A California appeals court said a woman who was paralyzed after her Ford Explorer rolled over is entitled to $82.6 million in damages from the carmaker.

The 4th District Court of Appeal was asked by the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case after Ford Motor Co. appealed the award, arguing that it was being punished even though the design of the vehicle met federal safety standards.

Benetta Buell-Wilson was driving on an interstate east of San Diego in January 2002 when she swerved to avoid a metal object and lost control of her 1997 Explorer, which rolled 4