My finance view

Oil prices hovered near $93 a barrel Thursday in Asia as traders mulled whether concern over Europe’s debt crisis justifies extending a sharp sell-off during the last two weeks.

Benchmark oil for June delivery was up 26 cents to $93.07 a barrel at late morning Singapore time in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract fell $1.17 to settle at $92.81 in New York on Wednesday.

Brent crude for July delivery was down 46 cents at $109.29 per barrel in London.

Crude has plummeted about 12 percent from $106 two weeks ago amid investor worries that economic growth in the U.S. and China will slow more than previously expected. This week, political turmoil in Greece and growing anti-austerity sentiment in Europe have raised fears of a debt default and economic recession, which would undermine crude demand.

Some analysts say a slowly improving U.S. economy and signs of growing oil demand in developing countries should keep the crude price from collapsing further.

“A drastic weakening of sentiment brought oil prices down sharply, with sovereign debt fears a key element in a mounting loss of faith in economic, and hence demand, prospects,” Barclays said business card. “Crude oil prices may well remain capped on the upside in the next few weeks by fears of major economic upheavals.”

“However, given the actual economic and oil demand picture, Brent prices are more likely to remain protected around $110 rather than attempting to break through to a more extreme downside,” Barclays said.

Should crude continue to fall or at least maintain the recent pullback, it should translate to lower prices for oil products such as gasoline, which would ease global inflation pressures and give policymakers more room to implement stimulus measures or loosen monetary policy to boost economic growth.

In other energy trading, heating oil was down 1.2 cents at $2.89 per gallon and gasoline futures slid 1.5 cents at $2.85 per gallon. Natural gas rose 1 cent at $2.63 per 1,000 cubic feet.

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Technology consulting firm Perficient Inc. reported a 67 percent jump in profits in the first quarter. The company, based in Town and Country, reported a profit of $3 million, or 10 cents per share, compared with $1.8 million, or 6 cents per share, in the corresponding period of 2011 totally free credit score. The company reported quarterly revenue of $74.7 million, compared with $56.2 million last year.

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China

Delta Air Lines Inc.’s chief executive, Richard Anderson, received a 10 percent raise in his pay package in 2011, a year when the company’s stock price fell by more than a third.

Anderson’s pay package was valued at $8.9 million, up from $8 million in 2010, according to an Associated Press review of a securities filing made Friday.

His salary was unchanged at $600,000 but he received stock awards valued at $7 million, up from $6 million a year earlier. Other items in his pay package _ including retirement benefits, home security and performance pay _ were mostly unchanged.

Delta and other airlines responded to rising fuel costs in 2011 by cutting flights and raising fares and fees.

Shares of the nation’s second biggest airline fell 36 percent in 2011, compared to a 21 percent decline for United Continental Holdings Inc payday loans for bad credit., the No.1 carrier in the nation. The stocks have recovered, with Delta showing a 34 percent gain in the year to date.

United CEO Jeffery Smisek’s pay package tripled to $13.4 million, according to a separate filing Friday.

The AP’s calculation of executive compensation includes salary, bonuses, perks and the estimated value of stock and stock options awarded during the year. The amount that Anderson or other CEOs eventually get can differ, depending on the performance of the company’s stock after awards are granted. Most companies require an executive to wait a certain amount of time before getting stock grants or exercising options.

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A polluted drainage ditch that once flowed with industrial waste from Lake Charles, La., petrochemical plants teems with overgrown, wild plants today.

A light-rail line zips past the spot where a now-defunct Portland, Ore., gasoline station advertised in 1972 that it had run out of gas.

A smoking Jersey City, N.J., dump piled with twisted, rusty metal has disappeared, along with the twin towers of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan that were its backdrop.

Forty years after the Environmental Protection Agency sent an army of nearly 100 photographers across the country to capture images at the dawn of environmental regulation, The Associated Press went back for Earth Day this year to see how things have changed. It is something the agency never got to do because the Documerica program, as it was called, died in 1978, the victim of budget cuts.

