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With NATO warplanes circling overhead, revolutionary fighters battled block by block Saturday as snipers rained fire from rooftops in fierce street fighting in Moammar Gadhafi’s hometown _ the most important remaining bastion of support for the fugitive leader.

The battle for Sirte is crucial because Libya’s new leaders have promised to declare liberation after it is captured even though fighting continues elsewhere and Gadhafi remains on the run. That will allow them to move forward with setting a timeline for elections and establishing normalcy in the oil-rich North African nation.

Revolutionary forces launched a major attack on Friday, pushing into the Mediterranean coastal city from the west, east and south after a three week siege from the outskirts in which they said they were giving civilians time to flee.

Gadhafi forces also remain entrenched in the central city of Bani Walid, but the transitional leaders say they will declare liberation without it because Sirte’s fall will give them control over all seaports and harbors.

British Defense Secretary Liam Fox pledged to keep up NATO airstrikes even after Sirte’s fall, saying the international military action would continue as long as the remnants of the regime pose a risk to the people of Libya.

“We have a message for those who are still fighting for Gadhafi that the game is over, you have been rejected by the people of Libya,” he told reporters Saturday in Tripoli.

Anti-Gadhafi forces met strong resistance as they pushed to within less than half a mile (kilometer) from loyalist fighters dug in around Sirte’s Ouagadougou convention center and Green Square in fierce street fighting in the heart of the city.

Libya’s de facto leader, Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, the head of the governing National Transitional Council, said the battle has been “ferocious,” with 15 revolutionary fighters killed and 180 wounded on Friday low interest rate personal loans.

“Our fighters today are still dealing with the snipers positioned on the high buildings and we sustained heavy casualties,” he said at a joint news conference in Tripoli with Fox and Italian Defense Secretary Ignazio La Russa.

Suleiman Ali, commander for revolutionary forces, said loyalist forces have been driven away from Ibn Sina Hospital where hundreds of civilians have sought refuge from the fighting.

A military spokesman in Tripoli, Abdel-Rahman Busin, said he expected the city to be declared free in the next 24 hours.

“They’ve pretty much taken the city and it’s just a few pockets of resistance,” he said, adding snipers were still posing a major threat.

NATO warplanes flew overhead but no strikes were immediately reported.

Abdul-Jalil called on the international community to help Libyans treat the wounded, saying they could deduct the cost from Libyan assets that were frozen under Gadhafi’s regime.

Sirte, 250 miles (400 kilometers) southeast of Tripoli, is key to the physical unity of the nation of some 6 million people, since it lies roughly in the center of the coastal plain where most Libyans live, blocking the easiest routes between east and west.

The international community has rallied around Libya’s efforts to move forward with forming a new government, with transitional leaders promising elections within eight months after liberation is declared.

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Italy’s government, waffling for weeks on an emergency austerity plan, received a stern warning Saturday from the European central bank chief to promptly implement the deficit-fighting measures and stay on target.

Premier Silvio Berlusconi is caught between trying to placate allies and satisfying both nervous markets and worried European Union officials.

Even as Parliament girds to take up approval of the package of spending cuts and new taxes which he promised will add up to a euro45.5 billion ($64.86 billion) austerity package, every few days has seen some measures _ including new levies on high-earners and reform of a generous pension system _ dropped to appease coalition partners.

With Italy offering a spectacle of uncertainty, European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet called on Rome to keep to its word and push the package, announced in early August, toward completion.

“It is essential that the target which was announced to diminish the deficit will be fully confirmed and implemented,” Trichet said at an annual economics forum at a Lake Como resort. “This is absolutely decisive to consolidate and reinforce the quality and the credibility of the Italian strategy and its credit worthiness.”

The outgoing central banker deemed as “extremely important” all measures to improve the “flexibility” of Italy’s economy. Both industrialists and union leaders have denounced the austerity plan as relying too much on slashed spending and new taxes and offering little to stimulate the country’s practically flat growth or to encourage job creation.

But the ECB’s own policies were being taken to task on the sidelines of the annual Ambrosetti forum.

