Business and Finance

More than 4,460 jobs have been created in Pennsylvania by casino table games in less than a month of operation, the state House Gaming Oversight Committee said Monday.

Supervisors, dealers and clerks, and security are among the jobs created by table games, which also appear to be boosting slot machine play, Committee Chairman Rep. Dante Santoni said at an informational hearing.

"The state received a record $116 million in slot machine tax revenues in July; a 17.81 percent increase over last summer that will go to lowering property taxes," Santoni said. "Many casinos credit that increase in slot play with the growing number of visitors they have seen since table games rolled out in mid-July No teletrak payday loan."

The revenue figures for table games won’t be available until after Aug. 20. Pennsylvania’s casinos, including Parx in Bensalem and Harrah’s Chester Casino and Racetrack, introduced table games in mid-July.

Table games and slots combined have created 12,754 jobs in the state, according to the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board.

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Community Bank of Florida moderately increased its earnings in the second quarter, but restated its 2009 results to change what it thought had been a profitable year into a loss.

The Homestead-based bank filed its amended 2009 results on June 4 with the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council. Instead of the $229,000 gain it originally reported in February, the bank lost $3.8 million last year. The main difference was the bank’s revision of its expense to reserve for future loan losses, which it increased to $11.6 million, more than double the $5.1 million expense it originally reported.

Sometimes, when banks review their problem loans, they determine drops in the appraised values of the collateral properties, which cause them to go back and take additional reserves.

Things went better in the second quarter for Community Bank of Florida. It earned $629,000, up from $570,000 in the first quarter. Its expense to reserve for future loan losses declined to $288,000 from $408,000 in the first quarter.

However, the bank’s net interest income fell to $4.8 million in the second quarter from $5.1 million in the first quarter.

The bank’s battle with a higher-than-average level of problem assets continued. As of June 30, Community Bank of Florida had $47.9 million in noncurrent loans, representing 11.75 percent of its total loans. As of March 31, it had $49.7 million in noncurrent loans, representing 11.59 percent.

The bank achieved that reduction by completing foreclosures on $6.4 million in additional properties during the second quarter, ending the quarter with $7.7 million in repossessed properties. It also charged off $4.6 million in bad loans during that time.

Its $9.9 million reserve for future loan losses covered 21 percent of its noncurrent loans as of June 30. That’s well below the coverage ratio of most banks and could leave Community Bank of Florida vulnerable to additional losses should it need to charge off more loans, especially given that nearly half of its problem loans are in the hard-hit sectors of construction and land holdings.

Community Bank of Florida was the 19th-largest bank chartered in South Florida as of March 31, with $592 million in assets. By midyear, its assets declined slightly, to $591 million. While its deposits increased to $489 million from $487 million, the bank’s loans dropped to $397 million from $421 million over that period.

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Venrock has announced the closing of a $350 million diversified venture capital fund.

The fund will focus on investments in early-stage technology, health-care and energy companies.

With the close of Venrock VI, the firm has approximately $2.2 billion under management payday loan.

Venrock, which has an office in Palo Alto, was originally the venture capital arm of the Rockefeller family.

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Sales of condominiums in Maui County doubled last month, while sales of single-family homes rose 35 percent.

There were 104 condo units sold in May, including two on Molokai, which was 100 percent more than the 52 units that sold in May 2009, according to the Realtors Association of Maui.

There were 81 single-family houses sold on Maui alone last month, a 35 percent increase compared to the 60 homes that sold on Maui, Lanai and Molokai during the same month last year.

Prices, however, didn’t follow suit. The median price for a single-family house was $442,000 in May, an 8 percent decline from $482,500 in May 2009.

The median price of a condo in Maui County last month was $412,500, which was a 3 percent increase compared to $399,000 in May 2009 Payday Loan for Bad Credit.

Year-to-date, single-family home sales are up 49 percent compared to last year, while the median price for the first five months of the year is $460,000, down 9 percent.

