Business and Finance

NEW YORK — Cars use lights, bells and buzzers to remind drivers to fasten their seat belts as they start their engines.

It would seem natural, then, to offer motorists friendly, yet stern warnings about another bad habit: holding a cell phone while driving, whether for texting or talking.

Several software and gadget companies — many of them at the country’s biggest trade show for the wireless industry last week in Las Vegas — have sprung up to address that challenge. But creating an effective, widespread solution looks a lot harder than putting in reminders for seat belts.

Furthermore, we’re only just beginning to figure out what constitutes a dangerous distraction, and how best to curb it. Are handsfree conversations dangerous? What about dictating text messages to your phone? Does everyone need help staying away from the phone while driving, or just teens and employees?

Many states ban drivers from using cell phones without handsfree devices, but a recent insurance industry study found that such laws haven’t reduced crashes. It’s not clear why, but one reason might be that drivers flout the laws.

At least a dozen startups have produced phone applications designed to curb the temptation to use the phone while driving.

But these applications work only on some phones and have a hard time figuring out if the user is actually driving. Potentially important players — wireless carriers, cell phone makers, auto manufacturers and the federal government — have yet to step in, leaving the field to smaller companies that lack the clout to put services in widespread use.

And some of the tools might not even improve safety.

“Technology without a clear vision for how it’s going to actually help drivers could end up doing more harm than good,” said John Lee, professor of industrial and systems engineering at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

For instance, Drive Safely Corp. proposes to put software on phones to detect, using a built-in GPS chip, when a device is moving faster than 15 miles per hour. To figure out whether the phone is being used by a driver or a passenger, who can safely text in the car, Drive Safely intends to have the phone flash a series of numbers and letters that the user has to match on the keypad. The assumption is that drivers won’t be able to match the sequence while watching the road, so they won’t be able to unlock it for texting.

Lee suspects that won’t deter teens, and perhaps other motorists, from trying.

“They will try to do that task while they drive,” Lee said. “And by making that task really difficult, you make it more dangerous for them.”

A half-dozen other services are either available or in the works to use the phone’s GPS chip to figure out if the device is moving. With names such as ZoomSafer, TxtBlocker, CellSafety and Textecution, these software tools can respond in a number of ways, such as holding incoming text messages in quarantine until after the trip or by blocking the writing of new ones.

They’re expensive compared with regular downloadable applications, possibly because the startups figure that parents of teens will pay for a feeling of security. Some cost $40 to buy, then charge recurring fees of $4 or so per month.

None of them can tell, however, whether the owner is in a bus or a train rather than an automobile, or if someone in a car is just a passenger and not the driver. So most of these tools have an override option — which a determined motorist can take advantage of even while driving cash advances pay day loan.

Power consumption from constant GPS use is also a concern, possibly draining the battery twice as fast on some phones and applications.

Another approach is to dispense with using the GPS chip and rely on the car to tell the phone that it’s in a moving car.

Services such as Cellcontrol and Key2SafeDriving come with a small gadget that plugs in to a port generally found under the car’s steering column. It’s intended to help mechanics diagnose problems with the car, but it can also tell the gadget how fast the car is moving. If it’s above a certain speed, a wireless signal is sent to the phone’s Bluetooth receiver. The application then goes into “drive mode,” locking out some features.

This method avoids the battery drain of GPS. But it adds the element of hardware installation, and the cost of the Bluetooth transmitter. If the phone isn’t set up to use a particular transmitter, the software doesn’t work. That assures that you can pair your phone with a particular vehicle, but it means you’ll have to remember to turn off the phone when you’re borrowing a car.

A problem common to both GPS and Bluetooth approaches is that the applications will only run on certain phones. The phones most commonly supported by the distracted-driving apps are BlackBerrys, high-end Nokia phones and devices running Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Mobile or Google Inc.’s Android software.

Phones that lack “smart” operating systems are out of luck, as is Apple Inc.’s iPhone. Apple doesn’t allow third-party software to run “in the background,” so it can’t figure out if the iPhone is in a moving car.

“It’s going to be expensive for companies like our own to continually try to catch up with the multitude of phones,” said Joe Brennan at Trinity-Noble, which has a GPS-based app called Guardian Angel MP.

Brennan believes the only viable long-term solution is to install a radio jammer that blocks all communication between the driver’s phone and the outside world. The company has been developing such a jammer for years, but it’s illegal in the United States. Brennan says its effect is so specific that passengers can still use their phones.

