My finance view

Verizon just can’t seem to stay out of hot water.

As of May 6, new, upgrading and moving Verizon DSL Internet users are being required to also purchase a landline telephone service package. That decision is causing a stir on Capitol Hill and with partner DirecTV (, Fortune 500).

Sen. Herb Kohl, chairman of the Senate’s antitrust subcommittee, wrote to Verizon (, Fortune 500) on Thursday, slamming the telecom giant for its new DSL rules.

"The bundling that Verizon now plans could potentially lessen competition, increase rates and lead to less innovation," Kohl said in his letter. "Consumers benefit when one service is competing with another, not when they must buy a package of services."

Kohl’s primary complaint was about the timing of the company’s move. Verizon’s decision comes soon after it struck a deal with rival cable companies Comcast () and Time Warner Cable (, Fortune 500) to sell wireless service to their customers.

Verizon’s move to reduce its competition with its new partners seems a little suspicious.

As Kohl put it: "It appears inconsistent for Verizon to argue, on the one hand, that the joint marketing arrangements and bundling wireless services with cable offerings increases customer choice, while on the other hand the company is tying voice and DSL services, compelling consumers to purchase bundled offerings."

Verizon’s residential DSL and landline telephone businesses is on the decline. In the first quarter, the company shed 89,000 DSL customers and 205,000 landline phone users.

"Our decision to adjust the way we offer DSL service after May 6 more accurately represents the broadband customer base at Verizon," Verizon spokesman William Kula said.

Ending standalone DSL sales lets Verizon "control our cost structure more effectively," he said.

Verizon said it is reviewing Kohl’s letter and "will respond appropriately."

Verizon is still waiting for regulatory approval of its arrangement with Comcast and Time Warner Cable. It agreed to purchase $3.6 billion of wireless spectrum from the cable companies. In return, the cable consortium will be able to bundle wireless service with their triple-play TV, broadband and phone packages.

"We have made a strong case that the spectrum purchase is in the public interest," said Verizon spokesman Ed McFadden.

Verizon’s plan is to take currently unused spectrum and use it to expand its 4G LTE wireless broadband services.

But the deal has raised eyebrows among consumer advocates and other competitors, since Verizon has its own FiOS triple-play package as well as its DSL service. Those both compete directly with the cable companies’ plans.

Related story: Are landlines doomed?

DirecTV, which bundles Verizon’s DSL service with its satellite TV offering, also opposes Verizon’s spectrum purchase. It said in a complaint filed to the FCC on Wednesday that Verizon’s DSL-landline bundling decision is a prime example of why the telecom’s spectrum deal with the cable companies is anticompetitive.

"Even in the short amount of time since the commercial agreements were finalized, Verizon’s behavior offers direct evidence of ways in which the proposed transaction will alter the market to the detriment of competition and consumers," the company said.

The DSL wrangle is just the latest in a recent slew of negative headlines about Verizon.

The company on Wednesday said it was planning this summer to begin forcing smartphone customers with unlimited data plans to switch to tiered plans when they upgrade.

Last month, Verizon said it would begin instituting a $30 upgrade fee when current customers purchase a new phone.

And just before New Year’s Eve, Verizon tried to sneak through a $2 "convenience charge" for customers who make one-time bill payments using a debit or credit card. Met with incredible consumer ire, Verizon abandoned that plan the next day. 

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All three U.S. stock indexes closed down roughly 1% Monday. Investors sold out of stocks on worries over the political and economic stability of the eurozone and the safety of the U.S. banking sector.

Over the weekend, Greece’s political crisis appeared to worsen as parties fought to form a government. The lack of resolution heightened fears that Greece could be forced to leave the eurozone.

"Everyone is trying to figure out how much of the possibility of Greece leaving the eurozone is being factored into the market," said Frank Davis, head of trading at LEK Securities.

The Dow Jones industrial average () closed down 125 points, or 1%. The S&P 500 () lost 15 points, or 1.1%. The Nasdaq () fell 31 points or 1.1%.

