Financial life in a big town

JetBlue is reviving its unlimited travel deal, which for one month allows travelers to fly anywhere they want, as much as they want.

The offer, which JetBlue (JBLU) originally debuted last year, is on sale through Aug. 20 and is good for travel between Sept. 7 and Oct. 6.

Jet setters can choose between two deals: a $699 package that allows them to travel any day of the week to any of Jet Blue’s 60 domestic and international travel destinations; or a $499 package that excludes travel on Fridays and Sundays.

Jet Blue spokeswoman Allison Croyle said that last year’s program "far exceeded expectations" and was "the most successful promotion in our company’s history." But she would not say how many packages were sold or how much money the airline made because she didn’t want to reveal this information to competitors. She did explain, though, that on the first day of the offer visitors to JetBlue’s route map surged 860%.

"I think it was very successful because it sold out sooner than they expected," George Hobica, air travel expert and president of Airfarewatchdog instant payday loan.com. He added: "The equivalent in advertising value was enormous. It’s a brilliant marketing ploy."

The price of the most expensive option has gone up since last year, when JetBlue offered its seven-day package for $599. Hobica said that it’s a better deal this year, even with the extra $100 charge, because fares are more expensive compared to 2009.

Hobica noted that JetBlue was offering the deal during a "very, very slow period" for travel. He also said the airline was offering the deal one week later than it did last year.

"I wonder if the Steven Slater incident delayed it," said Hobica, referring to the JetBlue steward who cursed out a plane full of passengers, deployed the emergency escape chute, and slid down to the tarmac, beer in hand.

JetBlue spokesman Steve Stampley, however, said the timing for the deal was "driven by the sequence of events in our marketing and activity calendars." 

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Public but personal details from more than 170 million Facebook profiles were harvested from the site and made available in a downloadable torrent file this week.

Ron Bowes, a security researcher and blogger, wrote a software program to scan Facebook’s public directory of profiles. Users can choose to opt out of that directory, but most stick with Facebook’s default setting and allow their name and a few other personal details to publicly searchable.

"Once I have the name and URL of a user, I can view, by default, their picture, friends, information about them, and some other details," Bowes wrote on his blog at SkullSecurity.org.

Bowes’ exploit did not involve breaching users’ privacy settings or obtaining any passwords, and all of the information he gathered is openly available on Facebook’s site. However, the sheer size of his data haul is significant: Bowes’ chunky 2.8 gigabyte file includes names and URLs for 171 million Facebook profiles. Facebook has an active user population of 500 million.

Bowes created a torrent for his cache, making it available through sites such as Pirate Bay. He also did some preliminary data mining: Facebook’s most-common user name is "jsmith," and the most popular first names on the site are Michael, John and David, Bowes found.

While Bowes called the information’s easy accessibility "a scary privacy issue," Facebook downplayed his exploit.

"This information already exists in Google, Bing, other search engines, as well as on Facebook. No private data is available or has been compromised," Facebook said in a statement. "Similar to the white pages of the phone book, this is the information available to enable people to find each other, which is the reason people join Facebook."

The company reiterated that its privacy controls allow users to adjust their settings so that they do not appear in a search on Facebook or through search engines.

Though the information Bowes culled is public, his approach still violated Facebook’s terms of service. The site prohibits collecting user information "through automated means," which includes harvesting scripts like the one Bowes created.

Facebook is typically aggressive in cracking down on policy violators. The company said Wednesday that it deleted all applications created by Pencake, a top outside developer whose widgets were used by 45 million Facebook members, because Pencake broke Facebook’s rules.

But Bowes doesn’t seem concerned. He’s already planning the next phase of his Facebook data dive. Bandwidth constraints stopped him from gathering users’ public photos and other openly available details, this time around.

"So far, I have only indexed the searchable users, not their friends," he wrote in his blog. "I’d like to tackle that in the future, though, so if anybody has any bandwidth they’d like to donate, all I need is an ssh account and Nmap installed." 

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Stocks end little changed Thursday, erasing bigger losses after weaker than expected reports on the economy revived worries about growth.

The Dow Jones industrial average (INDU) lost a few points and broke its seven-day winning streak. The S&P 500 (SPX) index ended just above breakeven, and the Nasdaq (COMP) composite lost a few points.

Stocks tumbled through most of the session, but managed to cut losses near the close thanks to a late-session advance in financial and commodity shares.

After the close, Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) reported quarterly earnings that missed forecasts on revenue that beat estimates, sending shares lower in after-hours trading.

JPMorgan’s profit report added to bets that quarterly earnings will hold up despite the slower growing economy. But that wasn’t enough to distract investors from a spate of mixed-to-weaker economic reports, particularly in the aftermath of a big rally over the past week.