“We need more stimulus, we need a weaker euro,” which could spur exports, complained New York University economist Nouriel Roubini. “You can’t just talk about austerity.” He urged the ECB to “at least send a signal there is going to be monetary easing” soon.

Asked by The Associated Press to respond to Roubini’s criticism, Trichet, during a brief stroll of the posh lakeside Villa d’Este grounds at lunch time, declined to comment, saying he wouldn’t talk about matters related to policy.

With Berlusconi widely considered to be distracted by a sex scandal linked to his self-acknowledged penchant for young, beautiful women, Roubini expressed concern that whatever the measures are, markets won’t be reassured.

“Italy is always bickering,” the economist, who in the past has warned of the specter of double-dip recession in some European countries, told reporters during a break in the closed-door forum sessions.

“Investors have lost credibility in this government,” Roubini added, noting the repeated widening of the spread between Italy’s bond interest rates and that of benchmark German rates.

The latest Berlusconi government proposal to achieve several billion euros in deficit reduction through a crackdown on widespread tax evasion could also rattle the markets since it’s impossible to predict just how much revenue that strategy could achieve.

Earlier in the day, Italian President Giorgio Napolitano echoed Trichet’s call to his country, saying the proposed measures must be quickly “translated into concrete terms” to achieve Berlusconi’s goal of balancing the budget by 2013.

“In effect, we need now and in the near future from Italy clarity and certainty of intentions and of results,” said Napolitano, who noted that an earlier austerity plan, in July, failed to placate nervous markets.

Napolitano urged Berlusconi’s bickering government to be “coherent and courageous” in meeting the economic crisis. He grimly recalled that Italy, suffering from lackluster productivity, already was lagging before the last few years of alarming crisis dragged down many of the planet’s economies.

“There is no doubt that in general the political (arena) is struggling, in the face of the tensions of the crisis and the risks to which the eurozone is exposed, and that the internal political and social equilibrium of individual countries are being put to a tough test,” Napolitano said in a video hookup from the presidential palace in Rome.

Austria’s former chancellor, Wolfgang Schuessel, went further in characterizing the effects of the crisis on citizens.

“This loss of confidence and trust is much more damaging than any economic data,” the Austrian, a participant at the annual Ambrosetti Forum in Cernobbio, said before the participants _ bankers, economists and politicians _ exchanged speeches and debate.

The three-day gathering began on Friday, and was marked by generally gloomy assessments of global economic prospects.

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More than 4 million homes and businesses were without power Sunday morning as Hurricane Irene continued to roar up the East Coast and took aim at the New York City area and New England.

Winds of up to 115 miles per hour whipped across the Eastern Seaboard, ripping power lines from poles and snapping trees in half. Hospitals, emergency call centers and other crucial facilities were holding up, but officials said it could get much worse as Irene churns north.

More than 1.3 million of the homes and businesses without power were in Virginia and North Carolina, which bore the brunt of Irene’s initial march. Maryland, Delaware and Washington, D.C. had about three-quarters of a million outages combined.

New Jersey and Pennsylvania each had about three-quarters of a million without power, and hundreds of thousands of other customers were in the dark in New York and Connecticut.

Officials in southern and mid-Atlantic states had warned of mass power outages, with some recalling the destructive Hurricane Isabel in 2003, and their predictions were confirmed after Irene moved over North Carolina as a Category 1 storm early Saturday.

New York’s biggest utility, Consolidated Edison, said it could cut power to the city’s most vulnerable areas if the storm causes serious flooding. Salt water and rain can damage electrical equipment.

ConEd operations chief John Miksad said the utility didn’t expect to cut power before the storm hits, but flooding Sunday could bring a shutdown to areas including the southern tip of Manhattan. That would cut off power to major Wall Street institutions through parts of next week.

The New York Stock Exchange has backup generators and can run on its own, a spokesman said. The exchange expects to open as usual Monday morning, though it may change plans depending on the severity of the storm.

New York is regularly blasted by winter storms, but Miksad said this hurricane will be different. Irene’s wind will pack a stronger punch than a nor’easter last March that knocked out power to 175,000 customers, he said.

ConEd has called in crews from as far as Colorado to help repair damage from the storm.