AP photographers returned to more than a dozen of those locations in recent weeks, from Portland to Cleveland and Corpus Christi, Texas. Of the 20,000 photos in the archive, the AP selected those that focused on environmental issues, rather than the more general shots of everyday life in the 1970s.

Gone are the many obvious signs of pollution _ clouds of smoke billowing from industrial chimneys, raw sewage flowing into rivers, garbage strewn over beaches and roadsides _ that heightened environmental awareness in the 1970s, and led to the first Earth Day and the EPA’s creation in 1970. Such environmental consciousness caused Congress to pass almost unanimously some of the country’s bedrock environmental laws in the years that followed.

Today’s pollution problems aren’t as easy to see or to photograph. Some in industry and politics question whether environmental regulation has gone too far and whether the risks are worth addressing, given their costs.

Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney has called for the firing of EPA chief Lisa Jackson, while GOP rival Newt Gingrich has said the EPA should be replaced altogether. Jackson has faced tough questioning on Capitol Hill so often the in past two years that a top Republican quipped that she needs her own parking spot.

“To a certain extent, we are a victim of our own success,” said William Ruckelshaus, who headed the EPA when it came into existence under Republican President Richard Nixon and was in charge during the Documerica project. “Right now, EPA is under sharp criticism partially because it is not as obvious to people that pollution problems exist and that we need to deal with them.”

Environmental laws that passed Congress so easily in Ruckelshaus’ day are now at the center of a partisan dispute between Republicans and Democrats. Dozens of bills have been introduced to limit environmental protections that critics say will lead to job losses and economic harm, and there are those who question what the vast majority of scientists accept _ that the burning of fossil fuels is causing global warming.

In the 1970s, the first environmental regulations were just starting to take effect, with widespread support. Now, according to some officials in the oil and gas and electric utility industries, which are responsible for the bulk of emissions and would bear the greatest costs, the EPA has gone overboard with rules.

For instance, Documerica photographers captured a wave of coal-fired power plants under construction. Republicans and the industry now say environmental regulations are partly to blame for shuttering some of the oldest and dirtiest coal plants.

Jim DiPeso of ConservAmerica, a group that recently changed its name from Republicans for Environmental Protection, says the EPA is caught in the center of a perfect storm. “This time of greater cynicism about government, more economic anxiety and the fact that the problems are not immediately apparent, has created this political problem for EPA,” he said.

In an interview, Jackson said she believes that people in the United States still want to protect the environment. “There’s a large gulf between the rhetoric inside the Beltway to do everything from cut back on EPA to get rid of the whole place, and what the American people would actually stand for,” she said. “It’s very easy to make rash statements without thinking about what that means to the health of everyday Americans.”

A 2010 Pew Research Center survey showed that 57 percent of those questioned held a favorable view of the EPA, compared with a 1997 poll that showed 69 percent with a positive view of the agency. A CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll taken last year found that 71 percent of people surveyed said that the government should continue provide money to the EPA to enforce regulations to address global warming and other environmental issues.

“We are not done. We still have challenges we have to face,” Jackson said.

The agency last year began a volunteer photography project called State of the Environment. More than 620 people have participated and submitted 1,800 photographs, but only a few are at the same sites at the 1970s project.

Images always have spurred environmental consciousness. A 1980s satellite picture of the ozone hole helped lead to a ban on the chemicals in aerosol cans and refrigerants that were responsible. Underwater video of oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 opened the public’s eyes to the gravity of the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history.

But a second Documerica project, with professional photographers, would be impossible today, given budget cuts facing the agency and the wariness of industry barring access by photographers.

Lyntha Scott Eiler, 65, shot photographs for Documerica around her then-home in northern Arizona, as well as one of the early emissions testing sites for automobile exhaust in Hamilton County, Ohio. At the Navajo Generating Station in Arizona, Eiler got right down in a strip mine “where the shovels were.”