"We’re coming off a strong rally over the last few days that was earnings driven," said Kim Caughey, senior equity analyst at Fort Pitt Capital Group. "Today we took a rest from looking at the earnings and took another look at the economy."

On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve lowered its forecast for GDP growth this year. On Thursday, a report showed that weekly jobless claims fell to a two-year low — but continuing claims, a measure of long-term joblessness, rose. Weak reports on manufacturing in the New York and Philadelphia regions added to the jitters.

China also reported strong GDP growth of 10.3% in the second quarter. Still, that fell short of the 11.9% growth recorded in the first quarter.

On Thursday afternoon, the Senate approved the most far-reaching financial reform bill since the 1930s, which President Obama is expected to sign into law next week.

The legislation is designed to limit big banks, protect consumers and prevent the future reoccurrence of financial crises like the one that hit in 2008.

Results: Dow component JPMorgan Chase posted a second-quarter profit of $4.8 billion, or $1.09 per share, trouncing expectations. The bank’s strength in the quarter was due partly to a decline in the number of consumers defaulting on loans. However, JPMorgan’s shares slipped amid the broader market selloff.

"It’s great to have earnings surprises but what we really need to see are companies issuing upbeat forecasts for the second half of the year," she said.

Earnings for the S&P 500 are expected to have risen 28% versus a year ago, according to the latest from earnings tracker Thomson Reuters.

Economy: The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment last week fell to 429,000, the lowest level since August 2008. Economists surveyed by Briefing.com thought claims would drop to 450,000 from a revised 458,000 in the previous week.

However, the drop in weekly claims was largely a result of seasonal factors. Continuing claims, a measure of Americans who have been receiving benefits for a week or more, rose to 4,681,000 from 4,434,000 in the previous week payday loans with no fax. Economists surveyed by Briefing.com thought claims would fall to 4,400,000.

The NY Fed-Empire Manufacturing survey plunged to 5.08 in July from 19.57 in June, surprising economists who were expecting it to dip to 18.

The Philadelphia Fed index fell to 5.1 in July from 8.0 in June, surprising economists who thought that manufacturing activity would rise to 10.0.

The Producer Price Index (PPI), which measures wholesale inflation, fell 0.5% in June after falling 0.3% in May. Economists thought it would fall 0.1%. The so-called core PPI, which strips out volatile food and energy prices, rose 0.1%. Economists expected it to rise 0.1% after it rose 0.2% last month.

Industrial production rose 0.1% in June after rising 1.3% in May. Economists thought it would hold steady. Capacity utilization held steady at 74.1% in June, versus forecasts for a rise to 74.2%.

On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve lowered its forecast for GDP this year to a range of between 3% and 3.5% versus the previous forecast of a range of 3.2% to 3.7%.

BP: Shares of the beleaguered oil company rallied 7.5% after BP (BP) said that it has managed to temporarily stop the flow of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, nearly three months after the explosion that caused the leak.

Company news: Private-equity firm Carlyle Group is buying vitamin maker NBTY (NTY) in a $3.8 billion cash deal that values NBTY’s shares at $55 per share, a 47% premium above the stock’s closing price Wednesday. Shares gained 43%.

World markets: European markets fell, with Britain’s FTSE 100 down 0.8%, Germany’s DAX off 1% and France’s CAC 40 down 1.4%.

Asian markets ended lower. Japan’s Nikkei fell 0.1%, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng lost 0.2% and the Shanghai Composite fell 1.6%.

Currencies: The euro gained versus the dollar, hitting a two-month high. The dollar fell versus the Japanese yen.

Commodities: U.S. light crude oil for August delivery rose 26 cents to $76.88 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

COMEX gold for August delivery gained $1.20 to $1,209.50 an ounce.

Bonds: Treasury prices rose, lowering the yield on the 10-year note to 2.98% from 3.05% late Wednesday. Debt prices and yields move in opposite directions.

Market breadth: Breadth was negative. On the New York Stock Exchange, losers beat winners by a narrow margin on volume of 1.12 billion shares. On the Nasdaq, decliners beat advancers 2 to 1 on volume of 1.99 billion shares.

How much of a hit did you take in the recent correction? Are you worried about a bear market? What changes have you made in your portfolio and what changes do you plan on making for the rest of the year? E-mail your story to realstories@cnnmoney.com and you could be featured in an upcoming article. For the CNNMoney.com Comment Policy, click here. 

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Birmingham stocks closed a tough week Friday with none of the local companies posting gains for the week.

