Financial life in a big town

Online search leader Google Inc. is taking yet another stab at social networking, as it tries to go up against Facebook in this wildly popular and lucrative segment of the Internet. This time the project is called Google+ and it aims to make online sharing more like real life.

Other social networking tools make selective sharing within small groups difficult. They don’t allow for the nuances people are used to in offline communication because they call so many acquaintances “friends,” said Vic Gundotra, senior vice president of engineering at Google.

Many Facebook users, for instance, find it difficult to limit their status updates to small groups of people so their co-workers aren’t exposed to party photos or their parents aren’t privy to flirtatious posts on their “wall.” Though Facebook has tried to address this with a much-hyped “Groups” feature, it’s not clear how many people use it.

Google, which dominates Internet search with a firm hold on two-thirds of the U.S. market, has been experimenting with different social tools since late 2009. “Buzz” was one major mishap. The product was a social network attached to Google’s popular Gmail service, and it wound up exposing email contacts that users did not want to share. Google eventually agreed to submit to independent audits of its privacy controls every other year for the next two decades as part of a Federal Trade Commission settlement payday loans.

Google shut down another attempt at online sharing, Google Wave, last August after unveiling it with much fanfare in 2009.

More than a year in the works, the project Google unveiled Tuesday lets users share things with smaller groups of people through a feature called “Circles.” This means only college buddies, say, or your favorite co-workers can see the photos, links our updates that you post.

Altimeter Group analyst Charlene Li has high hopes for the friend grouping feature. She said her biggest pet peeve with Facebook is its existing friend management tools. She noted that millions of people already use Google to share things with others via email, and Google+ looks like a natural extension of this type of sharing, making it more functional and organized.

“I think Facebook is going to have to up its game,” she said.

Google+ is undergoing what the company calls a “field trial,” so it’s accessible by invitation only and not yet available to the public. The company declined to say when it’ll be more widely available.

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The Food and Drug Administration is conducting an independent review of research on the public health impact of menthol cigarettes.

The federal agency on Monday gave an update on its review of an advisory panel report on the minty smokes, one of the few growth sectors of the shrinking cigarette business.

That report said that removing menthol cigarettes from the market would benefit public health because the flavoring has led to an increase in smokers and makes quitting harder free 3-in-1 credit report. It also said the FDA should consider other factors, including that a ban could increase counterfeit and smuggled cigarettes.

The report submitted in March was mandated under the 2009 law giving the agency authority to regulate tobacco. The FDA can’t ban nicotine or tobacco, but can limit what goes into products.

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Stocks are ending another week lower than where they started.

The stock market fell Friday after poor earnings from technology companies suggested that companies are investing less as the economic recovery has slowed.

Europe’s debt woes continued to weigh on markets as well. Moody’s warned that it might downgrade the credit rating of some Italian banks.

The Dow dropped 115 points, or 1 percent, to 11,935. The S&P 500 lost 15 points, or 1.2 percent, to 1,268. The Nasdaq fell 34, or 1.3 percent, to 2,653.

It’s the seventh week out of the last eight that major indexes have fallen.

Two stocks fell for every one that rose on the New York Stock Exchange. Volume was slightly above average at 4.4 billion shares.

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Stepping directly into stalled debt talks, President Barack Obama is inviting Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Republican leader Mitch McConnell to separate meetings Monday, shifting the negotiations to the highest levels.

The White House meetings, announced Friday by press secretary Jay Carney, would seek to pick up where negotiations headed by Vice President Joe Biden left off. Republican negotiators abandoned those talks Thursday over Democrats’ insistence on including tax increases in any deficit-reduction plan.

McConnell has been demanding that Obama become personally involved in the budget discussions.

Congressional Republicans want to reach a deal on about $2 trillion in spending cuts over 10 years before agreeing to raise the nation’s borrowing limit, currently capped at $14.3 trillion. The Treasury Department has said it has until Aug. 2 before its ability to pay U.S. debt runs out.

Obama has repeatedly called for a “balanced framework” for long-term deficit reduction, saying cuts in spending are necessary but that additional tax revenue should also be part of the equation. Democrats insist that additional revenues be found by closing tax breaks, alongside the trillions of dollars in spending cuts.

House Speaker John Boehner on Friday ruled out any tax increase as part of a final budget deal.

In a statement following the White House invitation, McConnell said Obama needs to decide between tax hikes or a bipartisan agreement. “He can’t have both,” McConnell said.

“Sadly, the Democrats’ response has been a mystifying call for more stimulus spending and huge tax hikes on American job creators. That’s not serious, and it is my hope that the president will take those off the table on Monday so that we can have a serious discussion about our country’s economic future,” McConnell said.

