My finance view

MARMORA, ONT.

Maybe the global economy isn’t in such bad shape after all.

After weeks of worries about the economy pulled stocks down, indexes have risen sharply for two days in a row.

The Dow Jones industrial average rose more than 120 points in midday trading Tuesday, thanks in part to signs that concerns of a global slowdown may be overblown. Quarterly results from Nike Inc. bested analysts’ expectations helped spark a rally in stocks of clothing stores, restaurants and jewelers. Such companies tend to do well when consumers are less worried about things like high gas prices and are willing to spend on themselves.

Other industries that do well during periods of economic expansion led the stock market higher. Caterpillar Inc., one of the 30 stocks that make up the Dow, gained the most, rising 2.3 percent. Industrials gained 1.2 percent overall. Consumer discretionary companies gained 1.6 percent.

Signs that the housing market is improving helped lift Home Depot Inc., a company that benefits when consumers spend money on home improvement. Home Depot gained 2.1 percent following a report that home prices rose in April in 13 of the 20 cities tracked by the Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller index. The index rose for the first time in eight months thanks to an annual push to buy homes in the spring.

The long slump in the housing market has been a drag on the U.S. economic recovery. Housing usually leads the economy out of recessions. But that hasn’t been the case with the current recovery, which began in June 2009 Low fee payday loans.

A decline in U.S. consumer confidence to a seven-month low, largely because of worries about jobs, did not slow down the gains in stocks.

The Dow gained 121 points, or 1 percent, to 12.164 in afternoon trading. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index rose 14, or 1.1 percent, to 1,294. The Nasdaq composite index added 34, or 1.3 percent, to 2,722.

Signs that the Greece may be making progress in its debt crisis also boosted markets. Greek lawmakers are debating austerity measures that must be passed to secure the next installment of emergency loans from international lenders. On Monday French banks agreed to accept slower repayment on Greek debts, another key step in avoiding a Greek debt default.

Among U.S. companies, Accenture rose 3.5 percent after S&P announced that the company would be added to its S&P 500 index. And tobacco company Altria Group fell 2 percent after the Food and Drug Administration announced it is reviewing research to determine the public health impact of menthol cigarettes.

Government bond prices fell as investors put a greater value on riskier assets like stocks. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury rose to 3.03 percent from 2.93 percent Monday. Bond yields rise when prices fall. Bond yields fell to their lowest level of the year last week due to concerns that Greece’s debt problems would spread to other European countries.

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Top U.S. and Indian officials are discussing economic cooperation and financial sector reforms that could promote American investment in the fast-growing Asian country.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is hosting Indian Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee for the second annual meeting of the U.S.-India Economic and Financial Partnership.

The central bank chiefs and top regulators are also attending. A conference on Monday will be followed by formal talks at the Treasury on Tuesday instant credit report.

Among the issues for discussion will be how to finance the development of India’s creaking infrastructure, which offers major opportunities for U.S. companies.

The U.S. is gently urging India to expedite economic reforms that could prove politically unpopular in India.

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French and British food safety officials on Saturday were investigating seeds from a British company linked to an E. coli outbreak near Bordeaux.

France halted the sale of fenugreek, mustard and arugula sprout seeds from British seed and plant vendor Thompson & Morgan after eight people were hospitalized following an E. coli outbreak. French investigators found that two of them were sickened after consuming sprouts from the three seed types in the southwestern town of Begles, a suburb of Bordeaux.

Some of those affected were infected by the same strain of E. coli that has killed 44 people _ all but one in Germany _ and sickened more than 3,700 in recent weeks.

The company cautioned the link was unsubstantiated, arguing in a statement that it believed that “something local in the Bordeaux area, or the way the product has been handled and grown, is responsible for the incident rather than our seeds.”

The company said it understood that French officials were still testing the seeds and investigating how they were grown. In the meantime, Thompson & Morgan said it had submitted samples of its seeds to British health authorities for investigation.