Meanwhile, JPMorgan’s announcement last week of a $2 billion trading loss continues to drag down bank stocks.

Bears are roaring back

Shares of JPMorgan (, Fortune 500), which were down 9% Friday, lost another 3% Monday, after the bank announced the retirement of chief investment officer Ina Drew, who oversaw the unit responsible for the trading blunder. Fitch Ratings downgraded JPMorgan’s debt after Friday’s closing bell, voicing concern over a "lack of liquidity."

Stocks of rival Wall Street firms Citigroup (, Fortune 500), Wells Fargo (, Fortune 500) and Goldman Sachs (, Fortune 500) all slid roughly 2% Monday, following 4% losses Friday. Morgan Stanley (, Fortune 500) dropped by more than 4%.

"If [JPMorgan CEO Jamie] Dimon is making these mistakes and known as one of the best managers out there, it really makes people wonder again who is controlling the risk situation at the banks," said Douglas DePietro, head of trading at Evercore.

As Greece’s problems heat up, investors made a dash out of European debt securities Monday, with the yield on 10-year Greek bonds shooting up to 27.3%.

The yield on the Spanish 10-year bond climbed to 6.33%. Any rate above the 6% benchmark heightens bailout risk. Italian bond yields also rose, hitting 5.75%.

Meanwhile, the German bund slipped to a record low of 1.45%, further raising the spread between Germany and the weaker nations’ yields.

Investors will keep tabs on Germany after German Prime Minister Angela Merkel’s party lost elections in the nation’s largest state on Sunday. Merkel is due to face national elections next year.

U.S. stocks finished lower Friday and were down for the second straight week.

World markets: Major European stocks closed sharply lower. Britain’s FTSE 100 () lost 2%, while the DAX () in Germany tumbled 1.9%, and France’s CAC 40 () plunged 2.3%.

The Shanghai Composite () lost 0.6% in trading Monday, while Hang Seng () in Hong Kong ended down 1.2%. But the Nikkei () in Tokyo finished up 0 short term personal loan.2% for the day.

The People’s Bank of China took action Saturday to stimulate slowing growth, as it cut the amount of reserves banks are required to hold. The move came a day after economic readings showed inflation, industrial production growth, spending and lending in the world’s second-largest economy all slowing.

Companies: Yahoo (, Fortune 500) CEO Scott Thompson left the company Sunday, after it was found he padded his resume with an embellished college degree, ending his term there after just four months.

The web-portal company also reached a deal with activist shareholder and Third Point CEO Dan Loeb, who had initially disclosed the problems with Thompson’s resume, by agreeing to nominate three of four directors he had put forth for its board.

Beauty company Avon Products (, Fortune 500) said that it would consider the most recent buyout offer from Coty Inc., which upped its offer last week. Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway (, Fortune 500) is helping to finance the bid and said it would back the purchase.

Shares of online deal site Groupon () rose nearly 11% in after-hours trading, following its release of first-quarter results, which showed narrowing losses and better-than-expected sales. In recent months, Groupon has seen accounting problems, shareholder lawsuits and an examination by the Securities and Exchange Commission, but shares moved up 19% Monday ahead of earnings.

Wall Street betting as big as ever

Shares of Chesapeake Energy (, Fortune 500) rebounded Monday from their Friday sell-off, which was sparked by news that Chesapeake might have to delay some asset sales, which are necessary to pay down its debt.

After Friday’s close, the company announced it had arranged for a $3 billion unsecured loan from Goldman Sachs (, Fortune 500) and affiliates of Jefferies Group (). On Monday, the Wall Street Journal reported that activist investor Carl Icahn is expected to reveal he has increased his stake in the company to more than 5%.

Shares of Best Buy (, Fortune 500) rose after the retailer said former Chief Executive Brian Dunn’s relationship with an employee was inappropriate but didn’t involve "misuse of company resources" or "misuse of aircraft."

Currencies and commodities: The dollar was stronger against the euro, but fell versus the Japanese yen and the British pound.