The decision by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., and Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., to quit deficit-reduction talks as a critical deadline approaches set the stage for Obama to step in.

It had long been assumed that the Biden group would clear the way for more decisive talks personally involving Obama and Boehner. As a result, Cantor’s move was interpreted as trying to jump-start the talks rather than blow them up _ a view shared by Cantor himself.

“The purpose here is to alter the dynamic,” Cantor said.

In fact, Cantor’s withdrawal came after Boehner had already made a trek to the White House _ in a secret meeting Wednesday night that followed up on a golf outing with Obama over the weekend. For his part, Cantor didn’t inform Boehner of his decision to leave the talks until Thursday, shortly before the news broke.

The White House sought to put a positive spin on developments.

“As all of us at the table said at the outset, the goal of these talks was to report our findings back to our respective leaders,” Biden said in a statement. “The next phase is in the hands of those leaders, who need to determine the scope of an agreement that can tackle the problem and attract bipartisan support.”

For his part, Cantor said the secretive Biden-led talks had “established a blueprint” for agreement on significant cuts in spending.

One of the byproducts of Cantor’s departure was to provide an opportunity for partisans on all sides to make statements at odds with the positions they may have to take to achieve a deal. Democrats insist that at least some new revenues are needed _ both to soften spending cuts and to line up the Democratic votes needed to pass the measure.

“It will take Democratic votes to pass any debt-ceiling agreement,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. “As a result, certain things are going to have to be true. We cannot make cuts to Medicare benefits. We have to allow for revenues like wasteful subsidies for ethanol and oil companies. And we have to do something on jobs.”

Cantor said that plenty of progress has been made in identifying trillions of dollars in potential spending cuts to accompany legislation to raise the $14.3 trillion cap on the government’s ability to borrow money.

The Obama administration says passage of the legislation by Aug. 2 is necessary to meet the government’s obligations to holders of U.S. Treasurys. The alternative is a market-shaking, first-ever default on U.S. obligations.

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Ontario

The economy’s continuing struggles aren’t just confounding ordinary Americans. They’ve also stumped the head of the Federal Reserve.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke told reporters Wednesday that the central bank had been caught off guard by recent signs of deterioration in the economy. And he said the troubles could continue into next year.

“We don’t have a precise read on why this slower pace of growth is persisting,” Bernanke said. He said the weak housing market and problems in the banking system might be “more persistent than we thought.”

It was the Fed chief’s most explicit warning yet that the economy will face serious challenges next year. For several months, he had said the factors working against economic growth appeared to be “transitory.”

The Fed cut its forecast for economic growth this year to a range of 2.7 percent to 2.9 percent from an April forecast of 3.1 percent to 3.3 percent. It also cut its forecast for next year to a range of 3.3 percent to 3.7 percent from an earlier 3.5 percent to 4.2 percent. The Fed also said unemployment would stay higher than it had expected earlier.

In a policy statement issued at the end of a two-day meeting, the Fed blamed the worsening economic outlook in part on higher energy prices and the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, which slowed production of cars and other products.

But at a press conference afterward, the second of what the Fed says will be regular question-and-answer sessions with reporters, Bernanke conceded the economy’s troubles are more puzzling and potentially more long-lasting than a pair of temporary shocks.

The Fed announcement, at 12:30 p.m., had little effect on the stock and bond markets. Bernanke began speaking at 2:15, and stocks started falling at about 2:30, when he acknowledged that some of the economy’s problems could linger into next year. The Dow Jones industrial average closed down 80 points for the day.

The Fed’s statement Wednesday stood in contrast to the Fed’s more upbeat view when officials last met, eight weeks ago. At that time, the central bank said the job market was gradually improving.

Since then, the economic news has been gloomy. The government reported that the economy grew at an annual rate of only 1.8 percent in the first three months of the year. It isn’t expected to grow much faster in the current quarter. The economy added 54,000 jobs in May, far fewer than in the previous two months. Consumer spending has weakened, too.

The bad economic news is taking a political toll on President Barack Obama personal loans for people with bad credit. For the first time this year, an Associated Press-GfK poll found that fewer than 50 percent of respondents believe Obama deserves re-election. Obama’s overall approval rating fell to 52 percent in the new poll. It had risen as high as 60 percent after the U.S. raid last month in Pakistan that killed Osama bin Laden.

The new Fed statement acknowledged a slowdown over the past two months. “They see the weakness,” said Bruce McCain, chief investment strategist at Key Private Bank. “You can hear their concern about economic weakness despite their hope it is likely to be temporary.”

The Fed stuck to its plan to bring an end this month to a program to help the economy by buying $600 billion in government bonds. The Fed also intends to keep short-term interest rates near zero “for an extended period,” a phrase it has been using the past two years. Though the central bank noted that inflation has risen, it expects that to be temporary as well.

