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For top executives, ’tis the season to get paid in company stock - unless you happen to work at Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac.

The taxpayer-backed mortgage giants disclosed Thursday that they could pay out as much as $40 million to their top 10 executives for work in 2009.

The CEOs - Fannie’s (FNM, Fortune 500) Michael Williams and Freddie’s (FRE, Fortune 500) Charles Haldeman - are in line to receive as much as $6 million apiece, on an annualized basis (though both will get less this year because they took their jobs midway through the year).

That’s a nice chunk of change for running two companies that together lost $72 billion in the first nine months of 2009 and have received $112 billion in Treasury aid.

But what’s remarkable is that every penny Fannie and Freddie will pay out will be in cash - at a time when the White House is pressuring companies to pay more in stock, in the name of suppressing the bet-the-ranch mentality that helped pave the way for Wall Street’s 2008 collapse.

The government’s pay czar, Kenneth Feinberg, has cut cash payouts at taxpayer-backed companies like AIG (AIG, Fortune 500), Chrysler Financial and GMAC.

But his message has been heard everywhere, notably on Wall Street, where some big banks that have repaid Treasury loans have set plans to offer more compensation in stock.

"It’s amazing that the government is pushing companies with which it has no contractual standing to pay executives in stock, but isn’t doing the same with companies that it actually controls," said Len Blum, a managing director at investment bank Westwood Capital in New York.

For its part, the government agency that oversees Fannie and Freddie notes that this year’s payouts are 40% below the levels that obtained before the government takeover. Much of the money will be deferred over several years and some will be paid only if the companies hit certain targets.

Fannie adds that Treasury, which approved the payouts, prohibits it "from issuing common stock in connection with any new compensation arrangements without Treasury’s prior consent."

That stands in contrast to two of Fannie and Freddie’s big peers in the government-backed stable: insurer AIG and carmaker GM, which are now paying their executives mostly in stock.

AIG chief Robert Benmosche agreed in August to receive an annual salary of $7 million - $3 million in cash and $4 million in common stock. He won’t be able to sell the shares for five years. Benmosche also gets up to $3.5 million annually in stock-based incentive pay.

At GM, new finance chief Chris Liddell agreed this month to receive $750,000 annually in cash salary, $3.45 million in stock salary and $2 million in stock incentive pay.

Even at firms that have repaid their Troubled Asset Relief Program loans, the pay-in-stock message has sunk in.

Goldman Sachs (GS, Fortune 500) said this month it will pay its top executives’ bonuses in stock in 2009, a year in which the big trading firm is expected to set aside some $21 billion for employee pay.

"We believe our compensation policies are the strongest in our industry and … incentivize behavior that is in the public’s and our shareholders’ best interests," CEO Lloyd Blankfein said in a statement Dec. 10.

Of course, there are big differences between these companies and Fannie and Freddie.

Since September 2008, the government has been propping up Fannie and Freddie in the name of stabilizing the financial markets and ensuring that home mortgages remained available for Americans.

With their emphasis focusing from investor profits to supporting home prices, the firms’ financial results have collapsed. Fannie lost $58 billion in the first nine months of 2009 and Freddie $14 billion, as their share of the U.S. mortgage market soared near 90%.

The availability of Fannie-Freddie financing allows loans that "no one would normally make" to be extended, said Blum.

Shares of Fannie traded as high as $70 in August 2007, as the global credit bubble was getting ready to collapse. But in the past year, they have closed above $2 just once.

Even that is probably too high, Blum said, given the companies’ giant debt to taxpayers and the prospect of additional losses should this year’s recovery peter out.

Indeed, the giant paychecks also show little progress has been made in resolving the key conflict at the heart of these firms.

Given their obvious public policy function and their ballooning losses, it makes sense to simply take over Fannie and Freddie and make them into full-fledged government agencies, Blum said.

But in doing so, the government would have to wipe out the shareholders, foreclosing a possible sale of the firms back to the public. And it would have to start paying the firms’ workers on the federal pay scale - which would mean no more $6 million paydays for CEOs.

So as officials in Washington posture about the need to end too-big-to-fail and put the financial system on a sounder footing, action remains in short supply.

"These companies are never going to turn a profit again, but the government hasn’t come clean and wiped out the stock," said Blum. "After the crisis we have had, I don’t understand why we’re still allowing conflicts like this in our financial system." 