Condo sales for the first five months of the year are up 59 percent; however, the year-to-date median price for a condo in Maui County is $427,750, a 34 percent drop from the same period last year.

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AIG and Prudential PLC formally terminated a deal for an Asian life insurance unit on Thursday that would have accelerated AIG’s bailout repayment to the U.S. government.

The announcement comes two days after AIG rejected Prudential’s reduced bid for AIA, AIG’s Hong Kong-based life insurance division. In early March, the companies had agreed upon a $35.5 billion price tag for AIA. But it became apparent over the past few weeks that Prudential’s shareholders were not going to accept the deal.

Prudential attempted to renegotiate the terms of the deal with AIG, offering $30.375 billion instead. Prudential PLC is not related to the American insurer Prudential Financial Inc.

AIG has said that it considers the sale of AIA to be a crucial component of its effort to repay the more than $130 billion it has borrowed from U.S. taxpayers. The troubled insurer had planned on using the proceeds of the sale to pay down $25 billion of its debt to the Federal Reserve.

When the deal was first announced on March 1, AIG’s Chief Executive Robert Benmosche said the deal would allow AIG "to realize value on a faster track to repay U.S. taxpayers" and will give the company "greater flexibility" with its restructuring plans.

Now that the deal has fallen through, AIG may consider an initial public offering for AIA, an option that the company had initially proposed last year. An IPO would take much longer to complete than a direct sale, and the recent market turmoil may dictate a lower price for the unit.

According a regulatory filing, AIG will receive a termination fee from Prudential worth £152.6 million ($223.9 million) on July 1.

Shares of AIG (AIG, Fortune 500) rose more than 1% in premarket trading Thursday. 

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Stocks erased gains by the close Wednesday, with the Dow ending below 10,000 for the first time in three months, as worries about global growth and a slide in the euro overshadowed upbeat economic news.

The Dow Jones industrial average (INDU) lost nearly 70 points, or 0.7%, ending at the lowest point since Feb. 8. The S&P 500 (SPX) index lost 6 points, or 0.6%, and the Nasdaq (COMP) lost 15 points, or 0.7%.

A global market rally and a strong housing market report gave stocks a boost in the morning, but trading was choppy through the rest of the session as the euro weakened. Stocks slipped in the last hour of trading.

Stocks have tumbled in May, with the three major indexes all losing more than 10% each, falling into "correction" mode as investors have worried that Europe’s growing debt crisis is going to cut into U.S. and global economic growth.

A $1 trillion aid package announced by European leaders helped temper, but not eliminate, worries about the threat of so-called contagion stemming from problems with debt-plagued nations.

Greece got the ball rolling, but concerns remain about the other so-called PIIGS — Portugal, Italy, Ireland and most recently, Spain. News that Spain’s central bank had to take over one of the nation’s oldest savings banks over the weekend ushered in the latest wave of European-crisis driven worries. Reports of heightened tensions between North and South Korea added to jitters Tuesday.

Whether the stock correction - a decline of more than 10% off the highs - becomes a bear market - a drop of 20% to 30% off the highs - remains to be seen.

"A lot of indicators I watch suggest there is a turnaround coming, but the problem is the pullback has been pretty dramatic," said Randy Frederick, director of trading and derivatives at Charles Schwab.

He said that a lot of investors who were skeptical of the huge rally off the March 2009 lows have been waiting for the ideal pullback to get back in, after several smaller pullbacks failed to cross the 10% threshold.

"That pullback is here," he said. "The question is whether they have enough nerve to come back in or will they look at it as evidence that the runup was a false rally."

Euro: The European currency has seesawed since falling to a four-year low of $1.2146 last week.

On Wednesday, the euro fell 1.4% versus the dollar but remained above that four-year low. The dollar lost 0.3% against the yen.

Volatility: The CBOE Volatility index, or the VIX (VIX), Wall Street’s fear factor, ended modestly higher after having fallen through most of the session. The VIX had dropped as much as 13% as the market initially rallied, but turned higher when stocks fell.