Spokesmen for the utilities said Saturday that hundreds more crews from as far away as Alabama, Michigan and Quebec are ready to help out in Connecticut.

Officials noted that crews wouldn’t begin restoring power until conditions are safe. Hurricane-force winds are expected to hit the state later Sunday morning.

Winds have already caused flooding and damage to many areas. North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut and Rhode Island have declared emergencies. For the first time, New York City ordered people in low-lying areas to evacuate.

Power companies have called in several hundred workers from surrounding states to help. Crews were rushing out between bands in the hurricane, when the wind and rain ease. They’re looking for damage first at towering transmission lines, where an outage could put an entire county in the dark.

Gasoline supplies fell as drivers filled up before leaving town or just topped off their tanks as a precaution before the storm hit. Pump prices rose about 3 cents per gallon overnight in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

Refueling barges waited out the storm off the coast, also causing gasoline supplies to fall. Widespread power outages could lead to fuel shortages as gas stations are no longer able to pump gas or have trouble replenishing their own gas supplies.

“Power is the lifeblood of oil supply on the East Coast,” said Ben Brockwell of the Oil Price Information Service, which tracks gasoline shipments around the country.

Some gas stations in New Jersey reported that they’d run out of fuel. Those shortages could become more widespread.

Retail gas prices were mostly unchanged in many cities that are expected to be hit this weekend. Rules against price gouging at gas stations took effect throughout Middle Atlantic states. Authorities will be looking for stations that try to take advantage of panicked drivers.

Pump prices were up slightly overnight, as much as 3 cents per gallon, to $3.44 in Philadelphia and $3.49 in New Jersey’s Atlantic-Cape May metro area. They seemed to hold in other areas, rising a penny or so on average in Maryland, Virginia and the Carolinas.

The Colonial Pipeline, which transports gasoline and other fuels from the Gulf Coast to the Northeast, stopped fuel deliveries to Selma, N.C., and to Virginia’s Tidewater area as the storm knocked out power. Pipeline spokesman Steve Baker said the pipeline may cut off deliveries further in Virginia and Maryland as the storm moves north.

Refineries, which make fuel from oil, have started to slow operations as Irene approaches.

OPIS says East Coast refineries will cut operating rates 10 to 25 percent in the next few days. Refineries in the Gulf Coast and the West should be able to keep supplies flowing to the rest of the country.

Refineries along the Louisiana Coast produce more than three times the gasoline and fuel of their East Coast counterparts, according to the Energy Information Administration. East Coast demand is going to fall as businesses close and people hunker down at home.

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State-owned China Construction Bank Ltd., the country’s third-biggest commercial lender, says its first half profit rose 31 percent, buoyed by higher income from fees and interest.

The Beijing-based bank reported late Sunday that profit for January-June was 92.8 billion yuan ($14.5 billion), or 0.37 yuan (6 U.S. cents) a share. Profit for the same period a year earlier was 70.8 billion yuan.

Like other Chinese lenders, the bank has benefited from rising interest rates and higher fees and commissions as it diversifies its revenue sources.

Interest income in the first half of the year rose 24 percent, while income from fees and commissions jumped 42 percent to 47.7 billion yuan ($7.5 billion).

The bank said it was strictly controlling lending to industries designated by the government as having excess capacity, such as iron and steel, coal and plate glass. Meanwhile, it boosted lending to small and medium-size companies.

Smaller businesses have usually struggled to get bank financing. Such lending increased 9.5 percent by the end of June over December of last year, compared with a 6.8 percent increase in total corporate lending.

Construction Bank, which is relatively heavily exposed to the property sector, also said it was limiting lending to local government investment entities, whose debts have ballooned in the wake of a binge of recession-fighting construction investments.

Lending to the real estate sector climbed a modest 4.1 percent in January-June, the bank said.

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So your 401(k) has shrunk into a 301(k) - again - and your kid’s college fund wouldn’t cover a year in kindergarten anymore.

You’re thinking of cashing in what’s left of your investment, turning it into Krugerrands (gold is at record highs!) and burying it in the back yard.