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After surging 10% in October, sales of existing homes jumped again in November, growing 7.4% compared with October to an annualized rate of 6.54 million units, according to the National Association of Realtors.

"This clearly is a rush of first-time buyers not wanting to miss out on the tax credit," said NAR’s chief economist, Lawrence Yun.

November was originally going to be the last month in which sales to first-time homebuyers would qualify for a federal tax credit of up to $8,000. However, that deadline was extended through June.

In addition, the tax credit was expanded to cover people who already own a home. They can qualify for a $6,500 tax credit if purchase a new house before the end of June. That should encourage "trade-up" buyers.

The strength of sales in November surprised the industry. A panel of experts compiled by Briefing.com had forecast month-over-month sales growth of just 2.5% to 6.25 million from 6.1 million a month earlier.

The sales total was also a huge improvement over a year ago. Sales rose 45.7% over the paltry annualized rate of 4.49 million units during November 2008.

The contribution made by first-time buyers is evident in a separate survey NAR conducted of its members. They estimate that 51% of sales in November were by newcomers to the market, up a point from 50% in October. Normally, first timers account for about 40% of sales.

Also propelling sales higher were rock-bottom interest rates. The average for a 30-year, fixed-rate loan during the month was just 4.88%, down from 4.95% in October and 6.09% a year ago.

With rates that much lower, homebuyers can save more than $150 a month on a $200,000 mortgage.

The industry expects home sales to slacken December, partially because of the tax credit’s originally scheduled demise. That caused some buyers to push up their closing, stealing sales from December.

However, sales will not fall off a cliff, though, according to Walter Molony, a NAR spokesman payday loans with no faxing. "The psychology seems to be turning around," he said. "Potential buyers, who had been staying on the fence, now believe we’re at or near the market bottom."

One X-factor, however, is the vast numbers of homes that may come to market over the next few months. There is a large "shadow inventory" — homes owned by banks and mortgage companies — that have not yet been put up for sale. It could be as many as 1.7 million units, according to First American CoreLogic.

In addition, another spate of foreclosures could be hitting the market as a number of option-ARM mortgages are set to default.

All that may drive prices down, according to Shari Olefson, author of "Foreclosure Nation: Mortgaging the American Dream." And the impact of these renewed price declines could again alter the market psychology.

"People think that prices have bottomed," she said. "I don’t think they have. People will see price declines and that will discourage them from buying."

Mike Larson, a real estate analyst with Weiss Research has preached all through the bust that price declines are what will "fix" the housing crisis.

"We needed to see prices fall to make ownership competitive with renting again, and to restore the normal relationship of house prices to income," he said. "That has now happened and you’re seeing buyers come out of the woodwork as a result."

Still, they will have to come out in large numbers to offset the inventory overhang in some of the worst markets, according to Olefson. In the Florida condo market, for example, there is a 35-to-40 month supply of units at the current rates of sale, she said.

Prices still almost certainly have further to fall. 

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Citadel Broadcasting Co., the third-largest radio group in the United States, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy Sunday.

The company, which has stations in 25 states, listed liabilities of $2.5 billion on assets of $1.4 billion, according to court papers filed with the Southern District of New York.

Citadel has been saddled with debt for some time and it had been widely reported in recent months that the company could be headed toward bankruptcy.

More than 60% of the company’s secured lenders backed Citadel’s pre-negotiated bankruptcy, which will allow it to extinguish $1.4 billion of debt and convert its $2.1 billion secured credit facility into a new term loan.

Chief Executive Farid Suleman said in a statement that "business will continue as usual" and Citadel would work hard to emerge from bankruptcy "as quickly as possible."

The company said Sunday that it had reached a deal with its lenders to gain access to over $36 million of cash plus cash flow from operations to help it through the restructuring process.

According to Sunday’s filing, the three largest unsecured creditors were JPMorgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500) (with an unspecified amount owed), Wilmington Trust Corp. (WL) (with a $49.2 million claim) and The Walt Disney Co. (DIS, Fortune 500) (with a claim of $11.2 million).

Citadel had reported a third-quarter loss of $21 million and a 14% drop in revenue for the three months ended Sept. 30. The company’s stock was delisted earlier in the year and last month Citadel warned, in a regulatory filing, that it expected sales would continue to decline through the end of the year.

The company comprises 165 FM stations and 58 AM stations. Programming includes syndicated radio properties like ABC News Radio, The Mark Levin Show and The Huckabee Report.