“They weren’t afraid of the EPA, so it was, `What else you do you want to get a photograph of?,’” Eiler said. “You probably would have a hard time doing that today.”

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SXC Health Solutions Corp. agreed to buy Catalyst Health Solutions Inc. in a cash and stock transaction valued at $4.4 billion to stay competitive as larger pharmacy benefit managers join forces.

Catalyst investors will receive $28 in cash and 0.6606 shares of SXC stock for each Catalyst share under the terms of the agreement, the companies said. That implies a purchase price of $81.02 per Catalyst share, 28 percent above Tuesday’s closing prices.

Pharmacy benefit managers are combining after Express Scripts Inc., the largest in the U.S., agreed to pay $29.1 billion for Medco Health Solutions Inc. SXC, one of the biggest providers of technology for processing prescription claims, was the target of speculation last month.

The company is now in position to be one of the nation’s largest pharmacy benefit companies, said Brian Tanquilut, an analyst with Jefferies & Co. in Nashville, Tenn.

“SXC will be the next big player in the PBM space,” Tanquilut said. “The opportunity to win new business from the larger guys, meaning Express-Medco, CVS, is there.”

SXC Chairman and Chief Executive Mark Thierer will continue in those roles in the combined company. “We will be the second-largest independent PBM in the country, in terms of prescription volume,” Thierer said. “The transaction will expand our reach to larger clients.”

The companies have little overlap among clients, with Catalyst having many state employers while SXC has state Medicaid clients, Thierer said.

“This catapults SXC and Catalyst into a much better negotiating stance,” said Anthony Vendetti, a Maxim Group LLC analyst in New York who follows both companies. “It gives them more leverage with drug manufacturers and drug distributors and because of their increased size, it gives them more leverage with clients.”

Founded as Systems Xcellence in 1993, SXC negotiates with drugmakers for lower prescription medicine prices on behalf of health insurers, Medicare and Medicaid plans, workers’ compensation programs and long-term care facilities.

SXC also makes software that processed one out of every five drug claims in the U.S., according to the company’s 2010 annual report.

Tanquilut said the company may take a year to complete the integration, then move on to more deals to keep growing and compete with Express Scripts and CVS. The company needs to add smaller assets in specialty pharmaceuticals, most of which are likely to be closely held regional companies, he said.

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The Donald, camera shy?

The Star was denied entry at a Toronto press conference featuring real estate mogul and reality TV star Donald Trump Monday to officially open the new Trump International Hotel.

Why? A spokesperson at the event said the event was

Dole Food Co.’s fresh vegetables division is recalling 756 cases of bagged salad, because they could be contaminated with salmonella.

The bags of Seven Lettuces salads were distributed in Alabama, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia and Wisconsin.

The company said the bags are being recalled, because a random sample tested by the State of New York came back positive for Salmonella. No other Dole salads are included in the recall.

The recalled salads are stamped with a use-by date of April 11, 2012, UPC code 71430 01057 and product codes 0577N089112A and 0577N089112B, the company said.

The product code and use-by date are located in the upper right-hand corner of the package, while the UPC code is on the back of the package, below the barcode fast payday loans.

Dole said that it’s coordinating with regulatory officials and that no illnesses have been reported.

Consumers should throw out the recalled salads. Dole said it’s also contacting retailers to make sure the bags in question are not available for sale.

The most common symptoms of salmonella are diarrhea, abdominal cramps and fever within eight to 72 hours of eating the contaminated food. The illness can be severe or even life-threatening for infants, older people, pregnant women and people with weakened immune systems.

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Never have I been less qualified to address a subject than the one you’ll read about today — fashion.

Let the record show I’m wearing jeans as I write this. It’s Wednesday. Not that it matters now that casual Friday has morphed into casual every day.

I once looped a tie around my neck every morning. It usually didn’t match my threadbare oxford shirt and always carried evidence of meals that didn’t quite make it from the plate-to-my-mouth. But it was, at least, a feeble nod toward professional attire.

