At 31, Brad Nimijohn is one of the youngest people in his field.
Make that wheat field.
Nimijohn runs Braelane Farms in Millgrove, Ont., with his father, William. He says he is one of the youngest farmers in Ontario.
A strong new earthquake rattled Japan’s northeast Monday as the government urged more people living near a tsunami-crippled nuclear plant to leave, citing concerns about long-term health risks from radiation.
The magnitude 7.0 aftershock came just hours after people bowed their heads and wept in somber ceremonies to mark a month since a massive earthquake and tsunami that killed up to 25,000 people and set off a crisis of radiation leaks at the nuclear plant by knocking out its cooling systems.
“Even after a month, I still cry when I watch the news,” said Marina Seito, 19, a student at a junior college who recalled being in a basement restaurant in Sendai when the original 9.0-magnitude earthquake hit on March 11. Plates fell and parts of the ceiling crashed down around her.
Officials said Monday’s aftershock did not endanger operations at the tsunami-flooded Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex, where power was cut by the aftershock but quickly restored. The epicenter was just inland and about 100 miles (160 kilometers) north of Tokyo.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told reporters that residents of five more communities, some of them more than 20 miles (30 kilometers) from the plant, were urged to evacuate within a month because of high levels of radiation. People living in a 12-mile (20-kilometer) radius around the plant already have been evacuated.
“This is not an emergency measure that people have to evacuate immediately,” he said. “We have decided this measure based on long-term health risks.”
Edano sounded a grave note, acknowledging that “the nuclear accident has not stabilized” and that “we cannot deny the possibility the situation could get worse.”
The latest quake, the second major aftershock in less than a week, spooked people yet again in a disaster-weary northeastern Japan. Customers in a large electronics store in Sendai screamed and ran outside and mothers grabbed their children, but there were no immediate reports of more damage or injuries.
Japanese officials said the quake was a 7.0 magnitude, but the U.S. Geological Survey said it measured magnitude 6.6.
With workers still far from bringing the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant under control, the bodies of thousands of tsunami victims yet to be found and more than 150,000 people living in shelters, there was little time Monday for reflection on Japan’s worst disaster since World War II.
People in hard-hit towns gathered for ceremonies at 2:46 p.m., the exact moment of the massive quake a month earlier.
“My chest has been ripped open by the suffering and pain that this disaster has caused the people of our prefecture,” said Yuhei Sato, the governor of Fukushima, which saw its coastal areas devastated by the tsunami and is home to the damaged plant at the center of the nuclear crisis. “I have no words to express my sorrow.”
In a devastated coastal neighborhood in the city of Natori, three dozen firemen and soldiers removed their hats and helmets and joined hands atop a small hill that has become a memorial for the dead. Earlier, four monks in pointed hats rang a prayer bell there as they chanted for those killed bad credit payday advance.
The noisy clatter of construction equipment ceased briefly as crane operators stood outside their vehicles and bowed their heads.
In the industrial town of Kamaishi, Iwate Gov. Takuya Tasso led a moment of commemoration as a loud siren rang through a high school gymnasium being used as a shelter. He bowed while people who have lived there since the tsunami kneeled on makeshift futons, bowed their heads and clasped their hands.
The school’s students will return to classes Tuesday even though 129 people are living in their gym. Some, like 16-year-old Keisuke Shirato, wore their baseball uniforms for Monday’s ceremony. Shirato’s family was not affected by the tsunami, but about half of his teammates lost their homes.
“A new school year starts tomorrow,” Shirato said. “Hopefully that will help give people hope and allow them to look toward a new start.”
The earthquake and tsunami flattened communities along hundreds of miles (kilometers) of coastline, causing what the government estimates could be as much as $310 billion in damage. About 250,000 are without electricity, although some of them because of the latest two quakes Monday and last Thursday.
Adding to the misery is radiation spewing from the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex, 140 miles (220 kilometers) northeast of Tokyo. The 70,000 to 80,000 people who lived within 12 miles (20 kilometers) of the plant must stay away from their homes indefinitely.
“We have no future plans. We can’t even start to think about it because we don’t know how long this will last or how long we will have to stay in these shelters,” said Atsushi Yanai, a 55-year-old construction worker. The tsunami spared his home, but he has to live in a shelter anyway because it is in the evacuation zone.
Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. said its president, Masataka Shimizu, went to Fukushima prefecture Monday to relay his gratitude and apologies. Shimizu recently spent eight days in the hospital with dizziness and high blood pressure, but has since returned to work.
Shimizu told reporters in Fukushima that people who live near the plant are “suffering physically and mentally due to the nuclear radiation leak accident,”
“We sincerely apologize for this,” he said.