Oil prices for June delivery slid to a five-month low, losing $1.96 to $94.17 a barrel.

Gold futures for June delivery lost another $26.30 and reached $1,557.70 an ounce.

Bonds: The price on the benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury rose, pushing the yield down to 1.78%. 

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JPMorgan Chase is expected to accept the resignation of one of the highest-ranking women on Wall Street after the bank lost $2 billion in a trading blunder, a person familiar with the matter said Sunday.

The bank will accept the resignation of Ina Drew, its chief investment officer, the person told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to discuss the decision publicly.

At least two other executives at the bank will be held accountable for the mistake, the person said.

The casualties come as the bank, the largest in the United States, seeks to minimize the damage caused by the $2 billion trading loss, disclosed Thursday by CEO Jamie Dimon.

Investors shaved almost 10 percent off JPMorgan’s stock price on Friday, and Dimon has said the mistake will complicate the efforts of banks to fight certain regulatory changes three years after the financial crisis.

Drew, 55, is a top lieutenant to CEO Jamie Dimon. She was paid $15.5 million last year and almost $16 million in 2010, making her one of the highest-paid officials at JPMorgan, according to a regulatory filing.

The Wall Street Journal reported earlier Sunday that Drew and two other JPMorgan executives were expected to resign soon.

The Journal also reported that Bruno Iksil, the JPMorgan trader identified as the “London whale” because of the giant bets he placed, was also likely to leave, but the paper reported that it was not clear when that would happen.

The surprise loss has been a black eye for the bank and for Dimon, who is known in the industry both as a master of risk management and as an outspoken opponent of some proposed regulation since the crisis.

JPMorgan’s disclosure has led lawmakers and critics of the banking industry to call for tougher regulation of Wall Street. Many post-crisis rules governing risk-taking by banks are still being written.

Dimon said in a TV interview aired Sunday that he was “dead wrong” when he dismissed concerns about the bank’s trading last month.

“We made a terrible, egregious mistake,” Dimon said in an interview that was taped Friday and aired on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “There’s almost no excuse for it.”

Dimon said he did not know the extent of the problem when he said in April that the concerns were a “tempest in a teapot.”

The loss came in the past six weeks. Dimon has said it came from trading in so-called credit derivatives and was designed to hedge against financial risk, not to make a profit for the bank.

A piece of financial regulation known as the Volcker rule would prevent banks from certain kinds of trading for their own profit. Dimon has said the trading involved in the $2 billion loss would not have fallen under the rule.

Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., told ABC’s “This Week” that he hopes the final version of the Volcker rule will prevent the type of trading that led to the massive loss at JPMorgan.

Dimon conceded to NBC that the bank “hurt ourselves and our credibility” and expects to “pay the price for that.” Asked what the price should be, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., said that banks will lose their fight to weaken the rule.

“This was not a risk-reducing activity that they engaged in. This increased their risk,” Levin told NBC.

“So we’ve got to be very, very careful that the regulators here are not undermined by this huge effort to weaken the rule by putting in a huge loophole” that includes the trading involved in the JPMorgan loss, he said.

Dimon said the bank is open to inquiries from regulators. He has also promised, in an email to the bank’s employees and in a conference call with stock analysts, to get to the bottom of what happened and learn from the mistake.

Dimon told NBC that he supported giving the government the authority to dismantle a failing big bank and wipe out shareholder equity. But he stressed that JPMorgan, the largest bank in the United States, is “very strong.”

Addressing public anger toward Wall Street, Dimon said he wants a more equitable society and does not mind paying higher taxes. But he said attacking all of business is “very counterproductive.”

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McDonald’s Corp. says a key revenue figure rose in April as strength in the U.S. and U.K. helped offset weakness in Japan. But results missed analyst expectations and McDonald’s shares fell 2 percent in premarket trading.

The world’s largest hamburger chain says global sales rose 3.3 percent at stores open at least 13 months. But Thomson Reuters says analysts expected a 4.1 percent rise.

