Financial life in a big town

Kohl's Department Stores said Wednesday its same-store sales fell 5.8 percent in August.

Menomonee Falls, Wis.-based Kohl's (NYSE: KSS) said overall sales for the four-week period ending Sept. 1 increased 2.6 percent, to $1.26 billion, compared with $1.22 billion over the similar period in 2007.

For the fiscal year to date, Kohl's said total sales were up 2.6 percent, to $8.6 billion, compared with $8.4 billion in the same period a year earlier. On a comparable store basis, sales for the period decreased 5.6 percent.

Kevin Mansell, Kohl's president and CEO, said some back-to-school business such as footwear and children’s performed well while other areas, such as juniors and young men’s, were more challenging.

“As expected, August was more difficult than our expectations of a 2 to 4 percent comparable sales decrease for the third quarter," Mansell said.

As of Aug faxless payday loans. 30, the company operated 957 stores in 47 states, including Georgia, compared to 834 in 46 states at the same time last year.

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Euro area inflation fell in August from a record high, offering some relief as economic confidence plunged to the lowest level in five years, the European Commission said Friday.

Inflation dropped to 3.8 percent in August, down from a record high of 4 percent in June and July when prices for fuel and food rose sharply from a year ago, the EU statistics agency Eurostat said.

But businesses are gloomy about prospects ahead for the 15 nations that share the euro. Economic confidence fell again in August to 88.8 with industry, the construction sector and retailers more worried than they were last month.

The European economy is slowing as prices at the gas pump and grocery store soar and amid tight borrowing conditions triggered by the global credit crisis as well as a slowdown in major trading partners, Britain and the United States.

The EU figures add pressure on the European Central Bank to hold off an interest rate increase that would make borrowing more expensive and risk hurting a fragile economy payday loans lenders. It raised rates from 4 percent to 4.25 percent in June to try to contain rocketing inflation. 

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Despite Bill Clinton’s powerful endorsement of Barack Obama Wednesday night, there’s still plenty of resentment inside Team Hillary over the fact that she’s not on the ticket and her strategists aren’t on the campaign. But when it comes to economic policy, the Democrats are jelling into one big happy family.

Obama’s inner sanctum now includes Clinton Treasury Secretaries Lawrence Summers and Robert Rubin, former White House chief economist Laura Tyson, and - most recently - Gene Sperling, former White House adviser and chief economic policy wonk for Hillary Clinton during the primary season.

"Everyone who was with Hillary Clinton is now with us," Jason Furman, Obama’s economic policy director, tells Fortune. "The campaign has deepened and broadened its economic bench in the general election."

That bench also includes poverty expert Jared Bernstein of the Economic Policy Institute; Austan Goolsbee, the University of Chicago economist who has been at Obama’s side since the start of the race; and Georgetown University law professor Daniel Tarullo. Investor Warren Buffett and former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker top off the list of regular advisers. A larger circle also includes CEOs Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500), Indra Nooyi of PepsiCo (PEP, Fortune 500), and Eric Schmidt of Google (GOOG, Fortune 500).

Managing this team of large and accomplished egos is the 38-year-old Furman, a child of Greenwich Village (and liberal parents) who was so intellectually precocious he had to trek uptown to Columbia University for math and physics because his high school didn’t offer sufficiently advanced courses. He later obtained his PhD in economics from Harvard. Despite his relative youth, Furman so far seems adept at meshing the two campaign cultures. "These are good friends of mine," he says of the Clinton folks. (He could have substituted "former bosses of mine;" Furman once reported to Sperling, and later to Rubin.) After the primary campaign was over, he notes, "I reached out to them and they reached out to me."

Furman’s job is made easier by the fact that Clinton and Obama ran on virtually identical economic agendas. The biggest difference was that Clinton’s healthcare plan mandated that individuals be covered, and Obama’s didn’t cashadvance.com. Since the primary campaign ended, Obama has borrowed one Clinton idea - a healthcare tax credit for small business.

Furman runs the Obama economics shop through regular conference calls with advisers - coupled with ad hoc meetings to respond to news events. On July 13, after the plunge in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac share prices prompted the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department to consider intervention, Furman’s first call was to Summers. A conference call to a broader group followed. Then Furman reported the results to Obama. Within hours, the campaign issued a statement saying any government plan should "maintain a steady flow of capital to the housing market" and should protect taxpayers rather than bail out shareholders.