I couldn’t tell you the last time I wore a tie to work or, for that matter, last purchased neck wear. Nor, apparently, can a lot of other people.

“There is no one way to dress for business anymore, where there used to be a set formula,” said Nancy Nix-Rice, a St. Louis image and wardrobe consultant.

Anyone who has paid a visit recently to an office occupied by small business or start-up can certainly attest to that.

Jeans, polo shirts and sweaters are standard attire in the boutique marketing firms, information technology and other companies with no designs of ever nailing down a spot on the Fortune 500.

In the small-business world, shorts are de rigueur summer wear for both men and women, and a tie is what happens when a soccer game ends with neither team scoring.

“There’s no doubt some people have taken business casual way too far,” said Nix-Rice. “And that sends a message that either says, ‘I’m an intellectual, and can’t be bothered by something so mundane as to how I look.’ Or, it’s a (finger gesture) approach that tells your employer, ‘You can’t tell me what to do even if you own the company.’”

Many trace the dressing down trend to young tech entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. But many medium-to-large corporations and law firms continue to buck the trend, unwilling to allow employees to dress as they see fit.

With the exception of casual Fridays in the summer months and occasional informal office celebrations, Edward Jones employees are expected to meet certain standards whenever they stroll into corporate headquarters.

For men, the rules call for a shirt, tie, suit or sport coat. For female employees, it means business attire.

Human resources executive Beth Cook said the Edward Jones dress policy rests on “the fundamental belief that being a professional is dressing like one.”

Monsanto, a little more lax, encourages its employees to arrive at the office in business casual.

The biotechnology giant’s dress code, in part to protect lab workers, bans open-toed shoes along with “shorts, skirts, tank tops and other garments that expose large areas of skin…”

The definition of professionally appropriate fashion started to evolve long before the first office worker through caution to the wind and wore shirt sleeves on a stifling August afternoon.

A reader responding to an informal survey on dress codes I posted to LinkedIn recalled the day when corporations required male employees to cover their heads.

“The hat you chose spoke to your status and position in the company as well as your attitude of professionalism,” the reader wrote remembering the co-worker who, in flaunting convention, was “henceforth known as ‘the man without a hat.’ A label he wore with pride.’”

Today, as often as not, the label will read Levi Strauss.

Nix-Rice has no squabble with jeans in the workplace. But she counsels it’s best to offset (preferably unfaded) denim with shirts and upper body wear that conveys a more, well, buttoned-down approach.

“Appearance is language,” she advises clients. “It’s what you are saying all day, even to yourself.”

In many ways, the folks at Edward Jones and other offices with strict dress codes have an easier time than those left to our own sartorial devices.

“Business dress today is confusing,” Nix-Rice acknowledged. “On one hand, you don’t want to look like the dork who didn’t get the business casual memo. But on the other hand, you don’t want to be the slob who doesn’t tuck in his polo shirt.”

Looking ahead, it’s not difficult to envision tomorrow’s corporate cubicle and office dwellers viewing mandatory business attire through the same prism with which we regard the rules that once placed a hat on the head of our grandparents.

Don’t think it will happen? Consider this: Time MoneyLand last month reported the results of a survey in which 93 percent of millennials (20- and 30-year-olds) said they gravitate toward workplaces that allow them to dress “in a way that makes them comfortable.”

Jeans, evidently, symbolize the truest measure of comfort, with 79 percent of the respondents saying they should be allowed to wear denim to work at least some of the time.

Finally, a note to anyone tempted to invest their life’s savings in necktie futures. MTV has attached another moniker to an age group already tagged as millenials and Gen Y.

It’s the “No Collar Workforce.”