At TEPCO headquarters in Tokyo, hundreds of employees bowed their heads for a moment of silence at 2:46.
Japan’s government marked the one-month period by putting an ad in newspapers in China, South Korea, Russia, France, the United Kingdom and the United States _ a letter from Prime Minister Naoto Kan thanking people for the outpouring of support that followed the tsunami. The Red Cross alone said it has collected $107 million (9.1 billion yen) from overseas.
Kan described the outpouring as “kizuna,” the bond of friendship.
“We deeply appreciate the kizuna our friends from around the world have shown and I want to thank every nation, entity, and you personally, from the bottom of my heart.”
Americans paid more for food and energy in February, but outside those volatile categories inflation was tame.
The Labor Department says the Consumer Price Index rose 0.5 percent in February, the largest increase since June 2009. But excluding food and energy costs, core prices rose 0.2 percent, the same as in January.
Gas prices jumped 4.7 percent in February, above January’s increase but below December’s rise. Food costs increased 0.6 percent, the most in two and a half years personal business card.
Costs for other goods and services, such as health care and cars, are also rising. Core consumer prices increased 1.1 percent in the past year, up from a 0.6 percent annual increase in October. Still, that’s below the Fed’s preferred range of 1.5 percent to 2 percent.
The global ranks of billionaires grew by 199 people in the past year, but none came close to unseating Carlos Slim of Mexico, the world’s richest man, who added $20.5 billion to his coffers, according to Forbes magazine’s annual tally.
The number of people on Forbes’ list climbed to 1,210 billionaires, setting a record with combined wealth of $4.5 trillion, up from $3.6 trillion a year ago. While the biggest slice of that wealth, $1.5 trillion, is controlled by people in the U.S., more than half of the new billionaires came from Brazil, Russia, India and China.
At the top of the list for the second year in a row is Mexican telecom magnate Slim, whose fortune climbed to $74 billion. The majority of his net worth comes from his holdings in America Movil, Latin America’s largest phone service provider.
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates was No. 2 on the list, with a net worth of $56 billion. The rebound in the stock market helped investor Warren Buffett’s wealth increase to $50 billion to secure third place.
The makeup of the top 10 was almost unchanged. Christy Walton, whose father-in-law Sam Walton and his brother founded Wal-Mart Stores Inc., displaced Germany’s Karl Albrecht as No. 10. Walton, one of 102 women on the list this year, saw her net worth climb to $26 billion.
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, had the fastest-growing net worth
When Jay Ricker, owner of the BP gas station off Interstate 70 in Plainfield, Ind., set the price of unleaded gasoline at $3.44 per gallon on Monday of last week, it was 4 cents higher than the Friday before.
That alone might have been irritating to drivers paying the highest gas prices in more than two years. It was even more so because it happened on a day when the price of crude oil, which is used to make gasoline, fell almost $1 a barrel.
“It’s up 20 cents one day, down 10 cents the next day,” says Oscar Elmore, a courier who was filling up his Ford Taurus at a RaceTrac service station in Dallas recently. “It sounds kinda fishy to me.”
Gas prices rise when oil prices rise, and fall when oil prices fall _ except when they don’t. What you pay at your gas station depends on an array of factors, from what happens on an exchange in New York to what the competition is charging.
This can rankle drivers, especially these days. Gas reached a national average of $3.51 a gallon on Monday. That’s up 14 cents, or 4 percent, over the past week. The week before, the average rose 20 cents, the steepest increase since September 2008.
A year ago, the price was $2.75. The average is the highest it’s ever been this time of year, and analysts expect it to climb higher in the coming weeks.
Unlike an iPhone or a pair of jeans or a Big Mac, oil and gas are commodities, and their prices can change every second at the New York Mercantile Exchange and other trading hubs. Those far-off changes affect the cost of the next day’s commute.
Sellers of commodities, like gas station owners and refineries, price their product based not on what it costs to produce it, but on what it costs to replace it. Stations like the Plainfield BP, which gets shipments of gas several times a week, must constantly adjust their prices to keep up with the changing costs of their shipments.
Oil is the biggest factor in gas prices. It accounts for 50 to 70 percent of the cost. Recent upheaval in the Middle East and strong demand for oil around the world have pushed oil prices over $100 a barrel for only the second time in history. But the price of a gallon of gas at the pump rises _ and, yes, falls _ for a number of other reasons.
Oil prices can be moved by geopolitics, the value of the dollar, extreme weather or Chinese demand. Gas prices can be moved by oil prices, refinery problems or even weather that might keep drivers at home.