Lee believes that eventually, some sort of solution will be built into cars and take advantage of their electronics, displays and controls to reduce phone distractions. Ford Motor Co.’s optional Sync system already links cell phones to the car’s controls, reads out text messages and understands spoken commands.

It’s questionable whether replacing manual manipulation of the phone with voice commands is safer, though. Research has shown that cell phone conversations are distracting to drivers whether they’re holding the phone or using a handsfree system.

The Department of Transportation’s Research and Innovative Technology Administration is looking at ways to reduce phone distractions, but it wants to make sure that technology promising better safety won’t also create an additional distraction.

Peter Appel, the agency’s head, warned against waiting for technology to solve what’s really a problem of behavior: “The real challenge that we face is: How do you get drivers to just drive?”

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A former controller for Cepia LLC, maker of the popular Zhu Zhu Pets robotic hamster toys, was indicted for mail fraud for allegedly embezzling more than $400,000 from the Clayton-based company.

Joseph Van Gronigen, 41, of Hillsboro, was indicted by a federal grand jury on two felony counts of mail fraud, the U.S. attorney’s office said Thursday. He is expected to appear in federal court later this week.

According to the indictment, between September 2007 to January 2010, Van Gronigen allegedly embezzled more than $400,000 from Cepia for his own use and to pay his own expenses cash advance no faxing. He was employed by Cepia from 2005 to January this year and had been the company’s controller since 2008.

Cepia brought the situation to the attention of the FBI and attorney general’s office.

Russell Hornsby is founder, owner and chief executive of Cepia LLC. His Zhu Zhu Pets were the must-have toy of Christmas 2009 and were named Toy of the Year in February by the Toy Industry Association.

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The government’s unprecedented $700 billion economic bailout will actually cost taxpayers just 16% of that total, according to a Congressional Budget Office report released Wednesday.

The Treasury’s losses on the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) will total $109 billion over the program’s lifetime, CBO latest estimates show. That’s up $10 billion from the agency’s last projection, released in January.

CBO, which is charged with reviewing congressional budgets, has released a series of TARP cost calculations in the 17 months since the bailout began, each time updating its numbers with the latest data. At one point CBO expected the cost to be as high as $356 billion, but faster-than-expected bank repayments and other cost adjustments have drastically reduced the expected price tag.

TARP’s two big moneysuckers are AIG and the auto industry.

AIG got TARP money in two forms: the government bought $40 billion in preferred stock and created a $30 billion line of credit for the company. CBO previously estimated the AIG bailout would cost the government $9 billion, but AIG hasn’t paid the Treasury the quarterly dividends it owes. AIG’s weak financial position prompted CBO to increase its loss projection to $36 billion — more than half of the AIG bailout cost.

Other major losses — a total of $34 billion — will come from TARP assistance to the automotive industry, CBO said. The government committed $85 billion to bailing out the automakers.

On the flip slide, the highly unpopular capital infusion for banks will actually net the government $7 billion, CBO expects — even including a $2 billion loss from CIT Group (CIT, Fortune 500), which declared bankruptcy, and Pacific Coast National Bancorp, which was taken over by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

CBO isn’t the only agency attempting to tally up TARP’s cost instant payday loan. The latest estimates from the Office of Management and Budget, released in early February, predict TARP will cost $18 billion more than CBO’s estimates. The numbers from the two agencies differ because of different assumptions about the cost of some items and a varied timeframe for some of the data they evaluated.

Foreclosure help forecast

As for President Obama’s mortgage modification program, the CBO estimates that the Treasury Department will use no more than $20 billion of TARP funds, less than half of the $50 billion originally allocated. That’s because the CBO expects many fewer people will participate in the program than the government originally expected, a view held by many housing industry observers.

When Obama announced the program in February 2009, he said up to 4 million people could save their homes through the loan modification program, which lowers eligible borrowers’ monthly payments to no more than 31% of their pre-tax income. But more recently, officials have backtracked and said up to 4 million people could qualify for trial modifications, during which loan servicers assess their borrowers’ eligibility and ability to pay.

Through February, around 170,000 distressed homeowners have received long-term modifications under the program.

Another $1.5 billion in TARP funds will be used to provide grants to state housing agencies in California, Arizona, Nevada, Florida and Michigan. These agencies are tasked with coming up with programs to assist the unemployed, the underwater who owe more than their homes are worth, and the second-lien holders.