A spokesman for Britain’s Food Safety Agency said that officials “don’t have definitive evidence that the company is the source of the contamination” and that an investigation was ongoing. He noted that European health authorities have misattributed the source of E. coli outbreaks in the past. Spanish cucumbers, for example, were wrongly blamed for the illnesses in Germany.

The food safety official spoke on condition of anonymity, in line with department policy.

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Rank Company Profit Margin

1 Commerce Bancshares 19.5%

2 Cass Information Systems 19.3%

3 Sigma-Aldrich 16.9%

4 Young Innovations 14.5%

5 First Clover Leaf Financial 13.7%

6 Amdocs 11.5%

7 Peabody Energy 11.3%

8 Synergetics USA 11.0%

9 Monsanto 10.6%

10 FutureFuel 10.5%

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Morgan Keegan & Co. is paying $200 million to settle civil fraud charges that it overstated the value of mortgage investments just as the housing market was collapsing and lured buyers in with false sales materials.

Federal and state regulators said the Memphis-based investment firm failed to use “reasonable” procedures to calculate the value of the investments. Half of the money will go toward compensating investors in five states loan for people with bad credit.

The Securities and Exchange Commission, regulators in five states and securities industry regulators announced the settlement Wednesday. Two former employees of the firm also agreed to pay civil penalties.

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The Federal Reserve acknowledged that the economy is growing more slowly than it expected. But it plans to complete its $600 billion Treasury bond buying program by the end of the month.

Concluding a two-day meeting, the Fed repeated a pledge to keep interest rates at record lows for “an extended period.” But it believes the main causes of the slowdown, such as high gas prices, are temporary and announced no new efforts to stimulate the economy.

As expected, the central bank said it would keep its massive holdings of Treasury bonds at current levels, an action designed to keep consumer and business loan rates at low levels.

Bernanke and his colleagues are trying to keep a fragile economy on track two years after the Great Recession officially ended.

A sharp spike in gasoline prices earlier this year has made consumers and businesses more cautious about spending. Unemployment is rising again and employers pulled back on hiring in May. Economic growth slowed to 1.8 percent in the first three months of the year. It is not expected to be much higher in the current quarter.

Bernanke has maintained that the slowdown is temporary. He predicts the economy should pick up later this year as the impact of high gas prices and supply disruptions caused by the March earthquake and tsunami in Japan abate. However, the Fed is now confronting renewed jitters that a debt crisis in Greece could spread to other heavily indebted European nations and send shockwaves through U.S. and global financial markets.

The Fed has kept rates at ultra-low levels since December 2008. When the Fed decides to abandon the “extended period” language, it would be viewed as a signal that the Fed was getting ready to reverse course and start boosting interest rates. Many private economists believe it will be another full year before the economy has recovered enough for the Fed to actually start raising interest rates.

The Fed is also winding down its bond-buying program, dubbed QE2, a short-hand for “quantitative easing.” It’s a wonky term economists use to characterize the Fed’s effort to drive down long-term interest rates by buying up Treasury bonds. QE2 marked the second round of such easing the Fed had taken; the first was in March 2009 at the depths of the recession one hour payday loan.

Supporters say the bond purchases have worked, in part by keeping rates low and encouraging spending. Low long-term rates are vital for consumers buying homes and cars and for companies making investments.

They also argue that those lower rates fueled a stock rally. When Bernanke outlined plans for QE2 in late August 2010, the Standard & Poor’s 500 index was down 6 percent for the year. Eight months later, the S&P 500 was up 28 percent. Lower rates made stocks more attractive to investors than bonds, whose yields were falling.

Falling bond yields have also helped keep mortgage rates near record lows. The average rate on a 30-year mortgage has stayed below 5 percent for all but two weeks this year and was 4.50 percent last week. Still, low rates have done little to boost home sales, which fell in May to the lowest level in since November.

Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, said the bond purchases gave a sagging economy a lift by slightly reducing borrowing costs for businesses and consumers and by raising stock prices to make people feel wealthier. Still, it didn’t much energize home buying or other major purchases.

“It wasn’t a slam-dunk success, but it was worthwhile,” Zandi said.