In the next few weeks, gas prices are expected to rise as refiners switch to a more expensive blend of gasoline designed to help protect against evaporation during the warmer summer months.
“We have to pay whatever the market says we do. It’s an instantaneous world,” says Joe Petrowski, CEO of Gulf Oil, a big gasoline wholesaler.
Whether the gas at the Plainfield BP was made from a barrel of oil pumped a month ago 1,000 miles away in Williston, N.D., or three months ago and 7,000 miles away in Kuwait, its price is set by buyers and sellers in New York hours before Ricker buys it.
There’s no way to know exactly where the oil used to make the gasoline sold at the Plainfield BP came from, or even where the gas was refined. Oils from many sources are mixed together on their way to a refinery, and gasolines from many refineries are mixed together on their way to a fuel terminal, where gas is stored before trucks take it to gas stations payday loan no faxing.
But here’s a plausible route: Oil is pumped by a company with wells in Texas or Louisiana and piped to a major oil hub in Cushing, Okla. From there, it is sold to an energy trader who may store it or trade it a few times.
Then BP buys it to feed its Whiting, Ind., refinery. After a two-week pipeline trip to Whiting, the oil is cooked into gasoline and piped to BP’s fuel terminal in Indianapolis.
There, BP blends it with ethanol and a few special BP-branded additives and sets a final wholesale price, known as the rack price. It’s this rack price that leads to the final pump price for most station owners.
A wholesaler like BP or Gulf each has its own formula for setting the rack price. In an attempt to smooth out the spikes and dips of the market, a wholesaler usually buys some of his fuel through long-term contracts. The rest is bought on the so-called spot market, priced at a given moment by a benchmark like the New York Harbor gasoline price.
Every day at 5 p.m., BP tells Ricker what the rack price will be starting at 6 p.m. That price is good for 24 hours.
Ricker hires a trucker to go to the terminal a short drive away in Indianapolis, fill ‘er up with 10,000 gallons and bring it to his station. Then Ricker decides what price to charge customers based on his ultimate concerns: the Speedway and Circle K stations that share an intersection with him.
There are only two or three pennies per gallon in profit selling gas for most station owners. What Ricker really wants is to attract customers to sell the truly precious liquids: Not the gasoline and diesel outside, but the water and soft drinks inside.
Three times a day, his station manager, Debbie Sennett, records his competitors’ prices. When the competition lowered prices on Tuesday, so did Ricker, to $3.24 per gallon.
“Gasoline is the only product in this country that if you’re a penny different people will go out of their way to go somewhere else,” Ricker says.
Wholesale gasoline prices have risen 38 cents per gallon, or 15 percent, since the first uprising in Libya on Feb. 15. When wholesale gas prices rise fast, filling station owners get squeezed or even lose money because competition prevents them from raising retail prices as fast as costs are rising.
So if it seems that station owners take their time lowering prices when oil and wholesale gas get cheaper, it’s because that’s exactly what they do.
“If gasoline prices drop a dime, a station will only pass along one or two pennies a day,” says Patrick DeHaan, an analyst at GasBuddy.com, a website that collects and publishes retail gas prices. “They are slower to pass along the discount because they need to make up for money they lost when prices went up.”
Through the first eight weeks of 2011, average gross profit for gas stations was 4.9 percent, according to the Oil Price Information Service. In 2010, it was 6 percent.
That doesn’t draw much sympathy from those who have to pay more at the pump, though. “To me it seems like a money game,” says Steve Armonett of Indianapolis, who pulled into Ricker’s BP to fill up his Buick LeSabre recently. “They’re just worried about how much money they can make.”
German Chancellor Angela Merkel signaled that European Union leaders may be ready to renegotiate the terms of Greece’s bailout as part of a broader package to shore up confidence in the euro.
“There certainly is a discussion about whether to consider extending the running time of the Greek program,” Merkel said, noting that last year’s aid plan for Greece was limited to three years while Ireland’s bailout package, agreed last November, runs for seven years. “It’s one point that’s on the table.”
Merkel, speaking to reporters in Berlin today after talks with Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou, said that any extension would have to be a part of the comprehensive package to fight the debt crisis being negotiated for next month’s EU summit. No decision has yet been made on such action, she said.
The comments by Merkel, the leader of Europe’s biggest economy, are the first indication the EU may respond to calls to ease bailout conditions for indebted countries. Papandreou used a speech in the German capital yesterday to urge her backing for lowering interest rates on bailout loans. Ireland’s main opposition leader Enda Kenny traveled to Berlin last week to tell Merkel of the need for Ireland to have similar relief.