So, how does a person avoid hair-pulling, teeth-gnashing, garment-rending gloom as a panicky stock market once again sends savings up in smoke?

Financial planners are fairly unanimous in their answer: Get an investment plan with an asset allocation - a fixed percentage pledged to stocks, to bonds, to cash.

Then marry the plan. Promise it your undying faithfulness, swearing to stick with it for better or worse.

When things get worse - as they have over the past three weeks - screw up your courage and do what the plan says. Right now, falling prices might have pulled your stock investments below their allocation. The plan would have you buy stocks, and sell bonds, in the midst of turmoil.

The genius of an investment plan is that it forces you to sell high and buy low - the key to investment success. Faith in your plan brings serenity. Or, that’s the idea anyway.

“The plan is simple, but it’s not easy,” says Larry Swedroe, research director at Buckingham Asset Management in Clayton. Lots of investors have trouble buying during a meltdown, and selling when things are going swimmingly.

“You have to caution them away from making decisions based on fear or greed,” says Peter Schick, chairman of the Moneta Group in Clayton. Fear is the stronger emotion, and the urge is strong to sell during a market panic.

Swedroe tells of one client who decided to sell out in November 2008, when the market hit a short-term bottom during the financial meltdown. Swedroe urged him to hold firm, but the client wanted out.

By January, stocks had climbed, and the client bought back in, only to watch stocks fall again. He sold again at the market bottom in March 2009. He’d doubled his losses by selling low and buying high.

A good plan starts by assessing your goals - college for the kids, retirement for you, becoming debt free. We’ll skip that part for now and get to the nitty gritty: asset allocation.

Investment success doesn’t depend on keen stock picking. The biggest determinant is how you divide your money, mainly between stocks, bonds and cash check cash advance.

You invest in stocks hoping for a fat return over the long run, knowing the market will give you heart failure regularly. Bonds provide a smoother ride, but historically a lower return. Cash is for bills coming soon. Some people sprinkle the pot with real estate and commodity funds.

Given the record of the past decade, you might wonder why you’d put a penny in stocks at all.

The stock market Friday was still 4 percent below its level at the height of tech bubble in 2000.

Professional financial planners have longer memories. The S&P 500 index of major-company stocks has returned an average of 11.5 percent over the last 30 years, dividends included. Bonds can’t beat that.

But twice in the last dozen years stocks dropped half their value. Ask yourself if you could stand a 25 percent investment loss without selling everything. If the answer is no, don’t put more than half your money in stocks, Swedroe says.

Bonds might lose a little money in a bad year, but they don’t crash like stocks. Over the past 10 years, while stocks were in a snit, a broad mix of bonds averaged 5 to 6 percent a year.

So, your allocation to stocks depends on the acid level in your stomach. Stocks are spice. Bonds are Tums.

Once you set your asset allocation, stick with it religiously. When the stocks rise above your plan’s limit, sell stocks and buy bonds. When stocks fall below, do the reverse.

That’s why the plan works. If you’d bought stocks when the financial crisis was at its scariest in March 2009, you’d be 72 percent ahead.

With an asset allocation plan, the market makes your decisions for you. You just follow the script.

Here are some examples, provided by Schick, on how allocation affects return. He picked a tough starting date, January 2000, the height of the tech stock bubble.

If you invested $100,000 then, with a portfolio of 70 percent stocks and 30 percent bonds, and rebalanced once a year, you’d have $141,000 today.

Had an investor put $100,000 just in the S&P 500 stock index, it would be worth $98,600 today. A mix of half bonds and half stocks would be worth $159,900 today. A 70 percent bond, 30 percent stock mix would be worth $176,500 today.

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President Nicolas Sarkozy cut short his vacation and pledged to slash France’s huge debts but rising concerns about a cut to the country’s credit rating helped send bank shares plunging Wednesday afternoon.

Worries that France would lose its triple A rating sparked the selloff, which built momentum on rumors that the banks’ financial health was in danger.

Credit Agricole ended 11.8 percent down. Societe Generale said it “categorically denies” all market rumors but its shares closed 14.7 percent lower. Its market value has now fallen from over 40 billion euros at the beginning of July to 17 billion euros Wednesday afternoon.