CNNMoney.com senior writer Tami Luhby contributed to this report.  

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Longtime East Bay commercial real estate broker Ed Del Beccaro has jumped ship from Colliers International to Grubb & Ellis in Walnut Creek — an office he opened in 1982.

Del Beccaro will take the lead of Grubb & Ellis’ Walnut Creek office, which has 12 brokers. He expects to more than double the broker base by the end of the year.

“I build organizations and that’s what I like to do,” Del Beccaro said. “The goal is is to create a real, local culture that is broker-centric within a national company.”

He started his real estate career in 1977 at Grubb & Ellis in Oakland, where he worked for five years before starting the firm’s operation in Walnut Creek. He left the brokerage to become a developer from 1983 to 1992 and then returned to Grubb & Ellis to revamp its offices in Walnut Creek and Oakland following a major recession. In 1999, he joined Colliers Parrish, the local division of Colliers International, and launched its Walnut Creek office.

Del Beccaro has been involved in some major East Bay deals of late including Legacy Partners’ $174.25 million purchase Ygnacio Center in Walnut Creek in 2008 and Children’s Hospital & Research Center Oakland’s space to open a clinic in Walnut Creek.

“Colliers was very good to me and I very much enjoyed working at Colliers, but in deep recessions, there’s consolidation and things change at companies,” Del Beccaro said.

Market downturns often push many commercial brokerages to go out of business, merge with other firms or reorganize, he said. Another Bay Area brokerage, BT Commercial recently dropped NAI and affiliated with Cassidy Turley guaranteed high risk personal loans.

In his new role with Grubb & Ellis, Del Beccaro plans to add a medical services and multi-family housing groups and boost the retail, office, industrial and investments groups.

“I’ll be looking for good quality brokers to give them the right platform to work from,” he said.

Jack Van Berkel, president of real estate services for Grubb & Ellis, said the firm has positioned itself to take advantage of the turmoil in the industry to expand it’s business. Grubb & Ellis has 130 offices nationwide and is looking to grow significantly in the Bay Area, where it has about 75 brokers.

“Ed is a great hire for us,” he said. “He’s very representative of the type of leadershp we’re looking for. He’s very knowledgeable and aggressive and very respected in the Bay Area.”

Last year, Grubb & Ellis hired Mark Geisreiter to lead its San Francisco office and Dick Scott to head up the San Jose office.

“Ed is not only a very talented individual with an incredible track record,” he said. “He has spent a large portion of his career growing Grubb & Ellis in the East Bay and is the most qualified person to ensure the company’s continued growth.”

Del Beccaro earned a bachelor’s degree from Stanford University and is a member of the International Council of Shopping Centers as well as the Tri-Valley Council.

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Affymetrix Inc. on Monday named Timothy Barabe executive vice president and chief financial officer.

Santa Clara-based Affymetrix (NASDAQ:AFFX) said Barabe will lead the company’s financial functions as well as the treasury, investor relations and information technology departments.

Since 2006, Barabe has held the same role at Human Genome Sciences, and before that he was CFO at Regent Medical Ltd.

For more than 20 years, he held senior executive roles in finance, general management, and strategic planning at Novartis AG.

Barabe replaces John Batty, who worked for three years at Affymetrix.

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The crash of a Toyota Prius in New York caught the attention of federal regulators Wednesday after the driver said it accelerated on its own, then lurched down a driveway, across a road and into a stone wall.

The Department of Transportation is looking into the New York crash, spokeswoman Olivia Alair said Wednesday.

Capt. Anthony Marraccini of the police department in Harrison, north of New York City, said a Toyota official asked to collect the Prius involved in the crash but that the police are "not prepared to release it just yet." He said he wanted to see first if a federal agency wants to join or take over the investigation.

When police release the Prius, Toyota will evaluate it to determine the cause of the accident, company spokesman Brian Lyons said.

The 2005 model was taken to a police parking lot. Its front end was severely pushed in, the hood was buckled and the front bumper and one front headlight were broken.

Police believe the vehicle was on Toyota’s recall list for the sticky accelerator problem, but they had no immediate proof that this one had the problem, Marraccini said free credit report and score. The vehicle had been serviced by Toyota for the floor mat problem, he said.