Economy: New home sales jumped 15% in April, thanks to still-low mortgage rates and a homebuyer tax credit that expired at the end of last month. Sales rose to a seasonally adjusted rate of 504,000 from a revised 439,000 in the previous month. Economists surveyed by Briefing.com expected sales of 425,000.

Another report released before the start of trading showed that durable goods orders rose 2.9% in April, versus forecasts for a gain of 1.5%. Goods orders were flat in March, a revision on an earlier reading that showed a drop in orders.

However, orders excluding transportation fell 1% after rising 4.8% in the previous month. Economists thought orders excluding transportation would rise 0.7%.

World markets: Stocks around the world rebounded. Markets in Europe gained in late trading. Britain’s FTSE 100 rose 2%, Germany’s DAX gained 1.6% and France’s CAC 40 climbed 2.3%.

Asian markets also bounced back following a steep sell-off Tuesday on increased tension between North and South Korea. Japan’s Nikkei gained 0.7% and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rose 1.1%. China’s Shanghai Composite ended just above unchanged.

Commodities: U.S. light crude oil for July delivery rose $2.76 to settle at $71.51 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, a gain of over 4%.

COMEX gold for June delivery rose $15.40 to settle at $1,213.40 an ounce.

Bonds: Treasury prices tumbled, raising the yield on the 10-year note to 3.24% from 3.16% late Tuesday. Treasury prices and yields move in opposite directions.

Trading volume: Market breadth was positive. On the New York Stock Exchange, winners beat losers three to two on volume of 1.94 billion shares. On the Nasdaq, advancers topped decliners seven to six on volume of 3.08 billion shares. 

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Shopping mall owner Simon Property Group Inc. is willing to settle for a slice of its biggest rival, just two months after it had a buyout offer rejected as too low.

Simon, the nation’s largest mall operator, on Wednesday offered to help finance General Growth Properties Inc.’s exit from bankruptcy in exchange for a quarter stake in the No. 2 mall owner.

Analysts suggested Simon may have backed off a bid for a complete takeover because of antitrust concerns.

But a person familiar with the talks said Wednesday that General Growth has made clear it prefers a strategy that would give it the financial means to emerge from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, rather than to be taken over. The person, who spoke on condition of anonymity, was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly easy pay day loans.

General Growth issued a brief statement noting it would study the latest Simon offer.

General Growth operates more than 200 shopping malls in 43 states, including the St. Louis Galleria, and is the nation’s second-largest shopping mall operator.

Among Simon’s eight properties in Missouri are the Regency Plaza center in St. Charles and the St. Louis Mills mall in Hazelwood. Most of Simon’s 20 Illinois properties are in the Chicago area. Its lone Metro East center is Lincoln Crossing in O’Fallon.

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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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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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Federal regulators on Wednesday imposed new curbs on the practice of short-selling, hoping to prevent spiraling sales sprees in a stock that can stoke market turmoil.

The Securities and Exchange Commission, divided along party lines, voted 3-2 at a public meeting to adopt a new rule. Investors and lawmakers have clamored for the agency to put such brakes on trading moves they say worsened the market’s downturn in the fall of 2008.

The rule puts in a so-called circuit breaker for stock prices, restricting short-selling of a stock that has dropped 10 percent or more for the rest of a trading session and the next one. The new curbs will take effect in about 60 days, but stock exchanges have six months after that to implement them guaranteed approval cash loans.

Short-sellers bet against a stock, in a practice that is legal and widely used on Wall Street. They borrow a company’s shares, sell them and then buy them when the stock falls and return them to the lender — pocketing the difference in price.

The SEC move followed months of wrestling with the controversial issue. The SEC asked for public comment last April on several alternative approaches to restraining short-selling, and a bipartisan group of senators have pushed the agency to act or face legislation. The agency got more than 4,300 comments on the issue.

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