The sell-off hit banking stocks across Europe, with leading banks in Britain, Italy and Germany also suffering large falls in their share prices.

After rushing back from the French Riviera, Sarkozy summoned key ministers for an emergency meeting after days of mounting warnings from analysts that the debt rating of the world’s fifth-biggest economy is at risk.

France’s growth prospects are considerably better than those of Italy and Spain’s, but its economic expansion is slowing and it’s failed for years to reduce a deficit that stood at 7.1 percent last year. No other eurozone economy with a triple-A rating has a higher debt than France’s _ around 85 percent of national income.

Although rating agencies reaffirmed France’s AAA rating, the downgrade of U.S. debt by ratings agency Standard & Poor’s last week fueled worries that France could be next to lose the coveted and rare rating if it contributes to further bailouts of eurozone countries.

French Finance Minister Francois Baroin suggested this week that Europe could boost the size of the eurozone bailout fund, the European Financial Stability Facility, although Germany has been reluctant to do so.

Adding to market worries, French presidential elections scheduled for the spring of 2012 also mean it is unlikely the government will implement further austerity measures at a time when the economy is slowing.

The government is already aiming for a deficit of 5.7 percent of national income this year and 4.6 percent in 2012, goals that analysts increasingly see as unrealistic.

Sarkozy said he’s asked Baroin to prepare a list of measures to guarantee the government attains its deficit-reduction targets. Sarkozy will take a decision on which measures to implement at an Aug. 24 meeting with his prime minister, budget minister and Baroin.

“We will take the necessary measures to reach these goals,” Baroin said, without elaborating.

Sarkozy reiterated his call for a constitutional change requiring balanced budgets and insisted that “commitments to reducing the deficit are inviolable and will be maintained.”

His comments appeared to only have a negligible affect on the spread between German and French bond yields, which has risen to 15-year highs.

“With yields now above those of the Netherlands, Finland and Austria, France seems in danger of slipping out of the core to become more closely associated with the eurozone’s periphery,” said Jennifer McKeown, senior European economist at Capital Economics.

S&P warned in June that France’s rating could be threatened if it fails to carry out planned reforms and reduce the deficit.

And the French central bank said this week that the economy will likely grow only 0.2 percent in the third quarter. The bank’s monthly industrial survey showed corporate order books and factory utilization rates falling for the second month in a row in July.

Pressures have also been mounting on Germany, starting to feel the pain of a slowing European and global economy as German companies see waning demand for their exports.

But officials in Berlin made clear Wednesday that Chancellor Angela Merkel is sticking to her plans to stay on holiday and return to the office next week.

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Who gets hurt by a credit downgrade?

The U.S. government could end up paying higher interest rates when it has to borrow money, says Steve Foerster, a finance professor at the University of Western Ontario

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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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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Americans borrowed more money in April for the seventh straight month, but they cut back on using their credit cards.

The Federal Reserve says consumer borrowing rose by nearly $7.2 billion, fueled by greater demand for school and auto loans. A category that measures credit card use fell for the second time in three months. It has risen only twice since August 2008, the height of the financial crisis.

The 3.1 percent overall increase pushed consumer borrowing to a seasonally adjusted annual level of $2.43 trillion, just above the nearly four-year low of $2.39 trillion hit in September.

The report includes auto loans, student loans and credit cards, but excludes mortgages and loans tied to real estate. The Fed will give a more complete picture of Americans’ debt on Thursday when it issues its quarterly report on household net worth.

Households began borrowing less and saving more to cope with the recession, which ended in June 2009. Credit card use has plummeted nearly 19 percent over the past 20 months and it has dropped 5 percent over the past year.

Overall borrowing has increased in recent months. But analysts say the reason for that is also a reflection of the weak economy: the gains have been driven by more people borrowing money to attend school _ many of whom are out of work.

High unemployment, steep gas prices and a weakening housing market have also forced people to resist reaching for their plastic.

“When you take out student loans, you’re still seeing credit card use, and borrowing overall, falling,” said Paul Dales, chief U.S. economist at Capital Economics. “That’s a sign about how people view the economy.”

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