The driver, a 56-year-old housekeeper, was going forward in the car on Tuesday, down a curving driveway several hundred feet long, when the accident happened, he said.

He said police did not yet know how fast the car was going.

The captain said police would consider the possibility that the driver, who was not identified, was at fault. But he added, "There’s nothing at this particular time that would indicate driver error."

The air bags deployed when the car hit the stone wall across the street. Broken glass, plastic headlight pieces and metal that looked like part of a window frame were nearby.

On Monday, California police stopped a runaway 2008 Prius going nearly 95 mph after the driver said the pedal jammed. Toyota and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration are investigating.

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China will limit the yuan’s appreciation to 4 percent over the next 12 months because of a “super cautious” outlook on the global economy, said New York University Professor Nouriel Roubini.

The central bank may end a 20-month peg to the dollar as soon as the second quarter, allowing a 2 percent one- step gain, and then let the currency strengthen another 1 percent to 2 percent in 12 months, Roubini said in an interview in New York. The yuan rose 21 percent between July 2005 and July 2008, when the government halted its advance to protect exports during the global recession.

Roubini’s forecast is less aggressive than the median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of 20 analysts for the yuan to rise 5 percent to 6.50 per dollar by March 31, 2011. Chinese central bank Governor Zhou Xiaochuan said on March 6 that the nation should be “very cautious” in exiting policies adopted during the global financial crisis, including the exchange-rate stance.

“It will be less than what they did in 2005 when everything was going right,” Roubini, 51, who anticipated the global financial crisis, said in the March 4 interview. “They will move by a token amount. The world is much cloudier in every dimension. They are super cautious.”

‘Hard Landing’

Roubini, who chairs New York-based Roubini Global Economics LLC, has become famous for his pessimistic projections. In 2007, he correctly predicted a “hard landing” for the world economy. He said last year that the global economy would shrink through 2009, only for growth to resume in the middle of the year.

Jim O’Neill, the chief Goldman Sachs Group Inc. economist who coined the term BRICs for Brazil, Russia, India and China in 2001, said last month that “something is brewing” on the yuan and predicted policy makers will allow a one-time 5 percent gain. Twelve-month non- deliverable forwards traded at 6.6505 per dollar, indicating bets the yuan will rise 2.6 percent from the spot rate of 6.8265.

“We must be very cautious about the timing of normalizing the policies, and this includes the renminbi rate policy,” Zhou said at a press briefing in Beijing, using another term for the Chinese currency. A global recovery “isn’t solid,” he said.

‘Sooner or Later’

China will exit its crisis policies “sooner or later” as it balances growth and inflation concerns, Zhou said. Regulators ordered banks to set aside more cash as reserves and to curb lending after the economy grew 10.7 percent in the fourth quarter, the most in two years.

Consumer prices probably climbed 2.5 percent in February from a year earlier, the biggest increase since October 2008, compared with 1.5 percent in January, according to the median estimate from 29 economists. A stronger currency would reduce import prices and may reduce the need to sell yuan for dollars to maintain the peg.

“A bit of move in the currency might help,” Roubini said. “If they move it by 2-3 percent, it won’t make a huge difference to inflation pressure. They are always cautious and won’t bow to the pressure from the U.S.”

While President Barack Obama has urged China to let the yuan climb to aid U.S. manufacturers, Chinese exporters say a gain of more than 2 percent may wipe out profits.

Export Recovery

China’s overseas shipments rose 21 percent in January from a year earlier, the fastest pace in 16 months. Fifteen U.S. senators called for stiffer tariffs on China’s imports last week, accusing the country of artificially keeping the yuan cheap. A stronger yuan would increase the purchasing power of Chinese residents and reduce the country’s reliance on exports.

“Most people are concerned about inflation, I am worried about the export-led growth model,” said Roubini. “A weak currency and low interest rate is a massive transfer of wealth from household income to enterprises. It will take more than three, five years to change China’s model of growth.”

Options traders are increasing their bets on the currency. Three-month implied volatility, a measure of expectations for yuan price movements, showed traders expected swings of 3.27 percent on March 4, a one-year high, up from 1.07 percent on Jan. 1. The next day the measure slumped to 2.8 percent as Premier Wen Jiabao said China plans to keep the currency “basically stable.”

“The Chinese authorities will be in no rush to further strengthen their currency,” said Joe Craven, the Asia-Pacific head of currencies and fixed-income at UniCredit Markets & Investment Banking in Hong Kong. “I view options volatility as being currently too high, especially in the shorter-end of the curve.”