The Fed has kept rates at ultra-low levels since December 2008. Abandoning the promise to keep them there for an “extended period” would be viewed as a signal that the Fed is preparing to raise interest rates. Many private economists think it will be another full year before the economy has recovered enough for the Fed to do it.

Economists looking for clues to the Fed’s next move didn’t get much help Wednesday. “There’s no obvious hint of tightening here,” said Jim O’Sullivan, chief economist at MF Global. “There’s no hint of new easing.”

The bond-buying program has been controversial. Supporters say the bond purchases have kept interest rates low and encouraged spending. Low long-term rates make it easier to buy homes and cars and for companies to expand.

They also argue that those lower rates fueled a stock rally. Since Bernanke outlined plans for the program last August, the Standard & Poor’s 500 index is up 24 percent. Lower rates made stocks more attractive to investors than bonds, whose yields were falling.

The average rate on a 30-year mortgage has stayed below 5 percent for all but two weeks this year and was 4.5 percent last week. But low rates haven’t helped home sales much. They fell in May to the lowest level since November.

Critics, including some Fed officials, saw things differently. They warned that by pumping so much money into the economy, the Fed increased the risks of high inflation later.

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The Federal Reserve Board approved the Bank of Montreal’s application to buy Marshall & Ilsley Corp., which has a large presence in St. Louis.

The Bank of Montreal announced its plans to buy Milwaukee-based M&I in Dec. 2010 for $4.1 billion. The bank’s U.S. branches will be rebranded as BMO Harris Bank.   

M&I Bank is among the largest banks in the St. Louis area with more than 6 percent market share of deposits as of June 30, 2010. M&I acquired Southwest Bank in October 2002 and added the M&I name to its 17 local branches in 2008. The St. Louis area branches switched to the M&I name in mid-2010.

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If you don’t have enough money saved for retirement, you’ve got a few ways to close the gap between what you have and what you need in your nest egg: Save more, invest more aggressively, and/or work longer.

Working longer is indeed an option, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute’s latest study; the only problem is that you may have to work much longer than you anticipated.

In fact, many Americans will have to keep on working into their 70s and 80s to afford retirement, according to the study, titled “The Impact of Deferring Retirement Age on Retirement Income Adequacy.”

What’s more, it’s even worse for low-income workers, according to Jack VanDerhei, one of the study’s co-authors. Those who earned (on average over the course of their careers) less than $11,700 per year, the lowest income quartile, would need to defer retirement till age 84 before 90 percent of those households would have just a 50 percent chance of affording retirement.

Those who earned between $11,700 and $31,200 will need to work till age 76 to have a 50 percent chance of covering basic expenses in retirement Payday Loan for Bad Credit. Those who earned between $31,200 and $72,500 will need to work to age 72 to have a 50 percent chance.

Finally, those who earned more than $72,500, those in the highest income quartile, catch a break: They get to stop working at age 65 to have a 50/50 chance of funding their retirement.

So what can be done to make sure you have enough? The sad truth is that not working is no longer an option and working past age 65 is fast becoming a fact of life, at least for those in the lowest three income quartiles.

One bright spot, according to John Nelson, co-author of “What Color is Your Parachute? For Retirement” is that working works: “For those in the lower half of the income spectrum, delaying retirement from 65 to 69 has a profound effect,” he said.

“It increases retirement income adequacy by 25 percent to 50 percent! That’s a powerful incentive.”

The reality about EBRI’s findings is that many Americans

Royal Bank declined to comment Friday on a report that two U.S. banks were showing interest in acquiring the Canadian bank

Internet radio station Pandora Media’s IPO struck the right chord with investors Wednesday despite the static in the overall stock market.

Pandora’s stock surged by as much 63 percent in their market debut before pulling back later in the session. The shares closed at $17.42, still a decent gain amid the market’s broader decline. It marked a 9 percent increase from Pandora’s initial public offering price of $16 and a nearly six-fold increase from what Pandora’s own board thought the stock was worth just six months ago.

The performance shows the recent market slump hasn’t dampened the enthusiasm investors have for new stock offerings from rapidly growing Internet services.

The excitement began to build after shares of professional networking site LinkedIn Corp. more than doubled on their first day of trading last month. Now it looks like the fervor could escalate into an outright mania as even bigger Internet companies such as online coupon seller Groupon Inc., Web game maker Zynga and the biggest star of all, Facebook, go public during the next year or so.

“Everyone seems to be getting gold-rush fever,” said analyst Phil Leigh of Inside Digital Media. “People are starting to believe they can find gold in every stream or around every hill, but that’s not the reality.”