Citadel’s attorney was unavailable for immediate comment. 

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U.S. President Barack Obama called a climate change agreement with China and about 25 other nations an “unprecedented” move to slow global warming. Environmental groups and at least five developing nations called it a failure.

The accord, which pushes off signing a treaty for at least a year, is “a first step,” Obama said yesterday before leaving Copenhagen, where he spent 14 hours cobbling together the agreement in meetings with world leaders, and addressing 8,000 envoys from 193 nations.

Delegates from the countries failed to reach consensus on the accord today after discussing it through the night, agreeing instead to “take note” of the document, or recognize that it exists. The agreement seeks voluntary cuts in greenhouse-gas emissions that scientists blame for global warming without binding countries to take action.

“The meeting was a disaster,” Lars-Erik Liljelund, the director general of Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt’s office, said in an interview today. “The process needs to be changed because if we continue like this, we won’t be any further a year from now.”

Negotiators met in the Danish capital for two weeks of United Nations talks on curbing global warming. Debate stumbled on aid to developing countries facing damage from climate change, pollution-reduction goals and how to verify individual country’s pledges to cut harmful emissions.

Environmentalists said the agreement that includes the U.S. and China — the world’s two biggest emitters of greenhouse gases — falls well short of what’s needed to deal with global warming. Bolivia, Sudan and Venezuela were among countries that spoke out against the accord, which will serve as a framework for continuing talks in 2010.

‘Backroom Deal’

“This is the United Nations and the nations here are not united on this secret backroom declaration,” Kate Horner, policy analyst for the London-based environmental group Friends of the Earth, said in statement. “Copenhagen has been an abject failure.”

The proposal calls for voluntary steps to reduce emissions blamed for heating the atmosphere, melting icecaps and causing destructive weather patterns. For two years, nations from China to members of the 27-country European Union repeatedly called for a binding treaty to be signed in Copenhagen.

“It will not be legally binding, but what it will do is allow for each country to show to the world what they are doing,” Obama told reporters in Copenhagen. “There will be a sense on the part of each country that we’re in this together and we’ll know who is meeting and who’s not meeting the mutual obligations that have been set forth.”

Bleeding Hand

Obama, U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva were among about 25 world leaders who spent ten hours “in a rather stuffy room” drafting details normally left to lower-level negotiators, UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer told reporters today.

The text, called the Copenhagen Accord, was then introduced to the meeting hall where delegates from all nations were present. Envoys from Bolivia, Sudan and Venezuela rejected the text.

During the meeting, Venezuelan negotiator Claudia Salerno Caldera raised her hand that was bloodied and complained about the way the document was drafted, calling it a “Coup d’état on the UN charter.”

“This hand that is bleeding wants to talk and has as much right as any of those you call a “representative” group of leaders,” she said. “International agreements can’t be imposed by a small and select, as you call it, group of countries.”

Burning the Midnight Oil

Negotiations went through the night yesterday, finally ending today at about 3:30 p quick guaranteed personal loans.m. local time, more than 21 hours after their scheduled conclusion. That followed debate by Brown, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton until about 2:30 a.m. on Dec. 18.

Dessima Williams, Grenadian ambassador who was lead negotiator for a group of 43 small-island and low-lying states, today said she’d been awake for 48 hours.

“Although I’m not ecstatic, I’m not unhappy in a major way. I wish I could’ve gotten more, but I think I’ll live to fight another day.”

Rich countries offered to provide $100 billion a year by 2020 to help poor nations reduce carbon emissions, conditional on developing countries cutting gas discharges, according to the text. They may also pay out $30 billion in aid from next year through 2012.

“In terms of finance, it is vague, it is a big soup,” Pa Ousman Jarju, a Gambian delegate, said in an interview in Copenhagen. “It’s well below what is required.”

Move Forward

The agreement was reached after Obama had last-minute talks with Wen, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Brazil’s Lula and South African President, Jacob Zuma. It was then taken to all nations and most backed it.

“There emerged over time a real sense in the room that most countries wanted to move forward with some kind of decision,” said Ruben Kraiem, co-chair of the climate practice for attorneys Covington & Burling LLP in New York.

Nations should try to keep the global temperature increase before industrialization “below 2 degrees” Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), according to the agreement.