There is a “need to work within the European Union to strengthen some of the mechanisms of financial support for countries which experience crisis,” European Central Bank Executive Board member Lorenzo Bini Smaghi said in a speech in Hong Kong today payday loans.
To Be Done
Greece’s debts are likely to be more than 156 percent of gross domestic product when a 110 billion-euro ($150 billion) EU-led aid package runs out in 2013, according to EU forecasts. Greece pays about 5 percent for European aid.
Merkel praised debt-cutting and austerity measures by Papandreou’s government, saying the “path is not easy.”
“Greece has started to put its house in order,” Merkel said. Even so, “quite a bit still needs to be done.”
Papandreou compared the Greek debt-cutting program to “a sprint,” saying his government is committed to seeing it through to avoid Greece having to restructure its debt.
The task will be easier “if the Greek people can be convinced that their sacrifices are not in vain,” he said.
EU leaders are working to finish a comprehensive plan to stem the crisis by a summit in Brussels on March 24-25. Germany will present initial proposals at a special summit called for March 11, and improving European competitiveness will be a “central theme,” Merkel said.
“Europe must become more competitive and everyone has a duty to stabilize the euro,” she said.
As cotton prices keep setting records, clothing sellers are challenged to do everything they can to avoid passing the cost on to shoppers. If they raise prices, they risk losing their customers.
But it’s not easy for retailers to ignore the fact that cotton prices have more than doubled over the past year, hitting an all-time high of $2 a pound on Thursday.
Some companies are taking creative approaches to use less cotton.
"T-shirts may get thinner," said Chris Callieri, principal with A.T. Kearney’s retail and consumer practice.
Callieri said some of his clients are playing around with the "density" of cotton fabric, to see how they can use less of it. "But you have to be careful with that approach so that it doesn’t affect the quality of the garment," he said.
Another creative tweak is using "fake" pockets.
"You can reduce the size of a garment, but add embroidery and buttons. This can reduce cotton costs as well," Callieri said.
The cotton crunch is also bringing back the go-to fabric of the 70s, polyester.
But before you break into a sweat at the idea of shiny disco shirts and skin-tight trousers hanging at your neighborhood Macy’s (M, Fortune 500) this summer, Callieri said retailers are experimenting with blended fabric, such as a poly-cotton mix, to replace pure-cotton offerings.
The cotton crunch is hitting the bedding and linen industry particularly hard since consumers generally favor 100%-cotton sheets.
"What has more cotton than the bedsheet that you slept on last night?" said Andrew Tananbaum, CEO of Capital Business Credit, which provides financing to suppliers who cater to bedding and clothing retailers in the U.S.
But companies are now warming up to using blended fabric.
Tananbaum said high thread count poly-cotton blended sheets are about 30% cheaper than comparable all-cotton sheets. The lower price could convince cotton purists to at least try the product and save some money.
"Instead of paying $100 for an 800-thread count all-cotton sheet set, you pay $70 for the same thread count." he said. "So it’s cheaper, but the quality is still the same."
Another subtle way retailers will look to keep prices steady is by repackaging cotton products differently. While it won’t seem like consumers are paying more, the repackaging will still come at some cost to them.
The most obvious example is with multipacks of cotton undershirts and socks that could shrink from five a pack to three a pack, said Marshal Cohen, chief retail analyst with NPD Group.
Ultimately, Cohen said the bottom line for consumers is that retailers can try to shield them from price increases through these methods but they won’t be able to do it forever.
"No one knows when this trend is going to stop. Maybe the only thing that will stop it is if consumer demand for cotton items cools." said Phil Flynn, senior market and commodities analyst with PFG Best.
Fans of the Super Bowl can probably expect to see Clydesdales in the game for the next few years.
The owner of Budweiser says it has locked up its position as the only national beer advertiser in the Super Bowl through 2014.
The brewer, which became Anheuser-Busch InBev in 2008, has had a presence in the NFL’s championship game as the exclusive beer advertiser for 23 years. This year, it will again feature its famous horses and, according to Kantar Media, it will keep its spot as the game’s largest ad buyer.
The week of the Super Bowl, which will be played on Feb. 6, is a busy one for brewers, with beer sales rising as much as 20 percent above a typical week in January or February cash advance payday loan.
That’s part of the reason the U.S. subsidiary, Anheuser-Busch Inc., is buying seven 30-second spots this year and securing its presence going forward.
“We wouldn’t have done it if the payoff wasn’t there,” said Anheuser-Busch President Dave Peacock.