Book retailer Books-A-Million (Nasdaq: BAMM) took the biggest hit with a 15 percent decrease for the week. It opened Monday at $6.57 to close at $5.57 on Friday.

The stock price for Colonial Properties Trust (NYSE: CLP) dropped around 11 percent to close the week at $13.89. It opened on Monday at $15.66.

Regions Financial Corp (NYSE: RF) ended the week at $6 .24 after opening at $6.95.

Superior Bank (Nasdaq: SUPR) saw its prices fall 10 percent to $2.03 after starting the week at $2.26.

Meanwhile, prices for HealthSouth (NYSE: HLS) were down 8 percent to close the week at $17.71. It opened Monday at $19.43.

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RxMedic, a maker of automated pill dispensing systems used in pharmacies, has been purchased by J M Smith, a South Carolina company that provides various products and services to the pharmacy industry.

J M Smith, based in Spartanburg, S.C., closed on its purchase of privately held RxMedic in late May, says RxMedic Senior Director Chris Cox. J M Smith had been one of the investors in the Raleigh company.

RxMedic, incorporated in 2007, sells its pill dispensing systems in North and South Carolina and parts of Virginia, Tennessee and Georgia. Cox said J M Smith’s purchase of the company gives it a better opportunity to grow because it can tap into J M Smith’s national sales and marketing force bad credit payday advance.Cox declined to disclose RxMedic’s revenue. The company’s competition includes Durham-based Parata Systems.

With the sale of the RxMedic, former CEO Alan Winchester has left the company. RxMedic currently employs 15. Cox says all of the remaining employees will be retained by the company and additional workers could be hired for its manufacturing operations in coming months. Cox said the number of workers the company hires depends on sales of the product.

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The Illinois Senate Labor Committee has approved legislation authorizing a controversial plan to divert sales taxes to finance developer Bruce Holland’s construction of a $380 million, 400-acre entertainment, retail and restaurant project in Marion, Ill.

Rep. John Bradley, D-Marion, and Sen. Gary Forby, D-Benton, sponsored the bill. The legislation now heads to the full Senate for consideration. The Illinois House of Representatives approved the legislation earlier this month by a vote of 79-35.

The development, which will include a mix of destination and entertainment businesses, retail stores and restaurants, has the potential to create 6,000 jobs during construction and 5,685 full-time jobs when completed, Holland said.

Holland, with Millennium Development and Holland Construction, scaled back the project, originally intended for Glen Carbon, Ill., and moved it south after Metro East lawyers blasted it and argued it would drain their tax bases.

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Fewer cities reported severe unemployment in February, according to a government report released Wednesday.

There were 29 metropolitan areas that reported unemployment rates at or above 15% in February, down from 35 in January, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported.

California and Michigan continue to report the hardest hits, as they have for months. Of the cities with jobless rates of 15% or more, 13 were in California and four were in Michigan.

Among metro areas with populations of 1 million or more, Detroit reported the highest jobless rate at 15.3%, while Riverside, Calif., was second at 14.7%.

Meanwhile, New Orleans, Oklahoma City and Washington, D.C., had the lowest jobless rates among the big cities, all reporting rates below 7%.

El Centro, Calif., which is highly affected by seasonal agriculture jobs, continued to post the highest unemployment rate at 27.2%, followed by two other mid-sized agricultural areas in California: Merced at 22.1% and Yuba City at 21.6%.

The Labor Department’s Metropolitan Area Employment and Unemployment Summary breaks out unemployment rates by city and lags the nationwide jobs report by about a month.

The Labor Department’s latest national report, released on Friday, showed the U.S. economy gained 162,000 jobs in March, more than any other month in the last three years. The unemployment rate remained stubbornly high, holding steady at 9.7%. 

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Lines reportedly thinned out quickly at Best Buy and Apple Inc. stores Saturday but when the dust had settled on the iPad's first day of sales an estimated 600,000 to 700,000 had been sold.

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster's issued that assessment of sales in stores and pre-orders, doubling his pre-launch estimate.

The first iPhone took 74 days to hit 1 million sales, while the subsequent iPhone 3G and Phone 3GS both hit the million mark in three days.

Fortune reported that as of 7:30 Saturday night, only one of the 20 stores contacted by Munster's team said they had run out of iPads.

Twitter messages on Sunday morning however reported sellouts at many Best Buys and some Apple stores, including in Palo Alto and San Jose.

The 9.7-inch touch-screen iPads sold over the weekend are priced starting at $499 and for now include only the ability to connect to the Internet via Wi-Fi.

Versions that are also capable of running on AT&T's 3G wireless network are scheduled to go on sale at the end of the month.