Envoys from the U.S., Europe and China have supported the 2 degrees target. Poorer nations and environmental groups wanted 1 or 1.5 degrees, fearing a higher increase will raise sea levels and make coastal cities and some island states uninhabitable.

‘Well Short’

“As President Obama said, its well short of what’s ultimately needed,” Elliot Diringer, vice president for international strategies at Arlington, Virginia-based Pew Center on Global Climate Change, said in a statement. “But it would provide a reasonable basis for negotiating a fair and effective climate treaty.”

Without emissions curbs, temperatures would rise by 6 degrees Celsius, an increase that “would lead almost certainly to massive climatic change,” the International Energy Agency, an adviser to 28 oil-consuming nations, said in a report. A more-than-2-degree warming will bring more intense flooding and drought and a faster sea-level increase, according to the UN.

“This declaration or outcome or whatever you want to call it, is not a legally binding document,” Indian Environment Minister Ramesh said in an interview. “It’s a political statement.”

For 20 years, scientists working for the United Nations have provided guidance for global climate talks. The result is the Kyoto Protocol, a 1997 accord that limits greenhouse-gas emissions among 37 industrialized nations. Those targets are set to expire in 2012, leaving the world without binding goals if Copenhagen doesn’t renew them.

“The objective of these negotiations of securing the future of the planet definitely wasn’t achieved,” Melinda Kimble, the U.S. chief negotiator for the Kyoto Protocol and senior vice president at the United Nations Foundation said in an interview in Copenhagen. “It’s a limited outcome.”

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The Federal Reserve is expected to leave interest rates at a record low this week. The big question is whether Chairman Ben Bernanke and his colleagues will hint about when they will reverse course and start boosting rates.

Plans for reeling in the unprecedented amount of money the Fed has plowed into the economy to bolster the recovery are likely to dominate discussions during the two-day meeting, which started on Tuesday afternoon. The Fed is expected to announce its policy decisions later today.

The central bank faces a high-stakes challenge: If it removes the stimulus too soon, it could short-circuit the fragile recovery. But if it moves too late, it could unleash inflation or new speculative asset bubbles.

A new report out Tuesday showed that wholesale prices shot up last month, but most economists think it will prove fleeting payday loan lenders.

Wholesale prices jumped 1.8 percent in November, lifted partly by more expensive energy products, the Labor Department said. That was up from a 0.3 percent gain in October and marked the largest one-month increase since August.

Stripping out energy and food, closely watched "core" prices rose 0.5 percent, the biggest increase in more than a year.

Meanwhile, the Fed reported that industrial production jumped 0.8 percent in November from October, the largest gain since August. Even with the stronger-than-expected showing, activity is still down 5.1 percent from a year ago, showing that the industrial sector is far from running at top speed.

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Colorado research biotech Array BioPharma Inc. has reached a deal with industry giant Amgen Inc. that gives $60 million to Array and separately funds research jobs at the company.

The Boulder-based company licensed continued development of an experimental Type II diabetes drug, ARRY-403, to Amgen in exchange for the $60 million up front. Amgen also agreed to pay for an undisclosed number of research jobs at Array for two years.

Array BioPharm will complete the Phase I trial it started this year on ARRY-403, testing its safety and dosing in people for the first time. Under the licensing arrangement, Thousand Oaks, Calif.-based Amgen, will conduct future testing and development of the drug.

Under the terms of the deal, Array BioPharma retains the right to co-promote the drug in the United States, if ARRY-403 makes it to market. It will also make royalties on future sales of ARRY-403 that Amgen makes, the companies announced Monday evening.

With 390 employees, Array is second in size only to Amgen among Colorado’s commercial biotech drug employers, and the largest one based in the state. Amgen employs about 900 people in Boulder County.

Array researchers struck upon developing "glucokinase activator" compounds for treating diabetes in 2005 Same day payday loans. ARRY-403, the leading drug resulting from the research, is hoped to be a once-a-day pill that helps the body modulate glucose levels in the blood and increases the production of insulin, a process that doesn’t work properly in diabetics.

"Amgen is a leading innovator of important new therapies, with a focus on the treatment of severe, chronic diseases, and we believe that this collaboration indicates the significant potential of our glucokinase activator program," said Array CEO Robert Conway in a press release.

A trio of former Amgen scientists launched Array BioPharma in 1998 after Amgen closed some of its Boulder labs there. Array started with 25 employees and grew by researching potential drug compounds — primarily potential cancer treatments — for other biotechs.