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“It must always be noted that these numbers are statistics—and complicated ones, based on tens of thousands of surveys from businesses and households, which are then massaged by a variety of quantitative techniques to produce the unemployment rate, the size of the labor force, and a host of other numbers. They are not absolutes, and they are not unequivocal facts. The definition of “unemployment” is not simply out of work; you can be without a job for years and not “unemployed” as a statistic; once you cease actively looking for work, you cease to be part of the workforce and hence are not “unemployed.” “Employed” also says nothing about wages. You can have two jobs and still earn less than the official poverty rate or be unable to support a family of five, and that indeed is the case for tens of millions of people.” - Primer by economist and money manager Zachary Karabell on how to interpret the federal government’s monthly report on unemployment.

Source: The Daily Beast

BY THE NUMBERS

$42,569 - The median salary for 2012 college graduates holding a bachelor’s degree at minimum — a 4.5 percent increase over the median salary earned by the Class of 2011.

Source: National Association of Colleges and Employers

FINAL WORD

“At G.M. you did the same thing every 48 seconds. In the nursing job, you don’t know what’s going to walk in the door.” — former autoworker Ken Harris on a new career path he took as a result of the type of retraining program now endangered by federal budget cuts.

Source: The New York Times  

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The unemployment rate has fallen dramatically over the last six months, but just how low can it go?

The answer is being debated among two camps of prominent economic thinkers. One school of thought says that unemployment will return to around 5% as the economy eventually recovers. But an opposing view states that permanent changes in the labor market mean higher unemployment is here to stay.

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Obama battles job crisis

Before Obama even took office, America had lost 4.4 million jobs. Track his progress since then.

Among those who believe the first, more optimistic scenario is Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. He thinks that unemployment will fall as part of the regular business cycle, and stimulative policies that boost demand could bring us back to a more normal unemployment rate of between 5% and 6% some time after 2014.

There’s plenty of research to back that up. A recent report by economists at Harvard, the San Francisco Federal Reserve and the International Monetary Fund suggests that three-quarters of the sharp rise in unemployment during the financial crisis was in fact due to cyclical, not permanent, factors.

And unemployment has indeed fallen sharply as the economy has slowly recovered from the recession. As of February, the unemployment rate stood at 8.3%, a substantial drop from 10% at the height of the financial crisis.

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Under the second, far less rosy scenario, 5% unemployment is out of reach. Devotees of "structural" unemployment, believe permanent shifts mean the job market may never fully recover, even as the broader economy does cash advance.

Nobel Prize winning economist Edmund Phelps, for example, calls a return to a 5% unemployment rate a "pipe-dream."

Phelps likens the economy to a skater who’s taken a bad fall. Just getting a boost might not be enough, because the skater may have a few broken bones.

What are those broken bones?

Less innovation, increased competition from low-wage countries, more efficient technology and a shortage of high-tech skills among American workers may all be to blame.

Another problem: Baby Boomers are working longer than their predecessors, creating a demographic shift in the labor market.

Plus, many Americans are finding themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time.

"Many workers do not have the skills required by employers in the location where employers are seeking jobs," Wells Fargo Chief Economist John Silvia said in a recent research note.

All of these factors are a recipe for a longer lasting shift in the labor market, and mean stimulative policies won’t have much of an impact, according to the structuralists.

So just how much further will unemployment fall?

The Labor Department will release March’s unemployment rate on Friday. Economists surveyed by CNNMoney are expecting the report to show the unemployment rate remained at 8.3% for the month.

Longer term forecasts are all over the map.

The Congressional Budget Office predicts that the unemployment rate will eventually fall as low as 5.3%, but not until 2021. Economists at Goldman Sachs, however, estimate that due to structural reasons the new normal unemployment rate may now be 6% at best.

The biggest wild card that could shift that balance is the long-term unemployed. Of the 12.8 million Americans who are unemployed, 42.6% have been out of work for six months or more.

"If progress in reducing unemployment is too slow, the long-term unemployed will see their skills and labor force attachment atrophy further possibly converting a cyclical problem into a structural one," Bernanke said last week. 

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