The politics of economics is hardly new territory for Furman. He was Kerry’s economic policy director in 2004 and worked on the Gore campaign in 2000. Before joining Obama in June, Furman was running the Hamilton Project, a centrist think tank founded by Rubin and former deputy Treasury Secretary Roger C. Altman.

Furman’s own reputation is as a centrist. When Obama tapped him there was a mini-uproar from the left wing of the party over his defense of Wal-Mart (WMT, Fortune 500) and free trade agreements. Furman reminded his critics of his work opposing efforts to privatize Social Security, and the storm settled.

"When Barack hired me," Furman says, "he told me my job was to be an honest broker and incorporate different points of view."

Now that he’s integrated Team Clinton into the campaign, that job is done. If Obama wins, Furman’s toughest (and potentially most influential) task comes when it’s time to advise the president on how to dole out all those prime government jobs - from Treasury Secretary on down. Those Clinton folks are no dummies on the workings of Washington: Being loyal and visible soldiers now means being front and center for the big titles later. 

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News and information publisher Thomson Reuters Corp reported slower revenue growth in its key Markets division as the U.S. credit crisis forced layoffs and budget cuts at global investment banks, sending its shares down 4.5 percent.

The company affirmed its 2008 outlook — citing resilience in the Professional division that sells databases and tools to accountants, lawyers, tax, health and other professionals — but investors worried that the real test would come when customers set their 2009 budgets.

Second-quarter pro forma revenue rose 11 percent from a year earlier to $3.4 billion, compared with the first quarter’s 12 percent increase to $3.3 billion.

The pro forma results assume Thomson and Reuters had been operating as one company in the second quarter of last year.

Markets division revenue rose 12 percent to $2.1 billion, but the closely watched organic growth rate — which excludes the impact of currency exchange fluctuations and acquisitions — was 7 percent, slower than the first quarter’s 9 percent.

Analysts had been looking for organic growth of 7 percent to 8 percent in the Markets division as the U.S http://payday-badcredit.com. subprime mortgage crisis and credit crunch have led to thousands of layoffs among firms that are Thomson Reuters’ clients.

“The results were not great. The market was pricing in half-decent figures and that’s what it got,” said Manoj Ladwa, a derivatives trader at TradIndex.

Thomson Corp of Canada bought London-based Reuters Group Plc in April this year for about $16 billion in cash and stock, aiming to expand its market beyond North America. For Reuters, the deal reduced its exposure to financial markets. 

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Personal income rose slightly in June after surging the previous month on the first wave of economic stimulus checks, the government reported Monday.

The Commerce Department said individual income increased by 0.1% in June after a revised 1.8% jump in May. Economists polled by Briefing.com were expecting a 0.1% decrease in June.

Personal spending in June increased by 0.6%, which was more than the 0.5% increase that economists polled expected.

However, the spending jump was driven by inflation. Individual spending, when adjusted for inflation, actually fell by 0.2% following a 0.3% increase in May, according to the report.

"Inflation is taking a pretty big bite out of the actual dollars," said Adam York, economic analyst at Wachovia. "It means that we are spending more dollars on gas, food, and things that are increasing in cost."

Another measure in the report that tracks prices that consumers pay on goods and services, excluding food and energy, rose by 0.3% over the previous month.

In addition, the core personal consumption expenditures index - a year-over-year inflation gauge that excludes food and energy - rose to 2.3% from 2.0% a year earlier. Core PCE was 2.2% in March, April and May. The Federal Reserve is widely believed to prefer that core PCE stay in a range of 1% to 2%.

While personal income rose in June, disposable income fell by 1.9%, after spiking up by 5.7% in May low fee cash advance. And in inflation adjusted dollars disposable income decreased by 2.6% after jumping 5.2% in May.

Disposable income is what consumers have left over after they pay taxes.

The drop-off in disposable income tracks a monthly decline in the amount of economic aid distributed by the federal government.

The Treasury Department sent out $48.1 billion in economic stimulus payments in May and $27.9 billion in June.