Pandora CEO Joseph Kennedy said he won’t allow his 360-employee company to get caught up in the hysteria. “I am not jumping up and down right now,” Kennedy said in a Wednesday interview. “I just see this as another step toward building a great company.”

Kennedy, 51, owns 4.2 million Pandora shares, a stake now worth about $74 million.

The warm Wall Street reception for Pandora pegged the company’s market value at $2.8 billion. That’s already more than the $2 billion market value of AOL Inc., an Internet pioneer hailed as a next great media powerhouse at the height of the dot-com boom 11 years ago.

Around the same time, Pandora was just starting out as a music recommendation company then known as Savage Beast Technologies.

Pandora adopted its current name in 2005 when it morphed into a new type of radio station that streams music over the Internet. What makes Pandora different from broadcast radio is that it can employ computer formulas to learn each of its individual listeners’ tastes in order to create personalized song lists.

The concept has been a hit with music lovers, helping Pandora build an audience of 94 million registered users who mostly listen to the service on home and office computer and mobile phones. The company, based in Oakland, Calif., is now striking deals to supplant traditional radio stations in cars, just as satellite service Sirius XM Radio Inc. already has done.

Unlike the subscription-driven Sirius, Pandora gets about 85 percent of its revenue from advertising. The rest of its revenue comes from subscribers who pay $36 annually to hear higher-quality sound without commercial interruptions.

Pandora’s biggest problem so far has been that its revenue is not growing fast enough to cover the royalties that it pays to play music. Those rates go up as Pandora attracts more listeners.

Pandora has suffered an uninterrupted string of losses totaling $92 million in its short lifetime, including a $6.8 million loss during the first three months of its current fiscal year before accounting for dividends on preferred stock.

“Unless they can continue to increase their subscribers or offer new material, obviously their losses will continue to grow,” predicted Scott Sweet, managing partner of IPOboutique personal loans for people with bad credit.com.

But Pandora’s revenue is rising rapidly, more than doubling in its fiscal first quarter to $51 million. If it can maintain that growth pace, Pandora’s revenue for the fiscal year ending next January would be about $325 million.

That means Pandora’s market value stands at 8.5 times its projected revenue. By comparison, Sirius’ market value of $7.7 billion is about 2.5 times its anticipated revenue for this year.

Pandora also is facing potential competitive threats from some of technology’s most powerful companies. Apple Inc., Google Inc., and Amazon.com Inc. all are offering to store people’s personal music collections on remote computers so the songs can be played on any device with an Internet connection. It wouldn’t be a surprise if any of those three companies expanded their music offerings to include a music recommendation service similar to Pandora’s, said analyst Martin Pyykkonen of Wedge Partners.

“There isn’t a big barrier to entry in this market,” Pyykkonen said.

Similar worries dogged Netflix Inc.’s video subscription service when the company went public in 2002. Many analysts thought Netflix would eventually be crushed by video rental store chain Blockbuster Inc. or another larger company such as Amazon.com or Wal-Mart Stores Inc., which once ran a competing DVD-by-mail service.

Blockbuster went bankrupt, Wal-Mart retreated from DVD-by-mail services and Amazon still hasn’t come up with a way to counter Netflix. Anyone who bought $10,000 worth of Netflix’s stock at its IPO price and held on to it would have a paper gain of about $330,000 so far.

The skepticism about Pandora’s prospects may be one reason the company’s shares didn’t soar as high as LinkedIn’s did. LinkedIn stock more than doubled from its IPO price in its first day of trading on May 19 to close at $94.25. The shares have since fallen more than 20 percent, closing Wednesday at $74.62. That’s still well above the $45 IPO price.

There’s another possible reason Pandora’s shares didn’t rise as much: the company’s investment bankers were more aggressive about raising the IPO price. Two weeks ago, the IPO price had been set at $7 to $9 per share before strong demand drove it up. After expenses, Pandora expects to get $85.5 million from selling 6 million shares in the IPO. Company insiders told a combined 8.7 million shares to cash out $139 million for themselves.

The current value of Pandora’s stock looks even more impressive, given the company’s board appraised the shares value at $3.14 in early December last year, according to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Pandora’s IPO also came in a rockier stock market than LinkedIn’s did.

A rash of ugly reports on the economy has helped push stock indexes down for six straight weeks, its worst stretch since 2008. Since LinkedIn completed its IPO, the tech-driven Nasdaq composite index has fallen more than 6 percent.

Internet IPOs, though, could still look attractive to investors desperately looking for bright spots amid the gloom.

“Companies like Pandora are growing despite the slow-growing economy,” said Kathleen Smith, a principal at Renaissance Capital, an IPO investment adviser. “That’s why investors have turned to them.”

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