The figure is key metric because it excludes the impact of newly opened stores.

The figure rose 3 payday loans guaranteed no fax.3 percent in the U.S., driven by its new extra value menu offerings such as 20-piece Chicken McNuggets.

The sales figure rose 3.5 percent in Europe and 1.1 percent in Asia/Pacific, the Middle East and Africa. McDonald’s says positive results in China were offset by negative results in Japan.

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The price of oil plunged to its lowest level in nearly six months Friday, falling below $100 per barrel for the first time since February. A drop in gasoline prices can’t be far behind.

It’s a welcome trend for motorists, with the summer driving season just around the corner. And it eases some pressure on the U.S. economy, which has shown only agonizingly slow growth in the nearly three years since the Great Recession ended.

Oil fell $4.05, or 4 percent, to $98.49, after a weak U.S. jobs report offered the latest evidence that the global economy is weakening, possibly reducing demand for oil. At the same time, there is mounting evidence that world oil supplies are growing.

For the week, oil fell more than $6 and is now about $12 below its February high. U.S. gasoline prices have fallen to $3.80 per gallon from a peak of $3.94 in early April.

Now they could go as low as $3.50 per gallon by July 4, according to Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst at the Oil Price Information Service.

The picture of the oil market is the reverse of just a few months ago. Then, world oil demand looked to be rising quickly at the same time that world supplies were threatened by a host of small production outages and the potential for drastically reduced production from Iran, the world’s third-biggest exporter.

Those developments raised the prospect that world supplies would be at their most tenuous just as the summer driving season arrived in the developed world. The price of U.S. benchmark oil rose to about $110. The price for international oil used to make most of the gasoline in the U.S. spiked even higher, to $128 per barrel.

Gasoline prices in the U.S. appeared to be on track to soar past $4 per gallon nationwide, another burden for U.S. consumers already suffering from high unemployment and pitiful wage growth.

Now the worst of those price fears have melted away for a number of reasons:

• Falling demand: A spreading recession in Europe and slow growth in the U.S. suggests energy consumption, which fell 0.4 percent worldwide in the first quarter, will remain weak.

• Growing supplies: Saudi Arabia and other OPEC members are pumping more oil. Energy companies are employing cutting-edge drilling technology to ramp up production across the globe. World oil supplies grew on average by 1.35 million barrels per day in the first quarter, and producers should easily meet demand in the coming months.

• Easing political tensions: The West’s nuclear standoff with Iran appears to be cooling off. The threat of conflict — and less Iranian crude on the market — helped push oil prices past $100. But now Iran and the West are planning talks.

The price of oil hasn’t dropped this much since Dec. 14, 2011, when it fell by $5.19, or 5.2 percent, to $94.95 per barrel.

Oil prices may drift even lower in coming weeks.

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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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Identity theft isn

The U.S. job market took a breather in March after its best hiring stretch since the Great Recession.

Employers added 120,000 jobs last month _ half the December-February pace and well short of the 210,000 economists were expecting. The unemployment rate fell from 8.3 percent in February to 8.2 percent, the lowest since January 2009, but that was largely because many Americans stopped looking for work.

Still, few economists expect hiring to fizzle in spring and summer, as it did the past two years. And they blamed seasonal factors for much of Friday’s disappointing report from the Labor Department.

“We don’t think this is the start of another spring dip in labor market conditions,” said Paul Ashworth, chief U.S. economist with Capital Economics.

The report was also closely watched in political circles. If employers retreat on hiring, consumers could lose confidence in the economy and potentially dim President Barack Obama’s re-election hopes.

Ashworth and other economists cited the weather for the latest jobs report. A warm January and February allowed companies to hire workers for outdoor jobs a few weeks earlier than usual, effectively stealing jobs from March. It partially explains a 34,000-job drop in retail hiring and a 7,000 drop in construction jobs.

“Our winter didn’t really exist,” said Alan Amdahl, who runs his own construction company in Sioux Falls, S.D. “It’s just incredible. People didn’t hibernate.”