"The pattern of changes in income reflect the pattern of payments associated with the Economic Stimulus Act of 2008," according to the report.

Excluding stimulus rebate payments, disposable personal income actually increased by 0.3% in June after increasing by 0.4% in May.

"There is no way that the underlying trend increase could make up for the decline in the tax rebate payments," said York. 

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Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc is expected to follow in Merrill Lynch & Co Inc’s footsteps and sell a lot of risky assets at a loss. But shedding the assets may create another headache for Lehman — the need to raise large amounts of new capital, including common equity.

Any capital raise would be painful for Lehman and its shareholders, given that the company just raised $6 billion in June and trades at a significant discount to its book value, or the net accounting value of its assets.

But Lehman, the fourth-largest U.S. investment bank, may have little choice as it wrestles with roughly $65 billion in mortgage-related assets, particularly after Merrill Lynch agreed to shed $30.6 billion in toxic assets at a fire-sale price of 22 cents in the dollar, analysts said.

“Lehman’s caught between a rock and a hard place. They’re getting more and more pressure from regulators and investors to add reserves or mark these things down,” said David Hendler, an analyst at independent research firm CreditSights in New York.

“In normal times, they could wait it out, but the market wants it done now,” Hendler added.

The New York Post reported on Friday that Lehman was talking to potential buyers about selling $30 billion in assets payday loans. CNBC television reported Friday that Lehman was in talks with BlackRock Inc to sell mortgage securities and other assets. Both Lehman and BlackRock declined to comment.

Lehman’s chief financial officer told Merrill analyst Guy Moszkowski recently that the investment bank was willing to sell assets at a loss if the deal materially reduced risk, the analyst said in a report.

Lehman had roughly $65 billion in mortgage and real estate-related assets on its balance sheet as of May 31. 

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An emergency move by U.S. securities regulators this week aimed at curbing manipulative short-selling in some major financial firms should be expanded to all publicly traded banks, or it could erode confidence in the banking industry, a top trade group said.

A letter from the American Bankers Association to the Securities and Exchange Commission this week stressed that banks could be vulnerable as they are suffering from the financial turmoil stemming from the downturn in the U.S housing market.

“The emergency order could further exacerbate a loss of confidence in the safety and soundness of this country’s banking industry,” ABA President Ed Yingling said in a Thursday letter to the SEC.

“As the commission is aware, it would be an understatement to say that short interest in financial services companies has greatly increased over the year,” Yingling said.

On Friday the SEC, the U.S. markets watchdog, amended its action from earlier in the week but limited the protection to 19 firms including U.S. housing finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac whose shares plunged on concerns they were undercapitalized.

The rule also applies to the stocks of 17 Wall Street firms, primary dealers that have access to the Federal Reserve’s discount window, such as Citigroup Inc (C.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and Lehman Brothers (LEH.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz).

Short selling is a legitimate strategy where the investor arranges to borrow shares they consider overvalued and sell them in hopes of profiting when the price drops payday loan low fee. A naked short occurs when an investor sells stock that has not yet been borrowed.

Wall Street, which was thrown off guard when the SEC announced the emergency rule on Tuesday, and U.S. stock exchanges applauded the rule modifications and guidance. But the ABA wanted the SEC protection expanded to all banks and their holding companies that are publicly traded. 

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WASHINGTON–Worker productivity increased at a faster pace in the first three months of this year than previously estimated, while wage pressures moderated.

The Labor Department reported Wednesday that productivity rose at an annual rate of 2.6 per cent in the January-March period, faster than the government's initial estimate of 2.2 per cent made a month ago.

Wage pressures, meanwhile, moderated from the final three months of last year with unit labor costs rising at an annual rate of 2.2 per cent in the first quarter. That was a marked slowdown from a 4.7 per cent surge in labor costs in the final three months of last year.

While rising wages and benefits are good for employees, those increases can lead to higher inflation if businesses are forced to boost the cost of their products to cover the higher payroll costs. However, if productivity is increasing, it allows businesses to finance higher wages out of the increased output.

The Federal Reserve, always on guard about the threat of inflation, closely monitors developments in productivity since wage pressures are often the main way inflation gets out of control.