ARRY-403 is among the first generation of treatments Array started developing for itself.

The Amgen deal helps Array end the year with positive news after it laid off 40 employees in January and scaled back its research focus.

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There will be mixed feelings within the University at Buffalo athletic department following the dpearture of head football coach Turner Gill to the University of Kansas.

The Bulls will be sorry to see the coach who lifted the program from the depths of Division I-A to a conference champion depart. Yet, Gill's exit to the Big 12 school is testament to the job he did at UB.

Gill will be officially introduced as the Kansas coach Monday after accepting the Jayhawks' offer over the weekend. UB, meanwhile, has elevated offensive coordinator Danny Barrett to interim head coach while launching a national search for a successor to Gill.

“Today is a day that creates many mixed feelings,” said a statement from Director of Athletics Warde Manuel. “I am saddened to see Turner leave us as he has done an absolutely fantastic job of building our football program to unprecedented success upon a value system that we can all be proud of. That being said, I am extremely happy for Turner and his family that they have been granted this opportunity Low fee payday loans.”

He added that Barrett is a candidate for the UB position and is the only internal staff member that will be considered.

Gill led Buffalo to its first Division I conference championship and bowl appearance in the program’s history when the Bulls won the Mid-American Conference championship game in 2008 and later played in the International Bowl in Toronto. The Bulls compiled an overall record of 20-30 during Gill’s tenure, including a 14-18 record in the MAC, after recording a 7-49 record in their first seven seasons in the league prior to his arrival.

Gill was named the 23rd head coach in school history on Dec. 16, 2005, taking over a program that had won just 10 games in its first seven years as a Division I-A member.

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NEW YORK – A nine-month rally in oil prices could be faltering as a gradual sell-off that began in late October gains momentum.

Crude prices, which doubled from March to October, fell Friday for the eighth day in a row. The contract for January delivery gave up 67 cents to settle at US$69.87 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It's the first time that oil settled below $70 a barrel since early October.

Prices hit two-month lows as the U.S. dollar gained strength and investors took a second look at paltry demand figures in the West.

All energy prices were in retreat despite a report Friday from the International Energy Agency saying global oil demand will rise next year more than previously expected. Analysts said they've heard such talk before, and they're now looking for concrete signs of demand from both consumers and industry.

"How do you know when the economic recovery really begins? It is when real oil demand growth appears," analyst Phil Flynn said in a report. "Not just artificial demand growth being propped up with smoke and mirrors, but demand growth that comes with solid economic activity and global growth."

The IEA, an energy watchdog for some of the biggest crude consuming countries, said Friday that it was raising its estimates for 2010 global oil demand because of increased economic activity in Asia and the Middle East.

The Paris-based organization said in its monthly report that crude demand would reach 86.3 million barrels a day in 2010, up 1.7 per cent from 2009. Last month, the IEA forecast oil demand of 86.2 million barrels a day in 2010.

Meanwhile, the U.S. dollar has surged on a drop in U no fax cash advance.S. unemployment and an anticipation that the Federal Reserve may raise interest rates.

Oil contracts, which are priced in U.S. currency, tend to move in the opposite direction of the U.S. dollar.

Crude had jumped as high as $82 a barrel in October. Since then, oil prices have slumped 13 per cent. U.S. consumption of petroleum products including heating oil and diesel, has fallen about 20 per cent from a year earlier, Barclays Capital said in a report.

"It is really the lack of inspiration in distillate demand that stands out, showcasing the lack of cold weather and no turnaround yet in trucking activity in the U.S.," Barclays said.

Retail gasoline prices are also nearing two-month lows.

Pump prices fell by less than a penny overnight to a new national average of $2.623, according to auto club AAA, Wright Express and Oil Price Information Service. A gallon of regular unleaded is 3.1 cents cheaper than a month ago and 95.9 cents more expensive than last year.

In Canada, the price at the pump averaged 98.5 cents Canadian per litre, down from $1.025 per litre a month ago, according to price-watching website GasBuddy.com.

In other Nymex trading in January contracts, heating oil added less than a penny to settle at $1.9085 a gallon while gasoline added less than a penny to settle at $1.8416 a gallon. Natural gas fell 13.5 cents to settle at $5.163 per 1,000 cubic feet.

In London, Brent crude for January delivery added two cents to settle at $71.88 on the ICE Futures exchange.