Economists also say the numbers can bounce around from month to month. Consistently creating 200,000 jobs a month is tough. The economy hasn’t put together four straight months of 200,000 or more new jobs since early 2000.

Economists are still encouraged by the recent hiring trend: The economy has generated an average 212,000 jobs a month from January through March.

Anthony Chan, chief economist at JP Morgan Wealth Management, noted strong growth among businesses that are especially sensitive to the economy’s health. Hotels and restaurants hired 39,000 workers. Manufacturers added 37,000.

The factory hiring is especially welcome. Expanding factories create more jobs at the mines that produce raw materials, in warehouses and at trucking companies and at utilities that generate power.

Government jobs, which declined by an average 22,000 a month last year, fell just 1,000 in March. An improving economy is generating tax revenue and easing budget problems at city halls and statehouses across the country.

The March slowdown brings back painful memories of what happened in mid-2010 and 2011, when the economy lost momentum and job growth sputtered.

The job market had been on a recent roll. From December through February, the country added 734,000 jobs. The only three-month stretch that was better since the recession ended was March through May 2010, when the government was hiring tens of thousands of temporary workers for the census.

Companies across the country are hiring:

_ Nimble Storage, a young information technology company in San Jose, Calif., is rapidly adding staff to keep up with demand for its data storage devices. Anup Singh, the company’s chief financial officer, says the explosive growth of data and the need for companies to store, analyze and deliver it is driving rapid expansion. Nimble Storage has added 30 employees so far this year, bringing its workforce to 175 cash advance america. It expects to hire 70 more by the end of the year. They are hiring engineers, sales people and customer support staff.

_ Landry & Kling Cruise Event Services in Miami, which arranges events on cruise ships, has added two workers this year and plans to hire two more. Sales are strong.

“It’s like the floodgates are opening,” says CEO and co-founder Joyce Kling. “There’s an energy to our day now. We see a lot of leads floating through.”

_ IdeaPaint, a company that makes washable paint that people can use erasable markers on, has hired seven workers in the last three months. Sales have risen sharply and are expected to keep rising. So the Ashland, Mass.-based company has more plans to hire _ it has 31 employees now and expects to have 40 at the end of the year.

“We just had a board meeting yesterday and agreed to become more aggressive with our hiring, with our advertising, with our investment spending. We’re very confident,” CEO Bob Munroe said.

The unemployment rate has dropped from 9.1 percent last August to 8.2 percent last month, the lowest since Obama’s first month in the White House.

Each month, the government does one survey to learn how many jobs were created and another survey to determine the unemployment rate. Those surveys can produce results that sometimes seem to conflict.

One is called the payroll survey. It asks mostly large companies and government agencies how many people they employed during the month. This survey produces the number of jobs gained or lost.

The other is the household survey. Government workers ask whether the adults in a household have a job. Those who don’t are asked whether they’re looking for one. If they are, they’re considered unemployed. If they aren’t, they’re not considered in the work force and aren’t counted as unemployed. The household survey produces each month’s unemployment rate.

Unlike the payroll survey, the household survey captures farm workers, the self-employed and people who work for new companies. It also provides a better snapshot of hiring by small businesses.

In March, the household survey showed that the number of people who say they have a job fell by 31,000 and that a significantly larger number of people _ 79,000 _ stopped looking for a job. That is why the unemployment rate dipped.

Some economists, most notably Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, say the job market faces bigger problems than unseasonably warm weather and month-to-month volatility in the employment numbers. They say the economy isn’t growing fast enough to sustain strong job growth and to push the unemployment rate down rapidly.

The economy is expected to grow 2 percent to 2.5 percent this year. Chris Jones, of TD Economics, says that is not fast enough for sustain the monthly average of 245,000 jobs created from December through February. He expects the economy to average 200,000 new jobs a month in the April-June quarter and then to pick up speed.