CEO Steve Jobs, his wife and daughter visited the Palo Alto Apple store themselves, while co-founder Steve Wozniak made another of his celebrated "regular guy" visits to a company store at Valley Fair mall in San Jose.

Tech blogger Robert Scoble posted a video on YouTube of what it was like to be the first iPad customer at the Apple store in Palo Alto.

The Better Business Bureau cautioned that scams have cropped up around the country in connection with the iPad launch, some of which offer victims a free iPad in exchange for a consumer's credit card number or other personal information.

The BBB said consumers should buy their iPad directly from Apple or an authorized retailer.

Click here to read more Business Journal stories about the iPad launch.

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Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told a congressional panel Thursday that the economy still needs some help, but acknowledged the need to begin to tighten credit to prevent inflation at some point.

"The economy continues to require the support of accommodative monetary policies," Bernanke said Thursday. "However, we have been working to ensure that we have the tools to reverse, at the appropriate time, the currently very high degree of monetary stimulus."

In prepared testimony, Bernanke explained to the House Financial Services Committee how the Fed intends to roll back emergency liquidity programs. He repeated some points made last month in remarks the Fed released after his scheduled appearance was postponed due to a snowstorm.

Bernanke re-affirmed Thursday that the Federal Open Markets Committee expects conditions are "likely to warrant exceptionally low levels of the federal funds rate for an extended period."

He added that the Fed has tools to counter inflation "at the appropriate time," he said, although he didn’t suggest when the appropriate time might be.

For the last 18 months, the Fed has bought mortgages, long-term Treasurys and the debt of mortgage finance firms Fannie Mae (FNM, Fortune 500) and Freddie Mac. (FRE, Fortune 500)

Bernanke laid out a plan to sell some of those mortgages, Treasurys and debt, by offering what’s called reverse repurchasing agreements bad credit pay day loans. Under those agreements, the Fed sells its securities to a third party while agreeing to rebuy them at some point in the future.

The second way the Fed plans to soak up money is to sell banks and financial firms the equivalent of certificates of deposit. In this case, the Fed gets a chunk of the bank’s reserves in exchange for paying interest at a steady rate.

Concern about mortgage markets

These deposits would be auctioned off and banks couldn’t count their investment in the Fed as cash or reserves.

One such exit that the Fed has begun is unwinding certain credit programs, including the Fed’s purchase of mortgage-backed securities, one of several credit markets that froze up at the start of the crisis.

Expressing concerns that the market for mortgage-backed securities won’t return, several lawmakers asked Bernanke if ending such a program will lead to problems in the housing industry, including hikes in mortgage interest rates.

Bernanke acknowledged that "mortgage rates might pop back up," but that, so far, "there seems to be very little negative reaction."

"While that market has not completely returned to normal, we’ve seen considerable improvement," he said. 

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Shares of Blockbuster Inc. sank 30 percent Wednesday after the video rental chain warned that it may have to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

Competition from DVD-by-mail company Netflix Inc. and DVD vending machines operated by Coinstar Inc. have eroded the Dallas company’s revenue even as it staggers under a heavy debt load.

Blockbuster said in a regulatory filing late Tuesday that it was suffering "significant liquidity constraints" and could have to file for bankruptcy protection if it was unable to convince creditors to restructure a big chunk of its debt or business continued to deteriorate.

The company has had to close about 1,300 stores and wants to shut down hundreds more. It had about 5,200 stores worldwide in January, excluding franchised shops. About 3,500 of those were in the U.S.

The company is trying to update its business, setting up video-rental kiosks like those run by Coinstar and offering a DVD-mailing service. It added 2,000 kiosks in 2009 and expects to have more than 10,000 by the middle of this year — but NCR Corp., which operates the kiosks, is "under no obligation" to install or run them, Blockbuster said bad credit personal loan lenders.

Blockbuster is also pursuing several measures to help shore up cash. It wants to sell some of its international business, and it is pursuing a debt-for-equity swap to help alleviate its debt burden. It wants to swap all or part of its senior subordinated notes for common stock. It said it owed $975 million under senior secured notes and senior subordinated notes as of Jan. 3. Even if the swap goes through, it could significantly dilute current shareholders.

Meanwhile, the company predicts further declines in its sales. The chain said it expects a key sales measure to drop in the mid-single digits to high single digits in 2010 — and a "further deterioration" could leave it unable to service its debt, leading to default.

The company’s key sales measure sank 16 percent in the fourth quarter — a dismal holiday season performance despite higher advertising. It lost $435 million compared to a loss of $360 million in the last three months of 2008.

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