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Some of the economists who anticipated the U.S. job market would see marked improvement in November now project job gains are around the corner, and possibly in the rearview mirror.

Payrolls fell by 11,000 workers, while the unemployment rate dropped to 10 percent. Jobs were forecast to decline 125,000, according to the median estimate of 82 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News. Estimates ranged from decreases of 30,000 to 180,000.

The drawdown in inventories and rising corporate profits are the most compelling reasons for payrolls to begin showing sustainable increases as soon as this month, these economists said. What’s more, the recent trend of upward revisions will probably continue, signaling the worst employment slump in the postwar era may have already ended.

“We could see a positive number for November next month,” said Stefane Marion, chief economist at National Bank Financial Inc. in Montreal, whose forecast of a 30,000 payroll drop was the closest. “Firms now are beginning to redeploy some of their cash flows” by hiring new workers, he said.

Revisions added 159,000 jobs to payroll figures previously reported for October and September, a report from the Labor Department showed yesterday in Washington. The previous month’s report added 91,000 for September and August.

Profits, Inventories

Corporate profits climbed 21 percent from January through September, the biggest three-quarter gain in five years, while inventories plunged at a record pace, according figures from the Commerce Department. Leaner stockpiles set the stage for recovery in production.

“If you run down your inventories hard, you also cut your labor force,” said Peter Possing Andersen, an economist at Danske Bank A/S in Denmark who projected a decline of 50,000 jobs for November. He said the ramp up in production means the manufacturing industry, which has cut workers for the past two years, may stabilize and begin hiring in “a couple of months.”

Still, some economists say that even if November’s figures are revised into positive territory, payrolls may not have reached their low point yet. “Revisions lately have been in the favorable direction,” said Neal Soss, chief economist at Credit Suisse in New York who forecast a 50,000 drop in payrolls. “We shouldn’t take that as evidence that we’re at the bottom.”

The improving labor market indicates the deepest U.S. recession since the 1930s may have ended, said the head of the group charged with making the call.

Yesterday’s report “makes it seem that the trough in employment will be around this month,” Robert Hall, who heads the National Bureau of Economic Research’s Business Cycle Dating Committee, said in an interview.

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The Toronto stock market closed lower Friday as strength in the greenback punished commodity stocks and Royal Bank lost ground even as the bank met expectations in its latest earnings report.

The S&P/TSX composite index dropped 125.75 points to 11,510.8, weighed down by a sharp decline in the gold sector. The TSX finished up 46.39 points, or 0.4 per cent, on the week

The U.S. dollar posted gains as the U.S. Labor Department said 11,000 people lost their jobs last month, far below the 120,000 that had been expected. The jobless rate came in at 10 per cent, down from 10.2 per cent in October.

"This may be the point where people really start to feel good about the economy and the people who have been calling for the sky to fall will start changing their mind," said Paul Thornton of Investor Boot Camp Online.

In Canada, 79,100 jobs were created last month while the unemployment rate moved down one-tenth of a point to 8.5 per cent in November, according to Statistics Canada. Economists had been looking for a drop in employment of 43,000.

The rising greenback reversed early Canadian dollar gains, with the loonie down 0.28 of a U.S. cent to 94.53 cents (U.S.).

Shares of Royal Bank fell $1.50 (Canadian), or 2 payday loans with no fax.6 per cent, to $55.98 after it reported its fourth-quarter profit rose 10 per cent from a year ago to $1.2 billion. Overall, the financial services sector in Toronto was down 0.56 per cent.

The Dow Jones industrial average closed up a slight 22.75 points to 10,388.9 – for a gain of 78.98 points or 0.77 per cent this week – as the latest sign of economic strength raised worries about higher interest rates. The Nasdaq composite index climbed 21.21 points to 2,194.35, while the S&P 500 index rose 6.06 points to 1,105.98 as U.S. markets also suffered from lower commodity stocks.

The gold sector was a major weight on the TSX, down 5.5 per cent as the February bullion contract on the Nymex lost $48.80 (U.S.) from its most recent record close to $1,169.50 an ounce.

The TSX energy sector dropped 0.76 per cent as the December crude contract on the New York Mercantile Exchange fell 99 cents to $75.47 a barrel. The decline followed two days of losses resulting from a report Wednesday that showed a big build-up in crude inventories in the U.S. last week.

The Canadian Press

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