“The last few months of aggressive employment growth were inconsistent with underlying economic fundamentals,” Jones said. “March’s number, while still weak, actually makes sense.”

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Teenagers love "The Hunger Games," a hot trilogy of books about to hit theaters. But the biggest fans may be from an older generation — investors.

Shares have soared so far this year for the companies best positioned to benefit from the opening of "The Hunger Games" movie this Friday. And analysts are saying they’re are all poised for further gains from the series.

Lions Gate Entertainment (), whose Lionsgate studio is releasing the film here and in many major overseas markets, has probably gotten the biggest lift from the post-apocalyptic story of teenagers forced into a life-and-death competition for the entertainment of others. Shares are up 75% so far this year after a gaining more than 7% Tuesday to close at a record high of $15.27, and they were up another 4% in early trading Wednesday.

Analyst David Joyce of Miller Tabak, who Tuesday raised his price target for Lionsgate to $17 from his previous $14 target, estimates this weekend’s domestic box office sales between $70 million and $90 million. Eventually he expects it to bring in at least $300 million in domestic ticket sales.

"That’s not quite Harry Potter, but I think it’s going to be impressive," said Joyce. The final Harry Potter movie last year brought in $381 million in domestic box office for Time Warner (, Fortune 500) on its way to global ticket sales of $1.3 billion.

Joyce said that much of the run-up in stock is due to the company’s recent acquisition of Summit Entertainment, the independent studio that has the Twilight movie series. The fifth and final movie in the Twilight series, which so far have averaged $270 million each in domestic box office, debuts this November.

Box office at 16-year low

"I can’t split how much of the gain is due to Hunger Games and how much is due to the Summit deal," he said. "But having Hunger Games helped Lionsgate get Summit to the table and get the deal done."

The performance of Lionsgate shares so far this year would suggest financier Carl Icahn could be the big loser of the Hunger Games stock rally.

Icahn and his son sold 44 million shares of Lionsgate last fall for $7 each, dropping a long-running battle for control of the studio.

Publisher Scholastic, theater chains gain

The buzz around the movie also helped lift sales of the books, which last week allowed publisher Scholastic () to beat forecasts and its own sales target for the most recent period. Shares of Scholastic are up 22.5% year to date after a 1.7% rise in trading Tuesday, and were up another 1.8% Wednesday.

John Carter: Disney’s epic bomb

Company officials said even if last quarter proves to be a sales peak for the books, they expect good results from the franchise going forward. Analysts agree the first film and additional planned movies should help the book sales for years to come.

"Unlike the Harry Potter series, for which the book release event drove sales, in this case, ‘The Hunger Games’ movie appears to be driving book sales," said Drew Crum, analyst with Stifel Nicolaus, in a note last week.

"The Hunger Games" was first published in hardback in September 2008. The second in the trilogy, "Catching Fire" came out the next year, with the final book in the series, hitting bookstores in 2010. Between them there are 24 million copies of the three books in print in the United States alone.

Shares of theater operators have all had strong performances this year, as hopes for "The Hunger Games" and some other widely anticipated titles later this year like "The Avengers" "Dark Knight Rises" and the final "Twilight" movie have lifted hopes of a rebound after a down year in 2011, and some early missteps this year, such as Walt Disney’s (, Fortune 500) now historic bomb "John Carter."

James Gross, analyst with Barrington Research who follows the sector, said that "The Hunger Games" is almost certain to have the best opening so far this year and might end up No. 1 for the year, given the pre-sale demand for tickets.

"It was selling out the midnight shows a month ago," he said.

Carmike Cinemas () has been the best performer in the group, rising nearly 81.7% year to date, after Tuesday’s 3.6% gain. But shares were slightly lower in early trading Wednesday.

Shares of large screen theater operator IMAX () are up 41.8% so far this year, while shares of the two other major publicly-traded theater chains — Cinemark Holdings () and Regal Entertainment Group () — have achieved more modest gains, but both are up nearly 20% so far this year. All three were slightly higher in Wednesday trading. 

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