This year, AB InBev will tout Belgian lager Stella Artois in its first Super Bowl with a 60-second ad. Flagship brand Budweiser will have one 60-second ad and Bud Light will get three 30-second spots.
China’s government failed to draw enough demand at a bill sale for the second time in a month as seasonal demand for funds and higher reserve-requirement ratios left banks with less cash.
The finance ministry sold 16.76 billion yuan ($2.53 billion) of 91-day securities, falling short of the planned 20 billion yuan target, according to traders at the lead underwriters of government debt, who asked not to be identified. The average winning yield was 3.68 percent, higher than the 3.22 percent rate for similar-maturity debt in the secondary market yesterday.
“The market is desperate for cash,” said Chen Liang, a bond analyst at Guohai Securities Co. in Shenzhen. “It’s too costly to park money with the debt at such a price given the seven-day repo rate has risen above 5 percent.”
Policy makers on Dec. 10 ordered lenders to set aside more money as reserves for the third time in five weeks to contain inflation. The seven-day repurchase rate, which measures lending costs between banks, has more than doubled in the past two weeks and yesterday reached a three-year high of 5.67 percent, according to daily fixings published at 11 a.m. by the National Interbank Funding Center. The rate slid seven basis points today to 5.60 percent.
The cash shortage has also sapped demand for bills sold by the People’s Bank of China. The monetary authority has sold 1 billion yuan of one-year bills at each of its last four weekly auctions, the lowest sales amounts since October 2007 cash advance in one hour.
Accelerating Inflation
The finance ministry sold 11.55 billion yuan of 91-day bills on Nov. 26, less than the planned 20 billion yuan. The average yield was 2.74 percent. China’s inflation accelerated to a 28-month high of 5.1 percent in November, the statistics bureau said on Dec. 11.
The finance ministry in February published a list of 48 lead underwriters required to bid at its debt sales, including Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd., Agricultural Bank of China Ltd., Bank of China Ltd., China Construction Bank Corp., China Citic Bank Corp, Postal Savings Bank of China, Guotai Junan Securities Co, BOC International (China) Ltd.
The yuan strengthened 0.15 percent to 6.6331 per dollar today, according to the China Foreign Exchange Trade System. It’s risen 0.34 percent in the week.
Twelve-month non-deliverable forwards climbed 0.23 percent to 6.4925 per dollar, reflecting bets the currency will strengthen 2.2 percent in one year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
–Judy Chen. Editors: James Regan, Sandy Hendry
To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: Judy Chen in Shanghai at +86-21-6104-3043 or xchen45@bloomberg.net.
Regulators on Friday shut down small banks in Michigan and Pennsylvania, boosting the number of U.S. banks that have failed this year to 151 as bad loans have mounted and the economy has been slow to heal.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. took over Paramount Bank, based in Farmington Hills, Mich., with $252.7 million in assets and $213.6 million in deposits; and Earthstar Bank, based in Southampton, Pa., with $112.6 million in assets and $104.5 million in deposits.
Level One Bank, based in Farmington Hills, Mich., will assume the assets and deposits of Paramount Bank; Polonia Bank, based in Huntingdon Valley, Pa., is assuming all the deposits and $77.1 million of Earthstar Bank’s loans and other assets.
In addition, the FDIC and Level One Bank agreed to share losses on $233.1 million of Paramount Bank’s assets. The agency and Polonia Bank are sharing losses on $45.8 million of Earthstar Bank’s assets.
The failure of Paramount Bank is expected to cost the deposit insurance fund $90.2 million; that of Earthstar Bank is expected to cost $22.9 million.
The 151 closures nationwide so far this year tops the 140 shuttered in all of 2009 and is the most in a year since the savings-and-loan crisis two decades ago. By this time last year, regulators had closed 133 banks.
The 2009 failures cost the insurance fund about $36 billion; the failures so far this year have cost around $21 billion, less because the banks failing in 2010 have on average been smaller. Twenty-five banks failed in 2008, the year the financial crisis struck with force; only three succumbed in 2007.
The growing bank failures have sapped billions of dollars out of the deposit insurance fund. It fell into the red last year, and its deficit stood at $8 billion as of Sept. 30.
The number of banks on the FDIC’s confidential “problem” list jumped to 860 in the third quarter from 829 three months earlier, even as the industry as a whole made $14.5 billion in net income. The 860 troubled banks is the highest number since 1993, during the savings-and-loan crisis.
The FDIC expects the cost of resolving failed banks to total around $52 billion from 2010 through 2014.
Depositors’ money _ insured up to $250,000 per account _ is not at risk, with the FDIC backed by the government. That insurance cap was made permanent in the financial overhaul law enacted in July.
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