The 2.6 per cent rate of growth in productivity was a significant improvement from a 1.8 per cent increase in the final four months of last year. The 2.2 per cent rise in labor costs, unchanged from the initial estimate a month ago, marked a sharp slowdown from a 4.7 per cent rate of growth in labor costs in the fourth quarter of last year.

Those developments should be welcomed by the Fed, which has started to worry more about inflation pressures in the face of a relentless surge in energy and food costs payday loans. The Fed cut rates for a seventh time on April 30, but the reduction was a smaller quarter-point move. The central bank indicated the rate cuts could be drawing to a close as the attention shifted from worrying about keeping the country out of a steep recession to concerns about inflation.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke discussed his inflation concerns in a speech on Tuesday, worrying that a rapid rise in prices, if sustained, "might lead the public to expect higher long-term inflation rates, an expectation that ultimately could become self-confirming.''

Bernanke's remarks were seen as a strong signal that the Fed is through cutting interest rates and may start raising rates later this year as a way to battle inflation pressures.

The Fed wants to make sure that soaring energy costs don't produce higher wage pressures that could trigger a disastrous wage-price spiral like the country experienced in the 1970s.

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General Motors Corp (GM.N: Quote, Profile, Research) expects the recovery in the U.S. auto market will be “a long haul” that only begins in the second half of the year, a senior executive at the No. 1 U.S. automaker said on Wednesday.

The market comments by Mark LaNeve, vice president for sales for GM North America, were the first by a top GM executive since Ford Motor Co (F.N: Quote, Profile, Research) cut its outlook for U.S. sales last week, citing rising gas prices and sharply lower demand for its trucks and SUVs.

“I think it’s going to be a long haul,” LaNeve said at an industry conference in Los Angeles, when asked when he expected U.S. auto sales to recover. “We think it starts to get better in the back half of the year.”

But LaNeve said the battered U.S. housing market and consumer confidence would have to both improve to support a rebound for auto sales.

“We don’t look for it to come roaring back instant payday loan. We think it will be a slow ramp up,” LaNeve said at the event in Los Angeles sponsored by Automotive News.

U.S. sales for GM are down almost 17 percent for the first four months of the year, compared with a decline of about 8 percent for industrywide sales.

Most analysts now see U.S. sales of cars and light trucks dropping to near 15 million units in 2008, down from about 16.15 million in 2007 and the lowest annual tally for the industry since 1994.

GM said in late April when it announced a $3 billion first-quarter loss that it would face a slower recovery in its home market than it had first forecast and a faster shift out of higher margin trucks and SUVs in response to higher gas prices. 

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Time Warner Inc (TWX.N: Quote, Profile, Research) will completely split with Time Warner Cable Inc (TWC.N: Quote, Profile, Research) by the end of the year, and receive a $9.25 billion payout, to separate its media content and distribution businesses.

The plan will break up a two-decade marriage of traditional distribution and content, a strategic combination of assets that has fallen out of favor on Wall Street as big media corporations compete with faster-moving Internet companies.

Left unanswered is how Time Warner Inc’s 85 percent ownership of Time Warner Cable will be distributed to Time Warner Inc shareholders. Details will be decided closer to the closing of the deal in the fourth quarter, executives said.

The long-expected move lifted Time Warner Inc shares 2 percent in morning trading on the New York Stock Exchange, while Time Warner Cable shares rose 3.5 percent.

Wall Street has clamored for the once top media company to streamline its focus as a pure media content company — with the Warner Bros movie studios, Time Inc magazines and Turner cable networks — and stem a stock-price decline.

It will also leave Time Warner Inc more time to determine what to do with its AOL Internet division, whose growth has been eclipsed by Web leaders like Google Inc (GOOG.O: Quote, Profile, Research) and Yahoo Inc (YHOO.O: Quote, Profile, Research) us fast cash. Time Warner Inc has continued to discuss with Yahoo and Microsoft (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) a transaction to sell, spin off or merge its AOL division, sources have said.

“Two independent companies will have better long-term strategic, financial and operational flexibility, something we believe is of growing importance,” Time Warner Inc Chief Executive Jeffrey Bewkes told analysts on a conference call.

Investors will be eager to hear how Time Warner plans to invest the payout for the media company. 

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