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The European Central Bank left its benchmark interest rate at a record low as policy makers weigh the risks of withdrawing emergency lending measures amid Greece’s fiscal crisis.

The Frankfurt-based ECB kept its key rate at 1 percent, as predicted by all 52 economists in a Bloomberg News survey. President Jean-Claude Trichet has promised to give details on the next step in the ECB’s exit strategy when he holds a press conference at 2:30 p.m. today.

Greece’s soaring budget gap has roiled financial markets and sent bond yields surging in Spain and Portugal, whose deficits have also swelled in the wake of Europe’s worst recession since World War II. The crisis is undermining confidence in the euro area’s economic recovery and complicating the ECB’s plans to scale back the liquidity measures it introduced to nurse the region through the slump.

Trichet must avoid any hint that the ECB will prematurely end its unlimited cash support for euro-area banks, said Colin Ellis, an economist at Daiwa Capital Markets in London. “It could spook markets, push up interest rates and make it more difficult for countries like Greece to finance its debt.”

Greece, which must replenish 20 billion euros of borrowing in April and May, today began selling 10-year bonds.

‘Addicted’

The euro stayed lower against the dollar after the announcement and was down 0.2 percent to $1.3674 as of 1:47 p.m. in Frankfurt.

The Bank of England today left its benchmark rate at a record low of 0.5 percent and kept the target for its bond- purchase program at 200 billion pounds ($302 billion).

The cornerstone of the ECB’s program has been to provide banks with unlimited funding at its key rate in the hope they will lend it on to households and companies. The ECB has already said it will stop giving banks 12 and six-month loans to ensure they don’t become “addicted” to the cheap cash.

Officials will today decide whether to extend the policy of unlimited allotment in its remaining seven-day, one-month and three-month refinancing operations beyond the current guarantee of April 13. Before the global financial crisis, banks were required to bid for funds in auctions.

“Trichet will be very keen to show that the ECB will not have its exit strategy held hostage by the Greek situation,” said Laurent Bilke, a former ECB forecaster who now works for Nomura International Plc in London free credit score. “They always said they would announce the next steps of the exit this month, and they will.”

Demonstrations

The Greek government has announced a series of spending cuts to convince investors it can reduce its budget gap, plans that have prompted protests and strikes. Demonstrators today took over the Finance Ministry building in central Athens and blocked streets in the city.

As well as Greece, ECB policy makers have to take into account the sluggish economic recovery. The central bank in December forecast growth of 0.8 percent this year after a 4.1 percent contraction in 2009. Trichet will present new forecasts today.

“The recovery feels more vulnerable than it did in December, when the ECB initiated the exit,” said Mark Wall, an economist at Deutsche Bank AG in Frankfurt.

Inflation Muted

Euro-area growth almost ground to a halt in the fourth quarter, the European Union confirmed today. Unemployment held at the highest level in more than 11 years in January and economic confidence unexpectedly weakened in February. The European Commission last month said the economy may fail to gather strength for most of 2010.

The cooling recovery is keeping a lid on prices, reducing the need for the ECB to tighten policy any time soon. Inflation eased to 0.9 percent last month from 1 percent in January. That compares with the ECB’s aim to keep inflation just below 2 percent.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. this week pushed its forecast for the first ECB rate increase into 2011 from the fourth quarter of this year, and said the bank will exit non-standard measures more slowly than previously anticipated.

“The tensions surrounding Greece and the banks in general are likely to inject some concern that a too-fast exit could be dangerous,” Goldman’s chief European economist Erik Nielsen said in a note to investors. “We now believe that they’ll aim for a somewhat more gradual path than the one we have been forecasting for some time.”

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A product of Molson Coors Brewing Co. was the prize in a friendly wager between President Barack Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper over Sunday's men's ice hockey final between the U.S. and Canada at the Vancouver Winter Olympics.

Canada won the game and the gold medal in overtime, 3-2.

Obama had offered to buy Harper a case of Molson Canadian beer in the event of a Canadian victory quick cash. And Harper had wagered a case of Yuengling beer if the Americans had won.

Molson Canadian is a product of Molson Coors, which is headquartered in Denver and Montreal.

Yuengling is made by D.G. Yuengling & Son Inc. of Pottsville, Pa.

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