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. They have complained that the Fed’s outpouring of dollars hurt the dollar and contributed to a spike in oil and food prices. They also feared the bond purchases fed speculative buying that could inflate bubbles in prices of stocks or other assets.

Bernanke hit back at those critics in a speech last month. He argued that higher oil prices were due to Middle East turmoil and demand in fast-growing countries like China and blamed food-price inflation mainly on crop shortages caused by bad weather. And he said the falling dollar was largely linked to slower U.S. growth and the U.S. trade deficit.

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European stocks and the euro slipped Monday after eurozone finance ministers came up short of a final deal to get Greece its next installment of bailout money that is needed to prevent a default that could cause financial chaos.

Officials say they do expect Greece to get the next euro12 billion installment in July.

But first they are pushing the Greek parliament hard to pass unpopular measures to reduce the deficit and seek more money from selling and developing state property.

Stocks in Germany, the eurozone’s biggest market, fell 1.2 percent while the euro was off 0.5 percent at $1.4210.

Eurozone finance ministers are meeting a second day Monday about the Greek debt crisis. Talks overnight did not produce a final agreement on the new loan money, or on a broader, second bailout expected in cooperation with the International Monetary Fund.

Officials agree Greece is going to need more money to avoid a messy default on government bonds that would disrupt Europe’s banking system and its entire economy. But they are waiting for the Greek government _ unsettled by protests, a Cabinet reshuffle and a vote of confidence slated for Tuesday _ to take the additional measures to cut the deficit.

The EU’s economic and monetary affairs commissioner, Olli Rehn, said he was “certain that Greece will be able to take the decisions needed because the alternative is so much worse.”

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Dumb thieves rob banks with pistols. The smart ones use card readers, laptops and the Internet.

The dumb ones are often caught, while the smart ones largely get away with it.

Bernice Krauze of St. Louis Hills learned about that last month. On May 24, she used her debit card at an ATM in St. Louis. Two hours later, a thief used a clone of the card to withdraw $503 from her checking account through an ATM in California.

Krauze says U.S. Bank spotted the California theft and froze her debit card within hours. The bank returned her money two weeks later, after she filed a police report.

But Krauze, a 69-year-old retiree, has lost faith in plastic. “I think I’ll go to cash, you know?” she says. “It kind of scares me. It feels like you’ve been violated and you don’t know what will happen next.”

Computer hackers, skimmer scammers, crooked bank employees and the like made off with more than 4 million electronic records last year, according to cyber-sleuths at Verizon, which investigates such incidents for companies online payday advance. The haul was mainly credit and debit card information, bank account log-ons and the like.

That’s an improvement. In 2008, thieves swiped 361 million.

All that theft explains why one-third of Americans report being victims of some sort of credit or debit card fraud over the past five years, according to a survey by the payment systems company ACI Worldwide.

How did the thieves get the electronic codes and PIN number to duplicate Krauze’s card? Krauze thinks it happened at a Michaels store in Rockville, Md.

Michael Stores last month discovered that thieves had rigged about 90 PIN pads at its stores to swipe account numbers, customer names and PINs from debit and credit cards. The Maryland store had a rigged pad, although the St. Louis stores did not.

Krauze’s experience points out the one happy truth about credit and debit card fraud: Consumer victims go through angst and hassle

Centrue Financial Corp., the holding company for Centrue Bank, plans to move its stock listing from Nasdaq to the OTCQB on June 24.

The OTCQB is an electronic marketplace for stocks operated by OTC Markets Group Inc.

Clayton-based Centrue (Nasdaq: TRUE) announced the voluntary delisting from Nasdaq after markets closed on June 14. Centrue received a delisting warning from Nasdaq in February for failure to maintain a minimum one dollar per share price.

“After considering its available options to regain compliance and the costs associated with its Nasdaq listing, the company concluded that efforts to secure a continuation of the current listing of its common stock and the costs associated therewith were not in its best interests,” Centrue said in a statement. Centrue will cease trading on Nasdaq at the close of trading on June 23.

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